
Background: https://pixabay.com/photos/abstract-wall-backdrop-background-1850424/; picture of Mphuthumi Ntabeni used with credit to Paulet House
Aeons ago, during the high political talks at Kempton Park that birthed what was prematurely referred to as the Rainbow Nation, most of us still believed in the naïveté of the political lull and comforting lies of a miracle nation, and the notion of the federal provinces of southern Africa bantered around the negotiating tables. Even then, we were slowly discovering that the racists, with their veiled notion of separate development, had not changed their minds, but were just on what has turned out to be a temporary retreat induced by apartheid state bankruptcy; and the Liberation Movement, under the political leadership of the ANC, had gained an irreversible moral victory over the National Party. Those who still harboured fears and resentment against what they saw as the Swart Gevaar feared the coming of the full democratic system in South Africa, and wished to tame it with federal imperatives they felt would guarantee the rule of law and safeguard minority rights against the majoritarianism of the political winners. The demands of federalism were partly silenced, we now know*, by backdoor agreements of leading Afrikaner businessmen and Oppenheimer’s funded Brenthurst Group, which co-opted most of the ANC leadership to make way for this so-called Rainbow Nation. It was the transfer of political power to the ANC, while the white monopoly capital remained in the same hands, with financial crumbs thrown to the political elite to appease the masses and maintain the socio-economic status quo.
The idea of federalism in the ’90s was brought about mostly by what we then called the reactionary forces, with the political leadership of the National Party, Democratic Party, Inkatha Freedom Party and others. It was unpopular within the broader school of progressive liberation politics, which had been skilled by experience and history to know the dangers of the South African tribalistic mentality, which had produced numerous black and white tribal wars, from the Mfecane to the Anglo-Boer War to the eastern township of Soweto violence, like Sebokeng, Boipatong and the rest. The idea was more abhorrent for having been brought about also by what, to us, was an unholy alliance of the NP and the IFP, then busy destabilising the black townships by killing many black people. Of course, De Klerk’s administration denied these allegations. Books like The inheritors by Eva Fairbanks now provide first-hand backing evidence of this. Together with the use of foreign Angolan mercenaries, the apartheid regime under De Klerk used to murder our people in the eastern township of Soweto, like in Thokoza.The IFP also entertained ridiculous notions of a semi-independent Zulu nation. They used the eastern Soweto township violence as a leveraging hand to negotiate for this and for socio-economic and political power, especially land control for the Zulu king, in what eventually became known as the Ingonyama Trust.
The white political parties have, throughout history, evoked the notion of federalism under one pretence or another since the early days of colonial settlement. You only need to read the colonial discourses on past papers like the Queenstown Representative and the inglorious Grahamstown Journal of the 19th century, under the ownership and editorial hand of the vile R Godlonton, to know more about this. Later on, the Liberals of imperial Britain, fearing being overwhelmed by not black but Afrikaner rule, demanded – in areas where they had a seeming majority, like Natal and the Cape – to be ruled by a federal system, towards the Union of Smuts.
Showing similar fears of being swallowed up by the ANC majoritarianism towards 1994, the National Party, with a vague backing by the Democratic Party also, made similar demands for federalism that eventually led to and resulted in a stillborn report on our electoral system – the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission on Electoral Reform Report (January 2003). As such, it is small wonder that this report is being resurrected and is gaining some traction. South Africa emerged as a unitary republic from the Kempton Park negotiations, but it had to make some guarantees for various principles of local autonomy and decentralisation to be inserted within the national constitution. These are mostly as strong as any federal republic ones. As such, our provinces later established their own provincial constitutions and economic policies that made them operate in a semi-independent manner, as long as nothing in them contradicted the national constitutional imperatives. What won the day for the unitary state argument at Kempton Park was the economic imperatives. Almost all South African provinces hitch a free economic ride on the Gauteng province. Nothing in the current situation suggests that anything has changed since.
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The current resurgent voice for federalism is mostly a disingenuous wolf pack mentality targeting the political weakness of the ANC.
