Economical Oppression-Dehumanization in the Neo-Post Apartheid Rule

8/18/2019 Economical Oppression-Dehumanization in the Neo-Post Apartheid Rule

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Economical Oppression-Dehumanization in the Neo-Post

Apartheid Rule

The ANC Must Eradicate and Reverse Patronage and Corruption

As we reflect on this critical statement, "We must be mindful of the prescient observation by Fanonthat the post-colonial reality provides ample evidence that national liberation movements ultimately

became transformed into their opposites and often replicated the style and practice of their

oppressors. The neocolonial socio-economic trajectory that they adopted for their liberated countries

degenerated into a patronage-based and corrupt system that progressively eschewed freedom of

expression and human rights and also marginalized the poor," that in the end we get a perfect

characterization of the ruling ANC-led government in South Africa today.

Post 1994, the ANC was virtually forced to adopt a neocolonial socio-economic paradigm that was

propagated by the World Bank and the IMF. It also adopted its values of selfish individualism and

wealth creation. The outcome was never in doubt and African South Africans have now achieved theunenviable status of being the 'most unequal society in the world.'

Without doubt there have been great changes in South Africa since the ANC took power in 1994.

Millions of poor people have been lifted out of the poverty trap, thanks to welfare support payments.

But contemporary South Africa manifests the shortcomings envisaged by Fanon and there is a dark

underbelly because the socio-economic situation has worsened for the majority of the poor. South

Africas Human Development Index ranks below that of many comparable developing countries with

much lower levels of GDP. Life expectancy has deteriorated and child mortality has risen in

comparative terms. This has substituted the rigid, racially classified apartheid social structure with a

stratified class society by the present Ruling ANC-led government.

Given the fact that unemployment, especially among young people, that has stayed at crisis levels for

the past three years and poverty remains pervasive for the majority of the poor, there's a need to

seriously rethink about the development strategy that must adopted going forward. Under President

Zuma there are indications that the ANC is seriously considering a new development paradigm that

will put the poor at the centre of development policies. The work of the National Planning

Commission is an inspirational bit and one hopes it will focus the attention of the whole nation and

be concluded speedily.

For the ANC, as the party in government, this moment calls for visionary leadership and decisionmaking. Patronage has become a systemic political tool that promotes corruption. It is undergirded

by an electoral law and the system of governance that flows from it because it gives power to the

political parties.

In this situation, the political party chiefs decide on the selection of public representatives. It is this

centralized control that has spawned the patronage that is now tearing the ANC apart and inhibiting

progress in national development. The electoral law is the most critical source and cause for the

patronage, corruption and faction fighting that is at the heart of the instability within the ANC in all

regions.

The call for change is loud and immediate, today as we speak or write. What then must be done to

arrest this untenable situation? Patronage and corruption have been condemned by all in the top

leadership of the ANC but it continues to grow, especially as Mangaung political shindig draws


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nearer[This will discussed as an update post Mangaung]. The time has come to accept and

implement the recommendations of the 2003 Frederik van Zyl Slabbert report on a hybrid

proportional and direct electoral system.

The goodwill that would flow from this decision would also enhance the ANC brand value as a party

that is sensitive to the mood and desire of the electorate. The quality of the representative would

also improve as well as the standard of accountability. Another decision that would improve the

image of the ANC, especially among rural women, is to pull back the Traditional Courts Bill. In its

current form it entrenches traditional feudal authority practiced by traditional leaders.

It has no place in contemporary South Africa as envisaged in the liberation struggle and vision. A

vast majority of the women of South Africa(Africans) are oppressed, repressed and violated

physically and murdered in more ways than one. A nation whose women are subjugated by dumb

men will never give birth to a strong and future nation

Unification Of Leadership Is A Dire Need

It isnt the most prudent thing one can do and it isnt encouraged. Of course you will hear those in the ANC say it is, but we know it is not. When one does so, one is often attacked and comments like

Polokwane-griever and enemy of the national democratic revolution abound. But I will do such a

thing because, as my main man Drake puts it, YOLO! You only live once. So YOLO you ninjas!

We have a very insecure ANC leadership at the moment and nothing weakens a movement more

rapidly than poorly conceived indecisive decisions, weakness and corruption at the top. Everything

said that might be constructive said without being sycophantic is seen as an attack and a broadside.

The ANC 'exile laager' mentality sets in and imaginary enemies are set out. Those who criticize for

want of a better ANC are bullied into silence through the loud bully pulpit of the powerful and

vicious deadly raw force.

To quote the man who would be the Yoda of the ANC, Nelson Mandela, It is a grave error for any

leader to be oversensitive in the face of criticism. I know he wouldnt be sensitive over being called a

Yoda, for example. Again, those who dare speak out, often speak of the hunger and suffering that

follows their outspokenness.Other speak of how business opportunities dry up.

So that, the intention of this Hub is to bring out the voices of the African people, splurge them on the

Web and make them as viral as much as possible, because there is a pressing need for them to tell

their story of the past 18+ years of ANC rule, in their own words, what they are really going trough

in South Africa.

"Other people in the private sector who might agree with the sentiments become complicit in

encouraging the weak leadership by stepping in to claim those business opportunities as they allow

their morality to be guided by nothing other than the pursuit of money. Bravery in private but

cowardice in public should be neither encouraged nor praised.

"We know that there are many in the ANC who lament the transformation the organization has

undergone. No one is happy with the ANC, with the exception of those who worship at the altar of

the 'Tender'. There are many who want to be happy with the ANC but are not given room to say how

the ANC could be turned into a better place because there are too many big but fragile egos.

"There was a time when people were proud of the ANC. Yes, today they are still proud. But their

pride always points to the past, never the present. The present pains and disappoints them and


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leaves them in despair. Yet in their despair they always leave room for hope because they know that

the organization can do better. They cannot and will not allow it to be broken in their lifetime."

They cant dishonor those who came before. What shall the people say when they see them in the

afterlife? Will African South Africans be ashamed or will they be proud? Will they say, Well done,

good and faithful servants of the movement, or will they say, Away from us! The latter answer and

attitude seems to be percolating on the fringes of the political reality that characterizes the present

reign of the discombobulated South Africa under ANC rule.

Of course there is no leadership in the world that can be proud of everything it has done. Even the

great saints of the ANC such as Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu have regrets but these are dwarfed by

their achievements. In its 2001 document, Through the Eye of a Needle, [this has a ring of Davidson

"In the Eye Of The Storm sense], that the ANC outlines the attributes that will help identify a true

leader. Unfortunately, it would appear as though those guiding principles have been ignored, as has

been demonstrated by the so-called Anyone But Zuma movement.

One of the points the document makes is this and I quote, Those in leadership positions should unite

and guide the movement to be at the head of the process of change. They should lead the movementin its mission to organize and inspire the masses to be their own liberators. They should lead the

task of governance with diligence. And, together, they should reflect continuity of a revolutionary

tradition and renewal which sustains the movement in the long-term. Having observed the ANC-led

government, they seem to be farther from the propositions above than at any other time now and in

the foreseeable future.

From the one paragraph we can already see the many flaws in their leadership:

The people have not been inspired to be their own liberators; the state has made sure that the

people are dependent on it. Thus, the party remains as their liberator and shackles them toitself.Some areas of government have been led well and the task of governance has been done

diligently, unfortunately there is less than desired.The sustainability of the movement at this rate is

questionable.

Point 35 of the document says, A leader should constantly seek to improve his capacity to serve the

people. Unfortunately, many of our leaders are interested less in improving their capacity to serve,

and more in increasing their chances to lead again and gaining materially for their inaction. There is

a big difference between the two.

Point 37 of the document then goes on to say, A leader should lead by example. He should be abovereproach in his political and social conduct as defined by our revolutionary morality. Through force

of example, he should act as a role model to ANC members and non-members alike. Leading a life

that reflects commitment to the strategic goals of the national democratic revolution includes not

only being free of corrupt practices; it also means actively fighting against corruption.

