“It so happens that the unpreparedness of the
educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the
people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive
moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps” (Fanon, 1963:
119).
How
has this statement been proven true in post-apartheid South Africa?
This
essay seeks to unpack the statement by Fanon, seeking to understand in what
ways the educated classes have proven to be ‘unprepared’, ‘lazy’ and ‘cowardly’
in the face of liberation, how they have failed to continue the struggle
through a dialectic with the people, and how these failures have led to the
current situation South Africa is in. This piece takes ‘laziness’ as an
unwillingness or inability to engage in conversation; indeed, it is much easier
to speak to those you know, those with the same interests as you than it is to
enter into an egalitarian discussion with those with different backgrounds,
needs, interests.
What this essay does not seek to do is to deny that the ANC
had any positive role to play in the liberation struggle. That is beyond
question. But the extent to which ANC ideology is parallel to or the same as or
even allied to a liberation ideology is profoundly questionable. Indeed, they
seem to be quite opposed to one another, with liberation ideology being almost
thoroughly obliterated in the face of a hegemonic party-state discourse which
has effectively ushered in the continuation of many apartheid structures as well
as political stagnation.
Critical
here is the failure of the educated classes to formulate a ‘liberation
ideology’. It would only be possible to formulate an authentic liberation
ideology through a dialectic between those who lead and the people who act as
the revolutionary body that provides the strength behind social change. What
should have occurred after 1994 in South Africa, according to Fanon’s theory,
was a conversation, a dialogue between the powers of the new administration and
the people. What we find occurring instead is a monologue between the party and
its corporate affiliates. The people are excluded.
We
see liberation ideology being substituted by party ideology – an ideology that
views the ANC as the prime liberatory force and despotic holder of power. In
part, my task is to map out how the interests or pursuit of interests of
government, ANC and party elites have manifested since the 1980s when we find
the ANC transforming alongside the collapse of the USSR and its ideological and
material backing. This is not to say that the ANC is the sole driving force
behind South Africa’s mainstream political stagnation; multinational
corporations like Anglo-American, foreign state’s with their own interests, and
wealthy individuals have all played a role in the pitfalls of South Africa’s
liberation. Nevertheless, for the sake of a more focused, structured piece,
this essay will focus heavily on the inner-workings of the party that claims
itself to be South Africa’s liberatory force.
SOUTH
AFRICAN SELF-WRITING
First,
it is imperative to understand the importance of writing one’s own history. In
“On National Culture” in The Wretched of
the Earth, Fanon articulates the need for colonised people to write their
own history, to define their past, their present and the irremovable future for
themselves, instead of having these things dictated for them by first-world
experts from the colonial motherland, or native bourgeois intellectuals who are
so far detached from their own roots that they seem to have forgotten the aims
of the initial struggle. What also becomes apparent is the idea that the
struggle has ended; as if people do not continue to live in the most bitter
forms of poverty and oppression.
“Struggle”
is emptied from our present reality, as if the struggle simply ended in 1994
with the election of Mandela and the ANC into power. What we hear is one story,
or a set of similar ideological tales, from very select mouths or pens or
cameras. What we hear is not the full tale of the nation and its people. What
we receive, particularly in the opening pages of many news publications, is a ‘party
update’. Consider this series of Mail
& Guardian (2012) front-page headlines: ‘Mdluli cops bugged Cele’ (Apr.
13-19), ‘ANC politics behind e-toll fiasco’ (Apr. 26-May 3), ‘Mdluli: ‘It’s a
racist plot’ (May 11-17), ‘Zumaville in chaos’ (Aug. 10-16), ‘R238-million: The
Nkandla scandal grows’ (Oct. 5-11), ‘Tokyo’s pound of flesh’ (Nov. 12-22),
‘Zuma’s home economics’ (Nov. 23-29). Certainly, it is useful to know what
South Africa’s celebrities of politics are up to. And it is useful to know the
scale of the corruption that plagues the country. But whose story do we read?
Whose tale is told and recorded? And, importantly, who is able to engage
through these potential avenues of dialogue?
However,
what has occurred since 1994 seems to emulate the anti-dialectical nature of
colonial and apartheid history. What reoccurs is an extreme exclusion of a
massive portion of the population; what occurs is a continuation of the old
system and many of its limitations.
AN
ANTI-DIALECTICAL HISTORY
Ato
Sekyi-Otu’s Fanon’s Dialectic of
Experience (1996) provides a useful understanding of Fanon’s insistence on
the dialectic required for fundamental change to occur, and for the colonial
oppression that has been retained in our society to finally be dissolved. It is
a dialectic – a conversation between two sides – that is required so as to move
forward; to transcend our respective situations in a profoundly racist,
colonially-structured society.
For
Sekyi-Otu, and certainly for Fanon, colonial history is ‘anti-dialectical’. It
is a monologue that is dominated by one side (the dominant side being understood
as a Husserlian, spiritual, non-geographical Europe [Gordon, 1995: 4]). When a
man or woman is viewed simply as ‘labourer’ or ‘producer’ or ‘slave’, then s/he
is emptied of his/her existential complexity (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 60): a voiceless
body for extraction whether for labour or votes or violence. The potential
dialectic is transformed into a monologue of history, defined by those in power
– our political elites – essentially disregarding the history of the other as
if they had never had a history, as if they do not continue to produce a
history, as if their history had to and still has to be written by those in
power, those who stand as gate-keepers of history. In colonial and apartheid
times we see white folk standing as those with the power, with the authority,
to write history. Thus black history, the history of the African continent and
the people of Africa comes to be written from the perspective of those who
could not possibly understand the lived experience of those they seek to
represent. In contemporary times, specifically after 1994, we see in South
Africa a change of faces in the space of power. With the ANC taking control, we
find an expansion of those with the authority to write history. Black folk are
now capable of writing their own history. But what has occurred? What history
is being written? Is it the history of the people themselves? Or has what has
been written been suffused with the rhetoric of the party?
