Indigenising the Rainbow Nation: Justice or Utopian Folly?

“And so the real drama of revolutionary thought is revealed. In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it finds in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist. Revolutionary thought, therefore, cannot dispense with memory: it is in a perpetual state of tension. In contemplating the result of an act of rebellion, we shall have to say, each time, whether it remains faithful to its first noble promise or whether, through lassitude or folly, it forgets its purpose and plunges into a mire of tyranny or servitude.”

The Rebel, Albert Camus (emphasis added: bold)

Marginalised and impoverished youth in South Africa today face living in a post-Apartheid society that is characterised by a dominant middle class that has attempted to gloss over the enduring impacts and legacy effects of its Apartheid history and ‘sweep it under the table’. In turn, the ruling ex-liberation party – the ANC – has descended into fragmentation, corruption, self-interest and ignominy; and has lost the moral authority to provide visionary leadership. This has ensured that a disillusioned, fragmented and exclusive society still persists 21 years after the end of Apartheid. The ‘rainbow nation’ has lost its way, and finds itself devoid of a shared political vision.

Consequently, recent developments in the political spectrum in South Africa have elevated a new discursive niche to prominence. A program of indigenisation, masquerading as black consciousness, has come to dominate the politics of the marginalised black youth demographic. It has its roots in the emergence of two new radical ‘left’ political parties that seek to capture the urban youth demographic, who have been marginalised by deep racial inequalities, the failure of societal institutions to nurture and support them, as well as a dire lack of adequate basic service delivery.

When the Economic Freedom Fighter’s (EFFs) first came into existence, it touted a “Marxist-Lenninist-Fanonist” political ideology, sprinkled with black consciousness rhetoric. Later, however, the main founder of this ideology, Andile Mngxitama was unceremoniously ejected from the EFF’s ranks after being harassed and publicly humiliated (he was cornered and forced to remove his EFF shirt at a press conference). He has since formed his own political party, called Black First Land First, and now espouses a political ideology that purports to be a mixture of the ideas of Frantz Fanon and Thomas Sankara. Steve Biko’s ideas are also thrown into the mix here and there, along with the occasional Malcom X quote to boot.

In this new and emerging political ideological milieu, ideas are being mixed and matched with scant regard for their roots and premises, as well as the actual political examples that were set by latter day black consciousness leaders in Africa. Privilege theory, for example, is tactically deployed (even if theoretically incorrectly) in service of the development of this emerging political niche. To be fair, it is early days, and some room for experimentation is necessary when formulating a new politics.

Yet, even in black consciousness terms, the political ideology being espoused today presents a significant departure from historical understandings of black consciousness as a political and personal philosophy. In Steve Biko’s framing, for example, to be black was “not a matter of pigmentation” but “a reflection of a mental attitude”. Blackness, included all (non-white) oppressed peoples in South Africa. However, the boundaries of blackness have been revised to include only indigenous black South Africans. In this respect, it is not a true black consciousness movement, but is rather embarking on a programme of indigenisation i.e. the logical outcome of black consciousness is now seen as a programme of indigenisation. This flies in the face of the national project that the ‘new’ South Africa and the struggle against Apartheid, was based on, and which was central to the black consciousness movement of the 1970s in South Africa. According to Steve Biko,

“We see a completely non-racial society. We don’t believe, for instance, in the so-called guarantees for minority rights, because guaranteeing minority rights implies the recognition of portions of the community on a race basis. We believe that in our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, just the people. And those people will have the same status before the law and they will have the same political rights before the law. So in a sense it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.”

Steve Biko, I Write What I Like, Interview with German TV

And so there is rightly, a fair amount of concern over what is emerging as an attractive revisionist political alternative for the youth of South Africa. It is questionable, given the historical context that the democratic South Africa has emerged from, whether indigenisation can play an effective role in consolidating the constitutional modern nation state that South Africa has become. Until now, the South African nation building project has been one that was mainly premised on building a national identity. While it has to be acknowledged that the manner in which this has been approached – i.e. primarily through the “rainbow nation” narrative – is in dispute, and that nationalism itself can prove to be a dangerous precondition for xenophobia and exclusion, it is undoubtedly a nationalist trajectory that post-Apartheid South Africa embarked upon.

In this, it has drawn on the leadership examples provided by visionary African leaders such as Julius Nyerere, to establish a national identity that rises above tribal, religious and other identity markers, and provides a sense of national unity that overcomes local and historical differences to hold together a geographical region that was bounded by colonial intervention. In a nationalist framework, once you are born in a country you are a full citizen and are native to it. Even a “settler” becomes a native through this project. In the long term, whether settler or native, everyone becomes part of the nation’s identity as a whole. That is, the nationalist framework focuses on the history of belonging.

In contrast, indigenisation projects are quasi race/history-based and implies diluting or doing away with nationalism and substituting it with indigeneity instead. That is, indigenisation focuses on the historical “right” to belonging instead. This right to belonging is also intimately tied up with the right to ownership, and this is the central mechanism through which colonial and post-colonial injustices are confronted and challenged.

In the nationalist framework of nation-building different accounts of how people come to constitute the historical mosaic that ascribes the national identity are validated. In contrast, indigenisation goes far beyond addressing historical imbalances and exploitation; it is – as a national philosophy – a program of exclusion. It is not about overcoming colonialism; it is about invalidating it altogether. That is, it attempts to “dispense with memory”; to eradicate memory in service of a utopian past.

One of the profound ironies of this approach is that the genuine ‘first peoples’ of South Africa (i.e. the San and Khoi San) get no mention and are still fighting to have their languages recognised. That is, a programme of selective indigenisation has emerged; one that selects an imagined memory for political expedience.

