This was published in the Sunday Times of 14 February 2024
In a quest to give the successes of the governing ANC a face, President Ramaphosa introduced Tintswalo to make its thirty-year reign more real. Tintswalo is not the ANC's election campaign mascot. She represents a human form of the ANC's perception of its contribution to the lives of South Africans. While Tintswalo is an African name and may be mistaken for the ANC's success for and on behalf of black Africans, as a representation of an era in the history of South Africa, Tintswalo as a concept goes beyond her blackness.
The ANC's claim to represent black people has since been liquidated by its adoption of the Freedom Charter and bequeathing its core message of South Africa belongs to all who live in it by chiselling it into the Constitution of 1996. At the time of chiselling, the ANC was operating as the leader of a liberation movement committed to building a non-racial, non-sexist, united, and democratic South Africa. To achieve this, the ANC further obligated itself to a struggle to transfer power to the people. Such Power is for political, economic, and social control. Government, as the most active agency of the state, would be the legal vehicle this struggle would be executed to its completion. The extent to which the ANC understood 1994 to 1996 as the end of its liberation movement role, the beginning of the lawful dimension of its struggle, and the Constitution as the lawful expression of its National Democratic Revolution taking over is the conundrum of RSA politics.
This
context characterises Tintswalo beyond the ontologies encapsulated in the
African name. Tintswalo is a product of what the ANC-led liberation of South
Africa from apartheid has accrued to her ilk. The ANC, as a liberation
movement, has all the rights and legitimacy to claim bragging rights for the
many Tintswaloes a post-apartheid South Africa has produced. The liberation
promise in the South African Constitution has a non-racial, non-sexist, and
non-homophobic impact on natural or juristic persons and organs of state within
the Republic.
This
makes Tintswalo both a natural and juristic person. Tintswalo is a South
African LSE listed company, a cross-border operating company that has had their
business accepted because of the new South Africa, the sports teams and
individuals that could be benchmarked against their international counterparts,
the arts and culture renditions performed at globally acclaimed theatres, and
the intellectuals and academics who can now publish in internationally
acclaimed knowledge platforms without the torments of the apartheid state
origins.
The
four times Rugby World Cup wins are Tintswaloes of a particular type. This
includes NASPERS in China, DSTV in Africa, MTN globally, Retail Chain Stores
and RSA franchises defining shopping malls in African business districts,
Medi-Clinic and Netcare as health care voortrekkers, HARITH Partners with its
infrastructure investment businesses, Discovery and Metropolitan-Momentum
Medical Insurance businesses. A deeper audit of Tintswaloes of a special type
will reveal interesting insights about other Tintswaloes beyond the 'poor one'
the President has focused on.
The
Tintswalo who made it through the first thirty years of the post-1994
liberation promise should not be the only one foregrounded beyond other
benefitting Tintswaloes that might be guilty of the disparaging remarks about
the poor Tintswalo the President put a spotlight on. What makes the discourse
on Tintswalo polyvalent in its agreeableness or controversy is the extent to
which society is ready to allow the ANC as a governing political party to get
the bragging rights about South Africa's Tintswaloes. On the other hand, evidence
is in how Nelson Mandela and before the ANC being curated into reputational
safety, the ANC, as the liberation movement, enjoys the endearment of the many
Tintswaloes the liberation promise in the Constitution has produced.
The
reputational standing of the ANC as a governing political party and its admission
that it is accused number one in the dock is choking the capacity of the
country to celebrate its hard-earned freedom. The cost of lionising the ANC
brand with the indisputable success of South Africa's Tintswaloes might come
with liabilities that will make the Zondo Commission Report look like a script
for a political circus show. Tintswalo is a South African who enjoys the fruits
of our constitutional, political, economic, and democratic order. She is
equally a South African who is excluded by the stubborn templates of economic
domination, which still have race and manipulated class as vectors of honest
analysis.
It
was, therefore, opportune and timely for the President to introduce into our
recollection and celebration of South Africa's thirty years of democracy a
personality we can all try to find amongst ourselves. As a society facing its
most consequential national and provincial elections and the prospect of an
entirely new generation of birthdate-defined Tintswaloes redefining our
politics, we must be honest about the Tintswaloes many of us have all become.
Our Constitution demands such political, social, and democratic humility.
CUT!!!
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