HEGEMONY
OF THE PARTY
Fanon’s
articulation of the aims of the national bourgeoisie in The Wretched of the Earth proves useful in an analysis of the
archiving that has taken place thus far in contemporary South Africa.
For
Fanon, the national bourgeoisie exists as a business class, not a class that is
able to accumulate capital. He writes:
“The
national bourgeoisie of under-developed countries is not engaged in production,
nor in invention, nor building, nor labour; it is completely canalised into
activities of the intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems to be to keep
in the running and to be part of the racket” (Fanon, 1963: 120).
Essentially,
the national bourgeoisie that comes into power upon independence lacks the
positioning in the economic structures of the nation to actually take full control
of the country. They remain answerable to neo-colonial powers – ‘donors’ – that
define their aims, their goals, their policies.
Sekyi-Otu
(1996: 106) provides a useful quotation of Fanon’s critique of a “mean-spirited
and predatory ‘national bourgeoisie’” which he refers to as a ‘kleptocratic
bourgeoisie’ (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 107): “Spoilt children of yesterday’s
colonialism and today’s national governments, they organise the loot of
whatever national resources exist. Without pity, they use today’s national
distress as a means of getting on through scheming and legal robbery… they
proclaim the pressing necessity of nationalising the robbery of the nation”.
Those we find as our leaders, according to Fanon and Sekyi-Otu, are part of a
class that, by its very structure, by virtue of the political space they exist
and flourish within, is essentially an extractive class.
What
occurs, then, is not fundamental structural change. Indeed, as Fanon writes:
“The change-over will not take place at the level of structures set up by the
bourgeoisie during its reign, since that caste has done nothing more than take
over unchanged the legacy of the economy, the thought and the institutions left
by the colonialists” (Fanon, 1963: 142). They merely fill the spaces left
gaping by the colonials who left their offices in 1994. For Sekyi-Otu, the
national bourgeoisie, those native elites who rise to power through the party
act as ‘substitutes’ for the colonial administration (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 96).
Sekyi-Otu quotes Fanon on the psychology of the native who seeks to take the
position of the coloniser: “The colonised is a persecuted person who dreams
eternally of becoming the persecutor” (Fanon in Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 88). Sekyi-Otu
continues, drawing on Fanon to argue that “these ‘affranchised slaves’ intent
on accommodation with colonialism are to be distinguished from ‘the majority of
the colonised’… For them, there is no question of entering into competition
with the coloniser. They want to take his place” (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 109).
What
occurs then is not revolution but a continuation of the very structures of
colonialism. What occurs is a form of neo-colonialism that, through their
intimate links with colonial authority, the national bourgeoisie remains
powerless to destroy or alter fundamentally.
Because
no such fundamental change has occurred, we find our own leaders filling the
positions, the political positions, previously occupied by colonial
administrators. What I mean here is more than just the fact that white
ministers have been replaced by black ministers or that the NP is replaced by
the ANC. What I mean here is that the approach of government towards popular
action – towards those Fanon refers to as ‘the people’ – has not changed. What
has continued is a repression of the very people who were and will always be
the historical force behind fundamental social change, behind revolution. The
people of South Africa have been virtually silenced in mainstream political
dialogue. Indeed, when Abahlali baseMjondolo or the Unemployed People’s
Movement or the miners of Marikana attempt to make their voices heard, they are
quickly and often violently silenced and deemed criminal. What we also find is
the amplification of the bourgeois voices of the educated classes: national
bourgeois voices that extract and condemn popular action, and alternative
bourgeois voices that criticise from varying standpoints; both of which are
quite far detached from the realities of the people. In fact, what will be
discovered is that the realities of the people become a footnote in newspapers,
something forgotten amid what are regarded as larger, more important issues.
Fanon
articulates this political situation quite nicely: “It so happens that the
unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between
them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their
cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic
mishaps” (Fanon, 1963: 119). Once 1994 came and ‘democracy’ born in South
Africa, there seems to have come a distancing of the political elite (the
national bourgeoisie) from the people who have historically performed as
catalyst in political movement. In this essay, as with Fanon’s work, we will
find that “such retrograde steps…are the historical result of the incapacity of
the national middle class to rationalise popular action, that is to say their
incapacity to see into the reasons for that action” (ibid). What we find in
post-1994 South Africa is a pattern of chastisement of mass political movement
on the part of our political leaders.
Sekyi-Otu
quotes a statement of Fanon’s which clearly defines the peasantry from the
national bourgeoisie. It is a statement which defines ‘the people’ who strive
for emancipation from the elites who seek to dominate and extract:
“The
peasantry is systematically disregarded for the most part by the propaganda put
out by the nationalist party. Now, it is clear that in colonial countries the
peasantry alone is revolutionary. It has nothing to lose and everything to
gain. The peasant, the déclassé, the
starving person, is the first among the exploited to discover that only
violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possibility of coming to
terms” (Fanon in Sekyi-Otu, ibid).
We
find in the struggles in and around the Marikana Massacre a perfect example of
the division between the interests of the people and those of the national
bourgeoisie.
In
an article by Kwanele Sosibo entitled ‘Mine on edge again after arrests’ (M&G, Oct.19-25, p12) we see the
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) supporting not their members, but the
interests of Lonmin and big international capital. Sosibo writes that “the NUM
criticised the police for what it deemed inefficient policing, particularly for
the lack of arrests… NUM spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka said the arrests had
brought some relief to the organisation, but the union would be happy only
after a successful prosecution. He said lawlessness was the order of the day in
Rustenburg. “If people are a danger to society, they shouldn’t be given bail””.
