The Communists and I – Volume 2
Towards A Socialist Azania And /Or A Democratic South Afrika
Part Two
of the Refutation of the ultimate revolutionary ideal essay
Date:
04/07/2012
“You cannot make a perfect law but you can
make a perfectible law which can then be improved.” – (Swiss Prime Minister
as heard on CNN’s Global Lessons: The GPS Road To Saving Health Care.)
“So he declared to you His covenant which He
commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on
two tablets of stone. The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes
and judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you are going over
to possess it.” – (Deuteronomy 4:13 -14, Torah)
“Talking of health, in socialist
countries medical services are free of charge. When necessary, doctors make
house-calls. In hospital patients receive free treatment and food until they
are completely recovered. While on sick leave people receive up to 100% of
their average monthly pay. In a society dominated b propertied classes the
working man cannot receive such treatment.” – (page 33, The Economic System of Socialism, from
Political Economy of Socialism by Nikolai Kolesov)
“We are by no means communist. Neither do I
believe for a moment that the unrest is due to communist agitation. --- but the
primary reason behind the unrest is simple lack of patience by the young folk
with a government which refuses to change, refusing the change in the
educational sphere, which is where they the [the students] are directing
themselves, and also refusing to change the in a broader political situation.
--- I personally would like to see fewer groups. I would like to see groups like
ANC, PAC and the Black Consciousness movement deciding to form one liberation
group. It is only, I think, when black people are so dedicated and so united in
their cause that we can affect the greatest results.” – (Steve Biko –
answering questions on Black Consciousness stance in Chapter 18 of I Write What
I Like: Our Strategy for Liberation)
“Consider that the socialist, the Communist
and the Trade Unionist of the white race are all agitating for higher wages and
better living conditions. It is evident that these economic improvements must
only come at the expense of greater exploitation of the weaker peoples. The
weaker peoples before were the Chinese, the east Indians and the Negroes. The
Chinese have organized national resistance, the Indians have also organized
national resistance, it is only the Negro, therefore who is exposed to the most
ruthless exploitation in the future and surely the low class working white man
will stop at nothing to raise his status even as controller of government
through Communism, even though it crushes the Negro.” – (page 298, Marcus
Garvey Life and Lessons, ed. Robert A. Hill, Barbara Bair, A Centennial
Companion to The Marcus Garvey And UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
PAPERS)
“Above all, to thine own self be true.” –
Chapter 1:
God and the Devil are in the details
I decided
to begin this chapter with a whole page of quotations, partly because I am
aware that I may not be the most academically qualified person to write an
exhaustive analysis of socialism and communism, but it is a task that I am
daring to apply myself to doing. Secondly, there have been many leaders from
many Black liberation movements who have been confronted with the question of
where they stand regarding communism and its ubiquitous companion, socialism.
Some of these leaders have been quoted here and I will strive to explain the
full meaning of their statements, according to the context, their time and also
try to see what they believed and whether these doctrines are any good for the
total liberation of our beloved Land.
I have
mentioned elsewhere that one of the reasons that I have resisted becoming a
member of any political party or institution is because I dislike creeds and
oaths that have their roots in Europe, Greece or Rome. While this may sound
naïve, juvenile or even racist, I feel justified and that it has been the
primary weakness of many of the great leaders of Afrika, together with their
belief in the God of the aggressors.
While it
is clear to any student of history that the faith and political education of
the liberators of Afrika (even though the project is still far from complete)
has buoyed them and helped them to navigate through the most difficult times,
yet again it can be demonstrated that it is this very grasping after western
norms and weapons that has ensured that we win the battles and still lose the
main war, the fight for our souls, our land and our dignity.
Allow me
to afro-romanticize a bit; before colonization, slavery and apartheid, it is
generally accepted that Afrikan people were typically dignified, humane and
also practiced something called Ubuntu, akin to what ancient Kemetens called
Ma’at (Justice, Righteousness and Order). Our ancestors had their own
cosmology, faith, trading or economic system and familial values, some even
posit that we even traded with visitors from the Far East and also from as far
north as Kemet/Egypt, Yemen, Aksum, and even with ancient Yehuda/Judaea.
Surely
then some of these relationships involved some form of diplomacy and even some
formal codes of conduct, and intelligence no matter how infrequent the
instances were.
