One of the greatest miscarriages of apartheid South Africa was its inability to produce out-of-homeland leaders, men and women, who would enjoy the legitimacy to be entrusted with the comprehensive project of liberating South Africa. The African National Congress, because of its then hegemonic prowess and timeless monumental policy documents, had occupied this space. Its leaders would be the personification of what it stood for, with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela arguably standing out as its most popular towers. The legitimacy of colonialism and apartheid has always relied on its acceptance by black people and, by extension, their leaders. The quest to purchase and repurpose black discontent about being dominated has always been fought through those they agree are their leaders or those imposed as such.
History records in South
Africa, many in leadership have made it their business to derail the
comprehensive liberation project at the altar of self-aggrandisement. To the
ANC, such leaders were seen as people who would use “the legal opportunities
provided by "the system" (such as the Bantustan programme and lately,
maybe, BEE) to participate in the mass mobilisation” ... and to “focus on the
struggle for a united and non-racial South Africa”. Politics have no currency
except for the personal interests of those in the vocation. Many in the
industry of (black) politics would make it through the criteria of Mzala,
"Chiefs or leadership with a double agenda".
Notwithstanding
their legality, Bantustan-type leaders always suffer the legitimacy deficit to
make 'apartheid as a system' or 'its enduring templates of dominance' workable.
What 'the system wanted as a template' is 'pliable negroes and not revolutionaries
on the plantation'. The self-organising prowess of 'negroes on the plantation'
is the social power any system of domination would pay whatever price is put on
it, if you like it is the most legitimate of capture allowed. What we may have
not interrogated is the extent to which 1994 legitimised 'the plantation with
the pliable negroes' project.
As
a fuse in a social bomb, Jacob Zuma has always been a 'when is he going to
explode reality'. In the run-up to Polokwane, he was characterised as a
'Zunami' to indicate how his being politically mismanaged by the Establishment
can devastate the triad order (political, democratic, and constitutional). As a
personality, Zuma has always been easy to develop into a cult, even without his
permission or consent. As a person, he had the sophistication to be tacit in
rejecting or consenting to such propositions.
The
prosecutions he went through since his prospect of, and ultimately becoming,
President of South Africa have established record jurisprudence on and about a
sitting president. In the perception industry, his prosecutions still must
convincingly extricate themselves from being the persecution of Zuma as a proxy
of what the latest fulminations are concretising to be about.
The
growing discontent about the on-the-dinner-plate benefits of the 'triad order',
the leadership dysfunction within the liberation movement, disintegrating
public infrastructure and, notably, what, in the eyes of the public worked
under Zuma, inconsistencies in how corruption is defined and prosecuted, and
the general member integrity management by the ANC has become potent social and
political capital for any Zuma-led second Revolution. In any case, Zuma has
more to gain in personal legacy rescue terms than facing his grave with what he
currently has or being paraded as his legacy. In President Ramaphosa's
parlance, he is not alone in the dock of reputation and legacy destruction, but
he is accused number one, if not the face of it.
The
incorrectness of the correctness of the anti-corruption and anti-state capture
project has been its preoccupation with individuals more than the evidence it
should have relied on. It has unfortunately assumed the character of being a
black executive abattoir with the death of cadre development, black economic
empowerment and economic transformation being the 'wedstryd wenner boerewors'
served on the butchery shelves of South Africa, the media. On auction in these
game hunting safaris is the soul of South Africa to the highest bidder.
Auctioneers have been hard at work to create distinct game farms,
euphemistically called political parties, with one big reserve and yet clearly
defined gates of entry to this soul. 2024 will, like 2016 and 2021 did in local
government, give feedback on progress made thus far. Game rangers are hard at
work; it is a sophisticated game-hunting enterprise.
Like
the cardinal pillars of the EFF, the stillborn programs of the in-ANC RET
faction, the never allowed to see the light of the day economic freedom in our
lifetime resolutions of the Malema-as-President ANCYL ... Conference
resolutions, and the General ... open letter raised issues, the Jacob Zuma
reasons for his 'fulminate response to the context' cannot be stripped of the
legitimacy of what it raises as concerns. The consolidation of this discontent,
which is acutely discussed in safe spaces and forums of the ANC, especially its
closed social media platforms, into a Zuma-led program, might be the beginning
of the second revolution for a revised republic.
This
fulmination with Zuma as its face might look like a 'regrouping of vultures'
that one indlulamithi scenario has pigeonholed as; the brute truth is that
social justice, human dignity, and human rights are noble causes which can
never co-exist with the dishonesty of capitalism in whatever disguises. Those young
in the world of principle generally have an addiction to superficial things and
not enough conviction for substantial matters like justice, truth and
commitment to a cause. The capacity of the disgruntled in the ANC might have
been waiting for 'nothing to lose a leader like Zuma'.
Jacob
Zuma's reasons for announcing that he would not be voting for the ANC are as
much about the inconsistency that Wally Serote, Mavuso Msimanga, and Thabo
raised. Together they are a voice whose echoes are very unsettling to the
interior of the ANC. Irrespective of how their discontents are presented, they
are all stimulations and obsessions with the liberation promise in the
Constitution. We are witnessing a rebellion against what might truncate the
National Democratic Revolution choked by sponsored factionalism.
Albeit from different vantage points, the discontents raised by the stalwarts and chocked by the 'vulturous' interests of the youth within the ANCYL, the reasons advanced are a voice and not an echo. The negroes in the plantation are singing a different song; the second revolution might be with us.
THIS IS THE FIRST INSTALMENT IN A SERIES
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