Similarly, Cyril Ramaphosa – former NUM leader, millionaire businessman, member
of the ANC executive and allegedly COSATU’s favoured presidential candidate
– is quoted as writing in an email to
Lonmin’s chief commercial officer Albert Jamieson that, “The terrible events
that have unfolded cannot be described as a labour dispute. They are plainly
dastardly criminal and must be characterised as such” (‘South Africa’s unions
use mass sackings and murder to suppress miners’, wsws.org). Of course, this
fits in exactly with Fanon’s articulation of a national bourgeoisie that
condemns mass action, seeing it as criminal, as treasonous and something to be
necessarily punished, claiming it as dangerous to society.
What
we see here is a divergence of the interests of the NUM and those it assumes to
represent. We find that the representative body, led by national bourgeois
elites, no longer represents its constituents, rather seeking to pursue the
interests of its bourgeois leaders’ own wealth, positional security, and the
interests of big capital.
What
we also find in the article is a distinct lack of communication – of dialogue,
of dialectic – between the parties involved. We find that Sosibo chooses to
speak to the heads of the NUM, the management of Lonmin, and President Jacob
Zuma. What Sosibo fails to do is speak to the mineworkers themselves; those
most intimately affected by the situation itself.
And
in an article that appears just below the aforementioned report, Sosibo does
exactly the same thing. The article, entitled ‘Mine workers’ hope lies in mass
action’ (M&G, Oct.19-25, p12),
Sosibo looks to the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) as a potential
organiser of the mass movement which began at Marikana. According to the
report, the DSM argues that “the only way for the mine workers to maintain
momentum is to link themselves to the broader workforce and working class
communities who have already taken their discontent to the streets”. In a
rather Fanonian or perhaps more Marxist turn, Mametlwe Sebei, executive member
of the DSM, argues that “the DSM cannot instruct the workers to struggle
because they are compelled by their own conditions”. He goes on to say that
“[w]ith or without us, they will struggle”. But Sosibo notes that “Sebei’s
words can be read as an attempt to disguise the distance between the workers’
immediate aspirations and the movement’s agenda” and that “he appeared to be
speaking more for himself and his organisation than for the crowd of strikers”.
What we find here, then, is an example of an educated man (Sebei, the native
bourgeois intellectual) with what we could perhaps assume to be revolutionary
intentions, but who himself is so distanced from the people who he seeks to
organise that his argument becomes only a footnote in the tale of
Marikana.
What
is even more striking, for the purposes of this essay, is the fact that once
again Sosibo fails to seek the views of any mineworkers. Indeed, it seems as if
they are exactly what he has described them as: a crowd, a mass that remains
virtually faceless and voiceless. Thus in two articles revolving around the
aftermath of Marikana we find the following views represented: 1) those of the
NUM; 2) those of Lonmin; 3) those of the South African government; 4) those of
a leftist party. The view we do not find represented is that of the mineworkers
themselves. Essentially, what Sosibo has achieved – whether on purpose or
through pure neglect – is the effective silencing of the masses. In the two
articles referred to, we are not given the opportunity to hear ‘the voice of
South Africa’, merely select voices from official spaces.
But
is this not how news is reported? Is it not – as things are currently conceived
– the duty of the reporter to find expert opinions on issues so as to give the
reader greater understanding? But then, could it not be argued that the true
expert on Marikana and the ensuing strikes is the participant, not the official
in the safe, secure, air-conditioned office? Is not the expert on struggle the
person who is in the process of struggle? And is not the expert on the
relations between the miners and the NUM and the DSM and ACTU not the miner
himself? Or is it not the case that the miner has been so thoroughly
disempowered that he does not even know the true nature of this relation, since
such discussions have occurred behind closed doors, that he is no longer an
expert on this relation? It seems that so thoroughly has the miner – has the
ordinary person – been silenced that s/he no longer has the authority to speak
of their own situation, according the media, according to those in official
offices.
In
fact, we the people have been interpellated as a mass to be muted to such a
degree that it has been said that we should not criticise the president outside
of the official avenues of the national protector or parliament (M&G Nov.16-22 2012, p16). Essentially,
according to such logic, we cannot speak outside of official forums. We must
then ask: who actually has access to these avenues.
OFFICIAL
AVENUES OF CRITIQUE
We
find, also, in a statement by an SACP official, the extremity of the party’s
attempts to silence the voice of the people. In a recent article entitled
‘Hands off our revered president’ by Fatima Asmal-Motala (M&G Nov.16-22 2012, p16), the reporter references the SACP’s
KwaZulu-Natal deputy chairperson, Nomarashiya Dolly Caluza, who is critical of
those who have dared to criticise President Zuma. Asmal-Motala quotes Caluza:
“When we say criticism and self-criticism, there is a platform where these
things can happen. There is parliament where these issues must be raised.
There’s also a public protector. People are aware of these platforms where they
can engage positively”. Clearly, it is not for the average, political
disempowered citizen to criticise the president, or any other official for that
matter. Let us consider the ease of access of parliament and the public
protector. It is not very often that, for example, members of Abahlali
baseMjondolo are allowed into parliament or are able to engage in a positive interaction
with the public protector. In fact, there are few citizens who appear in
parliament which seems to have always existed as a meeting place for government
elites to discuss national affairs behind closed doors.
What
does this piece of our South African historical archive tell us? At an
uneducated glance, one could quite easily assume that things are all right in
South Africa, that everyone has equal voice in parliament or in front of the
public protector. Indeed, it would seem, from the words of Caluza, that we are
all quite capable of voicing our criticisms in official domains, and that we
have no reason for ill-conceived dissent. But, as has already been stated, this
is not the case.
