White monopoly capital operating under guise of social cohesion
THE AXIOM “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is thrown around so often in public discourse that it’s shocking how the reasons, or conditions of possibility, for such a set-up are mystified rather than clarified.
What this means, in essence, is the ways in which the primary antagonisms that are foundational to the project that is Postasa (postapartheid South Africa) become sharper and sharper by day, the blurred, but rigid, (fortified) lines become crystal clear.
On one side of the line, the other side of the track, sits power, a concentrated kind of power; monopolised into a few families who will do anything (even unleash a taxi militia against anyone) to protect themselves.
On the other side of the track, is the rest of the common people, desperately trying to get by.
Theorists Fred Moten and Stefano Harney characterise the latter track (or compartment, if we are to borrow from Frantz Fanon) as the Undercommons. It is the space and place that surrounds the Settlement, here understood as the former track of concentrated power.
In iLiso Magazine’s latest issue, writer Vusumzi Nkomo narrates a story common to most Xhosa folk in an article titled “Stellenbosch (is) Surround(ed): Settlement
(in) cinema, intsomi and white imaginary”: “In one of iintsomi zika Dyakalashe and Mvolofu (tales of jackal and the wolf), the pair give in to hunger and approach the nearest farm populated by sheep.
Fence stands erect, arrogantly splitting the world into two compartments, their side and (against the) farm’s inside; so they carve an opening on what seems like an impenetrable divider and move into the world of plenty.
“They bring terror to the meek sheep, a (seemingly unintentional) declaration of war with the Farmer.
“UMvolofu attacks and feasts on the spot. UDyakalashe, the cunning cat, attacks and throws over the fence. Farmer appears with a gun spittin’ fire firing.
“The Pair run for the fence, uDyakalashe escapes through the small opening and uMvolofu, who has gained considerable weight, is caught and killed.”
Even though the article is a short theorisation of cinema’s narrative strategies as central to maintaining (by way of justification) the project of colonial settlement, the writer admits that there are “multiple ways of reading this story”, so we should be permitted to expand the contours of its meaning regime.
The Settlement, in its perennial efforts to manufacture a onesided narrative and “consent” to domination (see Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky), uses mass media to construct reality and drown alternative and dissenting voices. But the voices of and in the Undercommons persist in their (re) production of the alternative, giving free speech to those that “surround” Settlement.
The attacks on Dr Iqbal Survé, the executive chairperson of Sekunjalo Investment Holdings and Independent Media, are a natural progression in the battle between the two tracks, the Settlement and the Surround/Undercommons.
In a way, the two animals, Dyakalashe and Mvolofu, could easily be substituted for Independent Media, and by extension, Dr Survé, who have positioned themselves as deliberately oppositional to Settlement (white monopoly capital owned media machine). But as Afropessimism proponents have taught us, no black person can dare speak without any consequences.
We stand at a critical juncture as far as our democratic project is concerned. The illusions of social cohesion and nation-building are proving to be constructs of Settlement to maintain the status quo and keep power intact.