“You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
And skip out for beer during commercials, because
The revolution will not be televised”.
Goes the opening lyrics from the song by Gill Scott-Heron, pioneer of rap music. I relived the song live at Hyde Park in the late 1980s while performing live during the days of agitation for the end of Apartheid capitalism colonialism in Namibia, and likewise the reform of Apartheid in South Africa.
Reform of Apartheid. My emphasis regarding the reform of Apartheid. Because it is exactly the conundrum today in South African as much as in Namibia as to what is the question that needed resolution. Apartheid? As if Apartheid was and has been intrinsic to itself and not part of the bigger picture, which is colonialism. As eminent Pan Africanist and African liberationist, Kwame Nkrumah, would write in his book, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. It is any wonder if South African, especially her front organisation has ever confronted this conundrum of what after Apartheid in South African was as if Apartheid in South African then, as is now, was and is integral to that society and an important pillar of it. Rather than a pillar of capitalist imperialism that needed first and foremost to be rooted out with the broader struggle of the emancipation of the workers.
A point at which the South Africans, the ANC especially, had been verificating about and still still are as what the struggle in South Africa has and has been all about. Essentially about the rights of the workers or just about civil and political rights of just the Africans? And thus just based on either the colour of the skin and/or about tribes.
Hence the notion of the democratic nature of the African struggle. It is exactly where both in South Africa, and Namibia as well, the struggle has essentially been grounded. Democracy has been achieved what now?
Because the locus has not been on why the black and/or Africans were mistreated, which is of economic gain and benefit exclusively of the whites. Hence, the need for those in the ANC to emphasise and accentuate that South African belongs to all within her territory . Good and well for South Africa the territory.
But the reality of the post-democratic eras, as both have been proving in both South African and Namibia, is that it is more than just re territorial integrity. But more about economic integrity. Which for the last 30 years or so for most either Namibians and/or South Africans, has proven absolutely elusive if not unattainable ever.
And there’s no prospect of ever any economic magic ever delivering for the millions of Africans. This is the reality the free markters must fathom. This is exactly the free marketers must rudely waken to sooner rather than later.
A situation being laid bare by the results of the just-ended elections. And it seems it would be some time that any post-democratic elections would solve le t alone allay market jitters or shivers. Call it socialist or capitalist.
There is just no quick fix over 400 years of capitalist colonial exploitation. Because Apartheid entailed, in its crudest from simply separate development for the people of South Africa, meaning better resource allocation for her people, be they yellow, orange, green, etc.
It seemed equitable allocation of the country’s resources did not matter. Therein lays the unfeasibility of the reform of Apartheid. Because Apartheid was rooted on the treatment of some citizens better than others. Hence also the disproportionate allocation of resources to some, not based on their needs but their vantage position in society.
But it was and has been clear that it has been clear that simply it has been based on the unequal treatment of her citizens as far as the allocation of resources. This is what has been transpiring in that country since independence in 1994. Indeed a resource allocation that slowly has been eating way at the soul of not so much of the capitalist system that the Apartheid capitalist means of production has been, but that of those it has been designed to toil for it.
Not to their benefit but to the benefit of those unconsciously building it to their own detriment. Rendering itself little to being televised. Because this has been happening stealthily and for most unconsciously.
Only for the reality to be revealed as it has been with the election results in South Africa this week. Simply put the African National Congress (ANC) with its ideology, if such by any stretch of imagination can be defined as an ideology at all, has made its bed, and must now lay in it. Only problem is that it is not the ANC itself which ultimately and in the long run would have to lay in this bed with all and sundry but unfortunately the workers.
The very people who bore the brunt of the Apartheid capitalist mode of production, would now have to carry the brunt of whatever system the ANC is and shall have to settle for. Because the choices for the ANC are few, and the compromise it shall have to settle for, few would be to the benefit of the workers. This is actually the beginning of a return to Apartheid which is cannot be in the best interest of anyone one but the ANC elite.
To the detriment of the workers. ANC’s could not have put it better when alluding to “national interest” as the overriding consideration of whatever horse trading would be ensuing in the given time. One cannot but underline the ANC’s SG’s emphasis on “national interest”. Over and above ideological consideration. Leaving one to wonder what his understanding of “National interest” is, and if it is devoid from any ideology. But one of the parties the ANC is poised to engage is the Democratic Alliance (DA) and their obvious total opposition and aversion to transformation. A party that needless to say is a front for capitalist big brothers looking after the “national interest”, ala the ANC of none other than the capitalist world.
While in many African countries it may have taken years before neo-colonialism can show its ugly head, for South Africa, it has taken not much time. One cannot wonder if any of the two countries, Namibia and South Africa, how much to learn from the other, and what if anything?
