Power relations: Prioritise competent personnel
– African Proverb.
The news of the passing, no – not of the passing, but the brazen gunning down of Mfundo Mokoena, a Provincial Conference Preparatory Committee (PCPC) and PWT member of the ANCYL in KwaZulu-Natal has sent shockwaves across the country. The murder of Mokoena is not an isolated incident in the province but part of the unceasing murder of activists that has rendered KZN somewhat a “killing field” of political and social justice activists. While pain does not require to be mediated by the logic of rationality, the responses by many to politically motivated killings are an indication of how people understand the problems to be.
The understanding, perhaps the dominant one, is that the killings are carried out by merciless people, hired by politicians who never give a damn about anything and are only ready to pull the trigger against anyone earmarked for such violence. While it is true that such people are merciless, the material basis of this cruelty is rarely explored, hence the same inconsequential moral outbursts when the killings take place. Here is what I think we ought to understand and grapple with.
Power relations assign value to different things, including people. Unequal power relations give this assigning of value quite a tragic dimension. Value assigning is dependent on whether you affirm or ruffle the existing configuration of power relations. The raw expression of that in political parties finds expression through factions, and thus the value you hold for or against certain positions and claims.
In a neo-colonial and neo-liberal context like South Africa, where society remains unashamedly untransformed and the economy is in a few hands, every sphere of the state becomes a contested space – from employment to tenders. The state, from local to national, becomes the source of livelihoods for many people, especially black politicians. Who becomes a mayor, a city manager, the head of the department, a councillor – PR and otherwise, members of the procurement committee, etc. are heavily contested and dependent on politics, and on the ruling party in particular.
The fact of the matter is that the local sphere cannot accommodate everyone, and therefore, tensions are bound not only to simmer but also to flare up and have deadly implications. This is more so when the electoral power of the ruling party, the ANC, is in constant decline, and the possibility of the political ship hitting an electoral iceberg and sinking becomes palpable.
As a result, power relations change the spirit of camaraderie to that of conflicts and battles for control of resources. When people from the same organisation do not see each other as comrades but as enemies, their lives become less sacrosanct, and therefore, they become things that can be treated anyhow to realise political ambition.
And so, like a hyena that has to first accuse its children of smelling like goats to justify why it has to gobble them up, comrades remove the lens of seeing each other as human beings but rather as objects of impediments and hindrances to the realisation of a particular goal and therefore feel justified to violate them, including murdering them.
The ANC must prioritise the deployment of competent personnel in government. The private sector under the control of white males is thriving. It takes monies overseas and blatantly refuses to re-invest in the South African economy. The life expectancy of white people and of the bourgeoisie class is increasing. This is while black people suffocate in the pits, fight and kill each other over crumbs that fall from the master’s table.
The material need for the elite to amass wealth, and to do so by hook or crook, will always be the case until and unless the ANC radically changes power relations for the benefit of everyone. Unfortunately, that cannot be done by political leaders who pander to capital and are shareholders in companies that exploit us, our fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers and neighbours. The onus is on young black working-class to re-imagine and redefine power and politics for a just society that values the sanctity of life.