Clearly it
is known that none of these relations ever left us out of pocket or worse
still, out of land - which are ultimately connected.
Perhaps we
must have been morally, ideologically and spiritually bankrupt when we found it
convenient to convert to the fundamentalisms of the very people who saw and
treated us as sub-human. Or were we mostly forced and subdued into following
suit?
Either
way, to believe what they believe must be an indication that we agreed with
what they thought of us and thus we began to perceive the universe as they did;
but not all of us.
The reason
I bring this up is in order to show that Afrikan people did not only learn
about civilization from any revelatory books or by means of the indoctrinations
that accompanied colonialism, and the greed and self righteousness of
missionaries, whether spiritual or political. We did not need anybody or any
systems to save us from ourselves. After speaking about the virtues of Ubuntu
and the revitalizing effects of Black Consciousness on live radio a couple of
times, it came as a shock to me to discover that there are still so many Black
people who vocalize their gratitude for colonization, the arrival of Europeans
and the mental slavery that followed. I heard well travelled people,
theologians, doctors and their Mama’s calling in to tell me that Black people
would have slaughtered each other to extinction if it wasn’t for Gods wisdom in
bringing the ‘white man’ to save us from our devilish or heathen ancestral
ways.
This did
not only shock me, but it also emboldened my resolve to preach Black
Consciousness and what Marcus Garvey and the UNIA called African
Fundamentalism. As a young man who was raised on the meek and mild principles
of the Holy Bible, I had always treaded very carefully on religious territory,
choosing to respect people for their choices, doing to others as I would have
them do unto me. But experiences of late have caused me to decisively take a
more radical approach, to reclaim my Blackness even if it means tossing aside
all ideas of heaven, hell or family bonds, for what is a family if it is based
on convenient Lies and the sheepish following of foreign doctrines?
Ironically,
the evangelical Christian churches, especially the so called Charismatic and
Pentecostal ones, of which I am a ‘product’, have a song that goes: “I will serve no foreign gods, nor angels
before him…”; A rousing and spirited affirmation about serving only the God
of Israel. I fortunately have already
forgotten some of the lyrics, but this chorus serves the purposes of this essay
as it leads us to the primary question: Who or what is a foreign god/God and
how does one serve It or him?
In order
to sufficiently answer this let us hear what old Marcus Garvey has said,
bearing in mind that this is one of the great emancipators of the ‘Negro race’:
“The doctrine of God carries with it the
belief of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Christ is supposed to be the
begotten Son of God. He had a special mission and that was to take on the form
of man, to teach man how to lift himself back to God. -- It is evident that
Christ had in his veins the blood of all mankind and belonged to no particular
race. Christ was God in the perfect sense of his mind and soul. His spirit was
God’s spirit; his soul which acted on the advice of God’s spirit was never
corrupt.” – (page 226, The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers, Lesson 6, Christ)
This work
is by no means meant to be a theological analysis or a philosophical study of
religion, but what I aim to highlight is that even some of the Blackest leaders
in our liberation history were firm believers in the doctrines we were fed by
the missionaries, not only that, through what came to be called Black Theology,
our master teachers also derived much of their inspiration from the Word of
‘God’ as found in the Holy Bible.
They are
they are too many to mention here, but we can count among the most prominent
among them, the likes of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Dr Martin Luther King, Arch
Bishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Dr Cornell West. (Kindly forgive me for not
naming any women, but best believe there are plenty).
Perhaps
this is a sign that one has to use the best of both worlds, to not reinvent the
wheel as some often say, so that we may even draw strength even from that which
oppresses us in order to liberate ourselves. Garvey’s statement that ‘- Christ had in his veins the blood of all
mankind and belonged to no particular race.’ Although this sounds like a
direct contradiction o what is stated in the Good book itself, where Jesus’s
genealogy is carefully given from Adam all the way through Israelite kings
until it culminates with him being called the Second Adam, Garvey finds no
problem in selling his people this idea of a non-racial savior. It was also
Jesus himself who it is written to have said: ‘I have come for no one else but for the lost tribes of Israel…’
Surely
there is something wrong with this picture, our great leaders have greatly
erred in their judgment, but perhaps this was just to save us from the total
wrath of supreme white power.