Yet indigenisation is not automatically fascist, especially in the postcolonial context. It is, however, more a reaction to the past, than it is an actionable framework to shape the future. Moreover, the presumption that a specific history exists, and is attached to us, purely by virtue of birth, is always a dangerous idea, precisely because it places a fantasy that explains every facet of our existence at the centre of it. The tyranny of indigeneity is not a mirage or an imaginary; it is a fact of 20^th and 21^st Century existence, as much as it was a fact of colonial existence. Indeed, indigeneity is also the backbone of settler identity, where settlers view themselves as transplants from cultures that they are long removed from. When indigeneity is invoked in contrast and in opposition to humanitarianism, it ceases to occupy the space of moral or principled action; instead, it becomes a vehicle for division and polarisation. No true struggle against oppression can escape the fact that it has a universal obligation to oppose all oppression, everywhere that it exists, and in whatever form. That is, to give itself up in service of the many, and not a group, a few or an individual.

Twenty one years into the post-Apartheid democratic dispensation, South African revolutionary politics is suffering from an identity crisis, which is perhaps best captured in the statement by Albert Camus quoted above. The emergence of new, radical ‘left’ politics suffers from a compulsion to eradicate history, rather than to overcome it. In a desperate effort to resurrect black identity (ironically, in a post-colonial context), a forgotten and imagined past is being resurrected. That is; an attempt to reinstate indigeneity at the heart of national politics is being conducted at the expense of memory.

There can be no healing without memory; no utopian project of indigenisation can undo the colonial and apartheid projects. Indigenisation cannot replace memory; it can only offer a utopian set of virtues (e.g. 'ubuntufication') that make hypocrites of those who attempt to locate themselves solely within its self-referential frame. We cannot imagine away the past; we have to live with it as it manifests in the present in order to overcome it. Utopian aspirations are commendable, but utopia can only exist as a pretence, and virtue can thus only be inhabited by hypocrisy. And so when hypocrisy becomes the norm, challenges to it are met with tyranny, for only tyranny can expunge all dissent, and make reality of artifice. Indeed, that is the purpose of tyranny; to subjugate all before a norm, irrespective of what it is.

A profound bifurcation has emerged in the political realm in South Africa, one that finds expression as a profound gap in intergenerational politics. The disillusioned, marginalised youth have adopted a philosophy of renewal that seeks to cleanse the public and political realm of its fraught past, rather than embrace it as definitive and irrevocably resident in the present; a fact of our existence that cannot be eradicated. At the same time, the ANC has become a mere shadow of itself as a former liberation organisation, succumbing to self-destructive party politics that loyally submits to the bureaucracy of internal processes, and concedes misplaced loyalty to a discredited leadership. The inescapable conclusion is that while the ANC seems to have been plunged into the mire of servitude, its radical left opposition appear to have embarked upon the path to tyranny.

End

 ***Note that the opinion presented in this piece does not seek to deter from the many legitimate struggles of first and/or indigenous peoples, which has an important role to play in contemporary politics, but merely to point out the very apparent and potentially grave mistakes that are being made by invoking indigenisation as a politically and socially exclusionary ideology in the South African context.

Zuma and the Decline of the Post-Concourt ANC

“The President thus failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. This failure is manifest from the substantial disregard for the remedial action taken against him by the Public Protector in terms of her constitutional powers.”

“President Zuma was duty-bound to, but did not, assist and protect the public protector so as to ensure her independence, impartiality, dignity and effectiveness by complying with her remedial action.”

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, Constitutional Court Judgement on Nkandla

The ANC is currently in a threefold crisis. It is wracked by corruption, internal conflict, fragmentation, a loss of political leadership and direction, and is stuck with an immovable, paranoid executive. It is also increasingly the target of large scale societal discontent and is in danger of losing significant territory to an urban ‘protest vote’. Lastly, it is characterised by duplicitous loyalty, self-preservation, and a dire lack of accountability and transparency, which manifests mainly through a tendency to put the processes of the ANC before that of government and the state, and to treat ethical and constitutional matters as though they are subordinate to the logic of the ANC.

Hell No We Won’t Go!

The recent constitutional court judgement, which declared that the president of South Africa – Jacob Zuma – and the entire national assembly of parliament, had violated the constitution, acted illegally, and failed to protect the “dignity” of the public protector, was an historical landmark judgement in democratic South African history. The drama of the constitutional court judgement reading, delivered by chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, eclipsed even the events of Polokwane, even though both were equally significant events in South African political history in their times.

There was no mistaking what the constitutional court found. It delivered a damning indictment upon the abilities of the president to make decisions that are constitutionally sound, and of his majority ANC-led government to operate within the ambit of the constitution, and uphold its key tenets. This was not a wrap on the knuckles; this was expulsion from school altogether. It was a vote of no confidence in both the president and his majority ANC led parliament. It was an event that should, under normal circumstances, in a healthy democracy, lead to substantive changes in the body politic and government of a country. In the normal course of democratic action, the right an honourable thing to do would be for the president to resign, and for the national assembly to dissolve parliament and hold elections.

And so, the “top six” leaders of the ANC – including the president – met soon after the constitutional court judgement to “discuss” the matter. Predictably, they expressed their full support for the president. Soon afterward, the National Working Committee of the ANC met at a plush hotel in Cape Town to hold further discussions, and emerged professing reinforced support for the president.

The facetious and misleading response of the ANC leadership has been that the constitutional court did not ask for the president to be removed nor did it specifically state that he violated his oath of office. However, this is a thinly veiled ruse; the constitutional court cannot ask for the recall of the president (due to separation of powers), only parliament can decide on that.

The constitutional court judgement states that, “This imposition of an obligation specifically on the President still raises the question: which obligation specifically imposed by the Constitution on the President has he violated? Put differently, how did he fail to uphold, defend and respect the supreme law of the Republic?” It can hence reasonably be concluded that the judgement that he did indeed fail to “uphold, defend and respect” the constitution directly implies that he did violate the constitution, and his oath of office.