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The current resurgent voice for federalism is mostly a disingenuous wolf pack mentality targeting the political weakness of the ANC. It hardly has anything of rational muscle; even what is couched as concern for our democratic freedom is mostly baseless fearmongering and gerrymandering on the Godlonton Grahamstown Journal scale. Of course, the call mostly comes from the Western Cape. How a province that contributes about 13% to the national fiscus stands to benefit from more independence beats me. How is it even planning to sustain itself without the national income injection it gets from the national government? Besides through the tourism, service and hospitality industries, which the lockdown showed us can be ground to a halt in a minute, how else will the province take care of its denizens? I would even tolerate the call, were it a matter of mere emotional reaction to the present government’s incompetencies and corruption. But the accompanying prevalent attitudes of growing racist conservatism within the blue party tells me that something more is at hand here. The failures of the ANC have made bold and even closet racists come out of their hiding places. Generally, I welcome this, because it provides us with clearer space to deal with our more pressing issues – like the stubbornly untransformed colonial and apartheid economic and spatial space – away from the false prisms and pretences of the so-called Rainbow Nation and its accompanying rubbish, designed to distract the majority from legitimate demands for economic justice.
Only those with selfish private economic income would think that a federal arrangement of our provinces makes sense, when the majority of our provinces are poor and rural, without many economic prospects. The rest of us know the drab reality of how the majority of our people are dependent on the state for the bare minimum of their living income. If the lockdown has taught us anything, after the example of the US in particular, it is that where there’s no coordinated national planning centre, disaster tends to follow. Many American lives were lost because of a lack of national coordination within the US federal states; their national government had no legal powers to force individual states to follow a more scientific view of things.
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It doesn’t take a genius to notice the historical and political revisions which the ANC government failures have opened us up to. There’s a displeasing reframing process of scholarship to suit prejudices of white conservatism on the one hand, and the bigotry of nationalist wokeness on the other hand, that is doing a disservice to the requirements and means of our moving forward as a nation.
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It doesn’t take a genius to notice the historical and political revisions which the ANC government failures have opened us up to. There’s a displeasing reframing process of scholarship to suit prejudices of white conservatism on the one hand, and the bigotry of nationalist wokeness on the other hand, that is doing a disservice to the requirements and means of our moving forward as a nation. Otherwise, why would we, in 2023, still have to deal with assertions that companies like Anglo American – which profited at the expense of numerous black lives – “flourished in spite of, not because of, apartheid, and that overall they were forces for progress”.** This callous, frankly visceral attitude towards black lives is something that remains the stink of our modern state. There is a much greater act of recovery of our humanity and intellectual sight we desperately still need to undergo.
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And, as a black person, frankly I am tired of having to carry the burden of pointing out and correcting white blind spots of closet racism disguised as concern for our freedom or anti-corruption. I feel that’s the burden that should be carried by other white people. I have other burdens to carry, like the colossal disappointment the ANC has become within my own lifetime.
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And, as a black person, frankly I am tired of having to carry the burden of pointing out and correcting white blind spots of closet racism disguised as concern for our freedom or anti-corruption. I feel that’s the burden that should be carried by other white people. I have other burdens to carry, like the colossal disappointment the ANC has become within my own lifetime. And my more pressing duty is to correct that as a means of safeguarding the gains of our freedom, if nothing else. We must take the opportunity presented by the current situation to lance its boil. The ANC has been at the forefront of protecting those who unjustly looted this country by colonial and racial means. It is, perhaps, just that it also bore the brunt of their ire. Lest we forget, the ANC has also played a vital part in the emancipation of people in this country. Now that it is betraying its own legacy, it is not a reason to define it only as the greedy monster it has now become. Its time has come and gone. What we probably all agree on – for different reasons, obviously – is that the dearth in the ANC will probably spell out the authentic path towards the just and authentic freedom of this country. And I am glad that fire is already burning.
*Read Solomon Johannes Terreblanche and Sampie Terreblanche’s A history of inequality in South Africa, 1652-2002.
**Harry Oppenheimer: Diamonds, gold and dynasty by Michael Cardo.
Also read:
Van ongelykheid tot nuwe ongelykheid – van wit minderheidsoorheersing na ’n swart oligargie
Vryheidsdag 2023: Die nuwe energie vir federalisme en selfregering
Kommentaar
Die man praat sense. Ek dink as hy en selfdenkende mense wit, swart, bruin of Indiër of watter groep ook al by mekaar kan kom en gesels en 'n selfdenkende regering daar kan stel, sal mens die gemors van die ANC te bowe kan kom. Verskille van die verlede kan dan uit die weg geruim word en 'n nuwe bestel kan gevorm word.