The End of
Mandela Magic Is the Beginning of Reality
“But again the magicians of Egypt used their magic, and they too, turned
water into blood. So Pharaoh’s heart remained hard. He refused to listen to
Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had predicted. Pharaoh returned to his palace
and put the whole thing out of his mind. Then all the Egyptians dug along the
riverbanks to find drinking water, for they couldn’t drink the water from the
Nile. Seven days passed from the time the Lord struck the Nile.” – Exodus 7 verse 22 -25 (A Plague
of Blood)
Lately we
have been inundated with stories of apocalyptic endings. Whether it is the end
of the world as falsely prophesied by the doomsday mongers who misinterpreted
and thus misrepresented the Mayans and their ancient calendar or it’s the fervour
with which western psychologists, sociologists and other scholarly types have
been propagating the myth called ‘the
end of men’, by which they mean that as we become more modernist and
cosmopolitan, the world is generally shifting from its traditional patriarchal
tendencies into more balanced lifestyles which cater more for the rights and
needs of women. Of course the gullible types and the rumour mill have gobbled
all this up for better or for worse and while some have profited from the scare
tactics, others have been left high and dry. Some are still wondering WTF?
The end of
the world has not come on 21 December 2012; unless of course we are all now
existing as ghosts or the living-dead. The ‘End of an Epoch’ New Age teachers
have already spent their earnings pilfered from those who were given to panic
by all the media master-minded hysteria. Even the anxiety has been spirited
away as harsh reality of January’s bills, school – fees and well, life insists
– Samsokolo!!!
Nothing
indicates that 2013 promises to be significantly different from 2012 or 1999
for that matter. South Africa is still reeling under the pressure of so called
service delivery protests, more mass action or strikes are planned and more
political intrigue is still guaranteed to keep the fingers pointing in all kinds
of predictable directions. The Democratic Left movement puts the blame squarely
on the ANC government’s macro-economic strategies, which is nothing more than a
remix of documents copied from the International Monetary Fund’s 11
Commandments. The so called Gowth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy is
now team South Africa’s New Growth Path – talk about ‘brand new second hand’.
In Northern
Ireland, Germany, Norway and other parts of the western world, the rise of the
far right - racist movements is gradually gaining momentum, religious,
ideological and tribal war-fare is still a fact in the Middle East, and far
East – from Palestine, Syria, Jordan to Afghanistan and Pakistan to Myanmar.
African countries cannot be left out of the ‘troubles’ melting pot and foreign
meddling is a guaranteed feature as we can see in Mali, Libya and Algeria. All
this is happening while celebrations such as AFCON/CAF are also taking place,
since death, mayhem and disorder cannot deter people from enjoying their lives.
Life in other words, must go on as usual. After all we only live once, right?
In the meanwhile,
Barak Obama has been re-elected for a second term as the President of the rogue
nation called the United States of America and Africans still display the
naiveté to ask what he has done and indeed what the ‘black president’ can do
for Africa; his father-land?
Cynics do
not mince their words when they shout out - ‘Absolutely Nothing!!!’ Indeed nothing much more than imposition of American
values, nothing more than fiery and patronising speeches and American swagger
has been our reward for pouring all our hopes and energy behind a black
president who is clearly a pawn in the global game of chess called White
Supremacy.
The fact is
no matter how willing and able Obama is to change the world, his hands are as
tied as those of any black person in the world. As tied up as Lumumba when he
was arrested and tormented to death by the people he thought were his allies
and countrymen ( of course with the ever present assistance of Big Brother –
the indefatigable Central Intelligent Agency of the USA). And so it is clear
that the envisioned end of the
cruel-crazy- beautiful world as we know it is far from imminent.
So now the
question is, what do we do with all this
indefinite Time, how do we bring about the ends we seek and how do we
ensure that our means justify our ends? As the legendary jazz giant Louis
‘Pops’ Armstrong once crooned: “We have
All the Time in the World…”, indeed we have all the time available, we can
either spend it pointing out what is so terrible, detestable in the world or we
could spend it creating little instances of Wonderfulness.
That is the
choice really. As the Hip Hop golden agers would say “we have to show and
prove” that a better world is possible and it does not require martyrs,
messiahs or elitist governments and global capital. It will depend on neither
free markets nor farcical developmental strategies.
But I can
hear my Black radical comrades protesting and saying: ‘But this world is cruel
and dehumanising to the black personality, in fact the black does not even have
a personality or even humanity under the burden of whiteness – let’s just end
this world, because as it stands we are no more than slaves…’ Indeed that may
hold some truth and I will even add that many of the black heroes and heroines
have sold us down the drain. For their place in the pages of immortality – for
Nobel prizes and for freedom without justice, for peace without equal rights,
they have traded their blackness for whiteness.