It hardly needs to be stressed that the cadre of the ANC is more for corruption, obfuscation and

arrogance towards the cries, please and needs of the poor African masses

Having looked at all the points presented on the ANC document it is clear that the ANC does not

apply this with rigor and forthrightness when selecting leaders. This document might as well beburned, for no one follows its guidelines.

In my estimation, the document was written to ensure that not just anyone could become a leader


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because they think they can lead the movement; they should lead because they have ticked all the

boxes. Being an ANC leader was meant to be difficult, not easy for leadership is not easy. But the

present leaders are not making their task easier by permitting corruption and other social malaise to

reign supreme.

The title of the document is taken from the Book of Matthew chapter 19 verse 24 in the Bible. A rich

young ruler asks Jesus what he needs to do to get to heaven. Jesus tells him what to give up. The

young man leaves because he is not prepared to give these things up, then Jesus says to the crowd,

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich

man to enter into the kingdom of God.

If we are to use this metaphor or biblical aphorism, the ANC are really not doing well, and they are

at present fattened fat-cats who rule through ignoring the poor and using cronyism and crude

nepotism to arrogantly and greedily enrich themselves with the nations coffers without any shame

nor let-up.

The needle Jesus was speaking of is not the same as the one you think of. The eye of a needle Jesus

spoke of was a gate in Jerusalem, which only opened after the main gate to the city was closed atnight. A camel could only pass through a smaller gate if it was stooped and had its baggage removed

and had to almost crawl to enter.

Therefore, a leader should be willing to let go of his baggage in order to be worthy of leading the

ANC: in order for them to get through to the people be one with them. This is what is hard for the

ANC to let go off-the Gravy Train and all what it has to offer them-personal wealth and self-

arrogated power. They behave as if their voting polity had not sense nor consciousness to speak of

or realized or to be respected. On top of that, they are unwavering when it comes to using brute

force to crush dissent.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

There is a serious need to have a realization that the Poor masses are human beings and that their

humanity needs to be restored and respected. Acknowledging that Humans are humans, not Blacks,

Whites and other disrespectful references to others, needs to be weaned away from the psyche and

consciousness of a people who, as human beings understand and realize and know what "Ubuntu"

and consciousness is all about-if humans on this planet can do it in other lands, so too can Africans

in Africa and South Africa exercise the same human nature, capability and ability to know and

consciously deal with their environment and existential reality.

Julian Jaynes helps put this perspectives about human consciousness and their knowing and being

aware of consciousness as being consciousness, thus making them "be" Umuntu/Motho(Human).

Jaynes informs us thus:

"Some concepts need to be nailed down perfectly in order to begin the process of understanding a

few things: the fact that Africans are not unconscious: which is a fiction and fallacy is what I am

about to write about is what we need to have a serious understanding about consciousness and

Ubuntu, or we will forever dwell in the La-la-land. What am I talking about? For example, when

asked the question, what is 'consciousness'? And most of us take this 'consciousness of

consciousness' to be what consciousness is. This is not true. In being conscious of consciousness, wefeel it is the most self-evident thing imaginable.

"We feel it is the defining attribute of all our waking states, our moods and affections, our memories,


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our thoughts, attentions, and volitions. We feel comfortably certain that consciousness is the basis of

concepts,of learning and reasoning, of thought and judgement, and that it is so because it records

and stores our experience as they happen, allowing us to introspect them and learn from them at

will. We are also quite conscious that all this wonderful set of operations and contents that we call

consciousness is located somewhere in the head.

On critical examination, all of these statements are false. They are the costume that consciousness

has been masquerading in for centuries. They are the misconceptions that have prevented a solution

to the problem of the origin of consciousness; to demonstrate these errors and show what

consciousness is not, is a gargantuan and humongous task, which will be culled into a prcis for

expediency.

For example the phrase, "To loose consciousness" after receiving a blow on the head. But if this

were correct, we would then have no word for those somnambulistic states known in the clinical

literature, where an individual is clearly not conscious and yet is responsive to things in a way in

which a knocked-out person is not. Therefore, in the first instance we should say that the person

suffering a severe blow on the head loses both consciousness and what I am calling 'reactivity,' and

they are therefore different things.

This distinction is also important in normal everyday life. We are constantly reacting to things

without being 'conscious' of them at the time. Sitting against a tree, I am always reacting to the tree

and to the ground and to my own posture, since if I wish to walk, I will quite unconsciously stand up

from the ground to do so. I am rarely conscious even from where I am. In writing, I am reacting to

the pencil(keyboard) in my hand(Fingertips) since I hold on to it(am pressing the keys), and am

reacting to my writing pad(or keyboard).

Since I hold it on my knees(as I do my keyboard) and its lines(the scrawling on the screen), since I

write upon them, but am only conscious of what I am trying to say and whether or not I am beingclear to you. In this case, you can replace writing pad with screen and pencil with the keyboard. If a

bird burst up from the copse nearby and flies crying to the horizon, I may turn to watch and hear it,

and then turn back to this page without being conscious that I had done so. In other words,

'reactivity' covers all stimuli my behavior takes account of in any way, while consciousness is

something quite distinct and a far less ubiquitous phenomenon. We are conscious of what we are

reacting to only from time to time. And whereas reactivity can be defined behaviorally and

neurologically, consciousness at the present state of knowledge cannot.

But let us go further. Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious

of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; howdifficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something

that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction

it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so, consciousness can seem to

pervade all mentality when actually it does not.

The timing of 'consciousness' is also an interesting question. When we are awake, are we conscious

all the time? We think so, in fact, we are sure so! I shut my eyes and even if I try not to think,

consciousness still streams on, a great river of contents in a succession of different conditions which

I have been taught to call thoughts, images, memories, interior dialogue, regrets, wishes, resolves,

all interweaving with the constantly changing pageant of exterior sensations of which I amselectively aware. Always the continuity. Certainly this is the feeling. And whatever we're doing, we

feel that our very "Self," our deepest of deep identity, is indeed this continuing flow that only ceases

in sleep between remembered dreams. This is our experience. And many thinkers have taken this


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spirit of continuity to be the place to start from in philosophy, the very ground of certainty which no

one can doubt. "Cogito, ergo sum"(I Think, Therefore I am)..."

This is clearly understood by the Poor people of South Africa and they are acutely aware of their

consciousness about consciousness which in the final analysis allow them to "Be": "we think,

therefore they are aware that the Are". Ignoring the beingness and consciousness of the collective

poor is arrogance unbridled, which is not good governance nor true and real leadership, and will

finally lead to the fall of the present ruling African petit-bourgeois African vulture, predatory elite.

Lying to the people is one of the most gave errors that can be committed by any leadership of any

country; worse, to think of the masses as being unconscious, dumb and illiterate and stupid, is to

commit leadership suicide That is why Democracy is still not function to full effect nor any effect, for

that matter.

Critical Consciousness-Naive Consciousness: Literacy and Ignorance

"In a Democracy, no one ignores everything, just as no one knows everything"

Mannheim says that "as democratic processes become widespread, it becomes more and moredifficult to permit the masses to remain in a state of ignorance," and Mannheim would not restrict

his definition of ignorance to illiteracy, but would include the masses' lack of experience' in

participating and intervening in the historical process...

We began with the conviction that the role of men and women was not only to 'be' in the world, but

also to engage in relations with the world, but to engage in relations with the world that through

acts of creation and recreation, we make cultural reality and thereby add to the natural world, which

we did not make. We were certain that the people's relation to reality, expressed as a Subject to an

Object, results in knowledge, which men and women could express through language.

This 'relation,' as it is already clear, is carried out by men whether or not they are literate. It is

sufficient to be a person to perceive the data of reality, to be capable of knowing, even if this

knowledge is mere opinion. There is no such thing as absolute ignorance or absolute wisdom (No

one ignores everything, just as no one knows everything). The dominating consciousness absolutizes

ignorance in order to manipulate the so-called 'uncultured.' If some men are totally ignorant," they

will be incapable of managing themselves, and will need the orientation, "direction," i.e., the

"leadership" of those who consider themselves to be "cultured" and "superior (Alvaro Pinto). And to

find these men, one has often look for them amongst and in the midst of the masses of those thought

to be 'dumb' and 'illiterate' in more instances than not.