What
we find in such statements as those of Caluza is the fact that those in power –
those members of the national bourgeois elite, those members of the ANC and its
affiliates – actively insist on the silencing of most of the nation. Either
that, or they are completely ignorant of the realities of this nation.
THE
SABC AND THE NEWS AGENDA
An
article by Matuma Letsoalo entitled ‘SABC chief takes control’ (M&G, Oct.5-11 2012, p7) proves a
useful example of the distance between the national broadcaster and the people,
as well as the hegemonic role the party plays in the dissemination of
information. The article focuses on the handing over of control of the SABC’s
news, television, radio and sport to the SABC’s chief operation officer Hlaudi
Motsoeneng, replacing SABC groups chief executive Lulama Mokhobo who had been
acting in the position since the departure of Phil Molefe. The article begins
by sizing up two contending views on the power change. Some have said that the
change is a function of the ANC’s recent meeting in Mangaung. Letsoalo writes
that it “has been interpreted by some in the broadcaster as a calculated
strategy to ensure that an ANC faction close to President Jacob Zuma is given
enough coverage”. Others, however, have argued that the change has “nothing to
do with Mangaung and everything to do with the business interests of those
close to Motsoeneng and some SABC board members”. Motsoeneng himself argues
that the change was merely a part of the SABC’s “turnaround strategy” and that
his role “is to make news more interesting” or “more appealing”, not to
‘interfere’ in what appears as news.
We
can draw out several things from this news report. Firstly, that the change in
authority at the SABC is a contentious issue and, more importantly for this
essay, it is an issue that is either 1) a function of the ANC’s stranglehold on
power or 2) a function of certain business interests which one finds rather
difficult to detach from the ANC’s stranglehold on power. What we find is that
what little change that does occur on the level of the SABC’s highest offices
is generally defined by the movements within the ANC, its factions, its
divergent interests.
Let
us take a moment to read into these two points through the observations or
theorisations of Fanon. In the case of the first, we find a hegemonic party
taking control of the media, contorted its reportage for its own ends. In fact,
we find that this contortion is a function of warring factions within the same
party. Thus, the image that is constructed is one of the media tied to a
string, being fought over between contending factions within the very same
party. What occurs, then, is that the actual interests of the masses of the population
are forgotten amid the tumult of inter-party conflicts and divergent interests.
We find that problems with housing, water, electricity, living and working
conditions in general are forgotten and replaced by reports on the goings-on in
various ANC members’ lives and business dealings. In the case of the second, we
find that the business interests of various ANC members and their affiliates
are given primacy. Again, what occurs is a wilful ignorance of the realities of
the nation, substituted by a wholesome focus on the business-dealings of
certain national bourgeois elites (like, for example, the scandal of
Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau and his wife Pilisiwe Twala-Tau and their
much-scrutinised tenderpreneurship [in M&G
Oct.5-11 2012, p6 and Oct.12-18 2012, p7]). What we find is that, either
through emphasis on the ANC’s own infighting or on the business-dealings on
those regarded as ‘important’, the situation of the nation is forgotten. The
voice of the people is silenced, and the voice of South Africa becomes the
voice of the national bourgeoisie: an extractive class that makes up a
miniscule proportion of the nation.
What
we discover, too, in the change in power in the SABC is that it is not news itself that is questioned, but
rather the interestingness or the appeal of the news in question. What becomes
apparent is a certain mentality that tells us that it is perfectly fine for Zuma’s
massive Nkandla homestead or Zumaville
or Richard Mdluli’s own scandalous affairs to dominate news just as long
as the news itself remains interesting. One cannot help but ask what exactly
‘interesting news’ entails. And interesting to
whom? One feels almost as if we are observing a particularly sleazy soap
opera. Poverty, perhaps, is not as interesting as the soap-operas of the lives
of bureaucrats.
In
an earlier article entitled ‘Bitter battle to control the news agenda’ (Apr.
13-19, 2012, p10), the writers outline the political battles that occurred to
bring Motsoeneng into office. In brief, a spat occurred between SABC news chief
Phil Molefe and Mokhobo, with Molefe being disciplined for refusing to give the
SABC chief executive “a copy of the daily news diary so she could monitor the
news line-up”. Molefe was accused of giving ANC Youth League president Julius
Malema “an unprecedented amount of coverage”, according to a senior SABC
insider. What we see here is a tussle between the Zuma camp (comprising of
Mokhobo and co.) and the Malema camp (Molefe and co.). The SABC’s news agenda,
as the articles title implies, is defined by the internal politics of the ANC.
‘LIBERATION
THEORY’
What
we discover, then, in contemporary, post-apartheid South Africa, is the
replacement of a potential ‘liberation theory’ or ‘liberation ideology’ with
‘party ideology’. What this means is that instead of promoting the continuation
of the struggle after 1994 so as the thoroughly and fundamentally alter the
social, economic and political systems in South Africa, the ANC and its allies
opted rather for stagnation and the continuation of the structures developed
under colonialism. As Gibson (2011: 92) argues: “Apartheid and post-apartheid
society are… not opposites but rather operate along a continuum”. What is
retained, fundamentally, is the restrictive logic of the old system – a
divisive, racist logic.
What
Fanon argues for is the ‘organisation of thought’: the construction of a theory
of liberation. His critique of spontaneity is one that requires solidarity in
thought. It is liberation, struggle, resistance against a common oppressor,
that bonds people. “The necessity to think through what kind of society one is
struggling for does not happen without a conscious concept of organisation, as
well as a commitment to organisation of thought, a philosophic clearing of the
head and a confrontation with past failures” (Gibson, 2011: 105).
