What should we make of the uMkhonto we Sizwe trademark battle?

Published in the Sunday Tines on 23 April 2024

The responsibility of liberating a nation from an oppressive system like apartheid remains that of revolutionaries, activists, and conscientious members of society. Naturally, one organisation or institution will emerge as the leader of society in the management of the struggle system, and this is the ANC as the leader of the liberation movement executed. The outcome of the political settlement that follows the liberation struggle tends to be what the liberation movement defined as what it aspires for that particular society. 

In South Africa, the constitution, as the abstraction of the freedoms the struggle was all about, aggregates the political emotions of those who led and how they projected into the future. After the negotiated settlement, what was aspired for became the context of politics, and this made the struggle heritage a property of South Africa. 

 

"Heritage is an embodiment of a past we wish to take into our future without losing the benefits of a changing present. It not only defines a sense of belonging, but it also makes the past a form of the present and an abstraction of what a future will look like, with us as a presence of the past, which is the present we are living in now. Like its adjunct tradition, it creates and reorders our background of permanence. It assists us in transmitting the merits of the past to modern-day originality.  Such a background anchors the values with which a society can be normed".

 

However, heritage can also be defeatist and decadent, trapping institutional vibrancy in absolute attitudes and outmoded --isms. The currency it uses to defeat a society is nostalgia and, at best, mythology. Because of its sacred character, it is often a difficult thing to challenge heritage, albeit having flaws and weaknesses". The ANC's fight for the rich history of MK the MK Party is 'smash and grabbing', as well as the tenacity with which the MK Party founders are battling for the retention of the name is the core of determining how the ANC might disintegrate as a liberation movement and remain with a political party status emptied shell. 

 

As the heritage landscape of the country is redefined or expanded to be inclusive, it ceases to be a tribal (political or otherwise) matter. In Samora Machel's parlance, beyond the liberation struggle settlement and in peacetime, it might be necessary for several tribes or a particular tribe to die for the nation or heritage to thrive. The concept of a country's national self cannot be allowed to be the exclusive domain of majority tribes but must transcend sectarian preferences. 

 

The contest for who has the right to the use of Congress of the People, uMkhonto we Sizwe, and maybe in the next elections Congress of Democrats and United Democratic Front is a reflection of how heritage as a collective social capital of society has not received the attention it deserves. Social Cohesion and Economic prosperity of nations rests upon knowledge and its practical application. South Africa's contested heritage, with race and class as its vector of analysis, has choked its celebration because, in its divided form and not diverse character, defines the nature of our politics. 

 

Except for the political capital costs to the governing party, the court case has exposed the depth of legal sophistication in the current political elite. The MK Party victory, from whatever angle you choose to relate with it, is the subversion of RSA heritage trapped in the ANC's history and traditions. It might be the beginning of a heritage genocide and struggle traditions cleansing process where factual distortions of history might be recorded as litigation-discovered documents. 

 

In the middle of a growing discontent amongst voters taking Zuma to court on the MK trademark issue, after losing eligibility to stand case, he dialled up the heat on his support base, including the reluctant. The MK Party victory, which creates a precedent of future legal heists of heritage resources, especially names, rings hollow. It is, at best, as short-term as the earlier COPE victory, but it doesn’t mark a breakthrough or come close to resolving the real contentious issues of South Africa's heritage. 

 

Regarding intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights, RSA has been found wanting on several occasions. From the Rooibos global trademark debacle, the Port and Sherry remonstrations in the wine and spirits industry to the costs of reclaiming the use of Bafana Bafana, RSA displays a country whose legal claim to its heritage is at risk. The bottom line implications of this debacle are that it exposes in-ANC thinkers, intellectuals, and those working in its cognitive spaces. The disrespect of heritage resources also manifests in how factional convenience and expediency can destroy institutions of economic leadership such as Transnet, PRASA, Denel, SAA, and other state-owned entities. 

 

Reminiscent of a hyena hunt, the battle for the MK name is a graphic representation of how we might have ended where we are; everyone is now cutting his piece of the potential carcass the ANC heritage might be. Terror Lekota took the Kliptown slice, Julius Malema left with the generational mission of Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime of the ANC youth league, and Zuma joined the uMkhonto we Sizwe raid. The South African Constitution did not raid the National Democratic Revolution; it is its legal expression. The question is, what would be left of the ANC in the long run, given that it has not been deliberately redefining itself into the context where what it stood for has been bequeathed to the nation by history? 

 

As new generations of leaders come through the ranks, with Tintswaloes just fifteen years away from being a dominant force in its leadership, logic dictates what will they bring into that centre? The slicing off of the MK heritage, all be it legally won, requires an ideological response more than the current 'asilweni' posture. MK Party might be one of the most lethal intergenerational blows to the ANC after its denial that firing Malema was a youth power cleansing it cannot recover from. 

 

Of course, in such contexts, we should be fully and constantly aware of the dreadful forms that institutional self-mutilation can assume and be careful to guard against its impact on our path as a people to establish a National Democratic Society. Outside these political fights, as a society, we can be, or can provide, the institutional structures and patterns of agency necessary for working out a version of ourselves the constitution guarantees us. The ideational mortality of our democratic order depends on us. CUT!!!