Africans should work for the desired African continent

That politics is a vocation of fears and also some desires is a durable truism that can be confirmed by history right from antiquity to modernity. From the deep past through the shaky present right to the far future political thinking and activity will always be guided by what is feared as well as what is desired. Fear and desire, I observe, are the very oxygen of the political in its light and its dark realities.

Today I seek to ponder the fears and some desires that punctuate South African history and political reality in the context of Africa’s oldest, biggest and sometimes exemplary liberation movement, the African National Congress that is the governing party in the Republic.

The apartheid nightmare occupied the entire world with fear that white racists were going, one day, to commit genocide of black people and finish the entire population of Africans in the Republic. This fear was accompanied by another real fear that the many black people would turn around and commit a real holocaust by erasing the few white people from the South African landscape.

Apartheid and the inevitable end of it made both white and black people afraid. It is for that reason that the rather peaceable end of apartheid became considerable as a kind of historical and political miracle that enchanted the whole world and Nelson Mandela, the famous prisoner turned to be a famous statesman that was hailed for his conciliatory political philosophy and practice. The man who went to jail as a radical political hot-head that spoke of guns and fire came out as “cool-headed prophet” of peace and reconciliation. Apartheid as we all probably understand did not end in earnest but only changed its systems and structures.

What ended was the deep fear that genocide, black or white, was going to befall the land one day. As economic and political inequalities continue in the land fears that black versus white violence might one day erupt continue to endure though in a very minimal scale. These inequalities and the scramble for scarce life opportunities and resources expose unfortunate black foreign nationals from other African countries to xenophobia and the attacks that accompany it. Fears of genocide of foreign nationals, black African ones, are a South African reality as now and again deep anger is vented upon the so called aliens and foreigners. Hatred of the foreigner is a true nightmare that haunts the history of the Republic.

John Pilger, that legendary journalist of the world put it starkly and clearly that “apartheid did not die.” Black people exist as a cultural majority while white people circulate as an economic majority even as they are a political minority. A menacing fear that has arisen from the reality of white economic privilege and power in South Africa is that one day soon white political rule will return to the Republic, this time backed by a black vote.

Some white supremacists have been gaining confidence in the Republic, taking advantage of the liberal constitution to flaunt their extremist political stuff in the open. Openly white supremacist political parties such as the Freedom Front Plus and the Democratic alliance, an outfit that is shy by sure about its white supremacy, have been gaining votes and amassing black supporters. This raises a real political fear that one day soon white rule might return to South Africa on the back of black voters.

Sometime in 2017 Prince Mashele and Mzukisi Qobo published an alarming book titled: The Fall of the ANC; what Next? Besides the authors of that book there are many concerned South Africans that believe that the ANC has been suffering a fall from its former glory and power. Yet the days of the power and the glory of the ANC are themselves an item and a subject of question and debate. The power and the glory of every political organisation are in reality always a thing of the past or the future. All political organisations of the world are always imperfect and perpetually unfinished business that is permanently work in progress.

The fragile but durable tripartite alliance of the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions itself spells permanently negotiable unity that threatens disunity and division any moment.

The split from the ANC of Cope and the EFF are all troublesome reminders of the ever present possibility of a split of the titanic liberation movement. However, tensions and divisions almost always seem to strengthen than weaken the ANC, that has proven to be that troubled but dynamic organisation capable of using problems and troubles to renew and recharge itself. Like a snake the organisation now and again sheds its old skin and emerges as still the same old but much vitalised movement. It has existed for a long time as a big and undrying river that drinks from many tributaries and keeps itself flowing through storms and draughts alike.

I often irritate and sometimes excite some of my friends in the ANC and in the EFF by making the observation that in the very near future the two political parties will join hands and become one. More irritating to EFF cadres has been my argument that the EFF has always been an ANC faction that operates from outside the party but is actually politically and existentially located right in the belly of the movement. Enchanting to the ANC lot has been my stubborn insistence that in opposing the ANC the EFF is actually working its way back to the movement outside of which its chances of ruling the country and its president becoming the president of the Republic do not exist.

The EFF’s agenda of economic freedom is itself a quotation from the ANC’s old book of agendas and ideologies, making the party not only a faction of the ANC but a pressure group and a protest movement that cannot permanently severe itself from the governing party. For their existence the two separate but one organisation need each other as enemies that gain from the enmity and derive relevance from it. I can say it here that the vigorous friction between the ANC and the EFF is political competition that is still not opposition as the two organisations are in their souls one movement.

All the spectacles in parliament that keep the ANC on its toes might after all be performances of sibling rivalry of offspring that deep down themselves know it that they belong together.

What haunts South African history and is a true political nightmare is the reality of white economic power and growing political menace that threatens to take the country back to the bloody and dark days. The ANC and the EFF know it that they need each other to tackle growing white supremacy and right-wing insurgence in the Republic. Far from dwelling on the fear of the nightmare; all Africans should work for the desired African continent that is vigilant against the return of colonialism by any other means in Africa.

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].