Revolution Anxiety?

Southern Afrika Pre and Post Revolution

24 June 2012

Scenarios: No Country is an island

As the Republic of South Africa heads towards the leading party’s policy framing conference, the people of the Republic and surrounding countries are undergoing what could be termed a silent revolution, marked by sporadic yet recurring ‘service delivery’ and labour strikes, civil society constantly battling against the States abuse of power and infringements upon the constitution and the list goes on. The elites declare that these are merely an indication of a robust and healthy democracy.

But could these surging and seemingly separate social uprisings be the catalyst, a seed for a mass popular revolution? The question could be phrased in much the same way as South Afrika’s president Jacob G. Zuma put it in his statements during the recent NUMSA national rally held in Durban. The president said that a revolution in this country is unavoidable but it is up to ‘us’ to shape the direction of the masses, to make it a creative rather than a destructive revolution. He said that it would be unfortunate to undo the progress made since 1994. Yet the majority of South Afrikans would say that they have benefited very little from whatever progress there may be.

In the meanwhile we are all witnessing the gradual and often bloody unfolding of massive popular uprisingsin the North Afrikan, Middle Eastern regions, these upheavals have even been termed the Arab Spring. A curious and connotative name if there ever was one, a spring is something – usually water - that bubbles out as if out of nowhere and is able to engulf a wide region and in its wake  influences either growth or destruction. In the case of the Arab Spring, it refers to the fact that the revolutionary sentiment has been mostly sparked by youth, before it engulfed entire countries as in a domino effect.Since most of the conflicts in world earthly affairs are based on competition over access and or delivery of resources, then it is clear that everything we do is tied to the use or misuse of such resources.

Some have said that South Afrika missed a great opportunity in 1994 to turn the transition from apartheid to democracy into a fully fledged revolution, a cataclysmic popular transformation of not just political power but also economic wealth. But the sunset clauses and compromises that the leading political party entered into with their former enemies – the apartheid government - ensured that a large share of resource wealth remained in the hands of white people and their foreign partners who continue to exploit workers and enrich themselves while whole communities languish in poverty.

Our once faithful political leaders assured us that a peaceful, read un-revolutionary transition was necessary to avoid general blood-shed, we had to endure the precarious terrain of ill begotten policies forced upon us by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, globalization and become a submissive rainbow people of God.

It is no surprise then that only a handful of Black people have been able to reap the gains from such legislations as affirmative action, Black Economic Empowerment and purported economic stability. Thus after 18 years of majority rule, the gap between the rich and poor in this country has drastically widened, contrary to the promises and boasts of the leading party.

But if we are to really bring about a revolutionary or radical change in the Black condition in Southern Afrika, we will have to review some of the more nuanced causes for the slow pace of transformation.

In light of what is happening all over the world regarding the failure of free market capitalism, the financial crisis in Europe, the ongoing conflicts in Mali, Sudan and human rights abuses in some of our neighboring countries, we also have to begin envisioning some scenarios in South Afrika whereby the country will be rendered ungovernable and the masses of unemployed people begin to forcefully assert their rights. Is South Afrika ready for revolution?

Scenario 2: No longer at ease

Perhaps South Afrika’s liberation movements, especially the popular ruling party, the African National Congress was naïve and gullible when it received political power, perhaps it should have formed a better alliance with the more Pan Afrikanist movements such as the PAC, SOPA, AZAPO and a serious social contract with certain civil society institutions beyond the dubiously accepted tripartite alliance with the SACP and COSATU.

This is just a retrospective musing, and it is possible that after the CODESA meetings, the ANC was in such a position as to render it incapable of negotiating efficiently with parties with which it had fundamentally divergent policies, especially regarding land, the rendering of services and most crucially regarding economics.

Yet it did not seem so hard to form a pro-capitalist alliance with a dubiously Communist party, a New National Party made up of the old apartheid heads, we were told that this was all necessary in order to ensure a smooth and bloodless democratic process. We have thus inherited many of the oppressive attributes of a colonial government, including untransformed and a deformable social structure. In other words, no matter how excellent our new constitution, it is impossible to liberate the masses while we are still operating within a system co-designed with our enemies.

So let us take a brief look at the challenges that were and are still faced by South Afrika’s present developmental state. We have to look at what kind of government we do have before we even begin to challenge it and strive to replace by all means necessary.

