The remark by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on the insignificant role the State should play in the creation of jobs was bound to ruffle too many feathers. “We all know that the government does not create jobs. Business creates jobs. Around 80% of all the people employed in South Africa are employed in the private sector”, beamed the President.
Thus, the cat was set among the pigeons. Neo-liberal and right-wing parties within and outside the parliament celebrated this announcement while pro-black and left-inclined parties were left perplexed. Another profound development to have caught our attention this past week was the appearance (and testimony) of EFF CIC, Julius Malema, in the Equality Court in the case brought by Afriforum over the struggle song “kill/kiss the boer” as constituting hate speech.
What these separate matters effectively did was, really, to serve to remind us that the 1994 settlement and the resultant rainbow dispensation were but just a mirage. A wondrous dream, so to speak.
It is moments like these that should necessarily make us pause and reflect on how we have done as black people in the 28 years of the ANC in political office. In defence of the struggle song, Malema took the opportunity to buttress the point that our freedom ideals in this country have yet to be fulfilled.
He turned the situation into a platform to articulate the existential condition of black people in their native land, and further reminded us of the white colonial conquest, land dispossession and the continued socio-economic injustice that black people endure under this neo-colonial and neo-apartheid society.
It dawned on me that the oppressed natives got carried away by the narratives and lies of freedom preached since 1994 and, in the process, got entangled in the predetermined legal and constitutional meshwork that underpins what is deemed to be our democracy, which guarantees white privilege.
The EFF leader’s reminder of the agony or torture of the victims of apartheid being “forced” to sing the apartheid “Die Stem” in our national anthem was profound. The post-1994 arrangement has simply carried over apartheid apparatus, culture, identities and landscapes into the so-called democratic dispensation.
In this regard, we have failed to rename this apartheid construction called “South Africa”, to Azania, we have maintained the “Union Buildings”, kept the apartheid name of “Rand” for our currency, further embraced the superiority of white people’s languages and, above all, the colonial education system.
But the truth is, we find ourselves in the melancholic situation of the revolution having ended without reversing the logic of oppression and dispossession, while the erstwhile liberation movement, the ANC, has devotedly maintained the pro-white (anti-black) status quo. As long as this colonial and apartheid pattern persists, we will continue to live on a knife’s edge. Analogously, our nation is precariously sitting on a powder keg.
But the ANC, in political office for 28 years now, is in an unenviable position to not be seen to be against the same arrangements it has been responsible for manufacturing in their consortium with the apartheid leaders. This should explain why it’s so easy for the ANC leadership and, indeed, many black politicians to take to the podium to propagate pro-capital or neoliberal positions in a country where blacks remain disenfranchised and economically marginalized. It is heartbreaking to hear black politicians making fatal assertions to suggest that the sacrifices made in the freedom struggle were for this neoliberal constitution.
Our people, especially young people, should disabuse themselves from such dangerous notions. I have consistently made the point that this constitution (as per section 2) was granted superiority over Afrikan laws, cultures and practices, and above all, engineered to protect the ill-gotten white privileges. It is in this sense that such mentally entangled apologists and defenders of the status quo hysterically, and with ease, label any frank critique of this neo-liberal document as “an attack” thereof.
This leads us to questioning what the struggle was all about, whether that has been achieved or not? What has the 28-year rainbow dispensation brought to the oppressed natives of this land? We remain a cultural and economic minority in multifarious ways.
Education and all sectors of the economy, including minerals/energy, banking, agriculture and the media, remain white-dominated. But I ask, why is this unfavourable situation allowed to persist almost 30 years into the so-called democracy? As I have indicated, we got entangled in a neoliberal infrastructure with a leadership beholden to Euro-centric frameworks that serve to celebrate and sustain whitism.
This is further exacerbated by our obsession with electoral politics at the expense of the politics of liberation. It’s tragic for our organisations to shed off their character as liberation movements. It is my considered view that as long as we have not attained true liberation the need to sustain this character remains compellable.
