What it is to be African
The politics of the rainbow nation perpetuate racism and cultural domination
AFRIKA Month ended last week as the country descended into “booze month”, with thousands of our people celebrating the reopening of points of sale of alcoholic beverages.
The euphoria with which this was celebrated far surpassed the Afrika month celebrations. This is not surprising really because we have not seriously paid attention to what it means to be Afrikan.
Indeed, most of us in this country, including the leadership, are found wanting in this area. The myth of the “rainbow nation” and the muchhyped notion of “non-racialism” have greatly contributed to the lacklustre embracement and poor understanding of Afrikan-ness.
This reality, in my view, has rendered us complacent or even complicit in the persistent problems of racism, inequality and cultural domination by other races. We seem not to know ourselves, and our priorities, and to be specific we are indifferent to our pain as black people.
We have lost our sense of outrage, solidarity and unity. We have so solidly been conditioned to states of disunity and self-hate. It appears as though we aspire to be accommodated in spaces where we are not wanted, and strive too much to be affirmed and embraced by races that deeply and fundamentally do not love us.
Covid-19 and the resultant lockdowns in South Africa have spectacularly revealed, or exposed, the oft-ignored or papered-over truth that we are still trapped in a colonial/apartheid state in practical terms.
Of course, we still continue to cast our votes abundantly, as if herds of cattle driven to the polling stations at five-year intervals, for 26 full years; and it sounds normal.
Still on the undressing that Covid19 has organically done, the actions of our new colonial masters (Chinese) were exposed when people of black skin were harassed and hounded out of their “homes” in China, reportedly on account that they were carriers of the virus/disease (which ironically first erupted in China) itself.
In America, the consistent killing and lynching of blacks came to a point recently when the gruesome murder of George Floyd forcefully reminded us, yet again, that we live in a racist world, the world that is blatantly anti-black. All these instances continue to remind us that indeed blacks lives don’t matter in this world.
Marcus Garvey, Peter Tosh, Kwame Nkrumah, Anton Lembede, Robert Sobukwe and Pixley ka Isaka Seme would have dealt with this decades ago. I have deliberately chosen to mention Seme last because I want to instantly refer to his succinct, clear, pointed and unapologetic view of who an Afrikan is. I need to mention that it is quite concerning that we are still grappling with our identity, definitions of who we are and other such banal preoccupations while we should be reclaiming our rightful place globally, for Afrika brought civilisation to the world.
However, the basics must be addressed and the truth undressed.
So, Moss Mashamaite has become one of the self-appointed, volunteering and bold historians/biographers in these scary and dangerous times to deal with the basics of our being, and dig out the truth that those who dominate our cultural institutions, literature, historical records and media spaces have long made it their business to shield from our gaze and illumination.
In his 2011 offering, he digs out the hidden truth about the life of Seme, the founder of the South African Native Congress (later known as the ANC). Therein Mashamaite exposes the cruel hands of historians and some within Seme’s own movement; how this Pan Afrikan was utterly vilified in the curse of history.
Mashamaite takes huge interest in the importance of the “correct” conceptualisation of an Afrikan as a point of departure, because it is this understanding that is likely set to influence how we, and indeed, our leaders, conduct themselves in the wider space and world of politics.
There is Seme’s definition, so goes Mashamaite, that says: “I am an African, I set myself and my race against a hostile public opinion.” Already it is clear that in Seme’s thinking, we all need to be race-conscious in order to effectively deal with the problems that afflict us and indeed all the pain that other races continue to cause us. He is not shy nor scared to claim his race. His race matters.
And then, continues Mashamaite, there is Thabo Mbeki’s definition of an African which says, “I am an African… I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins (course) the blood of the Malay slaves, who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence”.
In terms of Mbeki’s definition, Afrikan is anyone, including Europeans and Asians, whatever their actions and their culture, as these respectively have formed him and have become part of his being. I think this is an altruistic and “humanistic” position which can properly be located within the context and construction of the “rainbow nation”.
This construct resonates with that (in)famous line in the Freedom Charter which boldly pronounces that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”. This is the line that caused so much pain, strife and contestation within the ANC between 1955 and 1958, and eventually led to Africanists within, as guided by the likes of Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo, exiting the ANC to form the PAC in 1959.
However, there are many people who view this inclusive view of Africanism as not helpful in the pursuance of the interests of blacks in our politics. This is the kind of view that would have offended the likes of Lembede and Seme, who had unequivocally embraced the Africanist agenda.
According to Mashamaite, such dilution (of the definition of an Afrikan) “has caused the natives handsomely on key matters of the struggle for true liberation”.
What Mashamaite implies, and correctly so, is that we have not achieved liberation, because a liberation that is not true can only be false, fake or quasi-liberation. Thus, false liberation can never be liberation at all.
So, what happened since 1994, if we do not have liberation? Following this logic, methinks, it has been a solid 26 wasted years. It is therefore a total fallacy to even attempt to introduce rhetorical phrases such as “nine wasted years”. Liberation is liberation, as much as power is power. Talk of true or false liberation is thus irrelevant.
Which brings me to the dilemma facing activists today, which is the discourse of “economic liberation”. The failure to assume power or liberation in 1994 has created a chimeric and desperate idea that power can be divided into various forms or sides. Political power and economic power?
I think it is quite nonsensical to view power in this manner. In my space, power is power. It’s either we, as Africans, got power or not. Power is a totality of all that we can use in the society to exert ourselves as a nation, be it in relation to language, economy, politics, culture, knowledge or language. When a destiny nation or race is in power it has absolute leverage on all aspects of its life. It has it in its own hand in this respect. As soon as one starts to talk of economic power and political power, then one must know that one does not have power at all.
It therefore becomes impelling that what happened (or did not happen) in 1994 has created the need or challenge for us to fight for power in the real sense. The fight for economic freedom is a burden that has been left for the new generation to pursue. Something that should have been settled 26 years ago. Can we say therefore that the EFF is an unintended legacy left by our leaders in 1994 by neglecting to assume power?
I have heard of some noise in the ruling party of the discourse of “the second phase of the first transition”, or something of that sort. This is so embarrassingly sad and painful.