Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick
It could all be so
simple/but you’d rather make it hard/ see loving you is like a battle/ and we
both end up with scars/ tell me who I have to be/ to get some reciprocity/ see
no one loves me more than you/ and no one ever will.
When I came home almost
exactly eighteen years ago, this song played a constant loop in my head. I put
it on when I got up in the morning, I brushed my teeth to it, I pressed play in
my car and it came on, I got to work and played it in my headphones as I
clicked away at my computer. I fell asleep to it each night. I lived in a fog,
wrapped in a delicate blanket of misery, and this song was my soundtrack.
I was in love, and in the
throes of a horrible break-up with a boy who was impossibly good-looking and
hopelessly complicated. It was a torturous back-and-forth process (as break-ups
tend to be when you are twenty-three) and this song was my solace.
And because we have all
been there and understand the pain of it, I will risk the melodrama and say
that in the last few years as I have grappled with events in South Africa, and
with the conduct of the ruling party, I have often looked back at my
twenty-three-year-old self. I have felt on some days, as I have scanned the
headlines, as though I am walking away from a dramatic love affair in order to
save myself even as I am uncertain about what I am walking towards.
So forgive me, but it
does feel like I’m breaking up with the boy I love; the one who has loved me
the most and for the longest, the one who has intoxicated me with his
brilliance and his pathos. It’s hard to imagine life without him, even as it
has become impossible to live with him.
This contradictory
impulse is most acutely apparent amongst those South Africans who feel both
betrayed by and indebted to the African National Congress.
I was born in exile and
spent my earliest years as part of an ANC community. Maybe this is why it feels
so raw. The ANC put food in my belly, a pen in my hand, and paper in my desk.
The ANC gave me the tools I have used to make my way in this world.
So the long, slow slide
into this moment on the cusp of elections, twenty years in, has felt
heart-wrenching and deeply hurtful. I don’t think that this feeling is exceptional.
Indeed, my story is the story of many, many South Africans – not just those who
left the country. The ANC clothed us and raised us. No one loved us more the
ANC, and we can’t imagine that any party ever will. In South Africa history is
not distant, so we remain torturously in love with the idea of the ANC and what
it did for us, even as we bemoan what it has become.
Is this just a silly
game/ that forces you to act this way?/ Forces you to scream my name/ then
pretend that you can’t stay/ tell me who I have to be/to get some reciprocity/
No one loves you more than me/ And no one ever will
Thuli Madonsela opens the
Nkandla press conference by gazing at the camera and reminding us, in her
whispery voice, that she is the Makhadzi; the aunt who serves as a buffer
between the ruler and the ruled. She says that the Makhadzi “enhances the voice
of the people while serving as the king’s eyes, ears and conscience.” He
ignores her “at his own peril,” she intones.
She is saying, patiently
and with steely eloquence, that she is still in love. Her voice shakes. This is
hard. She is asking who she has to be to get some reciprocity. No one loves the
ANC more than she does, and no one ever will. I watch her throughout the
gruelling session, alternately composed and shaken, angry and hurt. It occurs
to me that we are all Thuli.
We are all standing on
the edge of a pool of tears, fighting fiercely for what we love. Wondering when
they are going to get it, wondering why we still try, wondering how it would be
possible to ever stop trying.
I watch her and wish that
the miners who were shot down at Marikana had her persistence on their side. I
wish they had her savvy and her determination working for them.
Instead the Commission
happens somewhere in the middle distance. Cyril is the Deputy President of the
party that oversaw their killing. He was the Chairman who sent the ‘dastardly’
email. He walks atop their corpses and we watch in quiet shame.
Oscar and Reeva and
Nkandla and the state of the nation bury the ghosts of dead miners under a pile
of headlines. But the memory of the wailing of widows will not leave us. There
are some crimes that demand justice.
There is no peace without
justice. No reconciliation without truth. We know this from our bitter war
against racism. In Marikana there has been no justice, no truth, no peace.
I keep letting you back
in/ How can I explain myself/ As painful as this thing has been/ I just can't
be with no one else/
The City Press reports
that in Bekkersdal a 61-year-old woman, “who claimed to be a staunch ANC
member, said the ANC had fooled people for too long and was reaping what it had
sowed.” She claims to be a staunch ANC member because she is one. She loves the
ANC and because of this, she can’t stand the sight of its face anymore. The
people are saying, ‘We love you, but don’t come around here anymore’.
See I know what we got to
do/ You let go and I'll let go too/'Cause no one's hurt me more than you/ And
no one ever will
There are taxi ranks and
squatter camps that bear the names of our national shame. Monuments to Marikana
are scrawled into the soul of our nation. They take their place next to Chris
Hani, Solomon Mahlangu, Andries Tatane – all of them killed shamefully.
The ANC has hurt us and
we are remembering our pain as we always have. But there will be no RDP
settlements called Nkandla. The people will not even joke like that. The people
are on Makhadzi’s side on this one.
There was a time when the
only hurt that we could collectively remember had been inflicted upon us by the
apartheid regime. Perhaps what we needed was someone to remind us - Makhadzi,
in her whisper soft voice of steel - that we have new wounds to tend to, and
that our pain lies not only in the past, but also in the present.
Perhaps this admission is
the beginning of letting go.