We may
never get to find out, but in my view, the doctrine of Communism has had a
similar effect on the thousands if not millions of non-European citizens of the
world, those who have dreamt or striven for a better world, something other
than the consumerist, capitalist society that pits humanity against the environment
and even against ethical judgment.
The
question I ask here is, to use Garvey’s terms, do we need to look at the world
and ‘God through European spectacles?’ If
the answer is yes, then when will we realize our own fullest potential as a
people, a people with a history and ultimately a future of our own?
It is
possible that the matters of oral and written history have a lot to do with how
people believe. All book based religions tend to hold up their languages and
text-books as sacred and sometimes even to the point of violent imposition.
Typically
one would not blame the book to justify acts of aggression against nature and
fellow human beings.
We as
humanity are the ones who have put together these books for or own use in
religious practice and the stories we have built around them have transformed
through time from being allegories, to myths until certain ‘believers’ deem
them true-accounts.
Here is
when many of the violations of human rights begin, when people start to take
myths and stories so personally that they are willing to die or kill for the
preservation of the sanctity of their ideas. It would require many volumes to
give some examples of this, but suffice to say that many nations are founded on
principles that have a direct connection to sacred texts and we all know how
many people have died for the defense of their God, their flag/banner and even
their all too human prophets.
Last night
I had a brief conversation with my mother; it was about the racial identity of
her beloved ‘God’ Jesus the Christ. It seemed to pain her to admit that Jesus
must have been a ‘sort’ of Black man. When I mentioned that there is Biblical
evidence that Jerusalem and most of the Middle East was populated by people of
African origin, it was not easy for her to stomach. We finally agreed that
Jesus and his family or nation were of some kind of Afro-Asiatic race who
looked somewhat like modern day Ethiopians.
Our
conversation was untypically free of arguments since it is ‘written’ in the
Holy Bible that Jesus and his family were forced to live for a long time in
Egypt and that they had walked or ridden donkeys there and back. But is this
the same as admitting that Israel/Palestine should be considered as part of
Afrika?
If
Madagascar and some other Islands along the Eastern coast are considered
Afrikan without a doubt, what makes it so difficult for believers to say that
the so called Middle East is Afrikan, a part of this great continent?
Perhaps
this will equate to admitting that God - Jehovah, Allah and Jesus - are
intrinsically Afrikan too. But this would cause trouble in global understanding
of the whole Abrahamic religious fraternity and consequently also have a ripple
effect on the international strangle hold of white supremacy, which persists
arrogantly besides the spread of secularism, democracy and even Islam.
But then
again, these are all subjects that deserve their own time and serious
scholarship, of which some academics and anthropologists have devoted their
lives. One of those anthropologists is a lady by the name of Alice C. Linsley
who has devoted much of her time and scholarship to her blog called Just
Genesis - http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com where she publishes her Christian
based research on the African roots of all things Biblical.
There’s
even a chapter titled Just genesis: God’s African Ancestors where she posits:
“It is fitting that attention should
be paid to Christ’s ancestors and to the evidence that His ancestors included
Africans. It is interesting how consistently Africa is ignored when
investigating the etiology of biblical practices such as circumcision and the
linguistic connections between biblical words and the African languages. –
Jesus Christ’s ancestors were Afro-Asiatics. They spoke Afro-Asiatic languages
which include Akkadian, Babylonian,Berber, Chadic, Omotic, Phoenician,
Ugaritic, Hausa, Hebrew, Kushitic, Meroitic …twelve of these language groups
are spoken by populations in Africa. Christ our God spoke Aramaic, a language
that shares many roots with the African languages Tigrinya, Tigre, Amharic and
the older Ge’ez. Places associated with
clans and rulers in Genesis are found only in Africa – Nok (Enoch), Kano
(Cain), Ham, Bor’nu (Land of Noah), Terah, and the Jebu tribe (biblical
Jebusites). Elephantine, at the border between Egypt and Sudan, was known to
the ancient Egyptians as Yebu, the linguistic equivalent of Jebu.”
And this
is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg that is Just Genesis, where there is
so much overwhelming evidence of African origins of the bible that I had to
write to the author of this blog, questioning her how then does it make sense
to disregard the original traditional faiths of Africans in order to build up
such elaborate stories around the one personality cult of Jesus the Christ?