At the same time, the South African Communist Party (SACP) strongly criticised the president, in contrast to the Council for South African Trade Unions (COSATU) which professed its support for the president “at all costs”. Both are key members of the ruling alliance, yet while the SACP has grown in strength in recent years, COSATU has split dramatically, with its eight largest unions having departed from it last year. The tripartite alliance has never been more fragmented and discordant in its history

Moreover, mixed messages are emerging from both the ranks of the ANC, as well as its veteran leaders. Kgalema Motlanthe, Ahmed Kathrada, Dennis Goldberg, Ronnie Kasrils, Sheryl Carolus, Trevor Manuel and Zwelinzima Vavi have all called for the president to step down. The South African Council of Churches and other religious leaders have joined forces with some of the abovementioned leaders to establish a united civil society front that intends to take mass action to call for the president’s resignation.

After senior Umkhonto we Sizwe top level generals called for the president to step down, the South African National Defence Union also chimed in. The Gauteng chapter of the ANC has rebelled, calling for the president to step down, while the Sefako Makgatho branch in the Greater Johannesburg region has called for the president to step down, or face internal ANC disciplinary procedures that apply to all members equally.

It is not just the constitutional court findings that have placed pressure on the president and his leadership. The president’s bizarre comments regarding geography, economics and the rights of women, coupled with the Nkandla, Nenegate, the nuclear deal and the numerous Gupta scandals – as well as the blind, illegal defence of the president by his administration – have rattled the faith of many ANC loyalists.

Zuma’s handling of these recent affairs are a strong indication that his decision-making – when it comes to the affairs of the state – is not well formulated, while his handling of ANC and government top structures indicates that his decisions are well calculated; a wily attempt to secure loyalty amongst his government and state organisation(s) networks, and thereby to exercise control over the state. However, this loyalty has come at a grave cost to the ANC and the country, and the pressure on parliament and the ruling party has mounted to crisis proportions. The ANC, is at its most defiant, however, and ironically, this defiance has clearly precipitated its decline.

In the theory of the big bang, there are speculations as to how the universe will come to an end. Will it end with a bang, as it came into existence (i.e. a “bang-bang” universe)? Or will it be a “bang-whimper” universe, where it slowly and incrementally fizzles out of existence, its decline barely noticeable except to an observant few? The same question could be posed of the current ANC leadership, as the manner of the ANC’s decline will have significant and dire consequences for the country as a whole.

Our democracy’s dependence on the ANC, in all spheres of government and the state, as well as in the homes and communities of the voting majority, cannot be underestimated. The ANC has also come to be a central marker in the identity of the post-Apartheid South African voter, whether one loves or loathes them. In this sense, they have become indispensable to how to understand ourselves as a nation, as a body politic and our historical narrative is intimately tied up with it. So it is not insignificant or irrelevant what the manner of the ANC’s decline is.

Should the ANC go out with a bang, splitting from within and losing its majority as a result of rapid fragmentation and collapse (i.e. the departure of the SACP, COSATU and senior leaders within the ANC), it will leave a massive vacuum where the majority voter could thoughtlessly place their vote. A natural, automatic home for many would suddenly be bereft of the power to effectively act as a voice for the majority. There are many potential consequences of this, not least of which is the potential for increased frustration, anger, marginalisation and resentment in the public sphere, leading to political instability. The balance of power, if suddenly lost, can easily turn into a scary scenario for the country as a whole, as the question of who fills that vacuum and captures the public imagination most effectively in that vacuum, becomes relevant. Should it prove to be an angry, populist voice, it may precipitate a quick decline into paralysis and recrimination.

Should the ANC limp on, weakening incrementally but steadily over time, slowly dissipating in terms of power and electoral majority, there is a strong likelihood that the “eat first” philosophy will intensify as the ANC’s patronage networks make hay while the sun still ‘shines’. Indeed, should Jacob Zuma see out the rest of his term, his now discredited leadership will likely make every effort to profit off his lame duck presidency before it expires. If he is then replaced by a similar leader, along with a similar leadership who effectively copy-cat the precedent that he and his leadership have set (as it has proven itself to be a model that works effectively to capture power within the ANC, government and the state), then a process of erosion that ultimately degrades and renders defunct all our critical institutions will likely result. And when the damage is done over a long period of time it may prove difficult to undo.

Societal Discontent and the Protest Vote

Either scenario hosts significant potential risks and hazards; this is critical to remember in the current political climate in South Africa. To add to the confusion from within the ANC and the political domain, societal discontent is at an all-time high in South Africa. The memory of the Marikana massacre refuses to slip away quietly into history and subordinate itself to the liberation-party narrative that the ANC’s rhetoric so desperately depends on. Economic growth has stalled, unemployment (especially amongst the youth) has skyrocketed, and inequality is amongst the highest in the world. The rising costs of goods and services is bound to hit already stretched South African households very hard.

Dissatisfaction, and discontent with crippling state corruption that runs all the way from the very top to the bottom of the ANC, and failure to ensure basic service provision, has resulted in an extremely high number, rate and intensity of community-based public protests. These are commonly termed “service delivery protests” but they encapsulate a much broader set of dissatisfactions with the ANC led government.

In the lives of ordinary, everyday South Africans, corruption, maladministration and exploitation and nepotism has become an unavoidable and stark reality. Just recently, protests against the ANC’s appointment of its own choice of councillor, above that of the community’s (in Katlehong) led to full scale riots, with youth engaged in full stone-throwing battle with the police (which was met of course with buckshot and rubber bullets).

The protests are an indication of the levels of dissatisfaction that exists within the voter base of the ANC. It is worth remembering that dissatisfaction naturally seeks expression; it is a disturbance within an individual, community or organisation of people that becomes amplified when it is bottled, as it resonates more when it is trapped and bursts out dramatically when it finds an outlet. The number of ‘service delivery’ protests have steadily and unflaggingly risen to scary heights under the Zuma administration. It is only a matter of time before the protests on the streets find their way into the voting booths.

The lack of believable accountability, sends the message that the aim of attaining power in South Africa is to rise above the law itself, instead of subordinating to it in service of the people and in the interests of safeguarding and strengthening the key institutions of society. The problem with the trajectory that the ANC-led government is on (i.e. for its own sustainability) is that it progressively renders ordinary people powerless in the face of their government. As they increasingly feel forced to exercise their voice through channels of protest, rather than the formal channels that are available to them (because they are seen to be futile avenues for political expression and action), the more likely ordinary voters will be to choose to make a protest vote at the ballot box.

