This article is in dialogue with the recent piece of The Johann Rossouw conversation series “On the general election and a Government of National Unity (GNU): A post-colonial analysis”.
What beast is being born in our Jerusalem?
I
I found the recent piece of The Johann Rossouw conversation series “On the general election and a Government of National Unity (GNU): A post-colonial analysis” very interesting. I slightly differ with its historical background analysis, even as I concur that South Africa’s economic colonial nature was not changed by the coming to political power of the ANC. I wish to interrogate the argument that the drawn “colonial borders” for British economic interests produced similar ownership structures in 1910, 1948 and 1994. Though similarities between Afrikaner and African nationalism exist, I caution away from exaggerating them out of context by pointing out that the differences are just as glaring. I concur that the ANC elite who were given slices – more like crumbs – followed unproductive, rent-seeking business models that do not contribute much to the overall economic growth of our country.
To explain, let me start with the historical background.
The renowned Xhosa poet SEK Mqhayi, who was the sub-editor of the founding black newspapers Izwi Labantu (The Voice of the People) in 1914 and Isolezw’ (The Nation’s Eye), took an exception with Selope Thema, the second ANC secretary general (1915-17), when he claimed that the ANC had been founded in 1912. The ensuing newspaper debate was vigorous and animated. Thema’s view eventually became the official ANC stance. The argument between Mqhayi and Thema happened in 1929. By then, Mqhayi was an editor at another paper, Umteteleli (The Representative). Thema and his supporters, when they could not defeat “Imbongi yase Gompo” (the bard from Gompo), resorted to the ad hominem, always the last refuge of the eristic, claiming that Mqhayi was just a cantankerous old man. Mqhayi was not just a mere editor, but an imbongi in true Nguni character, meaning that he was an oral historian, a bard, an intellectual and a stickler for historical accuracy.
We’re greatly indebted to Mqhayi for reminding “the young man” (Thema) of the real history of the ANC. He rightly traced the roots of the ANC from 1887 to the year of “Thung’ umlomo” (stitch the mouth – referring to the first all-out black consumer boycott). During the late nineteenth century, Port Elizabeth was the place for black socioeconomic activity that led to the formation of a porto-nationalist political organisation called Imbumba Yama Afrika (South African Aborigine Association) in 26 September 1882. Imbumba was formed as an imitative response to the Afrikaner Broederbond, which had recently been formed in 1880 to mobilise and unite socioeconomic and political interests based on ethnic (racial) power.
Both black African and Afrikaner nationalism were a push of the middle-class elite: teachers, religious leaders, journalists and so forth. The black African nationalism, though, was meant to be broadband, while the Afrikaner sort to promote only exclusive interests of “volk” they regarded as “true Afrikaners”. Even its drive towards industrialisation and what they called volkskapitalisme was capitalism in the interest of only the volk. They created a complex network of Afrikaner organisations, largely through state support after 1948. This laid the foundations for the current economic structure of South Africa, whose economic hegemony is still extant. Another crucial difference between the two kinds of nationalism was the formation of Afrikaner umbrella bodies, like the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurverenigings (FAK), which saw to it that all Afrikaner cultural forms took a decidedly nationalistic turn. The National Party government eventually wished to impose this systematically laid material and cultural foundation of Afrikaner nationalism on everyone. This led to the tragic events of 16 June which we are currently commemorating this month.
The fatal difference between the two kinds of nationalism is the land question, which, as we all know, is at the centre of wealth production. The project of colonialism was not merely imperialistic, but racial also. The first people to encounter the Xhosa – and to begin 100 years of Frontier Wars – were the Afrikaners. They began the process of systematic plunder of Xhosa land and cattle that ended with the Xhosa nation on its knees after the Frontier War of Ngcayechibi (1877-9).