I must
have written twice or thrice, but I have yet to receive an answer, perhaps the
professor is overwhelmed with such questions and there are just too many people
to answer, or maybe there is no answer and this whole blog is just a happy
hobby that does not need such enquiries from Black Conscious fellows like
myself.
Yet I see
that she has found ample time to answer a lot of the questions and approving
voices who appear to share her Christian zeal.
There is
always a tendency to paint the world through in the canvas of the acceptable
Eurocentric perception of divinity, and just like the Linsley, some will go
through great lengths I order to universalize their propaganda, thus assuring
us that theirs is the foundational faith that should be accepted by all
mankind. But the world is not so simple and as Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it
in the title of his latest book; God is
not a Christian.
Afrikan
people once converted to Christianity typically disassociate themselves from
all forms of traditional practices, especially those that involve any
relationship with their dead, who we call our
ancestors/Amathongo/Abaphansi/Izinyanya.
Eurocentric
and typically evangelical Christians are quick to assert that because of the
saving and power-filled blood of Jesus on the cross, all rituals connecting us
with our ancestors are tantamount to worshipping of evil spirits; they are
basically the work of the devil.
This is
really strange indeed, given the amount of work that went into specifically
naming the Jesus’s ancestors in the New Testament and how many times the words,
God of our forefathers (fathers, not mothers) appears in theses scriptures. But
again, let us not digress too much from the main idea of our story.
Besides
the fact that we know that our illustrious leaders were born and raised in
Christian seminaries, we are aiming to find out what makes Middle-Eastern,
North Afrikan and Eurocentric religious concepts so popular with Afrikans,
especially those Blacks who rose to become our leaders in the liberation
struggle.
We
also are striving to connect this faithfulness to the typically anti-faith
principles of the communist and socialist movement. The final aim is to arrive at a
point where Black Afrikans do not require any of these doctrines to free
ourselves from white supremacy and the tyranny that comes with it. Bearing in
mind that some of the most vicious dictators and autocrats in the Afrikan
continent have been men of faith, either Muslims or Christians, although some
have concealed their beliefs under nationalist and African fundamentalist
rhetoric.
This is a
complex issue and goes deep beneath and beyond the racial line as there have
been many honorable people of European ancestry who have dedicated their lives
to the liberation of humanity from the plagues of Nazism, apartheid and modern
day slavery, some of whom have been men of the cloth.
The
question is have they brought us the kind of freedom that guarantees our
dignity, identity and preservation as Black Afrikans, or have they acted as
martyrs to the ultimate glory of Christ
the Lord?
A passage
from Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like illustrates my point exactly; let the
reader note that what we are reading is a quotation from the notes/journal of
Aelred Stubbs C.R, which rightly forms the last chapter of this famous book and
is titled Martyr of Hope: A Personal
Memoir:
“Steve
died to give an unbreakable substance to the hope he had already implanted in
our breasts, the hope of freedom in South Africa. That is what he lived for; in
fact one can truly say that is what he lived. He was himself a living
embodiment of the hope he proclaimed by word and deed. That is why I call this
little personal memoir ‘Martyr of Hope’.
Martyr means witness. He was in person
a witness to the hope that all men, women and children South African, the
oppressed and oppressor alike, could be free. His writings attest it; the works
of BCP and Zimele and above all the community at King proclaim it; his passion
and death seal it. The Church of the province of South Africa, in which he was
baptized and which (largely because of respect for his mother’s faith) he never
repudiated, this Anglican church does not have the right at present to claim
him as its martyr. ‘He was too big for the Church’, Lawrence Zulu Bishop of
Zululand, remarked to me after Steve’s death. And that about sums it up!” (page 243, I Write What I like )
This
really does sum up this part of our story about what seemingly is our ‘mothers’
faith; this church which tends to engulf our whole life experience, even to put
words into our own mouths. Within a Christian home, it is virtually impossible
to speak of God without being misunderstood as meaning Jesus Christ or his
father Jehovah.
Yet this
absurdity is something we have learned to live with, albeit uncomfortably, it
is what our honorable mothers have to contend with since our collective
conscience and the realities of our Black lives just will not allow us to
simply label ourselves Christian’s.
