By Koketso Poho
THERE is no longer any doubt that the country requires rescue. There is no doubt that the wound oozes thick yellow pus. To borrow from Oswald Mtshali, South Africa has become a gigantic sore.
This is not to suggest that there was ever any moment where South Africa was a utopia or some sort of paradise. As a country in Africa we suffered the brutality of colonialism, we had that thing called apartheid. Perhaps the real truth is that this country has always bled, this country needed rescue from the formation of the union.
South Africa has always been unethical because it has always survived through the subjugation of black people. It has always relied on the exploitation and oppression of the indigenous people to make sense of itself. The evidence is there – think about the brutality of the 1913 Land Act, the cruelty of migrant labour, the extraction of the country’s minerals, the pass laws, the Sharpeville shooting and the list goes on.
These are just a few examples that are a testament to the fact that the history of South Africa is a history of violence, terror and resistance.
The question that becomes quite necessary and almost unavoidable is whether or not the country can be rescued. This is to say, is South Africa not beyond repair?
There are many contending responses and views about this question. Some have said that the attainment of freedom for black people in South Africa is a chimera, a thing that can only be hoped for but can never be attained.
This view is based on the fact that in 1994 when apartheid was said to have ended people had a lot of hope that their conditions would change. They believed that they would be unshackled from their chains of oppression.
When black people came out in their numbers to go to the different voting stations on 27 April 1994, they were convinced that we would have some sort of tabula rasa. The ANC had promised a better South Africa for all. Alas, the promise was an empty one. The ANC without just cause failed to restore the dignity of black people in South Africa.
It has been 30 years since democracy in South Africa. It has been three decades since a black government was elected and yet the hierarchies that existed during apartheid remain unaltered.
What does this tell us? It tells us that something is wrong, something is rotting. It tells us that the people who were elected into ‘power’ were not quite the ones we needed. It means that the ones we chose as our ‘liberators’ in 1994 were not the beautiful ones that Ayi Kwei Armah anticipated.
We have been utterly disappointed, we have been scammed, and we have been frauded by those we trusted with our votes. We have been patient, election after election, slogan after slogan, but no delivery.
Instead, those in positions of power keep on getting fat, their cars get shinier, their houses even fancier, but the people get poorer. They are unable to self-correct and where they are told of their flaws they suppress those views. The stench of the rot can no longer be ignored. The rat must be taken out.
If the EFF did not exist it would have to be invented. It is necessary in the political landscape of South Africa as water is to the body. Ten years after its formation it has been able to effect a lot of change in the lives and minds of the people. The formation and growth of the EFF reaffirmed to black people that there is still hope. It instilled in their psyche that there are still possibilities and potentialities of a liberated South Africa.
The EFF demonstrated that economic freedom in our lifetime is not just a dream, and there is no need to defer it. The EFF has a clear vision and principles, its cardinal pillars are unambiguous and beyond that, without being in power it has demonstrated how the conditions of the people can be materially changed.
2024 presents us with another opportunity to make a choice. As Gabriel Letswalo would say, “life is a crisis of decisions”. What this means is that the choices we make undoubtedly affect our reality.
To vote this year is to hold the bull by its horns, it is to fight like we have never fought before because why else would we allow ourselves to be in a matrimony of violence?
As voters we must be able to discern, we must not be confused by the idiotic proliferation of many other political parties that promise change. Political parties that come from nowhere and disguise themselves as alternatives, yet are sent by our erstwhile oppressors to divide us.
Our minds ought to be at work, our bodies must not be used to advance the lives of people who care not about our well-being. We must be able to identify who it is who has our best interest. It is easy to do this, those who claim to love us must be unashamed to say expropriation without compensation. They must not be afraid to declare that the minerals above and beneath the soil must be nationalised. They must be no rhetoric around the idea of education. This thing is simple: free education in our lifetime.
The organisation we should vote for is the EFF, the only organisation that is totally committed to the liberation of black people, the only organisation that is unashamed in its love for black people.
Koketso Poho is a young activist and co-ordinator of the EFF in Soweto. He is a third-year political science student at the University of the Witwatersrand and an aspiring musical artist.