—Part ll
Let’s proceed from Part l. Mr. Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, continues: “That if workers don’t even have basic amenities, then who can argue with their right? And I think it’s the most important wake-up call that South Africa can have, tragic as it is, to address the need for the second transition in South Africa, so that we can begin to share out that economy, make people’s lives better, and ensure that we don’t have an equilibrium in society, but certainly that we move now to get to a greater harmony in our society” (Democracy Now).
This speaks directly to the great mismatch, theoretical and practical, between the instruments of political power and economic exigencies in post-Apartheid South Africa?particularly in the case of Black South Africa. But what is Mr. Rasool exactly saying? He seems to be suggesting that the secret negotiated settlement between Mandela and the white Nationalist government, led by P.W. Botha, on the one hand, and the first transition, what, in other words, has become known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, on the other hand, have failed to adequately address, among other challenges, the structural problems carried over from the Apartheid era.
Indeed, accumulated Apartheid-era structural deficits had nearly drowned South Africa’s economy on the eve the ANC assumed political power. Interestingly, Molefi Kete Asante catches the drift of Rasool’s analysis. He writes: “In effect, when Mandela’s party came into office they discovered something that they did not know: “The country was laden with international debt that stifled the progressive and radical agenda of wealth redistribution” (See Asante’s “Nelson Mandela Is An Ancestor”). We need to consider these facts as we constructively criticize South Africa’s Black leadership for their dismal performance in the economic sphere.
However, we may respectfully disagree with Mr. Rasool’s analytic prognostication, if our reading of him is in fact correct, by asserting that, indeed, the negotiated settlement benefited both black and white elites, although to what degree it did requires further sociological investigation, while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission benefited mostly White South Africa. This is one of the major, if sad, contradictory legacies of Nelson Mandela. Certainly, the moral shortcomings of those two projects, particularly of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, invariably threw economic and political South Africa freely into the embracing laps of oligopolistic whites and white cartels. Organized crime with deep roots in South America is also cashing in on white oligopolism, further sapping the vitality of the economy.
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has its serious critics. Wole Soyinka, for instance, faults the Commission for its moral inadequacies in firmly establishing the social need for and benefits of restorative justice in the public consciousness of South Africa. And for good reasons! So have South Africa’s Khulumani Support Group and Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. A Booklist reviewer of Soyinka’s “The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness” writes: “Although Soyinka respects the generosity of spirit behind South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he points out that failure to demand restitution may build an expectation of impunity that can only encourage further crimes.”
An apposite illustration of Soyinka’s crisp critique is the 2010 murder of South Africa’s infamous white supremacist, Eugène TerreBlanche, allegedly by his two black employees, an incident, which, is, to say the least, a clear symptomology of one of South Africa’s entrenched carry-overs?racial tension. The case itself restates Soyinka’s pointed indictment of the Truth and reconciliation Commission as an effective arbiter of human rights abuses, as the Commission granted TerreBlanche amnesty for making unauthorized entries into a set of public properties. Meanwhile, one serious crime after the other pursued him. And he had to serve brief prison terms for assault and attempted murder of a black South African.
These suspected black employees accused him of not paying them for their work, of sexually abusing one of them, etc. In fact, many black South Africans worked for their white employees without remuneration of any kind; instead they get alcoholic beverages as pay. This is called the Tot or Dot System. This system has produced so many black children suffering from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome as to render them useful to society. Yet the system still exists in a few residual pockets on white plantations. Productivity, human capital development, and labor are negatively impacted by this notorious system. Black families are negatively affected as well.
Finally, Edelstein’s “Truth and Lies: Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission” and Wilson’s “The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa” both expose the moral, legal, and political deficits of the Commission. In reviewing the latter, for instance, Choice has this to say: “Focusing on attitudes toward reconciliation, retribution, and vengeance, the author sees human rights in South Africa essentially as legal instruments that serve purposes of compromise rather than the concept of justice….Wilson’s analysis raises basic questions about the long-term efficacy of truth commissions and is useful for comparative purposes.” Soyinka is vindicated.
However, despite Soyinka’s well-meaning reservations, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an institutional invention borne out of Ubuntu, an African philosophical system based on humane inter-personal community, is, to say the least, Mandela’s and Tutu’s seminal idea, achieved some positive results for the people of South Africa. In fact, its global impact cannot be overstated. It has been acknowledged as having been more efficient than the Nuremberg Trials, for instance, in addressing human rights abuses. Further, the Solomon Islands, Liberia, Sierra Leon, Ghana, Kenya, and a few other countries have modeled their truth commissions after South Africa’s. It’s unfortunate that P.W. Botha didn’t acknowledge the moral authority of the Commission or accord it the respect it deserved. As a result, when the Commission summoned him to appear before it he ignored it as one conveniently ignored a leprotic handshake!
Then again, if White South Africans believe they are truly South Africans, why do they, unabashedly, display variegated flags according to their European ethnicities or nationalities, while Black South Africans patriotically carry the national flag, during public gatherings such as when South Africa hosted the World Cup? Why do some in White South Africa still prefer Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, the white Nationalist anthem, to Nkosi Sikele’ iAfrika, the national rainbow anthem? Isn’t it interesting that the American national anthem is in English while South Africa’s national anthem is in five major languages—Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English?
