Richard Runyararo Mahomva
The outcome of the South-African plebiscite compels an existential audit of liberation movements and their relevance in delivering on the aspirations of the people.
The ANC 40 percent popularity versus the 60 percent vote split across the hostile political divide namely, the apartheid god-mother party, the Democratic Alliance (DA); polemic ANC offshoots like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Mkhonto weSizwe (MK) and other opposition parties is instructive of the need to trace the operational pitfalls of nationalist movements in retaining their relevance.
What would cause a party of apartheid (DA) to be second after the anti-apartheid stalwart revolutionary movement, likewise, what would cause a 6-month-old MK to scoop 57 seats in parliament against an ANC, which has existed for a century?
Zuma's campaign message gives insights to some of the gaps which have culminated in the ANC's current predicament.
Without full economic democratisation, class adversity is perpetuated in favour of the capital dominant drivers of the class struggle.
At the heart of this class adversity is the issue of race. The Afrikaner oligopoly still considers South Africa a haven of its generations of loot. This explains why the black men, women and children in South Africa are subjects of capitalist existential needs.
This is why the DA's neoliberal posture on providing jobs and guaranteeing market stability still finds popular traction in the South African political discourse. The inference from this position is that a white-led party with roots in profound anti-nationalist proclivities has guarantees for employment creation, market stability, external investment overflow.
This is a stance which disparages the pro-liberation sentiment, which should be at the centre of ballot decision-making for an nation which endured decades of gruesome rule under apartheid.
South Africa is currently suffering neo-apartheid haemorrhage under the guise of market stability, which feeds on flight of capital and intergenerational monopoly capital.
In all this, the African's life depends on apartheid messianic tokens of jobs, mortgages and a confetti of loan comforts. As the markets flourish, the landless black South Africa is a slave to debt.
With a predominantly metropolitan construct of society, the average middle class voter would support any idea which protects the status-quo. Disruptive considerations to the political-economy (dis)order is met with resistance.
Consequently, the market forces (which in essence are predominantly Anglo-apartheid and neoliberal) have engulfed the relevance of social forces (to which the ANC is and must be a vanguard).
Inevitably, nationalist volatility has been on the rise. With the desire to be seen to be "democratic" (by way of conforming to market forces), the ANC has been losing its social base.
Today, the ANC is at its worst. Even after conforming to the moral postures of being a pro-democracy party, as dictated by the apartheid underpinned moral barometers, the ANC will never be loved by the very same sponsors on neo-apartheid.
The self-corrosive focus on the fight against corruption remains weaponised by the enemy to exaggerate the integrity pandemic facing South Africa. This explains why the ANC is constructed as a corruption-infested party worth uprooting.
Meanwhile, the centuries old machinery of looting is exonerated. This is the same system which dictates how politics should behave in order not to wreck market havoc.
Therefore, while African liberation movements are assigned to democratic conformity, those dictating the pace and the methodology of that process are after the outright annihilation of anything anti-colonial.
Once the pace and methodology of our demise is achieved the continuity of their looting, exploitation and plunder goes unabated. Meanwhile, we continue to languish as the Fanonian "Wretched of the Earth".
As one scribe (Jamwanda) in this same publication (June 8, 2024) argues, " . . . any revolution, however successful it may be in mobilising the masses, must also always ensure the basic needs of the masses, themselves the motor of history, are minimally addressed, and preferably met for the masses to keep their faith in the struggle."
If not so, George Charamba further writes "the masses, however well imbued or charged with revolutionary zeal and fervour, could very easily end up being incited by an empty stomach to act against their own core interests, however right, high or hallowed these may be. Even as you struggle . . . you must seek and strive to ameliorate the social conditions of the struggling masses so they keep and retain faith in the cause".
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The last point here, has been the MK's point of departure.
Meanwhile, across the Limpopo -- here in Zimbabwe -- ZANU PF's rallying call to power consolidation in the 2023 Harmonised Election has been the simple "Nyika Inovakwa Neve Vayo/Ilizwe Lakhiwa Ngabanikazi Bayo" mantra. Neo-liberal forces attempted to challenge our election, but the nationalist sentiment won the day.
Therefore, our ANC comrades must take time to remodel their relevance in a way that preserves revolutionary dividends and not hallow superficial and borrowed models of existential and ideological terms of expression.
Mayibuye!
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is the Director for International Communication Services in the Ministry of Information Publicity and Broadcasting Services. He writes in his capacity as a political scientist with an avid interest in African Liberation Legacies.
