It’s hard to believe that it’s almost a decade since the massacre of black people at Marikana in 2012. It’s even harder to imagine that when that atrocious anti-black act took place, it happened under the entrenched rule of the rainbow nation of the ANC.
Indeed, the ANC had already been a solid 18 years in political office. This begs the question as to why would such a callous act be committed under, and by, a regime led by a party which had called itself a liberation movement? Should we believe that the ANC fought against apartheid and for the freedom of the oppressed black people in this country?
I choose to be provocative on this matter and frankly make phenomenological observations, interpretations and re-interpretations of the ANC’s 27 years in the apartheid offices still called Union Buildings. Like all so-called post-independence African states, the South African reality continues to serve and protect the interests of the oppressors, while perpetuating the slate of anti-blackness in various ways.
This is a sad reality because Amilcar Cabral had pointed out this painfully foolish mess more than five decades ago when he said, “the problem of the nature of the state created after independence is perhaps the secret of the failure of African independence”.
These pointed words remain so apt when assessing the South African state “created” after apartheid, which is the failure of the liberation of the oppressed masses of black people. This confirms the view that this so-called rainbow project is a stillborn democracy.
Of course, the post-1994 dispensation is punctuated with the discourse of equality, dignity, prosperity for all and other human rights. But it’s all rhetoric as the factual reality points to a perpetual state of anti-blackness, wherein, the face of poverty, pain and suffering remains black, while the face of privilege and comfort points to other races.
Apartheid is still alive and well. Black lives continue to be perceived as cheap. They don’t matter. What is sickening is the residual mental slavery in terms of which black leaders have practically assumed the role of the former oppressors, and indeed, continue with the anti-black project.
They have become the most effective carriers of the oppressor’s toolkit and, in my view, have learned the art of self-hate and oppression with distinction. Perhaps, the apartheid spirit of the likes of Pik Botha, who died a member of the ANC in good standing, remains inspirational to the leadership?
As in the apartheid state, the structural realities in the post-1994 arrangement under the ANC rule are such that black people still do not have cultural, economic, linguistic and social power, while white privilege continues uninterrupted. The land is still under white people, while blacks remain landless in the land of their ancestors.
There is no appetite from the ruling party to repossess the land which was violently taken away from them in 1652. Just as Pik Botha would have said, the ruling party continues to use scarecrow tactics not to disrupt the land ownership patterns. “You don’t want to be like Zimbabwe, do you?” This has become a sickening line from those who have made it their business to maintain the pro-white status quo in this country since 1994.
It doesn’t end there. As in apartheid, black children still do not have access to quality education, health care and other amenities of life. Unlike their white counterparts, they live precarious lives in their own land. Apartheid spatial planning brought about separate race-based communities that ensured that service delivery and access to amenities were effectively dished out on the basis of race.
Even today, black people are still bundled in camp-like zones called townships and squatter camps, and also in abandoned rural villages across the country where service delivery is extremely poor, if not absent. In fact, everything that characterised apartheid almost still applies today.
All the anti-apartheid songs and slogans remain relevant today. Siyaya ePitori! Mayibuye! Senzeni na! Noma besidubula, besishaya! All these painful slogans are sung by black people, and not by other races. Just as in apartheid. It is such realities that make us clearly understand when concerned citizens assert that South Africa has never shrugged off the DNA of apartheid, and has thus remained, by and large, a neo-apartheid settler colonial state.
One of the most debilitating elements characteristic of apartheid society was the senseless, callous and wanton killing of blacks with impunity. One may also refer to the genocidal attacks on black communities during the incursion by white settlers in the country leading to the Wars of Dispossession, in terms of which the land and cattle were stolen or looted from the indigenous people of this land.
You may, for instance, be reminded about the Sharpeville and Langa Massacres in 1960, Soweto in 1976 and so forth. As I said, 1994 did not change this inclination. The baton was spectacularly carried into the black-led government decorated as the rainbow nation. The killings orchestrated in this country since 1994 are on black people. You may look at the Marikana Massacre, and recently, the Phoenix Massacre. Those maimed and killed in these massacres are black people.
I have been bothered by the question as to what is going on in the minds of our leaders in this rainbow government of the ANC. Do they have a conscience? Yes, do they really sleep at night? I mean, the killing of your own people should really touch you deeply. What about the squalor, the poverty, the hunger, the indignity and the humiliation meted out to black people?
With this hyperbolic splurge of anti-blackness, one is tempted to ask the question: is there a pheromone that links the apartheid regime to the rainbow government of the ANC? I am afraid the answer is in the affirmative. Why should we be the ones to sing Senzeni na? (what have we done to deserve this?). When will this nonsense stop?
I am frustrated that this generational burden will persist on various grounds. As black people, we have sadly become specialists in our own disunity. We find it too easy to fight one another rather than unite against the anti-black system. We also do not seem to take our lives seriously, hence we see most in our ranks reluctant to call what happened in Marikana what it really was, a massacre.
A question of self-hate? But, importantly, we need to exert more effort on conscientisation, and in particular, black consciousness. But I am deeply perturbed by our attitude and response to our pain, suffering and killing. We seem to have lost our sense of outrage as black people.
Something has been planted in our minds to demonise our sense of anger and we subsequently seem too shy to be angry. Our anger and response to atrocious acts committed against us have consistently proven to be temporary. Our anger fizzles out in time. My view is that our oppressors and their proxies have figured this indifference out, and therefore do not stop such injustices.
My body and systems simply freeze when I consider that nine years on, the perpetrators and instigators of the Marikana massacre are still free. No one, and indeed no one, has been arrested for such a cowardly anti-black ghastly act. Where is the criminal justice system? It is simply too hard to believe that black people have somehow rewarded some of those implicated in the massacre with cushy positions of leadership. Botse-botse – what is wrong with us?
The sorry tale of the 27 years of this rainbow regime should spur the oppressed people to rally together, to unite in a spirit of black solidarity to ensure the attainment of true liberation. If this is not done, the notion of freedom will remain nothing more than mere rhetoric, while the reality remains that of apartheid.
I have already passed the stage of denialism, specifically that, in this whole wide world, black lives are cheap. This is mainly attributable to white supremacy, which has entrenched itself, inter alia, through capitalism, imperialism, colonialism and apartheid.
In respect of the apartheid South Africa post 1994, this should explain why black people do not see it odd to keep on singing melancholic anti-apartheid struggle songs, such as ’Noma besidubula siyaya’, when frustrated by the socio-economic challenges under this so-called democratic government of the ANC.
Unashamedly, my lamentation is that we are fed the rhetoric of freedom while liberation is still a mirage because apartheid is alive and well in this country. This is how Marikana speaks to me. Senzeni na!
David Letsoalo is a Sankarist, an activist and Law academic