Leaders must empower people
The days of people being prepared to listen and be loyal subjects are over
I AM confronted by black indignity everywhere I turn in South Africa. I wish I could disappear behind the high walls of the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg the way our political and business leaders do. The indignity of black people offends me. It is troubling and distressing.
The calloused begging hands, the dark and hollow eyes, and the volatile voices of despair are enough to make me want to disavow my blackness.
Recently, I was in Pick n Pay to buy myself a meal during my lunch hour. As I waited for someone to attend to me, I noticed the gentleman standing next to me, counting his coins to make sure that he had enough money for the fried chips he had just ordered. The woman serving him had just announced how much they would be – R20. He had that familiar dusty, worn-out look of black men who do onerous work that pays very little.
This was a man who no longer dreamt about the future; he used his energy sparingly and focused only on getting through “today”. I approached him: “Sawubona bhuti. Do you mind if I help you with that?” I said, handing him a R20 note. “Ah, thank you, my sister,” he said, and I smiled in acknowledgement.
It is true that colonialism and apartheid have dealt a huge blow to black history (and possibly even to the future of black people). At some point, we must be willing to draw a line in the sand.
We have to take full responsibility for our future as black South Africans, and it’s time for black elites, the “sort-of elites” and “almost-elites” to do some serious introspection and soul-searching.
We are overdue for an honest, collective self-analysis as black South Africans. Why have we failed to build a country where black people don’t need sympathy and compassion in order to survive? The desperation is palpable and nauseating. We remain synonymous with the denigrating experience of begging. Even with a black government in the stead of vicious white minority rule, we beg.
“If only our government could just build schools for us.”
“We are just asking that the government pave the roads so the ambulances can drive into our village.” “Our children don’t have jobs.“We are suffocating under the tyranny of mediocrity and greed; they have wounded the democratic project. We are dealing with a sluggish economy, a limping healthcare and education system, and rising disillusionment.
Nigerian-born author Chigozie Obioma argues that though many African nations were sabotaged by self-seeking white imperialists who engendered their failure from the beginning, this is only a part of the cause. Speaking of his home country, Nigeria, he elucidates that a culture of incompetence, endemic corruption, dignified ineptitude, destructive selfishness and greed play a major role in the unravelling of a nation.
This seems to have been the fate of our country – where opportunity and prospects fall only into the laps of the connected. We need leaders who will empower black people so that we are fully independent and able to support ourselves.
I doubt that black people want to be beholden to their leaders forever. There is, even in the youngest child, a strong, defiant sense of independence. My son is two and a half years old, and one of his favourite things to do is to remind me that he can do things himself. When I offer to remove the plastic wrapper from the straw and stick it into the juice box for him, he will remind me that he is very capable of doing this himself. Alone. Without my help. And sometimes, he does succeed, but my job is to be there to provide support in the event that he needs me. It is not my job to make sure that he is perpetually dependent on me. And so, our leaders thrive on our neediness and we thrive on their benevolence.
In South Africa today, politics has been reduced to nothing more than strategy and spectacle. Political leaders seem more concerned with maintaining power by pretending to care than by actually caring. The leaders who are moral, at best, suffer alienation and intimidation, and at worst, meet their end through assassination.
I am told and would like to believe, that there was a time when leaders called themselves selfless, and actually meant it. When leaders have opportunities presented to them to be selfless, and then fail to demonstrate this characteristic, it can only lead us to wonder if they were ever what they claimed to be.
Perhaps the signs were always there, but there was a wilful blindness in the face of a more powerful, stark evil to overcome. But, in the wake of 1994, it began to stir and heave, and throw off its grave clothes; our hidden agendas and ulterior motives came out to play. The stage was set for a new era of politics.
Black people are good at navigating the familiar terrain of “collective struggle”. We can relate to struggle. We lived it for so long. Black pain is shared, and common to all. For years, we stoked each other’s anger and believed that all of us black people, as the ones who were oppressed, had an innate goodness that was incorruptible. Oh, but how wrong we were. The days of people being prepared to listen and being treated simply as loyal subjects are over.
Why is freedom such a bitter fruit? How will we know if our leaders love us? In the words of Robert Sobukwe, they will display integrity and uprightness of character.
Anele Nzimande graduated with a law degree from Wits University. She was active in the Law Students’ Council and a leader in the #FeesMustFall movement. She has been a legal researcher at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies. She has created an online company offering custom-made clothing, and is the founder of Alunamda Media, a content marketing agency.
This is an extract from Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, New Reflections, Edited by Benjamin Pogrund, friend and biographer of Sobukwe and recipient of the Order of Ikhamanga Silver in 2019. The book presents the insights and reflections of political figures, journalists, business leaders, academics, friends, family members and individuals touched by Sobukwe’s life and work. Thoughtprovoking, it makes clear how his example can help to guide us in these fractious times.