The priest
quoted above, who was a close friend of the Biko family, is typically at pains
to point out that Biko did not renounce the Anglican Church. Indeed Biko owes a lot to certain dedicated men
of the cloth for even this publication of his work, yet the real Bantu Biko
made sure that we all know where he stands with regard to his faith or
religious sentiment as his letter to the priest in the closing chapter attests:
“If Christ had not died, there would
be no question of him being ‘born anew’ (as you put it) in anybody’s heart; and
therefore because the son of man is no more, we talk of him being born anew.”
But it is
these words found in the chapter titled The
Church as seen by a young Layman which are more revealing about his
position and indeed my own position on the issue of Black spiritual
indoctrination and subjugation:
“The
time has come for our own theologians to take up the cudgels of the fight by
restoring a meaning and direction in the black man’s understanding of God. No
nation can win a battle without faith, and if our faith in our God is spoilt by
having to see Him through the eyes of the same people we are fighting against
then there obviously begins to be something wrong in that relationship.
Finally, I would like to remind the black ministry, and indeed all black people
that God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people’s problems
on earth.” – (page 65, I Write What I Like)
This is
clear enough and Biko is who he is because he was able to sum up his peoples
experience in just a few words, this is why he was such a danger to the wicked
establishment of the republic of South Africa. There is nothing that tells us
that he exuded so much love and hope because he dwelled on the teachings of the
biblical prophets or that he was inspired fundamentally by the New Testament.
Like many
of us he was raised by a caring Black and Christian mother whose religion he
respected but did not personally recommend.
His love
for his people and his zeal for the transformation of the personality of the
Black person is beyond doubt.
There is
also nothing to indicate that it was his reading or fraternizing with
Communists that caused him to rebel against the racist system of white
supremacy and warn us against liberal tendencies.
This shows
that a truly human and liberated Black person does not require the edification
and approval of the Abrahamic faiths in order to be acceptable in the sight of
his community and his God, that is if he chooses to even believe in the
existence of any such God.
It is
clear also that Biko as in the case of many other Afrikan leaders was inspired
to a degree by the works and words of Marcus Garvey, but then again Garvey was
a rather difficult act to follow since he has also become a Post-Modern
mythological figure himself, as attested by his statements quoted above, which
depict him as a committed and capitalizing Negro Christian figure.
The
historical complexities abound when one considers the fact that the
Rastafarians depict Marcus Garvey as a prophet akin to John the Baptist,
claiming he foretold the crowning of the ‘Black king’ Emperor Haile Selassie I
of Ethiopia, who is also a self confessed Orthodox Christian who recommended a
nationalistic reading of the Bible.
Note the
following factual depictions of Marcus Garvey according to the same book quoted
above:
1935
– Garvey relocates to London; publishes new edition of The Tragedy of White
Injustice; denounces Italian invasion of Ethiopia; opposes involvement of UNIA
members in New York – based Provisional Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia
because of coalition’s ties with members of Communist party.
1936
- Begins publication of series of negative editorials of Haile Selassie and his
policies; presides over UNIA regional conference held in Toronto; criticizes
depiction of blacks in films.
1937
- Amy Jacques Garvey joins Garvey in London with sons; Garvey accuses Haile
Selassie of lack of identification with fellow blacks and of being “visionless
and disloyal to his country”; organizes School of African Philosophy with
eleven students; travels to eastern Caribbean; returns to England; heckled at
Speakers Corner in Hyde Park for his views on Italo-Ethiopian war.
1940
– After suffering cerebral hemorrhage in January, suffers second cerebral
hemorrhage and/or cardiac arrest; Garvey dies in London, 10 June; buried in St.
Mary’s Roman Catholic cemetery, Bethnal Green, London.
1964
– Garvey declared Jamaica’s first national hero; his remains reinterred at
Marcus Garvey Memorial, Kingston.
Reader,
please note that these are factual pieces from the Chronology of the Life of
Marcus Garvey, who was born in 1887 – Malcus Mosiah (“Marcus”) Garvey, Jr., at
St Ann’s Bay, parish of St Ann, Jamaica, son of Malcus Mosiah Garvey, Sr., and
Sarah Jane Richards.
His first
published pamphlet was in 1910 was called The Struggling Mass, published in
Jamaica before he travelled to Central America.
After
leaving Jamaica for England, he published “The British West Indies in The
Mirror of Civilization: History Making by Colonial Negroes” in Duse Mohamed
Ali’s African Times and Orient Review.
