The uprising of the South Africa`s masses and their venting of their anger on the foreign nationals is the result of three causes: Social disgruntlement of certain layers of the population; ANC`s acceptance of a compromise with the ex – colonial power cartels and monopolies and surrendering a principle of National Democratic Revolution. The African National Congress – the once spectacular political liberation movement which gave the masses of South Africa hope and which pledged to lead the native South Africans to supreme sovereignty upon its ascendance to state power, is now seen in the light of experience of 33 years of its rule to be symbolic of a very great disaster. In transitioning from the status of a colonized people to that of self-governing citizens of an independent nation, the poor native South Africans have now come to realize that no real progress is being made along the road of independent, democratic South Africa.
To show the nature of their action, the ANC set out their claims not as clearly as possible, and sought with their colonialist opposite numbers, calmly and without passion, for a solution which took the interests of both parties (the settlers and the national liberation movements) into consideration. In their speeches the political leaders gave a name to the nation – the “Rainbow Nation”. In this way the armed struggle and the settlers` Apartheid rule were demobilized through a rapid process of therapy by hibernation. There was however, no political or social program. Rather, there was a vague outline or skeleton, in giving shape to national demands which was described as “historical compromises.” The ANC comrades who made speeches and who wrote in the nationalist newspapers made the people dream dreams. They avoided the actual overthrowing of the colonial state, but in fact they introduced into their readers’ or hearers’ consciousness the terrible ferment of subversion outside the bounds of the colonial order; and sometimes these ANC politicians spoke of themselves as “Afrikaners” during the transitioning epoch, thereby testifying a sacramental signification to the concessions of capitalism blindfolds.
As the heads of the liberation movements inevitably, the African native elites ended up by bringing about the “end of the colonial regime” by multiplying their appeals to the left for calm, while on their right they scanned the horizon, trying to make out the liberal intentions of colonialism. Even though it is the people who did see to it that the liberation became the business of each and all, the South African native African intellectual was being crowned as a national leader with special merit. Illuminated by a voracious taste for the concrete ascendance to political power, such native intellectuals have imposed themselves upon the masses as the demagogues, the opportunists, who mean to understand everything and make all decisions. International capitalism welcomed these “godsend” with open arms, transformed these “blind mouths” into spokesmen, released these men, and held discussions with them and in less time endowed them with independence, on condition that they restored order. All those comrades who have been spat on, insulted without shrinking, brutalized, imprisoned, and murdered, are studied and held up as examples of saints who have turned the other cheek, who have forgiven trespasses against them.
On the other side, there were to be found at the core of the political liberation movements and among their leaders certain revolutionaries in the example of Chris Hani amongst others, who deliberately turned their backs upon the farce of national independence. But very quickly their questionings, their energy, and their anger obstructed the party machine; and these elements were gradually isolated, and then quite simply brushed aside. As if there existed a dialectic concomitance, the state security in the likes of de-colonialist police and intelligence spies tailed their lives as grey shadows following all upon them. With no security in their homes, avoided by the militants of their party and rejected by its leaders, these undesirable firebrands ended up executed extrajudicial style.
This catastrophic situation has produced an ersatz conflict, in that the ANC intellectuals suddenly became useless with their bureaucracy that brandished the danger of a “mass mobilization”; yet, far removed from events, pursuing the crowning imposture of “speaking in the name of the silenced nation.” The practice of therapy by hibernation (“Historical Compromises”), which have been used as the “sleep-cure” on the people, may have succeeded to gain independence for African countries, but the masses have found themselves with the barren, inert slogan “Free at last” but realized few years after independence that they have been frustrated, that “it wasn’t worth – while” fighting, and that nothing could really change. National Democratic Revolution forming the fundamental basis of ANC ideological consciousness, instead of being the all-embracing crystallization of the innermost hopes of the whole people of South Africa has become in any case only an empty shell. In essence, the apotheosis of South Africa`s independence was transformed into the curse of independence.
We now notice the role played by the history of the resistance at the time of the apartheid era, springing again to life with peculiar intensity and (resemblance of apartheid era) in the period of a democratic South Africa; in which black South Africans give free reign to their “bloodthirsty instincts” and fling themselves into jacqueries, mutinies, and “brutish murders”, to force African immigrants to flee their country. They incriminate, intimidate, beat, maim, rob and kill fellow Africans irrespective of their innocence and legal status. It is absolutely rational that fully conscious and alive people do not look on while all other members of their family are wiped out by means of illicit drugs, car high-jacking and illicit sex business, etc in order to make profit out of them. The determination to fight for one’s life, public health, dignity and respect, which characterize the March and March and other pressure groups in their resentment to the African aliens` Mafia businesses are obviously good enough reasons in their resolve to avenge.
However, to introduce emotional motives for hating and reasons to go off hunting for African immigrants to harass, beat up, shoot and force their repatriation back to their respective countries — cannot justify “a legitimate desire for revenge”. Those lightning flashes of consciousness which fling the body into stormy paths or which throw it into an almost pathological trance where the face of the other beckons me on to hatred, where my blood calls for the spilling blood of the other, where by sheer inertia my revenge calls for the death of the other—that intense emotion of the desire to revenge falls to barbarism if it is left to devour on the other self. That hatred alone cannot draw up a solution to the Mafia drugs business and the illegal immigrants` situation. It will only risk the defeat of own ends if prejudice and hatred are put into use.
In the final analysis, the rage that is taking place in South Africa is not solely the result of influx of African immigrants to South Africa. It is also the result of the geography of hunger in Africa which has been profoundly generated by “politics of comrades”. The ANC just like the different African governments has remained oblivious to the systemic reform of colonial power; it has betrayed the ambitions and goals of their fellow citizens – the mass of the people struggle against the same poverty, flounder about with their shrunken bellies. The edifice which shows the process of retrogression in the ANC government is the practices of nepotism and favoritism. The ANC ruling class like most of the African leaders if not all, have installed their ethnic group members or clan affiliates, close and extended families, and friends within the state system and empowered them to manipulate the state power and exploit the state resources. As a common phenomenon in post – colonial Africa, the national economy is passed over for the class monopoly and exploitation, and the tribe is preferred to the state. This is one of the terrible retrograde setbacks that destiny played in the de-colonial program of Africa!
Gaontebale Mokgosi
Brother Chairman
Real Alternative Party