SOUTH AFRICA FROM A DISTANCE

Okello Oculi writes that South Africa is still struggling to attain the best

The season of liberation struggles knew South Africa through the stunning beauty of Winnie Mandela: the woman who remained resolutely loyal to her marriage to a man in prison. The leadership of the African National Congress used the power of her photographs to capture minds around the world in a way that Mandela’s photos could never equal. The country’s invasion of minds with radio broadcasts to newly independent Africa grew in strength as military coups and countercoups increased. South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) became a valuable source of news about political unrest, corruption, civil wars and repression of opposition groups which official media across the continent habitually hid.

Lack of television news broadcasts and documentaries by the Soviet Union and communist China denied the rest of Africa awareness of the raw brutality of Apartheid, while racist governments also strenuously blocked access to positive images of Africans administering post-colonial freedom politics. It took my flying over Johannesburg on a journey to Maputo, in 2005, to visualise the enormous creativity invested in designing its richer spaces. Likewise, white South Africans confess that if they had known the vast potential market in Africa, racist minority dictatorship would have ended earlier.

Mr Leloka, my Sotho secondary school teacher, was probably so afraid of official ears in colonial Uganda that the only glimpse we got of South Africa was yellow grains of gold he had smuggled in a leather belt from a gold mine. Dr Kumalo, our sociology teacher at Makerere College of the University of East Africa introduced us to Alan Paton’s novel ‘’AFRICA: CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY’’ without providing contents in the stomach of racist elephant in his country. South Africa remained a distant invisible space. Aluta Continue!

Julius Malema has told party members that ‘’South Africa is a direction’’, not the name of a nation. He insisted on ‘’Azania’’, while admitting that those who refer to immigrants from other African countries as ‘’Makwerekwere’’ (strangers) forget that their ancestors had arrived from lands north of Transvaal and beyond Namibia. ‘’Azania’’ is a melting-pot of travellers from an older season of migration towards the Cape of Good Hope. Brutal ‘’xenophobic’ attacks had also been against ethnic groups from other Provinces of South Africa; not only Mozambicans, Zambians, Zimbabwean, Nigerians, Congolese and Somalis, seen as ‘’aliens’’. Building a nation remains an open agenda.

The Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity based in Tanzania failed to adequately consider how South Africa would dredge out deep and toxic sediments of violence and humiliation that ‘’crimes against humanity’’ had accumulated for over 300 years. Franz Fanon did warn that brutalised people regain their sense of human dignity by inflicting violence against their op- pressors. Mandela’s ‘’rainbow nation’’ bottled-up degradation and transferred it to the pandemic of self-destructive drug addiction; violence against children and women; rapes, violent robberies, and bizarre crimes like raping infants, etc. Bottled rage remains as time bombs available for explosion by ‘’sleeping policemen’’ among former racist operatives.

South Africans are also sharing with other African countries demands for a ‘’Second Independence’’ following failures by their leaders to bring increased welfare to the majority of the people, while people witness leaders accumulating wealth for themselves. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, a United Nations report blamed 85 multinational corporations for supplying cocaine and AK-47 guns to unemployed youths to assist them in looting the country’s resources; while paying a pittance to these militias. In South Africa, armed robberies currently include hauling away huge cash amounts by shooting bullion vans. This epidemic first appeared in 2010 and 2011.

South African blacks are also sharing that ‘’dividend of democracy’’ known as obesity (or African Democracy) for politicians. This health time-bomb seems to be exploding in South Africa. In the United States, processed foods contain chemicals which cause various physiological disorders: including hyper-activity in children; addiction; cancer and obesity. Food processors in South Africa have probably not kept aloof from criminal additives to foods in supermarkets. Pot- bellies on trade union leaders look odd.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared that ‘’Land is about dignity; land is also about security’’. He promised to grab land from white individuals and corporation ‘’without compensation’’. Failure to equitably redistribute land from European immigrants has entrenched violence into the politics of Algeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Cote d’Ivoire. Except in Algeria, former owners poison politics by seducing politicians to abandon redistribution of land to desperate landless masses. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe earned notoriety with interested global media by returning land to the landless.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has that red line ahead of him. Jacob Zuma, a veteran of struggle from the age of 16 and heading the smuggling fighters for Nkomto We Sizwe, was hounded out as president on allegations of corruption. His supporters point at Zuma’s free university education and plans for ‘’economic transformation’’ as his offences. They are urging Ramaphosa to confront vast lands, mines and wealth owned by Oppenheimer and British parliamentarians as historic crimes of corruption. A court war drama against Zuma promises to fatally wound the ANC.

One curative tonic that Ramaphosa should import from Ahmadu Bello University, and Anglican Girls Grammar School in Abuja, is their tool for training youths as presidents of African countries. South Africa’s youths would acquire knowledge about, and empathy with, African countries.

SOUTH AFRICANS ARE ALSO SHARING WITH OTHER AFRICAN COUNTRIES DEMANDS FOR A ‘SECOND INDEPENDENCE’ FOLLOWING FAILURES BY THEIR LEADERS TO BRING INCREASED WELFARE TO THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE, WHILE PEOPLE WITNESS LEADERS ACCUMULATING WEALTH FOR THEMSELVES