This
is strikingly similar to Biko’s ideas of black solidarity in a mission to
construct a black philosophy: “to evolve a philosophy based on, and directed
by, blacks” (Gibson, 2011: 49). It is a philosophy that does not romanticise a
fictional African past, nor does it remain confined to Bantu education, nor
does it attempt to rise to some imagined white level. It is not a philosophy
that keeps trying to prove itself to its white master. It is philosophy for
itself.
This
differs from organisation according to a vanguard party (in this case the ANC),
which makes its own ideology the proposed ideology for and of the people. “Rather
than confronting through deepening dialogue, tactics become strategy and theory
is reduced to slogans and rhetoric” (Gibson, 2011: 93-4). Instead of
liberation, it is party power and ideology that is privileged. Domination takes
the place of liberation, and the people are thoroughly excluded from politics. We
see this form of party autocracy described succinctly in Andrew Feinstein’s
(2007: 133) rather scathing articulation of Mbeki’s method of rule:
“…
Thabo Mbeki was placing his own centralising, technocratic stamp on the
movement [the ANC], rowing back from the days of mass protest and community
organisation. This stamp included the Presidency’s active involvement in and
often domination of every area of policy making, and the emergence of a small
clique of trusted advisers which usurped the place of collective debate within
the ANC”.
What
needs to occur, according to Fanon, is a dialectic between people and leaders,
instead of a top-down hierarchy of ideas. Ideas cannot seep down to the
grassroots to be accepted without question for fear of violence or
acknowledgement of emphatic disempowerment. Conversation is necessary, not
monologue from above from technocrats, experts, officials.
Michael
Neocosmos’ theorisation of xenophobia in From
‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’ (2010) illuminates how state
discourse acts powerfully to interpellate very concrete subjects (the ‘illegal
immigrant’, the ‘illegal alien’ etc.). His work shows the power of the state to
hail or construct different subjects, and, fundamentally, the power and
ideology of the state – and therefore the party – to define the course of the
entire nation. Essentially, the party shows that it has a massive amount of
power in the construction of a certain ‘national consciousness’. But what we
find is the national bourgeoisie protecting their power, their legitimate
authority by emphasising the ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’ South African. And we see
how state discourse is adopted so fluidly by the masses of the population; and
we see the misguided violence (the “tragic mishaps”) that occur from such party
ideology and state discourse. As Neocosmos (2010: 14) argues, “in
hegemonic (state) discourse, citizenship
is reduced to indigeneity”. And it was not the people of South Africa who
decided this: it was the party, in their lazy insistence on the continuation of
the existing system, who have described and thus prescribed citizenship as
such. We find this as an example of the ideological power of the ANC, its power
to define the consciousness of the nation.
NEGOTIATIONS
We
find in the negotiations that occurred between the ANC and NP prior to the 1994
elections to be a perfect early example of the monologue that occurs
persistently between bourgeois elites. Negotiations
between the ANC and NP were, quite simply, a cop out. What happened was the
curbing of mass movements – mass movements that would have proven dangerous for
party-power and elite interests (both black and white). If the people were to
become too powerful, too well organised within their own ranks and on their own
terms, there would be no requirement for the organisation offered by the ANC, SACP
or cancered COSATU. Negotiations put the
ANC in the driver’s seat and, importantly, allowed the continuation of the
economic, social and political structures of apartheid. Negotiations replaced
potentially emancipatory violence and effectively excluded the people from any
sort of dialogue. The party replaced the people; party ideology replaced
liberation theory. Gibson (2011: 105) writes that “the transition became a
private event to which the mass of people involved in grassroots movements were
not invited”. Essentially, for Gibson, the ANC and SACP provided for the
struggle – and for contemporary South African – an “intellectual
straightjacket” (2011: 107). This very real limitation left the people out of
the discussion; and it marginalised the masses of the nation in its economic
policy. Gibson (2011: 95) cites Terreblanche:
“[W]hen
the period of negotiations began, the possibilities for debate about a future
South Africa became further curtailed and suspended in favour of an elite
compromise and an agreement on economic policy ‘that would exclude half the
population from a solution that was really aimed at resolving the corporate
sector’s longstanding accumulation crisis’”.
Certainly,
negotiations, having taken places between the NP and the ANC, two parties led
by two groups of racialised bourgeois elites, removed the people from any sort
of political space from which to define the nature of the transformation of
South Africa.
Gibson
(2011: 88) writes that ‘radical mutations of consciousness’ occurred during the
South African insurrections of the 1970s and 1980s. But these mutations have
been denied by the party. In the lead-up to negotiations, the ANC and its
allies employed the strategy of ‘ungovernability’ which had been employed in
townships by non-affiliate groups before this adoption. For Gibson, the
adoption of a strategy of ungovernability came so as to create some form of
chaos so as to essentially force the NP into negotiations (2011: 95). But
ungovernability, and certainly the fact of its usage before ANC influence, had
provided a form of resistance that had the potential for a form of power far
wider than the ANC itself. And so, as we see in the case of the NUM’s remarks
regarding Marikana, motions towards some semblance of ungovernability have been
subsequently outlawed or ‘dumbed down’ or erased by the party, by party
ideology. Gibson (2011: 93) sums this up nicely:
“The
South African case highlights what happens when theorisation of spontaneity and
power do not happen, when there is no dialectical relationship between
spontaneity and organisation, when grassroots mass movements are reduced to
‘mindless activism’ and become little more than a chorus for the nationalist
vanguard party. Fanon criticised spontaneity not because it needed leadership
but because it lacked an organisation of thought, that is, a liberation theory.