“Following on from South Africa’s constitutional development process which took place in the early 1990’s, the country’s constitution established a three-sphere system of government comprising local, provincial and national levels of government. This system was viewed by experts and politicians at the time as the most appropriate for South Africa, which is a large, multi-ethnic country featuring important regional differences.

The local level of government is correctly understood as the pillar of democracy where poltics meets people. Political plans and decisions should be the result of a participative process that includes the cultural context and specificities of the locality. However, municipalities and districts are heavily reliant on subsidies and capacity support from higher spheres.

From the perspective of the local level, the national administration is far removed from their specific problems and finds it difficult to support the communities adequately.

There are many examples throughout the world where governments have adopted centralized systems because decentralization was not able to deliver properly. A problematic consequence of centralization however is a lack of ownership of and responsibility for decisions especially at the lower levels, or the advent of separation movements.

In South Africa, the Department of Provincial and Local Government has introduced a provincial review process. This coincides with the ongoing political debate on poor service delivery and the alleged mismanagement that is affecting the relationship between the three spheres and government.” – (Dr Werner Bohler, KAS resident representative in Johannesburg, in the Review of Provinces and Local Governments in South Africa: Constitutional Foundations and Practice.)

I decided to quote this foreword at length because it is instructive if one is to understand the challenges of South Afrika’s government, regarding both services delivery and how the State apparatus is shaped. It is clear from the above that RSA appears to have a very participative democratic system and that both a centralized and decentralized method is employed to ensure the most efficient fulfillment of the governments duties. Yet despite all the legislation, the celebrated constitution, matters of maladministration, graft and general inadequacy persist in the RSA, of course one is not asking for a utopian State, but there appears to be a system failure in our country. Even the claim that we are a popular democracy is beginning to sound more dubious. What seems to have gone wrong from such well laid plans?

Let us look at a few reasons.

Due to many reasons, perhaps because of the pressures of an impoverished majority, it is possible that the ANC government adopted a disastrous social welfare model. While the government had to use all the political weapons at its disposal, it had to also claim that the methods and policies it was developing were in harmony with popular notions of Ubuntu, namely, the values and principles of humaneness, a spirit of giving and industriousness, while balancing that with strong anti-entitlement messages. Essentially we the people had to see to it that we strive to be creative and self sufficient entrepreneurs and that the government would offer all the support it possibly can muster.

Developmental social welfare became therefore the reclamation of an authentically African, non-Eurocentric way of caring, based on reciprocity and community development. This is how the ANC continues to triumph over opposition, whatever failures it has are either attributed to inherited apartheid era backlogs or they are portrayed as the results of counter-revolutionary elements especially from civil society or other popular opposition parties.

Through carefully chosen and words and emotive statements, the rising anger and disillusionment of the masses is thus quelled. All anti ANC voices are labeled counter-revolutionary, unpatriotic and even racist. Whistle blowers are increasingly under attack and there is an arsenal of elitist intellectuals whose business it is to be apologists for the ruling party, crushing all popular insurgence by claiming that all the policies and constitutional rights of the public are in place, therefore the country is in good hands. No need to panic. Problems! what problems?

“Armed with developmental social welfare, the ANC could now discredit the very idea that political liberation entailed a structural change in the distribution of resources:

 The idea that ‘the world now owes me a favor because I was a victim of apartheid oppression may well be understandable, but it is simply confirms and continues a cycle of dependency.’” –

( African National Congress, 1997 )

Ironically, this statement is dubious since then ANC government has continued to depend on IMF policies, World Bank handouts and even the willing seller willing buyer land policy that is unpopular even within its own ranks. There is very little to show that this is a self reliant government, yet it continues to tell its citizens that they must become more economically self reliant. How can we be truly self reliant when competing with  cheap Chinese manufactured productions that litter local stores and when our government is run like a corporation or a get rich quick scheme? Note these blatantly self-aggrandizing statements from one of the running party’s former chiefs:

‘Leila Patel – a social work professor and from 1995 to 1999, the Welfare Departments director general, argued for a “family-centred and community-based social policy to propagate “entrepreneurial values” with which “disadvantaged groups” could overcome their ‘passivity’ (Patel 2001). She actively promoted the sub-contracting of welfare services to companies, NGO’s and community associations ( DOW 1999) With the help of non-state actors, she wrote, the poor would become “empowerment partners in the privatization of state assets” and “potential shareholders … without making capital contributions.”’ – (Patel 2001: 39)

Furthermore, Patel found ammunition for welfare cutbacks in the idea that “in pre-colonial times, the welfare needs of individuals were met through the wider society, and communalism, cooperation and mutual support by individuals and the social groups were highly developed.”

