On March 18, thirty years ago, more than 68% of white South Africans voted in favor of the abolishment of Apartheid and 'endorsed' the idea of 'freedom' for blacks thereby ushering the dawn of this specific democracy. Hailed by some as a significant day in the History of South Africa, it is to strategists one of the strategic moves white South Africa made to avoid entering a negotiation process on terms they would not have control over.
Having successfully subdued, Nelson Mandela with a 27-year prison term, kept the ANC as an exiled liberation movement for almost three decades, prepared pragmatic templates of governing South Africa no right-thinking leader would oppose, built a sufficient buffer of a materialistic and non-ideological black middle class to sustain white supremacy, and consolidated all algorithms of an extractive and race-biased economic system no liberation inspired transformation software can fracture without the permission of the 'economic' establishment, the decision to ritualize the Dawn of democracy as an act of 'whites' allowing it was to be a cherry on top. In 1989, BaNtu-Black South Africa was reduced to spectators as 'white South Africa' was voting in a referendum on whether they will be included in the determination of arrangements on how to govern South Africa. As voting white, Indian, and colored politicians were in debates about the inclusion of BaNtu-Blacks, the liberation movement was busy consolidating its ready-to-govern strategies, they were sharpening their pens on constitutional options, and Oliver Tambo was crisscrossing the World influencing under what conditions the ANC will negotiate.
Knowing what we now know about the Nelson Mandela secret meetings, the outcome of him being the hero of those that jailed him, realizing that what mattered was left unchanged, and the economy is stubbornly refusing to follow the politics of the country, it is becoming clearer that part of what we might have celebrated as freedom might have been freeing the dominant from the shame of dominating without permission or political mandate of the dominated.
The ritualization of the 'freedom' as a miracle, the chiseling in of political freedom in the Constitution in such a way that the dominant can be in control of momentum on how subsequent freedoms may follow, and the control of the economic cadence by an otherwise racial exploitation built economy, would stand as the towering and last frontier to be fought to realize just the idea of freedom South Africa could imagine. As the contours of inequality grew to be givens of the socio-economic landscape, we saw the successor-in-law of the Apartheid State painfully inheriting the operating system with which Apartheid was maintained, and deployed on a 'supposedly free South Africa' what that system could only allow. The template has not shifted.
The spatial planning frameworks kept Apartheid Geography intact that it became normal and was ultimately celebrated as the delivery success of the new government, the inherent per capita expenditure patterns continued to instruct spending on social services to levels where education per capita has in real terms not shifted inches enough to remove mud and under tree schooling. Whilst all these might in the latest narrative be conveniently thrown in the 'nine wasted years' basket of analysis, including its catalyst corruption, evidence is emerging of how the systemic stubbornness of apartheid institutionalization has made it difficult for the incorruptible to change templates of dominance.
As we celebrate the 'ritualized freedom' we must do so recognizing that the little it did to move South Africa forward still requires the much that has not moved to follow. For the much to follow, it requires a systems focussed cohort of leadership to target apartheid algorithms that continue to instruct judiciary decisions even if it makes no transformation sense. Until there are transformation algorithms, apartheid will continue with the five-yearly endorsements of its majority of victims.
Notwithstanding, we must still thank the 68% white voters that voted YES, HULLE KAN MAAR OOK IN KOM in 1989. To them we say thanks for voting, we are sure some of you were genuine in voting for our inclusion. It should not have made sense to you how the nanny who knew more about you than your parents cannot have the right to vote. Your voting might not have known that you were giving a cognitive elite consensus legitimacy to keep the country economically divided, and by extension culturally unstable. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo selebreita makwerhu
🤷🏿♂️Just Celebrating 1989, my way
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