His criticism of spontaneity was not directed at the movements themselves but
at the laziness of the intellectuals who either ignored them or dumbed them
down when serious analysis and engagement were necessary”.
Gibson’s attitudes are echoed by Mercia Andrews in her
article, ‘The ANC transformed’, in which she traces the ideological shifts
within the ANC from the adoption of militant strategies of the later 1950s to
the mass movements of the 1970s and 1980s to the collapse or perhaps marginalisation
of dialectical resistance in the late 1980s. This period – the end of the Cold
War – is critical for ANC policy and ideology. Andrews writes:
“The
collapse of the Soviet Union was devastating for the ANC and the SACP, which
had become so dependent on it for material and ideological support… The
collapse of the Soviet Union created an ideological crisis for the left. The
crisis of credibility of socialism had a devastating impact on the SACP.
Leading members of its Central Committee, including Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma,
left the Party. The leadership of the SACP retreated”.
An ideological vacuum was formed by the collapse of the
Soviet Union – the ANC could no longer rely on the ‘material and ideological’
support of the communist superpower. What occurs amid the flurry of capitalist
hegemony upon the demise of the Soviet bloc is a shift within the ANC towards
an ideology that sought to maintain the old system and to advance it within
very limited economic spectrum of the free-market capitalism that had grown in
the USA and Western Europe.
Before this period – during the period of the illegalisation
of democratic opposition between February 1988 and February 1990 – COSATU and
the UDF stood tall as the “internal anti-apartheid movement” (Gibson, 2011: 107).
But once Mandela was released and the ANC re-empowered, COSATU and the UDF
became increasingly “ideologically subservient to the ANC and were thus
distancing themselves from the idea of grassroots control, turning their focus
to elite representation while the ANC busily discussed deals with
multi-national mining interests behind the scenes” (ibid).
After all, it was Mandela who stated at the Treason Trial
and again at the Rivonia Trials that the ANC was not communist or socialist. Mandela, in his speech at the latter trial,
stated the following:
“The ANC, unlike the Communist Party, admitted Africans
only as members. Its chief goal was, and is, for the African people to win
unity and full political rights. The Communist Party's main aim, on the other
hand, was to remove the capitalists and to replace them with a working-class
government. The Communist Party sought to emphasize class distinctions whilst
the ANC seeks to harmonise them. This is a vital distinction”.
But this is not wholly true. The ANC did not seek to
‘harmonise’ class distinctions: it preferred them respected, maintained and
unquestioned. We see this in the rigid class hierarchy within the party. Recall
that Luthuli, Mandela, Zuma all have claims to traditional nobility which are
consistently alluded to, particularly in cases of Luthuli and Zuma.
Andrews continues to echo Gibson’s Fanonian critique of the
ANC, arguing that negotiations were “unable to create the space for on-going
struggle that would open a transition to a much more radical transformation of
the existing system”. In the article, negotiations – the ANC’s decision to
enter into negotiations – essentially “demobilised and displaced popular
resistance”, thus “consciously side-lining” the people, that catalyst that
drives transformation and revolution. Indeed, so great have been the
‘unpreparedness’, ‘laziness’ and ‘cowardice’ of the educated class of South
Africa that the “iconic status of Mandela, Tambo and Slovo, who were in favour
of an accommodation with the ruling class, was sufficient to paper over the deep class differences
and class interests within the mass democratic movement”.
A CORRUPT LEADERSHIP
And Mandela himself is not exempt from critique for
forging links with some of the most infamous capitalists of the post-apartheid
era. In 1996, then-Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism Bantu Holomisa
accused the ANC leadership of having been “corrupted by South African casino
magnate Sol Kerzner” (Bond, 1996: 1). To the shock of many South Africans,
Mandela’s response was to admit that Kerzner had made “huge, secret donations”
to the ANC (ibid). On Kerzner, Bond (ibid) writes: “Kerzner is legendary at
wheeling and dealing, and there is no dispute that a decade ago he paid 2
million rand (then $1 million) to the former prime minister of the
pseudo-independent Transkei "homeland" for exclusive rights to open a
casino on the unspoiled Wild Coast”. Bond writes that to construct the
“playgrounds” of Sun City and Lost City, Kerzner “extracted huge favors from
corrupt officials, including more than R1 billion ($350 million) in tax breaks
for Lost City during the early 1990s” (ibid). Holomisa – who was subsequently
dismissed from his post by Mandela – also claimed that Kerzner had funded Thabo
Mbeki’s 50th birthday party and “suggested” that Mbeki and Sports
Minister Steve Tshwete had “accepted favours from the hotel magnate for
protection against possible bribery charges” (SAPA). These claims were
subsequently denied by the ANC, but Holomisa maintained faith in their truth,
citing Mandela as his source (ibid). It has also been reported that Mandela
accepted a R1-million donation from London-based South African millionaire
Oliver Hill (‘Cashing in on horse sperm’, Sunday
Times, 25/4/2010, p5).
Furthermore, Bond (ibid) notes Mandela’s reliance on the ‘Brenthurst
Group’ (“the country's half-dozen largest corporate
tycoons”) for “secretive and decisive economic advice” (ibid). Bond’s analysis
is outlines the extent of the Mandela regime’s basis in the very same
corporatism that denied the cause of the ANC: “Notwithstanding the fact that
nearly all its members endorsed and profited from apartheid, and opposed one-person, one-vote as recently as the
1980s, Mandela turned to the corporate tycoons for approval of his choices for
Finance Minister in 1994 and again in 1996, for example” (ibid).
