Interpreting Tintswalo beyond her blackness.

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!!!