A vote away from the ANC used to be viewed as an exercise in futility. However, the political landscape is changing rapidly. One indication of this, is the high percentage of votes that the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) garnered in its very first election (i.e. around 6 per cent). They, being an illegitimate child of the ANC themselves, are symbolic of the extent of frustration – especially of the youth – with the futility of engaging power and taking political action through ANC structures. Until the former ANC Youth League leadership constituted the EFF, and entered the political sphere, it was common to assert that political life “outside the ANC” was doomed to disappointment.

The EFF has since managed to capture the public imagination at large – for better or for worse – and have undoubtedly energised the political sphere in a manner that all other opposition parties, until now, have failed to do so. They took the president to the constitutional court and won, and they did so dramatically, with the eyes of the public resting squarely upon them as they agitated for change through open confrontation in parliament and broke the yoke of inter-generational hierarchy in society and the political spectrum. As they increasingly demonstrate that life outside the ANC has become viable and significant two consequences become more likely; (1) more may be tempted to leave the ANC fold, and seek their political fortunes elsewhere, and (2) voters may become more emboldened to exercise their protest vote.

The notion of a significant protest vote emerging at the ballot in the next local election thus seems plausible. This is more the case precisely because it is not a national election. By casting a vote away from the ANC in the upcoming local elections in August, those wishing to make their dissatisfaction clear to the ANC can do so without incurring national consequences. There is a strong likelihood that some of the major metropoles, such as Johannesburg and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality may exercise this protest vote in significant and telling numbers.

And if they do at the upcoming local elections, perhaps then the president will find himself bereft of support, especially as his tenure as an outgoing president is effectively a lame duck one, and those seeking to secure their positions within the next administration would have to make their moves now in order to guarantee their political currency does not expire with his presidency.

After all, there is a new leadership on its way, and that is what many political actors within the ANC will be setting their sights on. If association with Zuma discounts them from the possibility of holding public office in future, they will ditch him as quickly as he ditches those that become expendable to him. Of that there should be little doubt by now; many in the ANC operate in an atmosphere of fear and denial, mouthing platitudes and routine statements of loyalty to stay within the fold of the ruling elite, and are ultra-cautious about being ‘stabbed in the back’ or having their skeletons exposed.

It is a game of high stakes and the survivalist instincts of many that were kicked into gear a long time ago. That is why it is so difficult to find anybody from within the ranks of the current ruling elite who are willing to speak out against clearly gross violations and abuses of power. They will be watching, waiting and calculating in an effort to guess which way the dice will fall, so that they can survive the end of the Zuma administration with their political careers intact. When the president makes decisions that provoke a backlash, they get the opportunity to exhibit their fierce loyalty to the ANC through him, making them perfect candidates for continued service should he eventually be replaced by a similar leader after the next national election.

Survival Tactics: Bluff and Bluster

This begs the question; what is required for survival within the troubled ranks of the ANC leadership these days? Their loyalty and defensive tactics are not complex. It involves toeing the party line, and raising the internal processes of the ANC up above all other processes; making the pretence that it is normal that these processes should take precedence over that of government and the state. A similar ruse was conducted when parliament attempted to supplant the findings of the public protector by conducting its own internal inquiry into the Nkandla matter, effectively leaving it in the hands of the ANC to pronounce judgement on its leader(s) and thereby itself.

Even though the constitutional court found that the president and the national assembly had violated the constitution and failed to protect the “dignity” of the public protector, the speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete feigned confusion when asked whether the national assembly would apologise to the public protector. ‘Apologise for what?’ was the essence of her response. Her compatriot presiding officer, Thandi Modise (NCOP chairperson), denied that the constitution had been violated, stating instead that previous court judgements had given them the impression that the findings and recommendations of the public protector could be revised by parliament, and thanked the constitutional court for clearing the matter up.

The ANC and its leaders in government have treated the searing judgement of the constitutional court as a mere procedural, bureaucratic exercise. In truth the judgement was anything but a lenient or perfunctory one; it effectively found that the national assembly and the president had failed in their constitutional mandate, and had thereby engaged in the worst form of illegality that parliament can be accused of. This constant “rewriting” of judgements and findings, however, appears to have no end when they are hijacked by processes that the ANC have majority control and power over.

More troubling is that should the president and the ANC-dominated national assembly face no serious consequences for violating the constitution, future leaders will be emboldened and will treat the constitution lightly, making it more likely that the Nkandla affair will not be the last successful assault on the constitution but the first. Viewed in this light, it is not “state capture” that is most troubling for the future of South Africa, but rather the capture of the ANC itself.

President Jacob Zuma’s hold over the key leadership structures of the ANC is undoubtedly strong, and they are in large part loyal to his leadership (and indeed were selected to be so). He himself is not an authoritarian, but as a self-regulating system, the network of patronage around him wields authoritarian power over government and the state. It is because only with guaranteed loyalty, whether through fear or favour, can such power be so thoroughly omnipotent as to sabotage every attempt to hold him accountable.

The president therefore cannot be held to account through direct confrontation from within the ANC or inside parliament. The only direct confrontation that can stir the president into action is if mass public protest literally converges upon the doorsteps of power, as the #FeesMustFall student protesters demonstrated last year.

Effectively, the only option for Zuma’s removal that presents itself in the absence of a mass uprising or defeat at the polls, is to wait for the president to implode the power of his own standing and his office by himself, precisely by allowing him to make his own decisions, and to script his own responses. In the final analysis, it is more likely that it will be the very politics of survival that Zuma has so skilfully exhibited and entrenched within the fabric of the ruling elite in the ANC that will ultimately prove to be his undoing. For it is no doubt true, that morally bankrupt leaders are often undone by the moral bankruptcy of their partners in crime. The old adage that there is no honour amongst thieves, is an eternal truth that bears remembering in the times we live in.