The Boers were also implicated in the systemic British colonial plunder of Xhosa through the dreaded Boer Commandos, whose only purpose of existence was to raid and plunder cattle. And after each Frontier War, when the Xhosa had to concede vast amounts of land, the greater amount of it was given to the Afrikaners and a small portion to the Mfengu, to act as buffers between the Xhosa and the so-called colonial borders. So, the Afrikaners were never disenfranchised to the extent that the Xhosa were, for instance; by the era of attempted socioeconomic recovery that led to African nationalism, they were basically starting from zero. Lest we forget, the root of laws of segregation in South Africa go back to Charles Brownlee, the first secretary for native affairs. The famous annual Blue books on native affairs began under his editorship in 1874. He contributed extensively to the Compendium of kafir laws and customs, which was edited by John Maclean, the chief commissioner of the British, in 1858. Morphing into the Glen Grey Act (1894) – “a bill for Africa”, according to Rhodes – this enforced segregation of natives further by totally disenfranchising them. They also compelled Africans to seek work in urban areas so as to meet obligations for racist tax laws against them.
The Bambatha Rebellion was the result of the sustained pressure put by colonial authorities on traditional societies to force indigenous peoples into the European-controlled labour market. Discontent was welling up among many black people in Natal, particularly with regard to the allocation of land for sugar plantations and the heavy tax burdens that the colonial government imposed on them. After Dinizulu was deposed by the Natal government, the traditional way of life of the Zulu people came under renewed pressure, as the colonial administration continued with its policy of subjecting pre-colonial social structures to the colonial purpose. This policy was known as indirect rule. The Pondo Rebellion in the early 1960s was a similar duplication to show that the apartheid system was, itself, the maturing of colonial laws of segregation and disengagement of black people. To date, land ownership still reflects apartheid and colonial structure, because 7% white minority own close to 70% productive and economically meaningful land.
Imbumba as an entity didn’t have longevity, but its ideas and black bourgeois founders kept evolving throughout the turn of the century, until they established what today we know as the ANC. When the Cape Parliament, which allowed blacks to be members of its proprietary democracy, attempted to restrict the African franchise through the 1887 Parliamentary Voters Registration Act (this sought to nullify tribal tenure as a basis for property qualifications), the black voters launched a boycott campaign known as Tung’umlomo (Muzzling of the mouth). The phrase meant that the whites sought to muzzle the democratic political power of black people. This was the first major serious difference between the liberals and black nationalists, who until then had voted with each other against the Afrikaner nationalists. The historian André Odendaal has written extensively on this topic. And the newspaper writings of the first black intellectuals of the Eastern Cape are collected in a series that was edited by Jeff Opland and published by KZN Press.
Tung’umlomo is the movement that Mqhayi recognises to be the seed of what eventually became known as the ANC. The organisation quickly grew out of regional politics, mostly through the influence of its foreign, educated black class. Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, in his seminal book The land is ours, follows the history of some of them who were in the legal field. When Imbumba developed affiliated local groups in every district and province, the branches were now known as Iliso Lomzi (Native Vigilance Association). This led to the launching of the African American Working Men’s Union (AAWMU) in Port Elizabeth. This fell under the influence of black American movements and Marxist workers ideology, which stretched the political differences with the liberals further. But it was also the first major step of economic organising of black people in South Africa. Phakamisa Ndzamela’s book Native merchants: The building of the business class in South Africa makes a competent case for this history.
This is how it came to pass that by the late 19th century, two major black groups first competed for socioeconomic and (after the passing of the Native Land Act of 1913) sociopolitical space in the Cape Colony. Those who favoured the moderate collaborationist approach towards the so-called “friends of the natives” clustered around John Tengo Jabavu (then a secretary of Imbumba) and his Imvo Zabantsudu, especially after his notorious quarrel with Sol Plaatje, the first secretary general of what became the ANC. The Jabavu-led native group concentrated more on socioeconomic and educational issues of self-advancement. Counterpoised with it were the people who were dissatisfied with the collaborationist approach of the moderates, and who organised themselves under the more radically nationalist umbrella of Ingqungquthela, which became known as the South African Native Congress. Ingqungquthela was more of a broad-based representative umbrella. It was formed in 1890 as a response to the Voters Registration Act of 1887. It also had purely political intentions and is what Mqhayi regarded as the father of the ANC. It also supported the plethora of emerging African independent initiatives of religious groupings (Ethiopian, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc) and fell under the leadership of the likes of Walter B Rubusana. One of its major causes was to end the tribal antagonism between the Xhosa, Mfengu, Zulu, Sotho, etc, having a major emphasis on the unbreakable black unity (Wauchope) based on prophet Ntsikana’s teaching of “Imbumba yamanyama” (the ball twine unity) against all prevailing forces.