But
these are only a few examples of the corruption, mismanagement of funds and
secretive deals that have occurred since the late 1980s. The extent of the
non-existence of accountability at the highest levels of the ANC and of
government become plain, however, in the resignation of the ANC’s auditor and
secretary of finance Nathan Marcus. According to a 2010 article titled
‘Corruption in ANC goes back at least 20 years’, Marcus is cited as having
resigned because of the ANC’s “reluctance to investigate further” into his 1994
report on several investigations into corruption, fraud and theft in ANC
offices in London and New York. Further investigations found that similar cases
of maladministration had occurred in ANC offices in France, Denmark, Zambia,
Sweden and Kenya. The report found, interestingly, that most of the officials
found to be corrupt were the very same people who saturated the ANC’s list of
candidates for parliament.
These
findings have now been corroborated by newly-found evidence in the form of a
number of letters, reports and confidential journals written by Mandela. The
cache was “found abandoned in a Fort Hare University basement” but have now
been absorbed into South Africa’s National Heritage Cultural and Studies Centre
(therightperspective.org). Included in the new information is evidence of “a businessman who used ANC contacts and an official state trip to
Malaysia in 1994 to build a multimillion-rand empire”. Despite the fact that
the ANC had evidence of this corruption, the investigation was swept under the
rug. The evidence also points at a billionaire who allegedly “stole” R340 000
and two business properties from the ANC.
THE
RESULTS
The
results of such transformations within the ANC have essentially resulted in the
continuation of many of the structures of the colonial and apartheid systems.
Let us consider the moment of the choice to negotiate behind closed doors
instead of in dialogue with the people as the ‘decisive moment of struggle’ –
the moment at which the ANC could have used their power to dissolve the
existing structures so as to redefine South Africa, to construct it as
something new, a nation transformed by and for its people. But the results of
the transformations of the ANC paint a grim picture.
Andrews
is scathing of the ANC: “In power, the ANC has failed to break up the
monopolies that dominate the South African economy when it was on the agenda,
allowed the biggest corporations to de-list from South Africa and re-invent
themselves as foreign corporations, corporatised and privatised key state
enterprises and functions, and delivered our economy to the WTO and the needs
of predatory finance capital”. Under the ANC regimes of Mandela, Mbeki,
Mohlanthe and Zuma we find an increase in inequality, an almost-doubled
unemployment rate that now stands at approximately 40% (25,5% as of the
third-quarter of 2012 according to StatsSA) and the employment of about 40% of
South Africa’s workforce by labour brokers (Andrews). Education and healthcare
are in similar states of disrepair.
According
to Gibson things have not changed much for the poor black majority of South
Africans. Citing Terreblanche, he articulates the systemic continuation that
occurred after 1994:
“one
third of the 15 million in the bourgeois classes…are white, while 98 per cent
of the 30 million people in the ‘lower classes’ are black… the share of white
households in the top fifth of the income scale actually grew after the end of
apartheid… South Africa’s black population is surprisingly worse off after the
end of apartheid, with the black working class, and especially the poor, being
the biggest losers” (Gibson, 2011: 73).
The
situation of many South Africans has clearly not improved with the ANC’s rise
to power. Gibson describes the state of the nation in relation to Hillbrow, the
once-thriving “Manhattan of Africa” (Gibson, 2011: 71): “As Hillbrow crumbles,
its inhabitants are subjected to high rents, evictions, water and electricity
cut-offs and intimidation. Their situation is not unique; it is echoed across
South Africa” (ibid). Sandton, according to Gibson, has replaced Hillbrow as
Johannesburg’s business hub, “where rich whites and the new black bourgeoisie
spread out in luxurious mansions” (Gibson, 2011: 72). We find similar such
occurrences around the country, with a massive gap constantly expanding between
the rich and the poor.
We
have found that the ANC’s autocratic methods have continued and, in some cases,
worsened, since 1994. They have essentially transformed into a party of
monologue and the force behind what has, in a large way, been an
anti-dialectical history of South Africa in liberation and contemporarily. We
see the people written out of South African politics. What we also find is an
increase in the perceived importance of the ANC’s internal politics.
Ultimately, as Fanon theorised, we see the ANC rise as a national bourgeois
party that is extremely exclusive; indeed, it has seemed to pursue the
interests of the party elite and its affiliates most ferociously since claiming
power in 1994. And, we find that this has not been a sudden change. Indeed, the
ANC has never truly been a solely liberatory movement; rather it has always had
elements of autocracy which seem to be almost implicit in the construction of
the party. Indeed, we find that many top members of the ANC did not suddenly
become corrupt as soon as they got some semblance of power; we see that many
accepted what should probably be referred to as ‘bribes’ from the corporate
sector and from wealthy individuals. We see, then, that party ideology is
suffused with corporatism; and we see this filter into the minds of every South
African in our pit-fallen national consciousness.
This
has had an adverse effect on the masses of the nation, as proved quite
emphatically in the education and health sectors as well as, most clearly, in
the living conditions of the ‘ordinary’ South African. What has occurred is not
fundamental structural or social or economic or even political change. Rather,
we have been duped in our ‘drunken celebrations’ of liberation: we have failed
to see the necessity of the continuation of our liberation struggle. What must
then occur is critique of the party, critique of their methods, their policies,
their interests. Similarly, we must be ever-critical of our own positions in
society and how we are able to exist as we do. The creation of a black
bourgeoisie is not sufficient criteria for liberation; rather, it is a
continuation of the old racist, elitist, extractive, exploitative system. We
have come to be dominated by black skins in white offices. Thus, the struggle
continues.