The precedent that the ANC has set under the Zuma leadership, and what the impact of that will be in the long term, is perhaps of more concern than anything else; more of the same will destroy our democracy. After what people sacrificed for it, there shouldn’t even be a question about what is right and what is wrong. And the ANC, above all, should not need to be dragged kicking and screaming all the way to the constitutional court to know the difference. It is the one party in South Africa with unprecedented historical moral authority in the political sphere, and should be setting and upholding the standards of our body politic and our democracy.

Xenophobic electioneering will cost the poor: The seizing of foreign owned spaza shops in the North West Province

by Vanya Gastrow

Recently North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo surprised many when he proposed to seize all foreign owned spaza shops in the province, and hand them over to South Africans, barring foreigners from opening any shops in future. This is despite the fact that many of those shopkeepers are asylum seekers and refugees who are legally entitled to work in the country, and have few other means of supporting themselves.

While seizing anyone’s hard-earned business, not because of any conduct on their part, but because of some intrinsic feature belonging to them such as their nationality, is self-evidently unjust, there are a number of other reasons to be appalled by the Premier’s plan. First it is arguably unlawful. The Refugees Act grants refugees the right to work in the country. The Supreme Court of Appeal has also ruled that asylum seekers are entitled to work in South Africa, and that both asylum seekers and refugees may engage in self-employment. Furthermore, refugees and asylum seekers are protected by the Bill of Rights and thus enjoy the right to dignity and equality.

Confiscating refugee and asylum seekers’ spaza shops and preventing them from opening new ones drastically limits their ability to work and survive, given that the formal job market is not easily accessible to them. It also makes a mockery of the constitution’s declaration that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.”

Other features of the proposal also make it nonsensical. For example, in a time of drought and rising food prices, the closing down of foreign spaza shops is a manifestly reckless decision. Foreign spaza shops are known to be popular in low-income South African neighbourhoods because they provide poor people below the bread line with affordable basic food and household items.  This is not only because foreign spaza shops’ generally offer low prices, but also because of their customer focussed services.

When I conducted research for the African Centre for Migration & Society in 2010 and 2011 South African residents described that in addition to low prices they preferred shopping at foreign spaza shops because they were better stocked, and were willing to provide credit. They also sold “hampers” or bulk collections of food items at discounted prices, and items in small and flexible qualities, such as a single tea bag or egg, all in close proximity to where they lived. Without access to this crucial service the poor in many villages and towns in the North West will be worse off.  Other stakeholders that are economically reliant on foreign national shops will also be affected. These include wholesalers, suppliers, manufacturers, producers, landlords, and employees. In summary, the Premier’s strategy will do little in terms of promoting economic growth in the province. Rather it will likely lead to the further suffering of the Province’s most desperate.

During his report back on the ANC NEC meeting, Gwede Mantashe tried to explain the proposal by mentioning that in the past, some African countries have done the same. He is correct that there are countries in Africa that prohibit foreign nationals operating small businesses. These countries (such as Ghana for example) cater for refugees and asylum seekers by housing them in squalid refugee camps where they languish for years living off relief aid.  Whether such a plan would be feasible in South Africa, a country, which holds human dignity as a corner stone of its constitution, is questionable.

The Premier’s proposal is also flawed in its overly optimistic assumption that South Africans will quickly fill the gap left by foreign nationals once they have been forced out of their shops and barred from opening new ones. So far South African businesses have generally not been as competitive as foreign national spaza shops and have not seized opportunities in the market to the same extent. There is therefore a high likelihood that many of the businesses taken over from foreigners may lie vacant or go bankrupt.

Another absurdity is the Premier’s belief that setting up massive warehouses the province's four districts will invigorate South African spaza businesses. If anything it could see the Province’s grocery wholesale market sink along with its spaza market, not to mention the state’s coffers being abused through the proposed R200 million state surety and guarantees on offer.

Despite the ludicrousy of the plan, its true danger lies in the ruling party’s muted response to it.  On the eve of Human Rights day and the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, Gwede Mantashe’s defended the proposal by casually stating that small businesses should be incubators for South Africans.  His failure to express any disapproval or regret towards seizing thousands of vulnerable people’s livelihoods is alarming. It demonstrates xenophobia in its most dangerous form, that is, when it becomes an ordinary and everyday practice in society.

The proposal therefore poses many hazards to the North West Province and country more generally.  It is legally questionable and does not make sense for poor South Africans whom it aims to serve. Furthermore, Mantashe’s banal and casual response towards it suggests that basic respect for human rights principles is on the drastic decline, which should be of concern to all of us. Instead of a genuine plan to invigorate the economy, the proposal seems more like an attempt to secure votes through capitalizing on local xenophobia and putting local economies at great risk. This will likely come at a severe cost to the poor who are already burdened by rising food prices and weakened economic growth.

  

By: Vanya Gastrow

Freelance Researcher in Migration, Law & Society and PhD Candidate at the African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University

Tel: 082 685 1332 / email: vgastrow@hotmail.com

Decolonizing a Fragmented Memory: The Youth in Post-Apartheid South Africa

It is with more than mild irritation that I recently read through Judith February’s latest opinion piece in the Daily Maverick, entitled "A burning desire: To learn from the past or destroy the present?" Aside from the didactic, patronising tone of the article, her previous piece on the students so completely missed the mark, and so thoroughly underestimated the intelligence of the students, that it might have seemed obvious that continuing her critique in the same tone would be bound to annoy more than it educates.

Her previous piece, entitled “Why is the state not a target of student protests?" was written on the 20^th of October 2015. It adopted a haughty tone towards the students, and presumed to lecture them on where to direct the protests that they themselves had successfully organised and brought to the forefront of public attention. The very next day (21^st October 2015) the students marched to the gates of parliament and occupied the parliamentary precinct, effectively relegating her article to the dustbin of history, the short-lived usefulness of its analysis lasting all but a day. I therefore expected that she would offer a more nuanced analysis in this article, and exhibit a great deal more humility than she previously displayed towards the complexity of the subject.

