South Africa: Implosion of choiceless democracy

as Jacob Zuma’s government continues to disappoint by protecting capitalist business interests at the expense of poor black South Africans.
What we celebrate as independence in South Africa is, in fact, a truncated liberation of our own people — a liberation so tragically hijacked by neo-colonial imperialist forces in unholy collaboration with some of our own liberation icons, the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa.

The truncated character of South Africa’s liberation is sugar-coated in the exaggerated glorification of Nelson Mandela’s legacy: who is heroically hailed not only as the true liberation icon he is, but also and more so as a semi-divine reconciliator so exceptionally upright that he found it plausible to share the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer.

Ordinarily the idea of awarding a freedom fighter the same way with his tormentors does not arise from a point of view of pure logic. But the logic used in this case was not pure logic — it was imperialist logic meant to convert an iconic liberation fighter into a compliant ally of Western hegemony.
Today’s South Africa is egregiously commoditised at the expense of the black populace, and increasingly there has been social unrest, with a reported 5 085 protests in 2004 alone. According to the then Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Nqakula, 881 of these protests were defined as “illegal” by the state, just like

the most recent nationwide strikes by mine workers have been deemed illegal by Jacob Zuma’s government.

Zuma’s government, through its National Prosecuting Authority, had the audacity to press murder and attempted murder charges on 278 survivors of a shooting massacre of 34 mine workers executed so ruthlessly by South Africa’s dutiful police force. It really matters very little that the NPA later backtracked on this flummoxing move. The priorities of the South African government had already been explicitly spelt out, and they are shockingly benign to the need and cause of black South Africans.

The economy of South Africa is a mockery to the concept of social justice. It is what David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession,” well explained by Patrick Bond as “a new stage of voracious penetration of market forces into areas of society and nature that were not previously commodified.” South Africa’s governance system is what this writer calls “corporate democracy,” or what writers like Richard Wilson and Barry Gills call “low-intensity democracy,” or “choiceless democracy,” to borrow from writer Thandeka Mkandawire.

This is a democracy determined and decreed by the forces of insensitive capital. It is the rule of international agencies and capital, and the people are periodically made to ratify the decisions and choices of wealthy political elites, themselves under the control of owners of international capital.
Patrick Bond describes this idea of corporate democracy as “the inability to change socio-economic parameters because the basic substance of economic and even social policy is considered off-limits by international agencies and capital.” The argument for better salaries for South Africa’s miners is basic substance for the policy of black empowerment, but it has been treated by South Africa’s capitalist elite as “unrealistic,” and surprisingly dismissed by the South African government

as “misguided.”

The economic inequality in South Africa is so glaring that one can almost touch it with bare hands on the streets of Johannesburg. There is this unholy alliance between capital, the state and the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). This powerful tripartite today stands united as a rogue trinity against the poor and oppressed masses, with Cosatu as a treacherous shareholder in major multi-national corporations within South Africa.
The people of South Africa have been bottled up in this oppressive system for far too long, and when Julius Malema brings to them a word of hope, the only natural reaction is raucous support for the pro-people policies the firebrand politician preaches for whatever motivations.

Patrick Bond has written about a published study that showed that by 2002, the income of an average black household in South Africa had declined by 19 percent

between 1995 and 2000, in essence meaning inequality, in fact, worsened after apartheid rule or, more precisely, that the black South African government administers more racial inequality than apartheid ever did.

In the same period, white household income increased by 15 percent, effectively meaning white privilege and hegemony increased significantly under the ANC governance, so much for Africa’s oldest liberation movement, and one is abound to think that for the ANC making South Africa one of the 11 countries that solemnises gay marriages in the world today is a priority far higher than empowering the black South African.

This same study also shows that households with less than US$100 per month (almost entirely black families) increased from 20 percent to 28 percent in the period 1995 to 2000. The ANC ended apartheid only to increase the level of poverty among the black populace, one would be tempted to conclude.
Apart from these startling statistics, the study also showed that 50 percent of South Africans claimed only 9,7 percent of the national income as of the year 2000, and the richest 20 percent had a whopping 65 percent of the national income. As of 2002 unemployment stood at 31,5 percent, and by March 2012 it was estimated at 25 percent.