 (Patel 1992: 34)

In the same paternalistic and preposterous spirit that I have already mentioned, the political elites are always eager to blame someone else for their own failures, Patel continues:

‘Colonialism disrupted African “self –reliance, dignity and respect of tradition” not through capitalist market – relations and wage labor but by imposing “curative”, institutional and “bureaucratic” European welfare models.’

By mentioning this I aim to illustrate that although the ANC government aims to be inclusive and representative, by making sure that it has in place ‘Commissions of inquiry, public hearings and consultative processes provide platforms for stakeholders to enact competing visions of society, legitimation strategies, citizenship claims, and expectations on the roles and status of productive and unproductive members of the nation.’

This is how the State charts its progress against constitutional promises of rights and grand programs of delivery. Business tries to ennoble corporate profits with social responsibility, labour demands its policy payoffs for past and present struggles, and marginalized communities seek recognition and relief for their plight, phrased in the language of common humanity.

All these forces conspire to make one assume that the Southern Afrikan political terrain is a complex one and this is also how the ruling elites manage to win the hearts and minds of the majority. We are enticed to believe that despite the many challenges, the government ministers and all public servants are doing their best and that there is no need for a regime change.

After analyzing the precarious nature of wage work, labour unionism and South Afrika’s democratic transition, here is what one researcher had to say:

“By the first half of the 2000’s, the decline of decent jobs, despite robust economic growth, and widespread protests at the governments lack of delivery dramatically placed the idea of work based social inclusion at the center of contestation in the policy process.

As under the apartheid government, in democratic RSA the employment status determines citizen’s access to social provisions. The social security system is still characterized by the drastic separation of its two main components, social insurance and relies on occupational schemes, like retirement pensions, medical aid, ad unemployment benefits.” – (Franco Barchiesi, p.98)

He continues to state:

“The second class citizenship of precarious workers mirrored indeed the ‘second economy’ official metaphor of their productive functions. Belying the constitutional universalism of rights are representations of the non-working poor as an alien threat to the body politic, for which self-help is a psychological as well as social treatment. E.g. A disability grant claimant once told a researcher: “Yes, I like this HIV/AIDS because we have grants to support us. (Cited in Nattrass 2006: 13)” – (Barchiesi, page 107)

In other words, the victims of apartheid and ultimately the democratic welfare state are not only portrayed as part of the problem, they are also reduced to neurotic and pathological social outcasts, eager to endure debilitating illness trusting that their government will deliver the proverbial fish  and bread without the providing the means to produce it.

Whatever positive values that ever existed in the concept of Ubuntu have been rendered nonsensical by the governments watered down and anti-black version of it, once again, Barchiesi is very instructive when he states that:

“A social policy discourse infused with anti dependency morals and images of individual initiative tried to bring to life a virtuous individual citizen – at once a worker, consumer, and owner – as the imaginary partner of the state.” (Barchiesi, page 107)

So we must ask ourselves then, if wage work cannot does not generally guarantee decent income, social security, retirement provisions, decent healthcare, utilities, decent housing for the large majority of wage earners, and then what is required to transform our unequal society?

Perhaps it is not possible to come up with one or even a series of simple answers, but if we are to become a prosperous and successful nation, we all have our work cut out for us, and to fulfill this mission will require proper analytical tools and leadership that is willing to shed old notions of statehood.

While we all have a role to play in the Afrikan economic renaissance, it is clear that we are not operating in a vacuum, besides the surging social and labour dissatisfaction, there are international forces that clearly show that capitalism as we know it is a failure, yet despite the contending ideas urging RSA government towards more socialist policies, our leaders continue to fight silly political wars and to any serious person, it is clear that there is no real difference in this regard, between the socio-economic policies of the ANC or the DA, the two main ‘opposing’ forces.