Then, not so surprisingly, there is President Obama’s soulful eulogium to the great man, Nelson Mandela. Interestingly, following President Obama’s triumphant reelected to the presidency, 26 American States petitioned to break away from the Union, because, once again, a black man has assumed the executive office, an office supposedly meant for the exclusive privilege of whiteness. The historical connection between America and South Africa is an important one. That said, let’s also add that the racial situation in post-Apartheid South Africa is a politically dicey one. In fact, it constitutes the moral basis of Lucky Dube’s powerful track “War and Crime.” Who do we blame, blacks, Indians, coloreds, or whites, for the situation in South Africa, he seems to ask rhetorically, if not directly?
Back to square one. Why is the sudden flow of what seems like crocodilian accolades from Mandela’s one-time enemies toward the good people of South Africa? What did Britain do when UB40 dedicated “Sing Our Own Song” to Black South Africa? What did America do when Eddie Grant dedicated “Gimme Hope Joana” to Black South Africa? Taken together, what did America and Britain do when Alpha Blondy dedicated “Apartheid Is Nazism” to Black South Africa? The die-hard enemies of Black South Africa have no shame in the genes of their cultural psychology. These shameless enemies even had the nerve to openly castigate Mandela for expressing gratitude to courageous men, women, and countries which had fought on the side of Black South Africa, of goodness, against the evil system of Apartheid.
But not one to be intimidated by his enemies’ shameless and sanctimonious hypocrisy, he fought back hard, retorting: “No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past (Max Forte, “Slouching Towards Sirte, NATO’s War on Libya and Africa,” pp. 142-143).” In fact, this is how intelligent, spiritually-enlightened, courageous, and moralistic leaders fight back.
Mandela seemed to be saying to the hypocritical West: “Were you not part of the same diabolical system which enslaved and killed my people with impunity and moral abandon, stole our land, put me (and others) in prison for 27 years, in fact, for fighting against a system whose crimes you will not permit the people of Africa to institute against the people of the West, primarily white folks? Why should your enemies be our enemies? What did you do when Adolf Hitler attempted to impose the Apartheid of Nazism on the Europe? Didn’t you, Britain’s Winston Churchill and America’s Franklin D. Roosevelt, collaborate with Josef Stalin, your archenemy, to counter the hegemony of Nazism?
Didn’t Hitler and Nazism appropriate the idea of “concentration camp” from the British who had used it on the Boers in South Africa? Didn’t Hitler and Nazism appropriate the idea of eugenics from the Americans who had used it on African Americans (See Edwin Black’s “Hitler’s Debt To America”)? Didn’t Prescott Bush, George W. Bush’s grandfather, play a role in Hitler’s rise to political power, as Ben Aris meticulously details in his Guardian piece “How Bush’s Grandfather Helped Hitler’s Rise To Power”? Didn’t you collaborate with as well as instigate Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini against each other, even secretly selling arms to Hussein and Khomeini which they used against each other during their 8-year war?
Didn’t you sell arms to the Apartheid government while you received South Africa’s uranium (and gold, diamond, etc) to build your bombs in order to contain the former USSR?during George Kennan’s Cold War? Wasn’t Kaddafi a better leader than Hitler and Stalin? Didn’t you collaborate with the enemies of Africa?Akwasi Afrifa, Idi Amin, JB Danquah, Mobuto Sese Seko, Charles Taylor, and Chief Mangosutho Buthelezi? Why call another fellow an enemy when you are an enemy yourself? Is one enemy better than the other enemy? Which enemy should the people of South Africa choose over the other enemy? Mandela still awaits the answers!
But that is not all. Didn’t the founder of TransAfrica, Randall Robinson, the same man whose hunger strike would force the then-President Bill Clinton to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Haitian presidency and whose political activism and social acumen would push Ronald Reagan to force the Nationalist government of P.W. Botha to begin negotiations with the ANC—a project which eventually culminated in the death of Apartheid—only for White America to undermine his meeting Mandela in person after the latter’s release from prison and his subsequent tour of America?
A petition drawn by Adam Tomlinson, of Chesterfield, UK, and titled, “The British Government: Ban David Cameron from Nelson Mandela’s State Funeral,” reads: “In light of the sad loss of Nelson Mandela, we the British people during this sad time feel it is inappropriate for David Cameron to attend the state funeral of Nelson Mandela due to his and the Tory party’s outright contempt and hypocrisy they have collectively shown in previous years against Nelson Mandela’s struggles for justice and equality. We the British people don’t feel that it’s appropriate that David Cameron represent the views and feelings of the majority during this sad time and we ask him to stay away.”
Can David Cameron and the other long-time hypocritical enemies of the ANC, the good people of South Africa, and Mandela shed real tears for the great man during this solemn moment in the life of Africa and of the world? We wait to see!
We shall return…
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