Perhaps in her conceit, she may have awarded herself a measure of credit for the “refocusing” of student action on government and the state, but if that were the case she would be mistaken, for the youth of today are far more informed about their history, as well as their current condition, than many of the activists and political elite of the last century appreciate. There has been a steady stream of such articles and opinion pieces emerging from established South African media outlets; where the emphasis is on ruing the condition of the youth of today, who don’t ‘know’ or ‘understand’ their history well enough to take political action in the public realm.

In her new piece, February thoughtlessly invoked now familiar – if overused – props and tropes in her critique of the student movement. It begins by alluding to their lack of uncritical acceptance and adoration of Nelson Mandela as evidence of their ignorance of their good fortune for having such a powerful symbolic leader. It then delves into some painful history (i.e. District 6) and venerates the courage and sensitivity of those who creatively brought those stories back into the public imagination and conversation during the Apartheid era (i.e. David Kramer and Taliep Pieterson). Lastly, and most tellingly, she raised the burning of a painting of Molly Blackburn (“who worked closely with Mathews Goniwe in Lingelihle township at Cradock on issue of rent restructuring”) as evidence of “ignorance of our past”. Violence, she reminds us, cannot become the “new order of things”.

Yet, the laments over burnt paintings has now become a familiar, and overused refrain. As was the case with the burnt painting of a black painter, Keresemose Richard Baholo, the chattering classes were quick to pounce upon it as evidence of the students' ignorance. However, Baholo himself quickly dismissed this blatant and opportunistic hijacking of events – and the deluded middle class pretensions associated with it – by coming out in support of the students. Likewise, who is to say that Nelson Mandela and Taliep Pieterson themselves, were they alive today, may not prove equally sympathetic to the plight of the youth in South Africa and the student activists who have brought it to the fore. So easily forgotten these days, is that Nelson Mandela was kept in prison for much longer than he could have been because he refused to “renounce violence”, as was demanded of him by PW Botha’s apartheid government.  

Ironically, however, Judith February frames her argument in terms of the “risk of repeating apartheid’s erasure of knowledge and memory”. So it is perhaps correct to assume that she – as well as the very many commentators and who have offered their opinions on the student protests – are not entirely unaware of the complexities of history and memory, especially in the post-Apartheid context in South Africa. 

However, and surprisingly, what they all seem to miss – in their lengthy monologues and diatribes – is how South African history has been constructed in the post-Apartheid dispensation. History, as it is commonly understood and experienced in South Africa today, is fragmented, even schizophrenic in nature. It is fragmented because it was largely sacrificed for a nation-building narrative that put cosmetic change and short term stability (nay; meta-stability) ahead of real, meaningful healing and restitution.

This is not just a casual statement. It is evidenced in the ultra-slow pace of land reclamations, and the fact that after 21 years, out of the 400 cases that were allocated for investigation and prosecution for apartheid crimes only 3 have been taken to the courts. These are but two ‘hard’ examples of the lack of meaningful engagement with our history as South Africans. There are also myriad ‘soft’ examples of how the past is misconstrued in order to serve the purposes of various societal groups. One of the most difficult ones to stomach, was the overriding perspective of white Afrikaners – early on in the transition to democracy – that there was some level of equivalence between the ANC as a liberation movement, and the National Party apartheid government; a narrative that posed both as “equally misguided”. Apartheid was declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations; it cannot be compared in any reasonable sense with the politics of liberation movements in South Africa. 

The chances for real and meaningful change to unfold in South Africa's transition to democracy were diminished by the extension and perpetuation of the rainbow-nation, nation-building narrative far beyond its short term usefulness, in service of maintaining a status quo - which in a sense, is a of security of the known - in order to retain a sense of consistency, familiarity and stability. We were, in the majority, all complicit in this trade-off, and failed to challenge it adequately because the appearance of stability had engendered us with the optimism that is associated with the possibility of benefiting from the opportunity of an ensured continuity.   

So it is difficult to understand why our activists, struggle heroes and opportunists are so surprised at the very disconnect with history that they introduced and perpetuated. They appear to metaphorically throw their hands up in frustration in every article about this emerging, 'errant' youth. What is clear, is that they haven’t bothered to actually listen to what the students and their leaders have to say.

If they had listened, they would perhaps have a more nuanced and insightful appreciation of the understanding that the youth and student movement have of the current condition of South African society and its key institutions, and how that condition is directly linked to South African history, and extends not just into the Apartheid era, but all the way back into the colonial era. That is why the students are concerned with how to “decolonise” the institutions of higher education, as one of the starting points for the transformation of society as a whole.

They are more concerned with how they experience that history in the present, than they are with constructing narratives with precise chronologies solely for the purposes of understanding. This is because they are concerned, not just with understanding our society, but acting upon it. Residing in the space of action requires a great deal more than simply engaging with our history as artifactual. It requires engaging with how the past manifests in the present, as it is how that past emerges – in myriad, everyday interactions – which are both fragmented and distributed, that remains primarily responsible for holding back and preventing the transformation of South African society as a whole.

That is, the youth of today are concerned with a much more elusive target – one which resides in the system – that is; the past that shadows us through every moment of the present, but which is so deeply and thoughtlessly ingrained that it escapes our attention and ability to grapple with it effectively. It is distributed, and hence presents a more difficult challenge, as it is only encountered in the unstructured, fragmented experience of everyday life. It is difficult to “hold in ones hands” so to speak.

This is a subject that I have personally struggled with for many years. I was twenty years old in 1994, and have lived equal amounts of time under Apartheid as in a free South Africa. I found adjusting to the new realities of a post-Apartheid dispensation extremely difficult, and am acutely aware that many of my generation, and the next, struggle equally with assimilating and acting effectively on the fraught history that we have inherited in post-Apartheid and post-colonial South Africa. I hence laboured over the subject in my own writing in order to understand what it meant for our future.

