Raymond Suttner, The Daily Maverick
When I joined the
liberation struggle led by the ANC/SACP alliance in the late 1960s, it entailed
support for armed struggle. Until then I had been a liberal without the benefit
of any exposure to the ANC and its allies, which had been absent from public
politics in the aftermath of the Rivonia arrests.
I then abandoned my
reading of Martin Luther King Jr and Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, whose
conceptions of morality and care for the well-being of other human beings had
inspired me. I did not abandon their injunction to combat indifference to
“evil”, or remove their works from my bookshelf. But I did not see them as
relevant to a life in which I had taken a course that entailed the use of force
to combat and bring down the apartheid regime. I did not romanticise armed
struggle, but saw it as a necessary choice with which I wanted to associate
myself.
It is true that the ANC
adopted armed struggle when all other options had failed. But one has the sense
in some of the writings of Nelson Mandela, and even in the older Mandela
writing Long Walk To Freedom, that he did not elevate nonviolence to be a
principle in its own right and an unconditional good. In differentiating his
position from that of Chief Albert Luthuli, he said violence and nonviolence
were purely tactics for him, while nonviolence was a principle for the chief.
Mandela devoted his later
period in prison and his post-prison political career to securing peace because
he did appreciate the need to end violence in a situation where people were
dying, and in which there could be no winners. Those who were dying were not
primarily white soldiers, but ordinary black people.
While seeking to ensure
peace, Mandela and the government he led after 1994 did not devote much
attention to establishing the principle of nonviolence. They did little to
ensure that it was recognised as a necessary condition for social well-being.
Nor was it prominent in people’s consciousness in the period after 1990, even
though it ought, constitutionally, to be one of the foundations of our lives.
Conditions at the time
did make it difficult to be unequivocal about nonviolence. The unbanning of the
ANC in 1990 did not signify any will on the part of the apartheid regime to
ensure peace or freedom of political activity. Its official and unofficial
repressive forces continued to launch attacks against the ANC and a number of
black communities, the ANC’s presumed support base.
The elections were held
with violence still occurring in some places. The early years of democratic
rule were in the shadow of potential attacks on the new order. This was shown
when plots against the new democracy were revealed, resulting in the firing of
certain generals.
Consequently, even if an
adequate value was placed on peace and nonviolence, the conditions of the time
were not propitious to propagating nonviolence. To do so may have signified to
those who wished to destabilise the new democracy that the ANC government was
disarming in the face of their threats.
One result is that the
principles of nonviolence and peace have never been popularised or adequately
instilled in people’s consciousness. In 2011, the year of the 50th anniversary
of Chief Luthuli’s Nobel Peace Prize and also of the formation of MK, almost
all attention was devoted to recalling the heroism of MK. Luthuli and his
message of peace and nonviolence received practically no attention.
I think it is necessary
to advance nonviolence today as an unconditional good and unconditional
principle. That does not mean pacifism. Force is sometimes justified, notably
in the face of an armed attack. But violence is only justifiable in exceptional
conditions where a limited resort to force becomes necessary to eliminate armed
attack or similar threats to the well-being of human beings. The
unconditionality of the principle of nonviolence is restored once the danger is
removed. Resort to violence is a conditional exception to a universally
applicable principle.
It is important to stress
nonviolence because any act of violence against another human being
extinguishes that person’s subjective agency, his or her capacity to act as an
independent human person. Violence extinguishes the subjective qualities that
are essential to the human character of the Other, against whom violence is
wreaked. The universality of respect for free human beings and a free humanity
is thereby denied.
Chief Luthuli and
Communist leader Moses Kotane had been less willing to embark on armed struggle
than Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others, but ultimately agreed to the formation
of MK as a limited exception to the principle of nonviolence. In Luthuli’s
case, he conceded a limited exceptional condition where state violence made the
ANC’s departure from nonviolence a temporary necessity. Kotane’s resistance had
been based initially on reluctance to abandon the terrain of peaceful political
activities, but he became persuaded that that space had practically been
eliminated by the violence of the apartheid regime.
When Mandela, one of the
founders of MK, later bent every effort to secure a negotiated settlement that
was intended to end the violence and also deliver the vote for all, the
tripartite alliance of the time supported him. Ensuring that peace prevailed
was a foundation stone of freedom.
The understanding of the
freedom that was sought was universal. It was not meant to apply only to some,
but to all. Where a person spoke a language that was less widely spoken than
another did not mean that she or he should be entitled to fewer rights. The
same applied to all ethnic groups, to people of whatever origin. Notions of
Zulu ethno-centricism – as in Jacob Zuma’s depiction as “100% Zulu” during his
2005/6 rape trial – ran counter to the foundations of mutual and equal respect
that are essential to the democratic order. All people were meant to enjoy all
the freedoms on an equal basis in the constitutional democracy being
established.
Likewise, the freedom to
pursue political activities was not intended as a gain only for the previously
suppressed ANC, but as a universal right accessible to all organisations. Any
attack on the freedom to organise by any political organisation, or within any
political organisation, entails an attack on the universal freedom provided for
all.
At the time of the first
elections there was considerable conflict deriving mainly from IFP and NP
government-inspired violence against the ANC and ANC-supporting communities,
mainly in then Natal province and on the Witwatersrand. It appears that the
subsequent weakening of the IFP may have seen the gradual absorption of some
IFP warlords into the ANC in KZN. That province (but by no means the only
place) has re-emerged as a site of political violence in the Zuma era. This is
evidenced by attacks and murders related to selection for electoral lists and
more generally against communities and organisations that stand in the way of
what the ANC, its “factions” and the KZN government want. This happens even in
defiance of court orders, as in the provincial government’s actions, including
killings, against the shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
In the present political
climate, students and the EFF sometimes express a willingness to resort to
violence. Sometimes these are buttressed by dubious readings of Frantz Fanon.
It is not always clear that they are in fact saying that they will resort to
violence or when they will do so. But resorts to violence are usually preceded
by periods of ambiguity and it is important for those who value peace to nip
this in the bud.
South Africa is already a
very violent country and violence is almost entirely masculine. Emphasising
nonviolence buttresses the struggle for gender equality, and protects all who
fall victim to violent masculinities. The struggle for peace must contest the
notion that being masculine is to be rough and tough.
We must banish the
romanticism that continues to attach to violence and militaristic symbolism. An
emancipatory programme is urgent, putting peace and nonviolence at its centre
as conditions that make democratic debate and contestation possible.