Given the power of the rhetoric and sponsored narrative of “free and democratic” South Africa, it’s predicted that it will be a tough challenge to point to all and sundry the difference between human rights and liberation. It does, however, seem that the end result of all the costly sacrifice has, sadly, been to legitimize the oppressors and make them more comfortable.
But the oppressors have consistently managed to sustain their stranglehold through known tactics of divide-and-rule and parallel governance through establishments such as the media, and so-called NGOs and foundations.
As Black people, we have drastically regressed, particularly when it comes to the ownership of the media. It may be hard for some to believe the historical fact that in 1944, prominent ANCYL political heavyweight, Jordan K Ngubane, took up the editorship of Inkundla ya Bantu, by that time “the country’s only 100 percent black owned and controlled newspaper”.
By 1951, Ngubane had made Inkundla “the country’s lead voice and open forum for expression of African political thought”. As we speak, and many decades later, we cannot point to a black-owned media platform that is a leading voice in this country which can be regarded as a home for “African political thought”.
This leads me to look at the quality, let alone the value, of the so-called Sona debates. What difference does the parliamentary debate bring? Parliamentarians are hamstrung to their party mandates.
For instance, the powerful pro-black views of the likes of PAC’s Mzwanele Nyontsho, ATM’s Vuyo Zungula and indeed the EFF parliamentarians are deflected by the neo-liberal waves that dominate that house of parliament. This is a clear vindication of the view that in the absence of principle, the economically powerful can capture the majority.
For me, this underscores the dimension that parliamentary politics is not really helpful to the black majority. They give us the façade of liberation whereas true power practically still rests with the oppressor. In the end, we have no shame defending neoliberal arrangements as long as such steps benefit our selfish ambitions.
It is in this context that I find the Sona debates frustratingly heartbreaking. It’s all about a contest of catchphrases and verbiage with no prospect of meaningfully changing anything.
In principle, haranguing about the role of the private sector versus State in job creation is unnecessary, especially in the real circumstance of an erstwhile liberation movement “in charge” of government. However, it’s more concerning when considering the nature of the Tripartite Alliance.
In the ideal world, the SACP and COSATU must be rattled, if not embarrassed, by this statement by the president of their lead alliance partner, ANC. The reality, which cannot be contested, is that the private sector is about profiteering rather than the creation of employment.
For capitalists, issues of social justice and development are merely incidental to their main agenda of making profit. My heart really went out to the SACP’s Alex Mashilo, who made a brilliant analysis of this issue, and minced no words in condemning the gravely pro-capital remark by the president.
The stealth and cruelty of the private sector cannot be overemphasized. It’s devoid of humanity and ubuntu. It continues to prove itself in this regard, for instance, in terms of the farm evictions, exploitation in factories, the Marikana massacre and the reluctance to retrieve bodies of four trapped black miners at the Lily Mine more than 1000 days after the tragedy.
I thus decry the poor performance of the post-independence Afrikan states to the extent that they have failed to usher true liberation to the natives of this continent. Will this complacency and mediocrity ever end? Why is the Black power, and Black radical thought and voice, still suppressed? Why haven’t black media and black formations emerged so far?
In my view, we will not attain true liberation and thus experience our Azania as long as Black unity and solidarity remain elusive. The oppressor is aware of this and leverages on our divisions and our black-on-black lynching to ensure that we remain a conquered and defeated people.
As Steve Biko said decades ago, “it’s only when black people are so dedicated and so united in their cause that we can effect the greatest revolt”. It is in this sense that the need for a convention of black people is necessary.
I am alive to the fact that in electoral politics principle is often sacrificed at the altar of stomach and career politics. It’s only a few in our revolutionary history as Afrikans who may be said to have put principle ahead of personal aggrandizement.
So, we still have a long way ahead of us before we can realize true liberation. Let’s forge the spirit of the liberation movement because what the freedom struggle was about is still not achieved. The lamentation of our Afrikan ancestors (as per Moses J Madiba’s “Sello sa mogologolo”) still reverberates in our hearts, “Joo, rare, joo! Joo rare ijoo!”
David Letsoalo is a Sankarist, an activist and Law academic
Sunday Independent