RAMAPHOSA-DE KLERK DIARCHY FOR SOUTH AFRICA

Okello Oculi writes that the ‘sharing’ of power by the government gives room to instability

Nigerian political engineers invented the term ‘’DIARCHY’’ to couple hope from a position of weakness by politicians longing to share power with a military class that monopolised tools of violence. Both groups lacked popular legitimacy earned from votes cast in free and fair elections. Politicians envied the military’s access to a vast inflow of revenue from oil revenues. This game of social engineering had been shown by Leopold Senghor in Senegal and Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana who argued for one-party politics as a borrowing from village communities which did not accept the notion of permanent opposition and hatred between rulers and members of community. Julius Nyerere invented electoral competition by members of the same family following a British colonial by which all (but one rebel member), were declared ‘’elected unopposed’’ without voting taking place.

A French scholar of Africa accused President Bill Clinton’s government of supporting the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as a form of gift to Africa. Just as the genocide against Jews had taught Europeans to value ‘’Democracy”, a moment of horror would turn Africans away from dictatorships. So the allegation goes.

Regimes controlled by minority European immigrants had drawn Russian and Chinese support as friends of armed struggles for freedom. Mugabe had won in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) while in far west Agustinho Neto had – with Cuba’s troops and Russian weapons decimated South Africa’s white troops and forced political leaders to negotiate for peace and safeguards under Black majority governance. The United States now chose to support African Ethnic Minority Rule in Meles Zenawe’ Ethiopia; Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Paul Kagame in Rwanda.

As the saying goes, a sleeping cobra does not lose the poison in its throat. In African countries which were exploited by a small team of businessmen and political administrators, Kwame Nkrumah described the cobra’s venom as ‘’Neo-Colonialism’’.

On 11 July, 2021, supporters of former President Jacob Zuma erupted with violent anger against their leader sitting inside a prison cell. Two weeks earlier, the Constitutional Court sentenced former President Zuma to a prison term because he had disobeyed orders by the supreme court of the country. No one, including a former president of South Africa, is above the law.

The legacy of ‘’the rule of law’’ is sordid in South Africa. Its supremacy had imprisoned Nelson Mandela for 27 years.

A retinue of people who challenged the ‘’rule of law’’ under European immigrant repression were regularly either murdered in prison or while in exile.

European immigrants used guns and death to rob communities of their land. There were blatant incidences of corruption and ‘’state capture’’. The state forced victims of land robbery to till farms for whites, to live in horrible dormitories; provide slave labour in mines and die of dust in their lungs.

Mugabe, himself a brilliant lawyer, believed in ‘’Anti -Colonial rule of law’’; with the cardinal injunction of returning land to Bashona owners; by force if illegal owners resisted. Mugabe built schools and universities for Black Zimbabweans to catch up. Zuma as a disciple of Mugabe is bound to strike panic in De Klerk’s political camp.

Following ANC’s election victory in 1994, it was reported that Cyril Ramaphosa was directed by President Nelson Mandela to go into business. In 2021 he shares with former racist regime president, De Klerk, a similar vision of political engineering of South Africa. With over 400 years of bitterness from violent and poverty-entrenching white rule over African peoples; with 63 per cent of youths under age 24 years unemployed, this ‘Ramaphosa-De Klerk diarchy’ make the country very unstable.

In response to riots and looting, Ramaphosa called out the military instead of hurrying to meet angry and hungry looters in Soweto Township. The Secretary General of the Trade Union Congress claimed that the president’s distance from the people is manifested by addresses in English on television.

Human rivers of haggard youths carrying away consumer goods looted from shops, while an address by an ANC official merely tags them as ‘’criminals’’ affirm the gulf between her faction of the party and those still loyal to promises made to followers in the struggle against white South Africans owning 90 per cent of the country’s wealth while they constitute only 10 per cent of the population.

This split has pushed Ramaphosa towards dependence on De Klerk’s economic and political camp; and officials of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This is a road to political idiocy and spiralling conflict. External merchants of conflict welcome it. Those who wish to deepen an erosion of the country’s level of industrialisation and weaken its credential for being a member of BRICKS will deepen decay in the education sector and availability to drug addiction.

THIS SPLIT HAS PUSHED RAMAPHOSA TOWARDS DEPENDENCE ON DE KLERK’S ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CAMP; AND OFFICIALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AND THE WORLD BANK. THIS IS A ROAD TO POLITICAL IDIOCY AND SPIRALLING CONFLICT