These statistics clearly show us that black South Africans are absolutely justified when they feel that they have been hopelessly failed by the ANC government’s social policy. Basics such as healthcare and access to water are a nightmare for the majority of the poor masses in South Africa.
The current land tenure system in South Africa is a rude insult to the notion of liberation, and South Africans have been made to masquerade as an independent people for a good 18 years, and that joke is not funny at all.

The colonially stolen agrarian land of South Africa remains stolen 18 years after independence and the ANC government respects unreservedly the rule of law that protects and perpetuates this legacy of blatant robbery. That behaviour is inevitably unsustainable and soon we will see true revolutionaries in South Africa.
Nelson Mandela’s government promised that it would redistribute 30 percent of the country’s arable land in the first five years of national independence. This would have meant taking 30 percent of land occupied by 60 000 white commercial farmers, and redistributing it among 27 million landless backs in South Africa.

Five years after Nelson Mandela had left office, only 2,3 percent of the promised 30 percent of the country’s agrarian land had been distributed, not among South Africa’s 27 million landless people but largely among the ANC’s elite. This unimpressive side of the legacy of President Mandela is convincingly silenced by his more illustrious reputation of forgiving his apartheid tormentors and championing economic reconciliation with white capitalists in South Africa and those from abroad.

Zimbabwe walked similar steps after independence in 1980; compromisingly agreeing to a willing-buyer willing-seller land policy that disempowered the Government on all land matters for a good decade. Even at the expiry of this time, the Government of Zimbabwe did not prioritise land redistribution; neither did it pursue any meaningful economic empowerment policies for indigenous Zimbabweans.

It took the initiative of Svosve villagers in 1999 to ignite a mighty revolution that kicked out white hegemony from Zimbabwe’s agriculture regime. That kind of implosion is now imminent in South Africa, and it is inevitable that land will end up in the hands of indigenous South Africans one way or the other, whether the current occupiers like it or not.

Julius Malema increasingly advocates for the nationalisation of South Africa’s mines and the compulsory reclamation of the colonially stolen farmlands. The firebrand politician is immensely popular for his advocacy and he seems unstoppable as the white-owned media and the white-controlled judiciary tries in vain to terminate his political career.

President Zuma wants Malema stopped more for his own political survival at the helm of the ANC and less for the reasons Malema’s white nemesis spend sleepless nights plotting against the youthful revolutionary. Malema is having a lifetime good time deriding President Zuma’s legendary poor sense of judgment, from his silly and naïve “me too policy,” over the invasion of Libya to his scandalous sex life, a priority the president implements with outstanding commitment.

In just 180 seconds post-apartheid South African police gunned down 34 striking miners in the name of law and order, and this brutality could as well be the beginning of the detonating of a massive time bomb that will bring true independence for South Africa.

Much as the ANC is divided over the nationalisation policy, the rhetoric from the ANC Youth League and its ousted leadership resonates soundly with the views of the dispossessed public in South Africa.

Like Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe, the ANC will have to join the people’s revolution and abandon the appeasement of Western capitalists.
For the ANC will soon be time to sink with white capitalists or swim with the masses. The tide is rising fast and time is running out for profiteers in South Africa.
Of course every revolution comes at an exorbitant cost and there must be no illusion that in its revolution South Africa is likely to pay a dearer price than its neighbour Zimbabwe paid through the land reclamation revolution.

Those who dream of a revolution within the context of comfort and sweet and cosy relations with capitalist elites are excellent dreamers who must practise holy democracy in dreamland.

President Zuma dreams of a smooth revolution that will be popular with both the exploiters and the exploited in South Africa and that kind of delusional visionarism is quite legendary.

Indigenous South Africans can only be empowered through the dispossession of those who possess their wealth today, and there are simply no two ways about it.
The bomb in South Africa has ticked for far too long and soon it will explode right in the faces of the privileged.
South Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!