There Are People Dying in the Streets
It cannot simply be business as usual. It is a matter that
we will have to face. Certainly, it requires discussion and debate and the
forging of a common consensus. But unless the outcomes lead to a radical effort
to deal with our colonial legacy, it is destined to be yet another placebo to a
society that is stretched to the limits of its cohesion. If we are to avoid a
gradual disintegration of our society into gratuitous acts of violence, aimed
at the easiest targets, the most vulnerable of our society, it will require
bold and ambitious interventions.
This is what the EFF essentially represented, audacious and
direct actions that will result in a change in the status quo. That the EFF
strategy has shaken up the body politic seems hardly at issue. Their rejection
of the status quo has spawned both directly and indirectly a new focus on land,
a re-assessment of white supremacy and its challenge to the symbols of
colonialism, and the rebirth of radical
politics in the social psyche.
Government's resolution to be the “ mature”, cautious, legalistic, arbiter of
social change(in response to the EFF's youthful radicalism) and the broad
left's inability to provide the audacious leadership, so clearly demanded by
the youth and society, and to fill the social leadership vacuum that exists
between elections, both contribute to the misdirected militancy of the
unemployed youth,
While the EFF had read the strategic moment correctly, their
internal contradictions have always been their Achilles heel. For now they remain
as a radical force broadly on the left of the incumbent regime.
The ANC, because of its broad based appeal and its
majority at the voting polls, should be best placed to lead society away from the slide to patriarchal, masochistic, conservative, reactionary choices. But
it is paralysed by its parasitic capture. A host to the parasitic ethos of
private accumulation, from which it cannot escape and which condemns society to
the poverty, of not only material poverty, but also social poverty.
Its
structures, since it`s unbanning and fostered by its centralised democracy of exile
years, quickly became, rather than democratic conduits of the wishes of the
members, rather channels of patronage and access to resources. Over the 21
years of the ANC`s incumbency, the structures of patronage and access to resources
have consolidated into a staid autocracy and increasingly, as its elites blur
the line between business and politics, as a plutocracy.
The laws championed by the ANC over the past two decades have
gone from broadly radical, to increasingly colonial. The reintroduction of the
Traditional Courts Bill, the Land and Restitution Bill which favours
traditional authorities, the ongoing efforts to consolidate “traditional authority”
in the face of Constitutional barriers and the colonial exclusion of mining
affected communities from the mineral wealth in favour of traditional authorities in the Minerals Bill (MPRDA), all point towards a deeply conservative and reactionary turn.
With no clear progressive social leadership emerging, our
society continues to fracture.
In the same way that Marikana happened in the defence of
vested interests, the comments by the Zulu monarch, was not the random
xenophobic musings of a caring patriarch; it was instead the age old deflection
of the anger of his own people, away from the growing criticism of his lavish
lifestyle.
The deadly menace of these attempts to detract from the
private accumulation of the ruling elites inevitably result in the decay, if
not destruction, of the social fabric.
Society remains caught in the headlights, witnessing the
unfolding regression of a society that once held so much hope and promise of a
progressive and free society that belongs to all who live in it.
That vision, as we are finding out today, cannot live in
harmony with a society that is premised on the private accumulation of the
elite at the expense of the people. The interests
of the elite are antithetical to the common good. The interests of Cyril Ramaphosa
always defeat the interests of the workers. The interests of the King are more
important than the lives of innocents.
As the left peels off
from the hegemonic centre, the efforts to find common purpose by the left,
seems however to falter on its inability to birth a unifying catalyst, in the
way that Malema was to the EFF.
The left needs a purposeful, energetic, and youthful
aggression to the status quo that is able to capture the imagination and anger
of the youth and society, especially the unemployed and working class.
The elements of this possibility continue to
ferment in the cauldron of an ever violent societal response, even if it has
not yet found its form. But it had better find its form soon, lest it gets
overtaken by history.
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