Loving and leaving the ANC
Farlam commission happens somewhere in the middle distance. Cyril Ramaphosa 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 bury the ghosts of dead miners under a pile of headlines. But the memory of the wailing of widows will not leave us.
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 any more. The people are saying: “We love you, but don’t come around here any more.”
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.
This article first appeared on the Daily Maverick website