But men and women do not perceive those data in a pure form. As they apprehend a phenomenon or

a problem, they also apprehend it's causal links. The more accurately men and women grasp true

causality,the more critical their understanding of reality will be. Their understanding will be magical

to the degree that they fail to grasp causality. Further, 'critical consciousness' always submits that

causality to analysis; what is true today may not be so tomorrow. 'Naive consciousness' sees

causality as a static, established fact,and thus is deceived in its perception.

This is what the present rulers or leaders of South Africa want to see instilled in the masses, not in a

way the uplifts them or upgrades their sordid condition, but dumbs them up and down. Oppression,

depression and all techniques-of controlling and misleading and misdirecting the masses, often leadsthem go begin to develop their own skills of critical thinking, along with self-criticism (a la Mao)

Critical Consciousness


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Critical consciousness represents things and facts as they exist empirically, in their causal and

circumstantial correlations ... barren consciousness considers itself superior to fact, in control of

facts, and thus free to understand them as it pleases. Magic consciousness, in contrast, simply

apprehends facts and attributes to them a superior power by which it is controlled and to which it

must therefore submit. Magic consciousness is characterized by fatalism, which leads men to fold

their arms, resigned to the impossibility of resisting the power of facts.

Critical consciousness is integrated with reality; bland consciousness superimposes itself on reality;

and fanatical consciousness, whose pathological navet leads to the irrational, adapts to reality. ...

Once man perceives a challenge, understands it, and recognizes the possibilities of response, he

acts. The nature of that action corresponds to the nature of his understanding. Critical

understanding leads to critical action; magic understanding to magic response.

From being aware of consciousness of consciousness to critical, unknowing and magical

consciousness, we know that these states of evolving consciousness is what we will read about below

in the Hub when the Abahlali and other poor peoples challenge the ANC behemoth and try to gain

basic human rights and dignity of the poor had to interrogate in their opposition of the present

government to their, economical depression and oppression, their state of poverty, abuse, anddehumanization in post-Apartheid South Africa.

We will just peruse at Power and what it really means, specifically for Africans in South Africa, and

what it means to their leaders, too. In the process of observing these, we also see a picture of 'Low

Intensity Warfare' emerge when the people begin to resist their tormentors , detractors, oppressors

and putrid present-day leadership.

Those Who Lead and Those Who Follow

It is the contention of this Hub that, "Power is essential for all living things. If we neglect the factorof power, as is the tendency in our day of reaction against the destructive effects of the misuse of

power, we shall lose values that are essential to our existence as humans. James McGregor Burns

defines the primary basis of social power thus: "Power is a relationship among persons.

To define power not as a property or entity or possession but as a relationship in which two or more

persons tap motivational bases in one another and bring varying resources to bear in the process is

to perceive power as drawing a vast range of human behavior into its orbit. The arena of power is

not longer the exclusive preserve of a power elite or an establishment or persons cloth with

legitimacy.

Power is ubiquitous; it permeates human relationships. It exists whether or not it is quested for. It is

the glory and burden of most humanity. It is the self-assertion of the oppressed in quest for their

humanity. This brings us within the purview the war that is being waged against the poor in post-

Apartheid South Africa.

The transition from Apartheid

Over the ensuing period, the leadership of the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist

Party (SACP) worked overtime to convince white capitalists they were capable of taking over the

political reigns and becoming responsible managers of South Africa.

This process was far from smooth. Conservative forces in South African politics attempted to stifle

the transition.


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And the black masses consistently renewed mobilization, taking the transition into their own hands

and demanding it deliver an end to crippling oppression.

1992-3 saw a return to the streets as negotiations broke down. In August of 1992, a four million

strong general strike crippled the country. In April 1993, general strikes again broke out in response

to the assassination of the left-wing General Secretary of the SACP Chris Hani. Mandela appeared

on television calling for calmthe ANC leadership had no control over the street fighting and stop

work actions.

Here was a power capable, not just of toppling Apartheid, but of seizing the wealth held by white

capitalists and putting it to work for the black majority. But the ANC were terrified of losing the

support for transition amongst the white ruling class. And the leaders of the SACP and COSATU kept

insisting that, "Socialism would have to wait until some distant future."

The ANC abandoned all former commitments to nationalization.

They began talking about redistribution of wealth through growth not from rich to poor, or from

white to black-but amongst and within the whites and the African gendarme and predatory, vultureelite and ruling elite. Through 1993, COSATU began to be incorporated into state economic planning

boards, sitting alongside corporate leaders and publicly supporting the need for wage restraint to

support economic growth. In the lead up to the 1994 elections,

68 out of South Africas top 100 businessmen backed Mandelas campaign for President.

In South Africas first democratic elections, held in May 1994, the ANC received 63 per cent of the

vote. But despite the jubilation that greeted this historic victory, the commitment of the ANC to

running South African capitalism brought it into conflict with the black masses almost immediately.

This conflict will dealt with below in-depth. This Hub may appear to be long, but it is time that storyis 'outed' and let-loose onto the viral stream.

For example:

The ANC government savagely repressed nurses and municipal workers striking for higher wages in

1995using the same police units and same weaponry as the Apartheid regime.

Some public spending programs gestured towards the ANCs former promises of economic equality.

Perhaps one of the most significant of these was the delivery of free health care to all infants. A

reconstruction and development program promised 125,000 houses in the first year of the ANCgovernmentbut delivered less than 11,000.

Overwhelmingly it was the politics of neoliberalism, the same policies being implemented by ruling

classes around the world, which came to characterize the approach of the ANC. They implemented

massive cuts to company tax, waves of privatization and attacks on union rights.

A strategy of black empowerment," lifted from the Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe, was employed

in an attempt to change the face of economic power. A number of big companies recruited blacks

into the boardrooms. A handful of powerful black enterprises, incubated by the state, have become

major players within the ruling class.

But white settler and foreign capital still control more than 80 per cent of South Africas economy. A

tiny minority of blacks may have joined the ruling class in their opulent suburbs. But these still sit


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alongside massive squalid slums inhabited by the black majority. This extreme class segregation is a

product of capitalism and a characteristic of all former colonial societies, no matter the color of the

regime.

South Africa today

Despite the betrayals of the ANC leadership, the spirit of the anti-Apartheid struggle has remained

very much alive. Privatization has been fought both with mass strikes and direct action at the

township level. For example, a massive community-union campaign defeated attempts to patent

AIDS medication over 1999-2003.

In the 21 century, South Africa has registered the highest level of protest actions per person in the

world. And in recent years, splits have emerged in the ANC between leadership figures continuing to

preach wage restraint and redistribution through growth and grassroots militants furious at

worsening poverty, have been striking right up to until now as of the writing of this Hub

In 2007, more than a million public sector workers undertook weeks of strike action against wage

restraint and led the biggest general strike since the end of Apartheid. More mass strikes in mid-2009 provided the background to the ousting of president Mbeki for Jacob Zuma, who had promised

to break with neoliberalism. COSATU and the SACP have begun discussions about breaking their

tripartite alliance with the ANCthe bedrock of post-Apartheid rule.

But in over the long haul of the nearly 20 years of their tripartite rule, Cosatu has become one with

their former masters and the new slave-driver-The ANC and the SACP.

These were not promising signs, and the lesson of these last two decades is that Black(African)

oppression and crippling poverty cannot be reformed awaythey lie at the heart of South African

capitalism. A very Strong political organization is needed to take the explosive struggles of theexploited black majority beyond reformism and nationalismtowards revolution, empowerment,

freedom and self-rule of the armies of the African poor

Freedom and Self Rule: Dejavu All Over Again

'The Ecology Of Fear and Uncertainty'

When Tutu poignantly and pointedly called on the ANC and told them that he is going to pray for

them because their governance is worse than that of the Apartheid regime, this caused me to write

this Hub and try and list all the possibilities and not-so-possible realities of what he was saying andin the process, look into the possible existence of a "type" of 'Low Intensity' Warfare is being waged

on Africans in South Africa and by whom, who, why, where and what the ultimate goal is or was or

still being contemplated to date.