Some of the answers to my questions are now being provided by the youth of today. Under the banner of “decolonisation” the youth of today are attempting to seek out ways of taking action within South African society to transform it through a different process than was undertaken early in the post-1994 dispensation. Their approach is in contrast to it, and hence requires a different set of processes to actualise.

First and foremost, they are building awareness of a condition that is entirely and unmistakeably visible to them, in response to their frustration at a society that tends to sweep difficult and agonistic engagements under the carpet in service of maintaining the prevailing top-down rainbow-nation narrative. That is, the government-led rainbow nation narrative, that was intended as a project for nation-building, is today holding back open and frank exchange on the lack of transformation, and the everyday difficulties of encountering systemic privilege, racism, sexism and prejudice in South African society.

Perhaps it is to be expected that the fossils of yesteryear would be more obsessed with the artifacts of history rather than how that history manifests in the present i.e. how it is experienced by the youth as they encounter a society that is in denial about the very obvious shortcomings of its current condition. It’s all fine and well to adopt Oxbridge postures and deliver lectures on the lessons of history in order to impress your peers, but it is quite another thing to attempt to engage seriously with students and the youth, and the key issues that they are boldly attempting to tackle in our society.

Seizing upon a minority of misguided actions to launch into repetitive – and frankly over-rehearsed – critiques of the student movement, without actually engaging them or their thought processes with keen interest, serves no purpose other than to reinforce the establishment that the new elite have successfully occupied, upheld and gained substantial benefits from. Indeed, what is telling, is how scarcely any criticism or similar “advice” is directed at academics, the institutions of higher learning and government itself. This, more than anything, lies in stark contrast to the detailed preachy advisories that have been directed at the students, and says everything we need to know about what has motivated the aging products of the 20th Century to take to the pulpit once again.

  

“Together, Hand-in-Hand”: Disruption, Violence and Protest Myths in South Africa

“Together, hand-in-hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we will liberate this country.” Winnie Mandela, Munsieville, 1986

When a defiant Winnie Mandela uttered the words, “together, hand-in-hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we will liberate this country”, in Munsieville in 1986, it sent ripples throughout the South African public realm. The displays of violence committed in protest were already at an all-time high, and necklacing – the practise of securing a used tyre around the neck of an accused traitor, dousing it in petrol, and setting it alight – represented the ritualised use of fire in its most grotesque and ultimate manifestation. It was a clear message that there would be no middle ground; everyone had to choose a side, and if you chose the wrong one, you may pay for it with your life.

She might as well have set a match to a river of gasoline running through the very arteries of the fabric of South African society itself. In the mid-1980s there was a clear and palpable sense, in ordinary urban South African life, that the spiral into violent conflict had become inevitable. Many people believed that South Africa would ultimately end up in a civil war. Some reasoned it was the only way to bring an end to Apartheid. Others reasoned that it was inevitable because dissent had grown and exploded in too many places to quell. A large number of people armed themselves in preparation for the coming revolution, which to white South Africans in particular, heralded a descent into the “heart of darkness”.

As a teenager at the time, I was of the opinion that the former was the reason why the country would go down the path of increasing violence. It seemed obvious that the struggle against Apartheid would culminate in a full insurrection, that it would require extraordinary measures to overcome the seemingly insurmountable Apartheid project. I felt that South Africa was effectively a pressure cooker, and its various distributed eruptions were a strong indication that the potential for it to spread like wildfire was there. It could ignite, and “go viral”, in today’s parlance, and become a sweeping force for change that could destabilise the entire country and hold the state and government ransom to its demands. That is how I experienced it as a young person in Apartheid South Africa. I was much younger then, than the students who are currently making waves in the political arena in South Africa.

Thirty years later, the #RhodesMustFall movement, which initially advocated for the removal of  a statue of the colonial, industrial era mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, set in motion a series of protest actions, which culminated in the #FeesMustFall movement. This catalysed student protests across the country and forced the government to freeze fee increases for 2016. The collective tertiary student body in South Africa had come to realise their political power in the South African socio-political spectrum, and had won the respect of the South African public for their tenacity and determination.

As of today, however, there have been a series of events, involving the attempted burning down of buildings, vehicles, paintings, libraries and paintings, amongst other symbols and items. Fire, seems yet again to have emerged as an instrument of protest. This has brought questions of whether violence, as a form of protest – especially against a democratic system – is justifiable, and can be legitimately invoked in the interests of advancing political struggles in South Africa. Supporters of the protesters have argued that state and bureaucratic violence, which is more or less guaranteed, is the real source of all political violence in South Africa, and it is in response to them that these violent responses have emerged.

Currently, the fascination with fire appears to have become of particular anthropological interest to those who have been observing the student movement, and its momentary lapses into ritualised violence – involving the use of fire – as a means of political expression. In the emerging public and academic discourse, I have seen a number of references to the use of fire as a medium of purification, marking the symbolic destruction of an ever-present past in rituals that attempt to exorcise the shadows of the past that continue to haunt us as a nation.  

The fear, for those who have lived through the uncertainties of the 1980s, is that these rituals are rehearsals of a kind; that they are progenitors of a greater destructive force than they symbolise in isolated protests. Rather than a purifying force for change, many South Africans are likely to view these rituals as hosting the potential for sparking widespread public disorder and dissent at best, and as a practise run for greater public violence at worst.

For the South African public, the use of fire symbolises something other than purification; it symbolises the rapid spread and uncontrollable momentum of the masses in action against the state. It symbolises the breakdown of ‘order’ and stability in the public realm. It symbolises a retreat into the dark past that we have tried so desperately to outrun and leave behind, embracing our narrative of forgiveness, reconciliation and multiculturalism instead as the preferred principles upon which to build a new future. Public violence tweaks the ever-resident fears of the South African populace; our fear of lapsing into dystopia and falling into the dark void of cautionary tales that characterise post liberation statehood in Africa.