Currently, the economic conversation in high and low places circles around entrepreneurship, moral leadership and job creation. Very few if any of these voices are concerned with what kind of citizen is required to ensure that the economic and ethical success of this country is sustainable. We are faced with problems which go far beyond the matter of employment, we are currently mostly paying lip-service to our ecology, environmental degradation and the Green Economy issues that could really enable millions of citizens to become meaningfully employed.

Employment as we know it will not solve the socio-economic and identity problems that plague our people daily.

Note the following study:

“A vast research project outlining employment scenarios up to 2024 concluded that even if the unemployment rate fell by half, to 13%, the share of South Africans living in poverty would decline by only 15%, to 35% of the population. The director of the project, economist Miriam Altman, commented: “I was shocked because I thought if you halved unemployment, you would halve poverty.” Past the initial shock, Altman (2007a: 18) concluded that “the link between work and well being in South Africa seems tenuous.” As Baudrillard (1983: 65) wrote, work as an institution that heralds the rise of the social is producing and destroying the social in the same movement.” –

‘The question which stirs us…is not the well-being human beings will enjoy in the future but rather what kind of people they will be.” – Max Weber, ‘The Nation State and Economic Policy.

This all sounds a bit confusing perhaps to a person who is not yet convinced that a revolution should take place in whatever form, beyond a general uprising and masshysteria.  It should be a change of attitude, a gradual yet radical transformation of the society’s manners that can really improve our lives, especially those of Black folks who have endured many years of indignity. But are we ready, are we even sufficiently mentally prepared to be stewards of such a change?

Scenario 3: Visionary Leadership

If Southern Afrika does undergo a radical and massive revolution do we have among us any visionary and dedicated leaders, can we honestly say that Azania can produce an Upright Man in the fashion of a Thomas Sankara, an Amilcar Cabral, Solomon Plaatjie and Marcus Garvey, Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko,  to name but a few? Is it possible that among the Born Frees there is a young woman or young man in whose veins surges the revolutionary and Pan Afrikanist zeal of all these figures?

For all our sake, let us hope so, and indeed, if such people do exist in the real New Southern Afrika, they will have to be trained in a radically new and progressive political science, endowed with the necessary skills to carry out the affairs of a resource rich region without succumbing to current trends of corruption. We are not talking about a superhuman being, but if we should believe in the future of a sustainable and acceptable New SA, we must be allowed to dream big.

It is a well known fact that in our turmoil ridden past many young visionaries were tortured, murdered and forced to escape to other countries, some of them even died in exile, while some returned to become embittered citizens as they watch their colleagues plunder the freedoms they all collectively toiled for.Be that as it may, Southern Afrika’s young democracy is still much at risk of being curtailed by many forces. It would serve us well, to look into the past in order to learn from mistakes, victories and trace the steps of greatness. As Bob Marley put it, so poetically, “In this great future, you can’t forget your past…”

To begin our quest towards the ancient future, let us learn from the words of another great son of Afrika that was stolen away yet whose lion like roar still continues to ring clearly through the centuries, none other than Marcus Garvey. Here’s a shortened version of his vision of a sound an ideal Government:

“If we must correct the maladministration of the State and apply the corporate majesty of the people to their own good, then we must reach the source and there reorganize or reform. Under the pressure of our civilization, with its manifold demands, the individual is tempted, beyond measure, to do evil or harm to others; and if responsible, to the entire state and people, and if by thus acting he himself profits and those around him, there arises corruption in Government, as well as in other branches of the secular and civil life.

All other methods of government having been tried and failed, I suggest a reformation that would place a greater responsibility upon the shoulders of the elect and force them either to be criminals, that some of us believe they are, or the good and true representatives we desire them to be. His or Her administrators and judges should be held to strict accountability, and on committing of any act of injustice, unfairness favoritism or malfeasance, should be taken before the public, disgraced and then stoned to death.

This system would tend to attract to the sacred function of Government and judicial administration, only men and women of the highest and best characters, whom the public would learn to honor and respect with such satisfaction as to obliterate and prevent the factional party fights of Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, etc., for the control of Government, because of the belief that Government is controlled in the interest of classes, and no for the good of all the people. It would also discourage the self-seekers, grafters, demagogues and charlatans from seeking public offices, as the penalty of discovery of crime would be public disgrace and death for them and their families.” – (The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, p.31)

Menzi Maseko (c)