I have given this historical background to remind us that the forces we’re currently battling with have existed in our history before in one form or another. And though the similarities are there, the current realities are unique and so caution us from making false comparisons. President Ramaphosa’s GNU, like that of Mandela, might be seen as yet another attempt of a corroborative moderate approach to socioeconomic and political issues facing us. The radical wings, on both the right and the left, are also not new. On how they turn out, history has a limited lesson, but we shall still need to charter our own path. I first encountered the posit about the similarities between African and Afrikaner nationalism in the writings of Albert Grundlingh. With limitations, I agreed that although Afrikaner nationalism differed from black nationalism in many respects, it also displayed some similar characteristics. It shared, for example, the idea that foreign powers should not be allowed to dominate local populations. Afrikaners and black Africans have always viewed nationalism as a positive development – compared with, say, liberals. They regarded it as a legitimate response to the colonial/British racially/ethnically based development of capitalism in South Africa. A marked feature of Afrikaner nationalism was the emphasis on history, whereas the African nationalism of the ANC, in particular, tended to avoid too much emphasis on tribal instinct. Even in exile, the KZN wing of the ANC allowed itself to be abused by the notion that the Xhosa within the ANC were too powerful – the so-called Xhosa Nostra. This is actually how the SACP managed to gain so much influence within the ANC even though it had negligent membership. They (ab)used the Zulu sentiments against the Xhosa Nostra to entrench themselves artificially into positions of power by consensus instead of votes. But that’s a topic for another time. I just wanted to explain why the ANC is so sensitive to the tribal politics that the MKP – through the dog-whistling, dangerous utterings of its leaders (Zuma) – is so fond of. For the Afrikaner identity, the past and tribal instinct were crucial, too. The Great Trek, the Day of the Covenant, the Anglo-Boer War, the concentration camps during that war, and other events were cast in near-religious terms. Afrikaners saw themselves as God’s chosen people, destined to bring civilisation and Christianity to the southern tip of Africa. Both forms of nationalism promoted and united political idealists and pragmatists as a formidable political force against colonialism. But the Afrikaner nationalism was isolationist and exclusive, whereas the African has always been inclusive and broad-based. Isaac Wauchope, the leader of Imbumba, who died during the sinking of the ship Mendi while transporting black Labour Corps to France during WWI, was the first chairman of Imbumba. He is known as the black leader who first propagated the change of strategy from war after it became clear that black people had lost their land in the Frontier War. He propagated the famous slogan, “Fight with a pen!”, meaning making a shift from physical to intellectual and economic war. Afrikaner nationalism also had a great emphasis on education and folk literature.
II
I first encountered the idea of post-colonial states as mimicry of their former empires in the literary writings of VS Naipaul, in particular his book The mimic men. Its posit is similar to Girard’s as quoted by Rossouw. I contend as follows:
1. Even as colonial powers impose their norms and objects of desire on the colonised community, it is possible for those with a strong sense of identity to superimpose their own identity and worldview on the hegemonic powers of the former colonised. The difficulty is also added when the means of production in the post-colonial community are still largely controlled by the former colonial master through unchanged economic apparatus and structures. Countries like India, China and even the USA managed to break the colonial shackles relatively easily after the post-colonial community took over political power from the colonial powers.