Consequently, we have seen an outpouring of laments and pleas imploring the student and worker’ protest movements to adopt peaceful means of protest. Examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King have been touted as examples of times when protesters were worthier of admiration and public empathy. Amidst all this hand-wringing and appeals for sensibility, the bureaucracies and leaderships of universities and institutions of higher learning have conflated the emphasis that the protesters have placed on disruption, with that of violent protest. And it has largely gone unnoticed and unaddressed.

This is either deliberate, or the product of profound ignorance, for it is difficult for any learned person or persons to confuse the activities of disruption with that of violent protest. Violence, to be sure, is disruptive, but the converse is not true. Not all disruption is violent, nor does it have to be. Indeed, the very means of protest that they refer to, when invoking the names of leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, was disruptive in nature.

Even though these protests of yesteryear were peaceful, they were always intended to disrupt, not just perceptions, but also the physical public realm in which the protesters lived out their lives. Marches, sit-ins, occupations, boycotts, and other acts of civil disobedience, while peaceful, were order of the day for the protesters that rose up to challenge injustice and oppression. Protest, after all, is geared towards disrupting the status quo and forcing it to change. For that, it has to demonstrate its power through action, and not just demonstration or ideation.

As Gandhi himself put it, “there is nothing passive about my resistance”. The whole point of protest, it can reasonably be argued, is to disrupt both perceptions as well as the ordinary day-to-day functions and processes that are responsible for oppression and/or which are the target of protest. The two are intimately linked. Did not Rosa Parks defy the actual law of the time by refusing to move to the back of the bus? Weren’t Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many other civil rights leaders imprisoned for breaking the unjust laws that they protested against?

The notion that protesters should only adopt means of protest that do not disrupt the very functions and processes that they are targeting, in effect seeks to reduce these protests to mere performances that are played out merely for the sake of enactment, showing no real intent to bring about change in real terms. The attempts to deride disruptive protest are nonsensical and ridiculous, but they have a motive; the motive is to neutralise the protests and the protesters and relegate them to the margins of the public eye, ultimately rendering them peripheral priorities in the eyes of the bureaucracies as well.

As long as the protesters go about their business in an essentially compliant and impotent manner, they will be tolerated, perhaps even lauded, by the very institutions that are resisting the clear and direct impetus to transform to meet the needs of 21^st Century South African students. This sleight of hand needs to be challenged, and defied. It is only through disrupting bureaucracies, spaces, events and formalities that protest is taken seriously, and becomes effective. There is enough history to support this view. It is self-evident.

While fears of violence and destruction of property are legitimate, and requires attention, it is complete falsehood to conflate violence with disruption, and to argue against both as though they were the same thing. For example, Shackville (click here for an article on Shackville), and the occupation of administrative buildings, for example, are disruptive but not violent. Neither is it necessary to deploy paramilitary styled security and armed forces against disruptive protests. It is not necessary to fire stun grenades into a group of protesters who are seated on the ground, attempting a sit-in. These forms of protest, as much as they may inconvenience and disrupt the affairs of institutions and/or the public, deserve tolerance and respect.

Even if key public infrastructures become the targets of disruptive protest (e.g. Tahrir Square in Cairo), it is the mark of a civilised and sensitive leadership to respect this form of protest. Meeting disruption with force, is itself an unnecessary violence, and runs the danger of escalating an otherwise peaceful disruption into open confrontation and perpetuate unending cycles of violence.

While the public debates have focussed largely on the means that the protesters have employed, little criticism has been directed at the institutions for how they have gone about managing the situation, and providing leadership through the crisis. Yet they set the most profound example, and hold the majority of power in their hands, and it is hence their capacity for violence that should be under the spotlight. What actions they take matter, and any spiralling violence should be understood and acknowledged in this context.

As yet, they have not been able to shift the crisis onto a constructive trajectory. When the establishment makes a show of parading security forces that are disproportionately armed and militarised, and who then act with violence and impunity when encountering peaceful disruptions, they are sure to provoke a response in kind. Violence is never a one-sided affair; it is a conflict, requiring two or more parties to instigate.

What is often not well acknowledged, is that the overwhelming presence of security forces on campuses is itself a disruption to the spirit of free enquiry, as well as the everyday freedoms that are the hallmarks of institutions of higher learning. The presence of armed, paramilitary styled security forces is itself a more direct act of violent disruption upon a campus. It invokes the threat of violence to create an atmosphere of intimidation; this does not ensure safety, and neither does it provide any kind of stability. It uses violence and the threat of it to tightly regulate a system that is already unstable, achieving little more than a tenuous meta-stability, and not the normalisation of campus life.

These forces ensure that university life does not normalise, and works against efforts to ensure that the freedoms associated with institutions of higher learning are upheld. It should be remembered that these institutions play a critical role in shaping the public discourse on important socio-political and economic issues. They are sites of disruption themselves, primarily through the exchange and debate of ideas, as well as through innovating new ideas and visions for society and acting on them.

A display of militarised force – in such a space – is a means of intimidating protesters, as well as potential protesters, into servility. It should not be a first, or even a second option for dealing with student protests. Rather, full and complete engagement, as tiring as it may be, and as fruitless as it may seem at times, should be the primary means through which conflicts are resolved at institutions of higher learning.

Indeed, the reason why parliaments, as well as universities, have their own security systems and personnel, is to ensure that there isn’t a threat of abuse of state security (or private security) to quell dissent and restrict freedom of thought and expression. When campus security is unable to deal with a crisis the first response should be leadership, and not the deployment of police or private security firms. Perhaps it is the overarching propensity for securitisation of spaces and bodies in post-Apartheid South Africa that has infected the judgement of the authorities; where the fear of crime has become cause for all manners of securitisations that work against real security.

It is indeed ironic that any manner of disruptions that student and worker protests have undertaken have been conflated with violence. For it is the disruption that security forces introduce into campus life that is unquestionably, and most directly underpinned by the threat of violence. Student protests, in contrast, have largely undertaken disruptions that are non-violent in character. Nonetheless, student disruptions have been met with force, and not a meaningful two-way dialogue; this may yet auger the worst outcomes for both the students as well as the institutions of higher learning in South Africa.