I have
deliberately added these details in order to show that although the Black
liberators have tirelessly worked for the improvement of Afrikan lives, as
indicated by Marcus Garvey’s organization – the Universal Negro Improvement
Association, their lives were inextricably tied to the church, even from the
cradle to the grave and even beyond.
I have already
mentioned that the despite knowledge of Garvey’s view of the Rastafarian
supreme God-head Haile Selassie the First, adherents of this semi-Christian way
of life continue to venerate him as the prophet par excellence. Is it perhaps
due to lack of similar powerful social figures within our immediate
surroundings that we tend to create gods in our own image or make them to fit
our preferred world view?
The
answers for most of these questions are often within our reach, but we are
sometimes too uncomfortable to confront them.
I have
decided to do this self enquiry regarding everything from the Christian faith,
the Rastafarian lifestyle and even the acceptable communist/socialist
questions.
I am very much aware of the merits and the
demerits of each of these schools of thought, I also appreciate their
contribution to the advancement of the causes of human development, but what
has been the cost of their contributing counter-productivity?
This is a
time for radical revolutions, creatively, artistically, scientifically and even
spiritually, people have got to stop being spoon-fed and or as the Ethiopian
film maker Haile Gerima put it – we have to stop allowing someone else to chew
our own food and forcing us to swallow. He was referring to the role of the media
and elitist opinion makers in shaping the behavior of people. He also
explicitly urged young people to rebel against commodification, to dare to be
free even from counter-progressive notions of education.
The
ultimate end is to be free from lies and useless myths in order to begin our
Black life on a clean slate, to rewrite ones own life and liberate the
suffering Black masses without the weight of all the unnecessary religious and
tricky political propaganda.
This way
then do we end this chapter and literally return from heaven, refraining from
unreasonable stargazing to an exploration of a better politics of Humane
Liberation, to use Biko’s words, the aim is to pump new life into the empty
shell that is the Black persons existence on earth. But others may say that
this is ridiculous, since there are plenty examples of Black excellence,
exemplary and even opulent note; undeniably so, but we aim to liberate a more
significant number of Black souls from the ravages of inferiority, constant
warfare and perpetual fear. Billions of Black souls universally have lived
through many generations in fear of white power, the White God who subjects you
to fiery hell unless your sins have been washed ‘whiter than snow’, this fear
has to end.
The
Biko’s, Lembede’s, W.E.B. Du Bois, the Poor Righteous Teachers, the Black
theologians, Imams and the superstars of the past, present and future, all have
their parts to play in the puzzle.
Chapter 2: Between A Democracy and a
Hard Place
As
excellent disciples of Black Consciousness and its righteous strength, it is
apt that we begin this chapter with a little bit more of what Bantu Steve Biko
once so eloquently sayeth, as an answer to a racist White Judge Boshoff in the
….:
“I think My Lord, in a government where
democracy is allowed to work, one of the principles that are normally
entrenched is a feedback system, a discussion in other words between those who
formulate policy and those who must perceive, accept or reject policy. In other
words there must be a system of education, political education, and this does
not necessary go with literacy. I mean Africa has always governed its peoples
in the form of the various chiefs, Chaka/Shaka and so on, who couldn’t write.
To which
Judge Boschoff retorted:
“Yes, but the government is much more
sophisticated and specialized now than in those days?”
Biko: And there are ways of explaining it to the
people. People can hear, they may not be able to read and write, but they can
hear and they can understand, the issues when they are put to them.” **
Here I aim
to show that even though Biko was a well read and intelligent person, he still
respected the placed trust in the ordinary citizens ability to perceive what’s
right and wrong for him/herself leadership wise. He uses the simple example of
a famous King Shaka Zulu who has only recently been hailed as one of the most
brilliant strategists both in peace and war-times; there are even books on
Business models, strategy and personnel management based on the wisdom of
Emperor Shaka. These texts are similar to those designed like the Art of War by
Sun Tsu and they are adaptable to various organizational scenarios.
It is
great that certain liberal minded White people [academics, theologians and
business leaders] have recognized the mental capabilities of the race that has
historically been deemed inferior and thus incapable of governing itself.