The
Mandela’s, the Mbeki’s, the Obama’s, the Tiger Woods, the Patrice Motshepe’s,
the Cyril Ramaphosa’s and the Oprah Winfrey’s and the rest have made it cute
and alright to forgive without proper reparation. They have motivated the world
to embrace the surface of compassion without rooting out the cause of our
suffering; which is racism, white domination and persistent dependence on the
capitalist consumerist culture of pro-American globalisation. They have given
us plenty of fish while confiscating our fishing rods and selling our acres of
land and poisoning our rivers.
This we are
told, we must learn to forgive and see things from a global perspective. We
must become self-made millionaires, entrepreneurs; rising from the quicksand of
Alexander and South Western Township unto
the leafy suburbs of Rosebank, Sandton and from ticklish Khayelitsha to windswept
Muizenberg and paradisiacal Clifton beach. We must do this because we are
capable, individually of achieving everything we can dream of. If we dream and
earnestly hope to marry the grand daughters of P.W. Botha or Adrian Vlok, or
better yet, the sons of European liberals such as Helen Suzman and Andre Brink,
then by all means we must. We are born free and freedom means, yes you can,
since South Africa belongs to all who live in it, we are all human after all
and this whole race thing has been biologically proven to be a fallacy, nothing
more than a crudely constructed delusion.
Anyone who
does not share this sweet and milk and honey dream is a bitter fool. He or she
must let go of the anger that has congealed in their heart, they must become
emancipated from the unfortunate ‘mistakes’ of pre-1994. They must begin to
realise that apartheid is dead and with it, inequality, group areas act,
landlessness and wretchedness of the Black Condition. But I digress, we were
talking about Time and a way forward after Mandela finally dies. After all the
global lamentations and the out-pouring’s of truly well-meant sadness, the
spell might subside.
Many will
say that a Lighthouse has crashed, pulled down by the inevitable winds of Time.
Many will recite poems, finally learn all the words of the RSA national anthem
and be united in our diversity. Many will renew their vows, attempt to learn
IsiXhosa, embark on pilgrimages to Robben Island and Eastern Cape - reminiscing
about the miracle of 1994, the story of the one man who spent 27 years in
chains for crying freedom, he will be re-sainted, re-coined and eventually the
doors of all the heavens of all religions will be opened just for him, since
his political party has claimed more than once that they alone in Southern
Africa possess the keys to freedom and even to Jesus Christ’s own heavenly
abode.
After the
gold dust has finally settled, the poor citizens of Azania will return to the
streets to complain about having no toilets, roads, proper housing and jobs.
Some of us will even attempt to burn down parliament in bold attempts to end
the status quo, to light the torch of the long postponed Southern Afrikan
revolution in earnest. But is there time
for Revolution to take place and what will take place after such revolutionary
actions, will the people be able to think beyond their jobs and to see
themselves as not just South Africans, totally unrelated to the people from
across the border? Will we be able to take care of food production, clothe ourselves,
manage and administrate better governance structures. Will the new
revolutionary vanguard be able to protect human rights and correct the human
wrongs in our diverse country? Will we end the proliferation of Genetically
Modified Organisms in our food, protect the rhino’s from poachers and will we
continue along the path of nuclear energy, fossil fuels and mining dependent
economy? Do we have a proper plan for a communalist society as envisioned by
Nkrumah, Nyerere? Will we enforce revolutionary discipline and Black Power
pan-Africanism in the manner of Sankara and could the majority of South
Afrikans be able to maintain a Consciousness that was envisaged by Sobukwe,
Biko or Zim Ngqawana?
All these
questions depend heavily on how we spend our Time. And if we are to be the
masters of our destinies, “overcoming
petty prejudices” as Emperor Haile Selassie I once taught; surely in due
time we can see the Azania that has been denied existence for so long. We shall
be able to be a country with a real name, perhaps it shall be a New name, a New
people and a new and refreshed country, a real nation.
“Time is our most precious treasure because
it is LIMITED. We can produce more wealth, but we cannot produce more time.
When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will
never take back. Our time is our life.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
Antifragile
And so like
the heard hearted Pharaoh, described in the Old Testament, no amount of
resistance, magic or effort can stop an idea whose time has come. But it is a
people who have directed the flow and quality of their nation’s transformation
who decide when the tide must turn. But while the same people still prefer th
fleeting safety of precarious jobs, houses and governments suicidal benevolence
to true Freedom and self-sufficiency, the only change they are going to get is
a few Mandela bank notes.
By Menzi
Maseko
24 January
2013
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