2. The internalised norms of the colonial master can be used for or against post-colonial emancipation and development, where the political will and economic muscle have been transferred for real to the post-colonial community. That this has not happened in South Africa belies the ANC government’s inability to meaningfully transform the economy they are not in control of.
3. The ANC and Afrikaner nationalism, as argued above, have always had a desire to share power with the elite without any plans or means to dismantle the colonial structure and apartheid geography. This was the major critique of black consciousness by Steve Biko against the ANC. Biko forged this from the writings of Frantz Fanon and the Negritude political philosophy of the likes of Césaire and Damas, which current left radical politics falsely claims to champion.
4. The 300 years and more of damage by colonial rule and apartheid in South Africa have been fundamental to the extent that the assumption of political power has exposed rather than mitigated it. When they assumed power, the ANC did so without proper administration and civic power geared in pursuit of its ideals and policies, to the extent that in some instances the (white) administration it inherited sometimes even worked to subvert its policies and ideals.
5. Not only did the ANC not have productive knowledge, but most of the big capital firms that had been structurally installed by colonial and apartheid capitalism effectively worked to undermine the ANC government through things like false promises, private sector investment boycott and so forth. This, of course, was collectively called absence of investor confidence. The GNU seems to be turning things around a little where investor confidence is concerned.
6. Using the state as a vehicle for the economic development of the constituency – whether in the form of government-sectioned monopoly, which established companies like Anglo-American, or injection of state capital to form a network of complex companies like Sanlam – is a common thing among post-colonial governments. The major flaw of the ANC BEE policies is that they benefited unproductive, rent-seeking political lackeys instead of clued-up businesspeople.
7. Even the reliance on state power would be tolerable, were it to be accompanied by clean governance and productive capacities that could feed the state coffers for greater egalitarian welfare distribution. China manages somehow as a socialist state with a productive capitalist system.
8. The lack of sympathy from Afrikaners about the situation of black people is one of the beguiling phenomena when historical similarities are taken into account. Even the obsessive talk about the corrupt ANC state does not excuse this lack of sympathy, especially because the NP was itself mired in corruption no less than the ANC during almost all of its tenure as a governing party.
Many say that the ruling coalition government named GNU will be good for clean governance and economic stability. If so, this is a good thing for our country. I was very much impressed by the realistic nature of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s inaugural speech. Of course, we don’t know whether he and the ANC will walk the talk this time. Also, the ANC might just have saved itself from fast becoming a rural party in the next few years. The bourgeoisie, including me, might even be attracted back to the party on a mixed ticket of political moderates with the hope of much more far-reaching, inclusive economic development. The stability of the politics, which gives confidence to the markets, means nothing for our internal dynamics if they don’t serve not only the aspirations of individual success but the working and poor classes also. Far more serious to our future is the fog of the Mzansi Spring that hangs over us, which the dog whistles of the radical left will intensely stoke. It would be great, were big capital to put their shoulder to the wheel with things like training our unemployed youth in skills that are relevant to what the market desires. This is what our big business promised but never made good on during the World Trade Centre talks and when they sought to appease regarding talks about wealth tax coming from the TRC recommendations. It is actually really pathetic that big companies that got their wealth through nefarious means due to colonial and apartheid machinations got off with that scot-free. Not even in Nazi Germany has that happened. Not only were they required to pay reparations, but they were also compelled to do things like youth skill development.
Some of the last trump cards of the GNU towards appeasing the justified anger of the majority of our people would be things like the basic income grant (BIG) and a functioning NHI. Reducing crime, creating more jobs and fighting corruption also are a given. My worry is that far more efficient governments, like the UK, have jumbled the NHI. And the BIG would require a high economic growth, which our country has no real means of gaining for now, unless big business also comes to play seriously. Of course, we could drastically reduce the public wage bill, but that would require pruning of all the unnecessary, parasitic government departments that exist only for cadre deployment and political reward. I doubt that the DA will have enough clout to compel the ANC to risk a backlash by drastically reducing the public wage bill. If you take what is happening in the Western Cape, you realise that the DA is not a paragon of that either, despite its critique of the national cabinet.