This is a loaded statement and assertion, and I am going to attempt to tabulate all the variable

possibilities in order to see if TuTu is right or wrong in accusing the ANC of gross mismanagement,

poor and inept governance, murder and arrest of the striking and discontent Africans in South

Africa: in a word, that they have been carrying on oppression, repression, depression, suppression,

abuse and the whole bit, of the poor people; in fact, who else is involved, How and Why? How,

Where, When, and to what extend and end?

In fact, the word on the street, since the conclusion of the provincial elections, polls have influenced

the view of people that the saw some serious minuses in terms of the ANC electorate and that they


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have been deserting ranks and either not voted or went-over to other parties. Confidence in the ANC

has plummeted to the extent that even the elected officials are beginning, albeit slowly, to consider

the possibilities of a loss in the near election.

Given the state of euphoria that ANC ascended into power, what has really happened here: the

deterioration of relations between the ANC(pronounced ENK) and its voting polity-the loss of

confidence of the people in the capabilities and abilities of the ANC-led governance of the country is

more widespread now . This is what this Hub will try to trace and delineate with hope light might be

gleaned on this entropic reality.

When the Gravy Train took off, it is unconscionable that up to date the feast and fiesta of the Gravy

Train is in is in full effect and swing without abating. What is happening now and today in South

Africa is not new, but has worsened and bludgeoning on its path the African South Africans and

other ethnic group's newly found democracy and freedom. The wild dreams and speculations and

hopes and dreams have been shattered, trampled and stumped, scorned upon with sheer, raw hate

and impunity without remorse, empathy and consideration-with an arrogance and mien not matched

since.

This is still going on now. No one is reporting the details that come from the actual African

community itself, but the ruling party(ANC), only talk about themselves and their elite and celebrity

crews statuses and life-styles. If one were to talk to the inhabitants of South Africa, more

specifically, the poor African population, there's a lot many people do not know; What I am talking

about is the day-to-day existence and lived lives and experiences of Africans under the Apartheid

government and the present African ANC-led government, there is a consensus, the new government

has failed the suffering masses and that Tutu had to at least holler out in desperation(maybe for his

failed bid to Bring in the Dalai Lama for his birthday-or maybe decrying the inconclusive TRC).

Tutu was in effect echoing the murmurings of the wretched African masses of the earth in South Africa. It should be noted that the transition of the oppressed peoples to free people left its marks

and continues to be part of their lived experiences that remain unchanged: inadequate social

services, poverty, diseases(those from the dark days of Apartheid to those of the mixture of

malingering and permanent diseases added to by the social and economic conditions and

encouraged by a predator ruler-class of post and neo-Apartheid South Africa) along with their

entrenched cabals, thuggerism, terrorism, lack of job and employment opportunities

And perpetuated under that ANC government-wherein we'll be able to learn how the local

Shebeen(Tavern) kings and queens tried to block the poor peoples movement who wanted to put a

curfew on their Shebeens(Taverns) not to operate 24 hours a day because they raised a lot of domestic abuses and fights which destabilized the local communities, as would be clearly elaborated

on down further into the Hub by The Abahlali baseMjondolo).

Unemployed armies of the poor; alcoholism(which was designed and promoted by the Apartheid

regime, drugs (of all sorts), and cheap liquor and fake cigarettes foisted on the poor and imbibed by

them, mostly, the youth, decimating households, families, communities and the whole society-add in

onto that the state of drug abuse and drug dealing that has gripped the country like never before;

insecurity, ignorance, meanness, opportunism, jealousies, rat race, an attitude of "everyone for

Themselves", and the spirit of "Dog eats Dog" spirit reigned supreme, and is still the norm and

mores up to the point of writing this Hub and beyond.

The voice of the voiceless and powerless needs to be put in the forefront about any dialogue

concerning anything South African. From 1652 to 2012 and beyond, Africans have not received any


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respite from their slave-bonded maldeveloped economic, material, political, social, spiritual, cultural,

customary and traditional subjugation and national humiliation and annihilation and all sorts and

forms of genocide.

Paging Through Edges of Hell

South Africa's relative wealth to the rest of Africa is acting as a magnet for the poverty-stricken of

sub-Saharan Africa is massive. It is worth noting that both poverty and inequality are South African

hallmarks(from the Dark Days of Apartheid in the case of Africans in South Africa, specifically). The

present ANC-led government is caught in an unenviable position of balancing the needs of market

stability (in a world dominated by free market economics of yesteryear) and appeasing domestic and

international capital with trying to undo the damage of 400 years of colonialism, and a disgruntled

polity.

The meaning of poverty in South Africa takes on different tacks within the present ruling

government governing philosophy, and it is affecting development programs and contributing to a

hollow and meaningless debate about the progress that the need African people to upgrade their lot

becomes even more dire. It is a fact that poverty is a defining reality in South Africa, and has a clearracial, gender and spatial dimension. And whenever many definitions are used to measure poverty,

one thing remains constant and common: the majority of African South Africans exist below any

acceptable minimum poverty level (Seekings; Nattrass, 2005).

Looking at the low-intensity warfare we will be using the perspective and words and lives of the

Africans Of South Africa(Nguni/Bakone (Africans and Colored, the Khoi and Bushmen's) and lived

and experienced reality to try and bring serious attention to this tragedy that is now hanging like a

dark cloud over the heads of the African South African people.

Poverty, Diseases and Ignorance are the Achilles-heel Of the Poor

Living in poverty has its effects on a people. This in turn conforms them to that state of existence,

and ignorance and depression stress, oppression, repression by the state(ANC) and its functionaries

collude and forge a confluence upon the lives of the poor and who are lacking in privileges to the

extent that this creates maladjustments and psychiatric cases: normalcy is scorned-whilst madness

becomes the ideal to be realized and achieved: the norm.

The way of life a people becomes meaningless whilst the pursuit of material ends becomes the way

of life of a motley crew of the elite that is, it becomes a new culture of the have mores and have

little: the rich become richer-the poor, poorer. The old ways of the Africans are cast aside andscorned, riled and ridiculed. The customs, culture, practices and languages are trampled upon and

seen as unsophisticated and barren- and also labelled as backward and infantile; the common

humanity that glued the society together(Ubuntu) is perceived as outmoded and a throw-back into

the stone-age.

What is immediate is the constant gnawing hunger which beckons constantly, non-stop and intensely

tortures and grips the poor people's stomachs with vicious pangs that need to be satisfied

immediately in the reality and existence of the poor constant shortage of food-if there is any food,

questionable as to whether it is of real good quality. All the social mores and norms are blown away

like one would when clearing one's nose of snuff-filled mucous-or like mist when the sun comes up.

Others aver that things have gotten better, and point out to the overland infrastructure initiated

during the country's run to hosting the 2010 World Cup. The magnificent stadiums and new roads


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which are more or less showcase than being streamlined along an economic boom-but people are not

seeing and feeling the bust. The political, social, media and economic play-books embedded within

the national landscape, along with the reality and collective national psyche are those aping if not

being commandeered by foreign powers and their cultures, rather than by the local people.

The Arts, Sports, Religion, Society and the whole bit is being controlled and dictated to by foreign

powers and multi-corporations along with their armies and security spooks and other vested

interests. The present Ruling ANC-government is in all this hook and sink-they are in cahoots with

Conglomerate multi-trillion Dollar/Pound/Yen and so forth magnates and their bullies-with the

country's currency controlled, i.e., the local Rand, being dictated to by International finance9along

with the local white big capital. Corruption is rampant, nepotism, kickbacks, ahistorical and

apolitical mind-set the daily babble spearheaded by a gaggle of willing and compliant new and old

petty bourgeois of Grand Apartheid days and the one that has gelled during the first and present

contemporary 'democratic' government of the ANC.