Biko was
brilliant at cutting through that kind of nonsense without resorting to
sophisticated political speak. He debunked the many racial myths that the
average Afrikaner held about Black people and since such myths still persist,
even within the minds of the oppressed classes, it is a work that we must
endeavor to carry on.
In the
liberating work of Black Consciousness there is no room for tolerating
neo-liberal and elitist tendencies, and one strives to educate oneself
thoroughly not only through books, but also through the age old value laden art
of Listening. We must listen to each other in order to realize true freedom,
there is no liberation when there is an unchecked perpetuation of Black upper
middle class elitism, this is a recipe for disaster and a clear indication that
apartheid’s slow drugs are still in the freed society’s central nervous system.
The ghosts of tribalism, factionalism and even the insipid disease of
multi-racialism must be exorcised aggressively if we aim to create a humane and
equal society of ourselves. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, the gist of
this chapter is democracy, its pro’s and cons in Southern Afrika and whether
there is really such a reality as a Socialist-democracy.
With that
we should recall the very first quotation on the first page of our story, the
one made by the Prime Minister of Switzerland: “You cannot make a perfect law but you can
make a perfectible law which can then be improved.”
Even
though she was referring to laws pertaining to the best possible way of
distributing health care within a socio-capitalist democracy such as hers, this
statement might as well be about democracy.
In issue
No 5 October 2008, of the South African
Policy Paper published by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and edited by Hennie Kotze
and Cindy Lee Steenekamp and titled Democratic
Consolidation in South Africa: Comparing Elite and Public Values; I
recently read this, under the title; 3. General Values of the Elite And Public
In South Africa:
“Understanding
the value patterns of opinion leaders may provide an indication of their policy
preferences and performance judgments on issues such as legalizing prostitution
and euthanasia, which are (were) being debated in South Africa. Understanding
the value patterns of the mass public, on the other hand reiterate the belief
that government policy on ‘moral’ issues is more ‘progressive’ than the
attitudes of the electorate.”
If I am
reading this correctly, what this research shows is that South Afrikans tend to
leave most important policy decisions to the opinion makers, the elites and the
government to make. In other words, we are not exercising our democratic rights
and that we tend to think that what our government thinks is more ‘progressive’
or more conducive to our well being than our own thoughts.
This shows
that the general population of South Afrika, the mainly voiceless Black masses do
not value their very own opinion on important policy matters, we simply give back
our rights to the State and to elites or any loud mouth that appears to be
speaking on our behalf. We cannot afford to be a nation of sheep in a world
that is not becoming more complex, globalized and networked. We have got to
find ways to effect these networks organically and creatively rather than allow
them to influence us, the influence must be cyclic and most of all, beneficial
to our own civilization and immediate environment.
The
research continues, and please note the numbers here:
“In order
to gauge the importance of various life domains, respondents from both the
elite and public surveys were asked to indicate how important family, friends,
leisure time, politics, work and religion are in their lives.
Figure 1- measured on a five-point scale
(“very important”, “rather important”, “not very important”, “not at all
important” and “don’t know”) – illustrates the differences in the
prioritization of values between elites and the South African population based
on the scores of those who answered “very important”.
The categories are ranked in
descending order based on opinion leader output.
Family is overwhelmingly important for
both opinion leaders (96.7%) and the South African public (95.6%).
The second most important facet of
life for both samples is work, with 82.8% of elites and 77.4% of the public
respondents expressing that it is ‘very important”.
Although religion ranked the third
most important life domain for both samples, the gap between the public (96.9%)
and the elite (55.4%) starts to become evident.
The attitudinal divide between the
South African elite and the general public is best illustrated in terms of the
importance that each set of respondent’s places on politics, friends and
leisure time.
While the public measure leisure time
(37.1%), friends (33.9%) and politics (21.7%) with gradually less importance,
the inverse is true from an elite perspective.
After family, work and religion, the
elite rank politics (54.8%) as being more important to them than friends
(53.8%) and leisure time (42.4%).
“– (page 8, KAS Johannesburg Policy Paper No 5 October 2008)
It is
clear according to this relatively recent research that, South Afrikans from
different spectrums do not only think differently and act differently; they
also spend the time pursuing vastly differing lifestyles. But this may be true
of any country with the expected inequality of various classes, yet in in a
place with such a history as Southern Afrika has, it is reveling to see that
the general public spends less time on politics and more of their headspace on
religion and this clearly says a lot about our priorities and it also shows
that democracy is being stewarded or attended to and ultimately shaped by the
elite. But does this mean that the public is really not playing its role in
shaping the destiny of the country?