The see-sawing breakaway politics within the ANC is a common thing in its long history. In fact, even if you go to its roots, the ANC was founded by a faction that marginalised the Cape Colony faction of the South African National Native Congress (SANNC) when they held the Bloemfontein conference in 1912, which elected the leadership of Plaatje as the first secretary general. In 1959, another group broke away from the ANC to pursue what they termed an unadulterated form of Pan-Africanism. Led by Robert Sobukwe, they called themselves the Pan Africanist Congress. Gatsha Buthelezi also chose to follow his tribal instinct when he was asked to form a strong wing of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal – which he called the Inkatha Freedom Party. ANC moderates founded a breakaway party called the Congress of the People (COPE) on what it called the premises of the People’s Congress Alliance in Kliptown on 26 June 1955, when President Thabo Mbeki was recalled. To their permanent regret, they chose the most obnoxious, hot-headed leader, Mosuoa Lekota, who has since made sure to take the party into the grave with himself. The former ANC Youth League leaders chose to use the dissatisfaction of the people in the non-existent economic transformation for black people, to form the Economic Freedom Fighters when their leaders were expelled.
What I’m trying to point out is that the ANC leviathan has so far survived all the chunks taken out of it by historical happenings. There’s no reason to believe that it won’t survive the much more disjointed and fatally confused uMkhonto WeSizwe Party (MKP) breakaway. What we should be more concerned about is what beast is now being born from our collective failures as a nation. Pessimistic as this may sound, I’ve no confidence in the ANC cleaning up its act regarding the endemic culture of corruption in its ranks. I don’t see the DA looking beyond the interests of its suburbs and business class for greater solidarity with the poor. Those of us without goldfish memories recall how big business duped the administrations of both Mandela and Mbeki to relax financial laws only for their own ease of moving into occidental market hives. I don’t see the GNU of Ramaphosa getting the better of them in that regard, either. My guess is that the growing radicalism from the left will gain momentum, especially if things don’t get better. As it is now, they too are at sixes and sevens and have no workable solutions. Anger at the failures of the ANC and the betrayal of the revolutionary mandate is their only political fund. They will probably take the coming few years to unite, organise and consolidate before coming to take yet another bite out of the sinking leviathan. More serious than all this, beyond the disorganisation within the politics of the middle left, is the rise of what I call conservative nativism, which in our country is personified in the vacuous character of Jacob Zuma and the rapid growth of his MKP. Trump is the US version, Putin the Russian one, and in the European Union it manifests itself in the manner of the extreme white conservative parties winning on the anti-immigrant and Islamophobia ticket. The MKP, with Putin-sponsored bots that create an atmosphere of disinformation and doubt about our institutions and systems, is now our formal opposition party. That is going to make this a long five years of GNU. But Zuma is just the symptom, not the cause, of our problems. Even this GNU is tantamount to kicking the can of our national problems down the road. But our radical, unprincipled left is indeed a dangerous symptom that will have managed to enter the eye of the storm that is coming our way, if nothing really substantial happens in the next few years. Neither Zuma nor Malema can control the behaviour of the beast they’re trying to mount. To the ANC, they’re like the python in the Xhosa ntsomi, which a young makoti picks up while gathering wood and puts on her shawled back for warmth. She begins by feeding it crickets and locusts, and then, as it grows bigger, birds, rats and rabbits. She then has to sacrifice her egg-laying chickens to appease its hunger, and then her milk-giving goat and cow, before it demands her children. She flees her house only when it darts its red eyes to squash and swallow her. What happens to the country as the ANC leviathan dies? Remember, as is the case now, no opposition party really gains from the ANC’s demise. It has always been more like the ANC, in ouroboros-style, devours itself into multiple opposition parties. At some stage, one of them will probably be strong enough to replace it, but which one among the trends we see? That is the real question.