The cacophony that has been raised by the atrophied social hell is given scant consideration by

anyone within the embattled country presently imprisoned by the present ANC ruling government,

and is rapidly eating away at the cadaver that is the African polity(alongside many other poorminorities). The transformation a whole of the people's leadership has been made the puppet doll of

the monied international potentate, and this has eroded most of the "Ubuntu" which is the fulcrum of

African culture, customs and traditions. This has put the indigene at the brink of a genocide, which

will be discussed in another Hub

Bantu Biko writes: [In our history] "We are concerned with that curious bunch of nonconformists

who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts

of names liberals, leftists, etc. These are the people who claim that they too feel the oppression just

as acutely as the Blacks and therefore should be jointly involved in the Black man's struggle for a

place under the sun. In short, these are the people who say that they have Black souls wrapped inWhite skins. The role of the white liberal in the Black man's history in South Africa is a curious one.

Very few Black organizations were not under White direction.

"True to their image, the White liberals always knew what was good for the Blacks and told them so.

The wonder of it all is that the Black people have believed them for so long. It was only at the end of

the '50s that the Black started demanding to be their own guardians. Nowhere is the arrogance of

the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in the insistence that the problems of the country can

only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both Black and White.

"This has, by and large, come to be taken in all seriousness as the modus operandi in South Africa byall those who claim they would like a change in the status quo. Hence the multiracial political

organizations, all of which insist on integration not only as end but also as a means. The ANC has

arrogated to itself the right to be cantankerous and belligerent towards their own country-men and

flaunt their ill-begotten wealth"

Bantu continues: "The integration they talk about is first of all artificial in that it is a response to

conscious maneuver rather than to the dictates of the inner soul. In other words, the people forming

the integrated complex have been extracted from various segregated societies with their in-built

complexes of superiority and inferiority and these continue to manifest themselves even in the

"nonracial" set up of the integrated complex. As a result, the integration so achieved is a one-waycourse, with Whites doing all the talking and the Blacks the listening.

"Given the situation and the facts where a group experiences privilege at the expense of others, then


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it becomes obvious that a hastily arranged integration cannot be the solution to the problem. It is

rather like expecting the slave to work together with the slave-master's son to remove all the

conditions leading to the former's enslavement. ...Once the various groups within a given community

have asserted themselves to the point that mutual respect has to be shown then you have the

ingredient for a true and meaningful integration.

Each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by

another. Out of this mutual respect for each other and complete freedom of self-determination, there

will obviously arise a genuine fusion for the life-styles of the various groups. This is true integration."

We also learn from Bantu that: "From this it becomes clear that as long as Blacks are suffering from

inferiority complex as a result of 300+ years of deliberate oppression, denigration and derision they

will be useless as co-architects of a normal society where man is nothing else but man for his own

sake(Ubuntu-my two cents). Hence, what is necessary as a prelude to anything else that may come is

a very strong grass-roots build up of Black consciousness such that Blacks can learn to assert

themselves and stake their rightful claim."

It is important to read into Bantu and what he is saying as relevant to contemporary society. Bantuwas an astute observer of the Apartheid colonial/Imperial system and mind-set and how it

dehumanizes Africans, who in turn end up assisting in their own dehumanization. What Bantu was

talking about in the 1970s is what is actually happening today despite his warnings.

There is a permanent Gendarme cabal of semi-African vulture capitalists within the ruling

government that does not have any vested interest in the "plight" and "postulations" of Bantu despite

that being their real reality today in contemporary South Africa. Confusion begins, for African South

Africans, when they immerse themselves in the world of liberals, who Bantu understood and

explained their modus operandi as follows:

"Thus, in adopting the line of a nonracial approach, the liberals are playing their old game. They are

claiming "monopoly on intelligence and moral judgement" and setting the pattern and pace for the

realization of the Black man's aspirations. They want to remain in the good books with both the

Black and White worlds. They want to shy away from all forms of "extremisms," condemning "white

supremacy" as being just as bad as "Black Power!".

They vacillate between the two worlds, verbalizing all complaints of the Blacks beautifully while

skillfully extracting what suits them from the exclusive pool of White privileges. But ask them for a

moment to give a concrete meaningful program that they intend adopting, then you will see on

whose side they really are. Their protests are directed at and appeal to White conscience, everythingthey do is directed at finally convincing the White electorate that the Black man is also a man and

that at some future time he should be given a place at the White Man's table."

This is what has happened today. Africans have been given a place in parliament and living spaces,

jobs, albeit they be paltry in number. A lot of African leaders and activists of all stripes are tripping

over themselves, rushing pell-mell into the white world, espousing white values in expectant hopes

of being accepted into the white 'life-style'. These Africans go to the extent of discarding the

'irrelevant carcasses' of their 'outdated' and 'backwards' culture, in favor of changing their

languages, importing modes of behavior, lifestyles and modus operandi amongst and as a show-off

against their unfortunate, poor and forgotten African voting polity and brethren.

Warfare may be viewed through the prism of armies, bombs and soldiers. The war I am writing

about is severe and very deadly for the Africans of South Africa. They are still being mistreated and


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warred with by their own elected government, and this has left the voting African nation befuddled

and bamboozled. In order for us to appreciate this, we will take an article from the

Mail&Guardianonline which has this article on the comments made by the Cosatu general secretary

Zwelinzima Vavi in Johannesburg on Thursday December 2011.

Corruption As Part Of Low Intensity Warfare

Vavi says: "South Africa was 'in trouble' on many levels. There can be no denial that we are fighting

ourselves the moment...and there is an attempt by the powerful elite group to shut up everybody:

including shutting them permanently. Comrades are beefing up on private security. It's not the AWB

[Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging] and it's not all the right-wing white extremists. It's one another.

Some government officials are too preoccupied with power games to care about the poor and

unemployed.

We are in trouble politically...in 2014 we 'will not be able to offer answers when our people ask what

have we done [to eradicate unemployment and poverty]. Many people were living in fear of their

reputations being destroyed, their political standing being jeopardized, and fear for their own safety.

Corruption is the elite's way to steal from the poor. It has become a matter of life and death.Corruption is the biggest threat to the realization of our dreams and Self-enrichment will unravel the

fabric of society."

This comes on the heels of the anti-corruption summit wherein this summit was told that as many as

1273 public service officials were charged with misconduct for corrupt activities between September

2004 and June 2011. During this time, 603 officials were dismissed from public service, 226 were

suspended, 134 were fined and 16 demoted; another 330 officials were given final written warnings,

and 190 prosecuted (national Anti-Corruption Forum chair Futhi Mtoba) Vavi added that up to 20%

of government procurement was lost to corruption as officials exploited gaps in the system to

procure government tenders.

"We are facing a nightmare future in South Africa...people are systematically using their power to

secure ... parts of society. If the current economic system of capitalism continued with the "me first"

mentality, it would be difficult to root out corruption. The culture of "me first" accumulates and

accumulates that one person in this country earns R627-million per year... while workers earn less

than R1,500 per month."

The very nature of the corruption described above tells one that it is used for self gain and

enrichment, and at the same time it is a form of warfare against the poor by taking or mismanaging

their monies to deny them their humanity and human basic needs-impoverishing them and turning adeaf ear to their please and protestations..." We learn more and in-depth presentation of corruption

in South Africa today from Tolsi

Niren Tolsi wrote the following article in the Mail&Guardianonline on October 29, 2010, that:

"State Departments to respond to 90% of government corruption cases reported by the public on

hotlines during the past financial year, according to Public service Commission's [PSC] 2010 report

on the state of public services. The report, released on Thursday, also points to a twelve fold rise in

fruitless and wasteful expenditure by government in 2008/9 compared with the previous year from

R2,8-million to R35.2-million.

"Noting a "sharp decline" in the government's responsiveness to corruption cases, the commission

said that 1,430 cases were reported in 2009/10 but there was feedback on only 150, compared with


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507 responses (25%) to 1,857 cases in 2008/09. the commission evaluated the government and

public service on a range of issues, including transparency, service delivery and the creation of a

more egalitarian society, according to the implementation of policies and programs.