Perhaps in
the micro economic sphere, but in the overall mass economic arena, it seems
that politics is still a game that the powerful play upon the weak. But then
again, this sense or appearance of weakness might just be a choice or a sign of
apathy and frustration with the system and this can have various types of
results.
What then
do South Afrikans think of democracy and do we feel that it is all that we
hoped it would be post 1994?
Let us
hear what the research from this Policy Paper says:
“The levels of support for democracy in South
Africa are extremely high among the elite and this is seen not only in their
support for democratic principles but also in their strong refutation of any
other type of political system. An overwhelming 98.4% think it is god to have a
democratic political system, while fractionally more (98.7%) feel having strong
opposition parties – a critical component of a democratic system – is a good
way of governing the country.” (p.12)
It is
interesting to note that a far smaller
percentage of -“ parliamentarians (26.0%), the media (21.6%) and civil servants
(17.0%) feel it is either very or fairly good for experts to make the country’s
decisions, as opposed to the government. (Who are these supposed experts?)
The levels of support for democracy
among the ANC and DA supporters within the elite are interesting (the ‘very
good’ and ‘fairly good’ categories were combined to create a ‘good’ category.”):
Of those
elite who indicated that it was good to have a leader who does not bother with
parliament or elections, 13.9% support the ANC and 17.9% support the DA.
More DA
supporters among the elite (46.3%) believe that experts and not government should make the country’s important decisions.
compared to 18.6% of ANC supporters who agree.
Half the
elite who thought it would be good to have the army rule (1%) are ANC
supporters.
All (100%)
DA supporters and 98% of ANC supporters among the elite agree that democracy is
a good form of government.
Although
support for democracy among the general South African population is also high,
there is a considerable difference between the attitudes of the public and
elite in this regard. However, public opinion regarding having a democratic
political system has increased slightly since 2001, when 83.8% of respondents
indicated it was very (44.5%) or fairly (39.3%) good.
Respondents
from both surveys were also asked to indicate to what extent they agree or
disagree with the statement that although democracy has many shortcomings, it
is still better than any other political system. Here again, the elites tended
to agree overwhelmingly much more than the general public.
So what
does this tell us about South Afrikans knowledge and or acceptance of the
democratic system and its accompanying institutions?
Even with
the above percentage indications, it is not easy to answer these questions,
since South Afrikans have not experience theocracy, socialism or communism as a
political system; all we have to compare democracy to is the morally bankrupt
apartheid system.
Thus I
equate democracy to the subtle hegemony of Christian dogma or even the
overwhelming power of the Abrahamic religions.
The
institutionalization of divine fear, divine love and divine retribution has
been instilled in us to a point where it is difficult to use our free-will. We
exist in a world of spiritual shock and awe and true knowledge is avoided or
distorted by the powerful.
We were
born into this and thus we now have not experienced what it would be like to
practice anything different. A case in point is that during this research, the
respondents were provided with a list of characteristics of democracy and asked
how essential each is as a characteristic of democracy.
Why were
they not also questioned on the distinguishing traits of say, socialism or
theocracy or even anarchy? It seems that we are being spoon-fed this democracy,
a system that comes from above and is beyond reasonable questioning.The fact
that it – democracy - is admittedly not perfect only compounds the problem and
just like Christianity, allows the perpetrators to make costly blunders and
deliberate crimes and still be forgiven. But what about the damage caused to
millions of lives?
There is
no indication of who the so called experts who would influence or make policies
are, for all I care it could be the World Trade Organization, the International
Monetary Fund, the United Nations or various business conglomerates that
already run the global South at the expense of black, poor and landless people.
Could this
be the same kind of democracy that Biko meant when he was answering Judge
Boshoff’s questions? I doubt it very much, and I propose that in our next
essay, we deal with the various types of political systems so that we may
freely choose one that befits the majority of people and not just the elite. It
may be a Socialist-Democracy, Communalism, a Resource Based Economy or a
Meritocracy, but if we are to trust our elders, let it be anything but
communism, or an elitist democracy. After the revolution, time will tell!!!
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