Long Walk To Freedom: Frantz Fanon Perspective

Sam Ditshego
The president of Botswana Ian Khama is always out of kilter with the rest of the continent on issues of continental importance. The people of Botswana do not necessarily agree with the bizarre positions he adopts. He adopts pro-Western positions which he never raises in their national parliament.

The African continent (except Ethiopia and Liberia) was under colonial rule. Then Ghana became independent in 1957, followed by many other countries in the 1960s to 1990s. The last was South Africa in 1994 although the writer is not oblivious of the fact that Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco is still outstanding.

Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, which most African leaders read before they became leaders of their respective countries after the fight against colonialism but still repeated the mistakes Fanon warned against. (I am not sure if Ian Khama and Jacob Zuma read it).

“The people of Africa have only recently come to know themselves. They have decided, in the name of the whole continent, to weigh in strongly against the colonial régime. Now the national bourgeoisies, who in region after region hasten to make their own fortunes and to set up a national system of exploitation, do their utmost to put obstacles in the path of this ‘Utopia.’

That is why we must understand that African unity can only be achieved through the upward thrust of the people, and under the leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the interests of the bourgeoisie.”

Former Robben Islanders especially from organisations other than the ANC have complained that Nelson Mandela went around the world fund-raising in their name and kept the money he collected to himself.

The president of Botswana Ian Khama is always out of kilter with the rest of the continent on issues of continental importance. The statement, “That is why we must understand that African unity can only be achieved through the upward thrust of the people, and under the leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the interests of the bourgeoisie” rings true in the face of the wayward foreign policy positions Khama adopts.

As regards internal affairs ad in the sphere of institutions, the national bourgeoisie will give equal proof of its incapacity… the parliamentary game is faked from the beginning…Powerless economically, unable to bring about the existence of coherent social relations, and standing on the principle of its dominations as a class, the bourgeoisie chooses the solution that seems the easiest, that of the single party.

Fanon says that the national bourgeoisie turns its back more and more on the interior and on the real facts of its underdeveloped country, and tends to look towards the former mother country and the foreign capitalists who count on its obliging compliance. As it does not share its profits with the people, and in no way allows them to enjoy any of the dues that are paid to it by the big foreign companies, it will discover the need for a popular leader to whom will fall the dual role of stabilizing the regime and of perpetuating the domination of the bourgeoisie.

We know that in the well-developed countries, the bourgeois dictatorship is the result of the economic power of the bourgeoisie. In the under-developed countries on the contrary, the leader stands for moral power, in whose shelter the thin and poverty-stricken bourgeoisie of the young nation decides to get rich.

Fanon continues to say, “Before independence, the leader generally embodies the aspirations of the people for independence, political liberty and national dignity. But as soon as independence is declared, far from embodying in concrete form the needs of the people in what touches bread, land and the restoration of the country to the sacred hands of the people, the leader will reveal his inner purpose: to become the general President of that company of profiteers impatient for their returns which constitutes the national bourgeoisie.”

Mandela was the one who told the African people in the early 1990s “not to have unreasonable expectations.”

The Mandela movie by Anant Singh will not reveal these inconvenient truths. It is a movie meant to canonise Mandela. The movie will not mention leaders like PAC founding president Robert Sobukwe, the principled and uncompromising leader who put South Africa on the international map and made it possible for the world to know about the atrocities perpetrated on the African people in racist South Africa.

We need a movie that will tell the true story of South Africa’s struggle for liberation and not one that distorts and disfigures our past out of shape.

As the people are being lulled to sleep through movies such as Long Walk to Freedom, let us remember the longest walk Sobukwe trudged.