"The report also evaluated the average feedback from the government on reported corruption cases

from the 2005/05 financial year to 2009/10, finding that of every 100 cases reported, whistle-blowers

or the commission received no feedback to 64. Corruption is an increasingly insidious problem in

South Africa, as reflected in the latest Transparency International corruption perception index

report, also released this week. South Africa scored 4.5 out of 10 on the index and was placed 54 out

of 146 countries. In 2007 it was placed 43 out of 170 countries, with a score of 5.1. It scored 4.9 in

2008 and 4.7 in 2009. The commission's report found that "capacity to follow up on these cases and

investigate them is lacking" in departments. It painted a bleak picture of the effectiveness of

structures created to fight corruption."

Tolsi adds: "It is said the Anti-Corruption Coordinating Committee [ACCC], formed n 2002 and

convened by the public service department with representative from 18 key department and

agencies, including the National Intelligence, National Treasury and revenue service, still had to

prioritize the coordination of 'measures to build the minimum anti-corruption capacity of departments.' This is a pressing priority for the government, which will undoubtedly require

resources and close monitoring. The report found that the 'synergy' between structures such as the

ACCC and the National Anti-Corruption Forum (NACF) "needs improvement.

The NACF, established in 2001 to facilitate a national consensus on combating corruption had been

debilitated by "not always having its own budget and capacity". Low levels of attendance and

participation by government representatives and departments and poor recording of meetings. The

commission said 1,024 cases of financial misconduct were reported to in 2008/09, compared with

868 in 2007/08. A "key challenge," it said, is "Some public servants ... implicated in acts of financial

misconduct resign before disciplinary hearings can be concluded and then accept appointments inother departments".

"The report found that this was often difficult to detect because departments operated 'in silos'. It

said that of the 868 officials reported to the commission in 2007/08 (or 6%) left the public service

before disciplinary hearings can be held. In 2008/09, 17 implicated employees resigned after the

charges of misconduct were leveled against them. The report blamed "highly unsatisfactory"

evaluation of the performances of government heads of departments for the sharp rise in wasteful

and fruitless government expenditure.

"As of March this year just half [51%] of these had undergone performance evaluation, a drop from56% in the previous year. The report said that, "In financial terms this means that roughly half of the

national budget [including transfers to provinces and municipalities], which was in the order of

R500-billion - [excluding the state debt costs] in 2007/08 financial year, was controlled by

accounting officers who were not subjected to a proper evaluation."

We are further informed by Tolsi that: "The report is forthright on what the government needs to do

to improve service delivery communicate with itself. It called for greater coherence within the

government and between departments or spheres of government exacerbates the challenge even

further. The report observed that national planning at the departmental cluster level is a "collection

of special projects pursuing the joint objectives of cluster" rather than an integrated process.

Only 332% of directors general attended cluster meetings, no planning decisions were taken there

and there was no holistic planning around outcomes. At provincial level "there is very limited


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evidence of actual implementation of projects and budget items flowing out of the provincial growth

and development strategies" The report also found that integrated development plans (IDPs) in

municipalities were "drawn up for compliance reasons and municipal activities carried on in spite of,

and no on the basis of, the IDP. Forty percent of the municipal IDPs 'lacked financial strategies' and

"most lacked budgets."

The incoherent government malfunctioning structures show no discipline of ideas and action

necessarily for the outcome that moves the people's needs and agendas that so desperate;y need to

be addressed. In fact, whenever the community itself intervened within the cracks of the

malfunctioning structures, they are met with part of the corrupters on the system that protect a

vested interest they have, as already been pointed out by Vavi and Tolsi above.

Whenever the enriched and governing elite feel their livelihood threatened, images and the power

they wield over the poor being challenged and questioned, they resort to violence, death-threats and

organizing agitators to pacify the masses and root out 'thugs, criminals, and destabilizers' of the

government and the society by using and unleashing their spooks and thugs onto the poor and

resisting masses.

This constitutes what this Hub aims to demonstrate, a 'low intensity warfare' which flares up from

time to time when raw force is used by those elements in the state who are charged with protecting

the people and at the same time are the ones who facilitate the murders, tortures, detention and

intimidation of the public in order to make them conform and be loyal to the ruling regime in power

today in South Africa. This will be discussed below within the hub how this was being done and

carried out, and the actual narrating of events will be done by the oppressed and suppressed victims

themselves in their own words.

Critique and anti-Critique: From The African, By The African

It often bothers me that up to date, we still have to read and learn about ourselves from other

people, and yet that whole idea does not jive with us African people. The problem is that we are not

supposed to think or have ideas originally our own. We have to operate and exist within a prescribed

and proscribed Europeans social mosaic matrix, and anything that is outside that cave and mind-set,

one cannot and must not talk of nor is free to speak about.

If we use History as our guiding light, we will glean facts like that Africans, consistently within the

historiography of South Africa, have never been regarded as persons who can articulate their

'Ubuntu/Botho' and because it still "exist as a word, and its actual manifestation never recognized

nor known, and it still has to be foreigners who validate or reject it it. Africans have not yet beenable to elaborate and act out the concept of 'Ubuntu/Botho' within a setting determined and

controlled by them; yet, it is still present and functioning within their milieu.

Even when Biko has already given Africans their signposts on how to navigate this murky trap-

ridden and one-sidedness of the lives Africans have to live through, and there are still questions

about this being valid or not. Biko lives in the minds and lives of the Africans of South Africa-he is

their product, and is one with them; he was able to mediate an articulate this without no need for

any theorist nor philosopher lest he has to talk about him/her-wherein he rejects, critiques or

clarifies his conception of 'Black Consciousness.'

But What Bantu was trying to do here was to capture the mind of the oppressed and compel them to

express their thought and lives, whilst giving body and soul to the aspiration of the army of the

oppressed reminding them who they are and how to go about asserting and establishing their being


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humans("Ubuntu"). What I learn from Bantu is that we should come from the experiences of the

African collective masses in all the manifestations and beingness and realities.

It is not for us to provide the language which the Masses have ample to offer-we are to really be the

voice of the voiceless masses and see if whatever comes out of their minds, writing saying what the

masses are saying, so that it may be heard by the masses. If the leaders speak with one eye and half

of their minds based on what the world or the former or present-day African people are able to speak

for themselves, they have to be helped to do so-what they want to say about themselves, not what

the "others" will want to hear-as in being "Politically Correct" will be one story for the ages.

At this point, I want to point out that Africans spoken and written about in this Hub are not anybody

but South African Africans. The problem here when you look at Mandela's quote below, and the

quotes of the many "Knowing a lot about Africans," none is saying as to what Africans are saying.

The point is this, if you do not live with and among the masses, how are you going to speak for them

or about them, when they are saying something or experiencing something else; yet, these experts

who give their 'expert' analysis and opinion, have not really lived with Africans.

When African people speak for themselves, it is a lot different from what these 'so-called pros' aretrumpeting. When people talk about Biko's Black Consciousness philosophies, they are ignoring the

origins of its root and voice that he was using was not that of his own but the voice of the African

people-and he was using their voices to expound and expand the concept of Black Consciousness-

Africans Awareness of their Awareness about Awareness that it is their awareness of their self-

awareness-their knowing of the consciousness of the consciousness-as explained above If we base

our perceptions[way of life, really] with that of the South America and Latin Americans, we

conveniently forget about the origin of South African African conscious derives from the African

masses, just as the people of the continents and countries mentioned above.

I have said that Bantu speaks for himself very clearly and does not necessarily need aninterpretation by outsiders because the voice of Biko is still prevalent amongst their Africans of

South Africa today-because his ideas were culled from their collective consciousness which was their

consciousness and being consciously aware that they were conscious of their consciousness about

their consciousness and reality. Bantu simply called this 'Black Consciousness.' This will be explored

later, but emphasis is made as to the genius and originality of the Africans of South Africa in having

a consciousness that was progressive under the oppressive raw force and laws of Apartheid that

tightly controlled every aspect of the their lives.