TRANSCENDING
LAZINESS
After
dwelling for so long on the failures of the post-apartheid regime to propel the
fundamental transformation of South Africa, one cannot help but wonder what the
middle-class intellectual, criticised by Fanon for their laziness,
unpreparedness, cowardice and lack of practical links with the people, can do
to transcend this position. Indeed, there must be some role within the
continued struggle for emancipation in South Africa for the educated elite. Usefully,
Sekyi-Otu outlines a certain direction such intellectuals could go so as not to
fall into the trap of replicating the ‘tragic mishaps’ of the post-apartheid
era. For him, the duty of the educated classes is to enter into conversation
with the masses regarding the nature and form of the resistance to party
despotism and oppression. But he, like Fanon, does not specifically prescribe a
political party to execute this. Neither writer prescribes a formal authoritarian
structure to define the direction of the people’s resistance. For Fanon and
Sekyi-Otu, the bourgeoisie who work with the people must do so on the terms of
the people instead of conduction their own detached elite-driven monologue of simply
‘taking state power’. They must make themselves “the willing slave of that
revolutionary capital which is the people” (Sekyi-Otu, 1996: 173). As Sekyi-Otu
notes, militants and bourgeois intellectuals leave the city or are forced out,
but what must occur is not them merely telling the country peasantry what to do
and how to do it. Rather, they educate and are, in turn, educated. This is an
allusion to authority or power emanating from below. What must is a dialogue
between intellectuals and the people. The revolution and its theory must occur
from the bottom up, not from the top down.
Thus,
the educated bourgeoisie must actively seek to open the networks of
communication to include all. For this to occur there must be a wilful appropriation of the tools that power
has used to dominate the masses. Sekyi-Otu draws this from Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism (1959). During
revolution, it is necessary to appropriate certain tools of oppression so as to
overcome the oppressor. Appropriation does not mean to merely take these things
on unproblematically and uncritically. Rather, the revolutionary must
transfigure these things, to make them
revolutionary. In his exploration of revolutionary appropriation, Sekyi-Otu (1996:
185) refers to the radical mutations that occur in the subjectivity of the
revolutionary subject during revolution. Simply, in resistance, consciousness
changes. Thus, there is a need for our resistance to exist as an affirmation of
the fluidity of consciousness and the necessity of continued struggle. There is
a need for our resistance to not accept stagnation; we must stand in opposition
of the systemic continuation that has occurred in the post-apartheid era under
the ANC and its affiliates; and we must realise the pitfalls of a party-driven
national consciousness.
In
this essay I have focused my research on news articles that have catalogued the
influence of the South African political elite in the modes of communication.
For Fanon, these avenues for conversation hold an immense emancipatory
potential. In A Dying Colonialism, he
outlines the power of ‘The Voice of Algeria’ – the power of the radio, news
publications etc. in the people’s struggle. These are forums for communication:
spaces in which to be heard, to listen, to allow for the revolutionary mutation
of one’s consciousness through dialogue with others. They are also spaces
within which the dialectal construction of a liberation theory or liberation
ideology can occur.
The
news articles referred to earlier in this essay are but a few examples of the
party and political celebrity orientation of the news. They exemplify the
manner in which the dramas surrounding the ANC and its affiliates have
dominated our national modes of communication. Rarely do these dramas end in
the further emancipation of the people. We see how our airwaves are dominated
by the party and corporate domination.
What
must occur then, for the sake of emancipation, is a challenge to this dominant
anti-dialectical ‘laziness’. We find such challenges, certainly, in such
publications as The Daily Maverick and
Amandla!. But still it seems we must
go further. Our written resistance must become more radical, perhaps.
REFERENCES
BOOKS:
Fanon, F.
1963. The Wretched of the Earth.
Penguin Books. 2001.
Fanon, F.
1959. A Dying Colonialism. Grove
Press: New York. 1965.
Feinstein, A.
2007. After the Party. Jonathan Ball
Publishers. 2007.
Gibson, N.
2011. Fanonian Practices in South Africa.
UKZN Press.
Neocosmos, M.
2010. From ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’.
Codesria. 2010.
Sekyi-Otu, A.
1996. Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience.
Harvard University Press. 1996.
ARTICLES:
Andrews, M.
‘The ANC transformed’. Amandla, issue
24. http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/amandla-magazine/102-amandla-issue-24/1104-the-anc-transformed-by-mercia-andrews
Asmal-Motala,F.
‘Hands off our revered president’, Mail &
Guardian, Nov.16-22 2012, p16.
Bond, P.
1996. ‘Gambling with Mandela’s reputation’, Multinational
Monitor, Oct.1996, Vol.17, No.10.
Letsoalo, M.
‘SABC chief takes control’, Mail & Guardian,
Oct.5-11 2012, p7.
Mandela, NR.
1964. 'I am prepared to die', Nelson Mandela's Statement from the Dock at the
Opening of the Defence Case in the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, 20
April 1964, http://www.un.org/en/events/mandeladay/court_statement_1964.shtml
Marsden, C.
‘South Africa’s unions use mass sackings and murder to suppress miners’,
wsws.org, 26 October 2012. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/safr-o26.shtml
Sosibo, K.
‘Mine on edge again after arrests’, Mail &
Guardian, Oct.19-25, p12.
Sosibo, K.
‘Mine workers’ hope lies in mass action’, Mail
& Guardian, Oct.19-25, p12.
‘Cashing
in on horse sperm’, Sunday Times, 25
April 2010, p5.
‘Corruption
in the ANC goes back at least 20 years’, Sunday
Times, 25 April 2010, p5.
‘Bitter
battle to control the news agenda’, Mail
& Guardian, Apr. 13-19, 2012, p10.
‘Mandela
confirms Kerzner did contribute funds to ANC kitty’, SAPA, 10 Aug. 1996.
‘New Mandela
letters show waste, corruption’, therightpersective.org, 28 April 2010.
http://www.therightperspective.org/2010/04/28/new-mandela-letters-show-waste-corruption/