This is why I am asking as to why should people always talk about African South Africans and on

behalf of Africans, and yet have not lived with them and do not absolutely know them. Yes, theycannot talk for themselves because from the days of Apartheid, books were censored, pages taken

out, blackened or newspapers glued on certain information(especially about Black Consciousness).

In fact, I have one such book published by the "South African Institute of Race Relations: A Survey

Of Race Relations in South Africa 1972 and it cost R3.00"*. The book has 470 pages and covers all

aspects of Race relations in South Africa, which Bantu has criticized as to their prescribing and

describing African ways of life in a patronizing and wrong way.

This leads me to one aspect of the quotations I have listed below, that, Apartheidization and

Americanization and the Europeanization of Africans has been done in many ways that have affected

African South Africans adversely,

The most ambiguous section in the Freedom Charter is its preamble, South Africa belongs to all who

live in it. This is not only ahistorical, it is illogical. The very claim that the country belongs to all


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removes all claim of the African people's struggle itself. It is illogical to wage a struggle, call it a

national liberation struggle, and yet deny or ignore the simple question about the very existence of

the conquerors and the conquered, of the victors and the vanquished.

The struggle in South Africa was not simply for equality between human beings. Nor was it simply,

as others within our ranks want to argue, only about class. Failure on the side of certain sections of

the liberation movement, especially the left, has led to a false analysis of the South African question

where class has been privileged over race. It must be stated that this is an inverse of the same

mistake committed by nationalists, who deny the existence of class. In the South African situation,

then and now, race and class became intertwined as capitalistic development took a racial form and

combined, wherein class became mediated through race. (Console Tleane.)

This will be made much more clearer when we write about the stories that are told by the Africans of

South Africa in their struggles, today, against the ANC government. We learn from Mandela below,

how, they having been incarcerated in Robben Island, came to know about Black Consciousness,

wherein he writes that:

The Changing of the Second Guard: Black/African Consciousness

Some Notes On Black Consciousness

"These fellows refused to conform to even basic prison regulations. One day I was at head office

conferring with the commanding officer. As I was walking out with the major, we came upon a young

prisoner being interviewed by a prison official. The young man, who was no more than eighteen, was

wearing his prison cap in the presence of senior officers, a violation of regulations. Nor did he stand

up when the major entered the room, another violation. The major looked at him and said, Please

take off your cap. The prisoner ignored him.

Then in an irritated tone, the major said, Take off your cap. The prisoner turned and looked at the

major and said, What for? I could hardly believe what I had just heard. It was a revolutionary

question: What for? The major also seemed taken aback, but managed a reply. It is against

regulations, he said. The young prisoner responded, Why do you have this regulation? What is the

purpose of it?

This questioning on the part of the prisoner was too much for the major, and he stomped out of the

room, saying, Mandela, you talk to him. But I would not intervene on his behalf, and simply bowed in

the direction of the prisoner to let him know that I was on his side. This was our first exposure to the

Black Consciousness Movement. (Nelson Mandela)

What youll find about Biko is that he was a thinker who was very much alive. His method with its

heterogeneous rhythms makes him very much open to the here and now (see Naidoo and Veriava).

As a work that seeks to critically reclaim Biko as a living thinker there are three areas of

contestation that are central to this Hub. Firstly, it shows and talks about a challenge to the

increasingly standardized and orthodox history of the apartheid struggle, which includes

contestations over historical memory and the activity of critical remembrance.

Secondly, it has cited discussion of the largely ignored consideration of Biko as a philosopher, as an

original thinker. Third, there is Biko as cultural theorist and the importance of Black Consciousnessto artistic productions- and also, that Black Consciousness is a product of the collective experiences

of Africans of South Africa. All these have been somewhat discussed above in relation to Biko, who

was enabling and exhorting Africans to stand up and fight for themselves, no matter what the


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conditions they face hurl at them.

So that, Black Consciousness is thus an anathema to the BEE approach. Gordon writes, Black

liberation, the project that emerges as a consequence of Black Consciousness, calls for changing

both the material conditions of poverty and the concepts by which such poverty is structured. ... To

this, the ANC has replied with vicious violence and arrest of those it deemed to threaten their status

quo, as will be clearly talked about below. Moodley offered a surprising rebuttal to those who lament

BCs disappearance from the historical record: "From my point of view its good BC has been written

out of the struggle.

"Because if it was written in then were part of the problem. Now were still part of the solution. The

thesis is in fact a strong white racism and therefore, the antithesis to this must, ipso facto, be a

strong solidarity amongst the blacks on whom this white racism seeks to prey. Yet he also rejects

Sartres idea that that black solidarity is a priori insufficient by itself. Indeed, rather than class as an

external unifier, it is already embedded in the dialectic of negativity: They tell us that the situation is

a class struggle, rather than a racial one. Let them go to van Tonder in the Free State and tell him

this.

Black Consciousness set in motion a new dialectic, argues Lou Turner, based on the truth that the

only vehicles for change are those people who have lost their humanity. To speak of a new humanism

is radical and Black Consciousness transcends the former (analytical moment) in order to achieve a

new form of self-consciousness or new humanity. And yet, Frank B. Wilderson III argues, this

presencebased on absenceputs into question the very idea of liberal humanism.

In a racist society human relations are unethical because the Black is positioned below humanity. To

speak of a Black Human, Wilderson argues, is an oxymoron. Wilderson locates the source of this

absence in an inability to recognize that the register of black suffering goes beyond the the political

subject [as] imagined to be dispossessed of citizenship and access to civil society. It also goesbeyond the SACPs formulation, which imagines the political subject as being dispossessed of labor

power. Wilderson argues that, [N]either formulation rises to the temperature of the Blacks grammar

of suffering.

BC on the other hand, he argues, accessed and articulated the possibility of speaking such a

grammar. Different understandings and viewpoints of Fanons critique of Sartre and Hegel and

dialectical thought directly affect approaches to Biko. Turner notes a shortcoming in his own work,

Frantz Fanon, Soweto and American Black Thought, written with John Alan in 1978. In it he argues

that he emphasized Fanons deepening of the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness but did not fully

see the duality that Fanon posits in the dialectic of Black Consciousness, namely that alongside a willto freedom is a will to power that ends up emulating the white master.

Gordon, at another register, argues that because anti-black racism structures blacks outside of the

dialectics of recognition, contradictions are not only of the dialectical kind. I contest that they are

embedded and within what I will call 'Apartheid's dialect.

Does Bikos writings on Negritude, culture, and black communalism contain tensions and insights

that have often been overlooked and might be of value to the present generation? Biko is critical of

Blacks(Africans) who, mimicking white liberals, take an elitist attitude toward African cultures and

thus fail to understand that the criticism of apartheid education coming out of rural areas is basedon a fundamental truth: an elemental resistance to the destruction of African ways of life.

In rejecting the tribal" cocoons...called homelands [which] are nothing else but sophisticated


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concentration camps where black people are allowed to suffer peacefully, Biko was considering the

experiences of people impoverished by apartheid as the ground of Black Consciousness philosophy.

He articulated this in a grammar that was understood by all the poor and suffering into a coherent

argument that Black Consciousness, if was mutually respected by other ethnic groups and given

space to function would lead to proper integration, as he punctuated this point cited above.

For Biko, the liberation of the poor in South Africa was grounded in African cultural concepts of

collectivity and sharing that resituates the human being at the center. Andries Oliphant relates Bikos

idea of culture to Fanon and to Cabrals notion that anti colonial struggles are acts of culture. Based

on a number of fundamental aspectshuman centeredness, intimacy, trust, cooperativeness, and

sharing.

Bikos conception of African culture is essentially anti colonialist and anticapitalist. In contrast to the

possessive individualism of liberal humanism, the stress of Bikos humanism is not anti-individual but

egalitarian. Like South American liberation theologians, Biko rejected the Christian homily that the

poor are always among us.

Because of its gendered language, Bikos thought has been considered oblivious to gender politics, if not outright sexist. Barney Pityanas statement Black man you are on your own is offered as proof

that women were not included in the BC conception of liberation. Desiree Lewis has argued that the

language of emasculation used to describe black mens condition under apartheid meant the

marginalizing of women. Because of its gendered language, Bikos thought has been considered

oblivious to gender politics, if not outright sexist.

Pumla Dineo Gqola has argued that BC discourse failed to recognize points of variation among

blacks. She writes, Due to its emphasis on racial solidarity as the only means towards the liberation

of Black people, it promised complete freedom at the end from all oppressive forces despite its

reluctance to acknowledge their existence. The experiences of gender, class, age, geographicallocation, and sexual orientation were not perceived as consequential enough to warrant inclusion

into the discourse of the doctrine.

In addition to discursive problems, the experiences of women in BC organizations have been

characterized by sexism. Akin to womens involvement in other nationalist movements in Africa (and

in South Africa), it is argued that women in the movement were regarded mainly as supporters of

the struggle with more assertive women becoming honorary men. Perhaps the most famous woman

in BC, Mamphela Ramphele, maintains that during the 1970s, the specificity of experience of sexism

was utterly absent from the movement: Women were important as wives, mothers, girlfriends and

sisters, in fighting a common struggle against a common enemy.

Scant regard was given to their position as individuals in their own right. As leaders in BC, women

had to face the apartheid regime and the sexism of their comrades. As Ramphele states, I soon

learnt to be aggressive toward men who undermined women, both at social and political levels . . . A

major part of the process of being socialized into activist ranks was becoming one of the boys.

Into this dialogue, Oshadi Mangena and Deborah Matshoba offer a complicated and contradictory

picture of gender politics in the Black Consciousness movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Their

accounts and analyses add to a small but significant body of scholarship in this area, but much work

certainly remains to be done. Mangena highlights the fact that Winnie Kgware was elected the firstpresident of the Black Peoples Convention when it was formed in 1972, making her the first black

woman to lead a national political organization.


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But as we know, the presence of one person in a position of power hardly indicates the experience of

a group within an organization as a whole. Matshoba also describes the objections to a proposal for

a womens organization within SASO, on the argument that the contributions of women were

essential to the main body, which would suffer if drained of their inputs.

Matshoba recalls, I remember we came with a name, made a proposal. We called it WSOWomens

Students Organization. They said down with WSO, they voted us down. And Steve blamed me and

said Debs, youre coming with your YWCA mentality.

"I worked at the YWCA office which was downstairs and the SASO office was upstairs . . . You guys

have to admit you are very powerful, thats how Steve would put it. You are very powerful. And we

asserted ourselves in the organization. As Matshoba explains, women asserted themselves by

smoking, wearing hot pants and heels, speaking loudly, and adopting a tough walk.

Becoming 'one of the boysasserting oneself on a patriarchal pattern and through a male gazewas

undoubtedly both liberating in some ways and profoundly restricting in others. Matshoba describes

how they began to take pride in themselves as black women, but simultaneously started to look

down upon other women who chose not to adopt their dress, appearance, and attitudes.

Mangena argues, however, that far from recognizing women as honorary men, the Black

Consciousness movement leadership acknowledged that, a greater effort needed to be made to

mobilize womens active participation. This led to the launching of the Black Womens Federation

[BWF] in Durban in December 1975...A total of 210 women attended the launching conference.

People such as Fatima Meer, Winnie Mandela, Deborah Matshoba, Nomsisi Kraai, Oshadi Phakathi,

Jeanne Noel and other prominent mature women from established groups such as YWCA, Zanele and

church bodies were key participants in this conference. Mangena thus argues that Black

Consciousness philosophy recognized women as equal participants and 'colleagues' but not on thebasis of gender considerations. There was a tacit recognition and acceptance of the idea, she argues,

that women could be leaders in their own right.

The question of the link between womens emancipation and human liberation was being framed and

debated in anti colonial struggles and post-colonial societies the world over and the Black

Consciousness movement of the 1970s and 1980s did not articulate many answers in this regard. As

Mangena writes, the question continued to haunt all factions of the anti-apartheid struggle: Does the

transition to the new South Africa warrant gender acquiescence to patriarchal capitalism?

Bikos philosophy would reject such an acquiescence, but in engaging with Bikos thought in thepresent, it is vital to determine how it might help us understand the contours of patriarchal

capitalism and sexism, and where and how it falls short. Africans should also examine the status of

women in contemporary South Africa to see if whether the absence of Black Consciousness has in

any way advanced the women's cause- I doubt it and have many reasons for my statement.

The changing of the guard in the body politick and real politick and national conversation and

perceptions were evolving from those of the days of Mandela, and what we are seeing today are the

manifestation of this reality of the evolution of Black women's status in the absence of Black

Consciousness movement, but in thede times it is sparse and wherever t exists, is on steroids.

FAILURE TO DEVELOP AN AFROCENTRIC IDEOLOGY:The Diaspora

Lessons to Be Learned: Looking At the Mirror and What's Looking back


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Permanent War In the Diaspora Against Africans-Same Old, Same Old

In America, pro-White socialization is primarily anti-Black.Ideas of White superiority are embedded

in every aspect of American society. For example, educational, religious, and mass media institutions

all play a major role in the projection and dissemination of ideas and images that convey the innate

superiority of Whites and the innate inferiority of Blacks (Boggle, 1974; Cogdell and Wilson, 1980;

Staples and Jones, 1985).

Throughout the world, all societies have established sets of ideas by which life is made

understandable by their members (Vander Zanden,1986: 136). Ideas such as these are generally

referred to as an ideology. A societys ideology tells people about the nature of their society and

about its place in the world (Vander Zanden, 1966:136). In this sense, a societys ideology gives

structure to how group members define themselves and their experiences and also provides impetus

for group action.

Thus the most important function of a societys ideology is that it forms the spiritual and intellectual

foundation of group solidarity (Vander Zanden, 1966: 136). A major aspect of the EuroAmerican

cultural ideology is that people of European descent are inherently more intelligent, beautiful,industrious, and just than are non-White people(Jordan, 1969; Froman, 1972). All Americans (Black,

White, Hispanic, Asian, and others) are exposed to pro-White socialization messages disseminated by

the school system, mass media, and religious institutions.

American media perpetuating negative images of Blacks by portraying them as descendants of

savages and people who have failed to make a significant contribution to America or world

civilization (Woodson, 1933; Baldwin, 1979; Perkins, 1986). The superiority of Whites over Blacks

has also been perpetuated by American religious philosophy and symbolism through the projection

of White images of Christ and God (Welsing, 1980; Cogdell and Wilson, 1980; Akbar, 1983).

This has had a devastating impact on the psychological development of Blacks. For example, to

embrace a White God is to reject the Black self (Cogdell and Wilson, 1980: 115). Moreover, being

socialized to perceive God as White creates the idea in the Black mind that people who look like

them White image of God are superior and people who are non-White. The most significant problem

emerging from the projection of God as White is summarized best in the comments of

Welsing(1980:28); Therefore it can be said that all Blacks and other non-White Christians worship

the White man as God-not as God but as 'the God'. So the White man is perfect, good, supreme, and

the only source of blessing.

Hence, as a result of their religious socialization in America, in the Black religious mind, a Whiteman is their creator, protector, and salvation (Cogdell and Wilson, 1980: 117). For example,

American cultural ideology promotes a specific set of values and images that define what is and what

is not beautiful. Constant exposure to beauty standards that are antithetical to their racial

characteristics causes generation after generation of Blacks to experience low self-esteem and self-

hatred (Clark and Clark, 1947, 1980; Cogdell and Wilson, 1980: 1-16).

Consequently, Black self-hatred has been a major factor that has historically contributed to the lack

of unity among Blacks as well as a pervasive low evaluation of Blacks by Blacks. Hence, the failure of

Blacks to develop an Afrocentric cultural ideology has prevented Blacks from developing the sort of

collective philosophy, definitions, cultural traditions, and institutions that ot

Economical Oppression-Dehumanization in the Neo-Post Apartheid Rule

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