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Monday 5 October 2015

Decolonisation is a myth that we have internalised, thank you ANC

*article triggered by radio chat on @Powerfm- @NduimsoDladla & @ImanRappetti* I write this today with a sour heart and a hungry mind which sees no prosperous future for non- white people, by definition, world wide especially in Africa. I find myself working day and night to secure financial, domestic and biological security in the land of my birth in a socio-political climate that does not allow me to do so with the skills I possess. Not that I am not capable, but the society we live in is designed to demoralise and eradicate me and my ‘people’, by definition. For over 380 years or so, what is now known as south Africa( which was named by an act of the british parliament and yet to be appealed) and which i identify as Azania, has been under systematic rape, abuse and exploitation by an imperial mafia. The reasons for this have long been discussed and accepted as dehumanising colonialism, yet colonial powers (they still are) have not been reprimanded or taken to task to take responsibility of slave trade in particular that displaced and killed Africans at a genocide-rate manner. Verily, millions of africans have to deal with the impact and degrading nature of these atrocities which result in modern day poverty, disease and starvation. This further binds us to slave like job seeking agendas that still leave us eating the crumbs of the bread that the master colonial power throws down at us. It even becomes worse when the colonial master has in place and ‘induna’ /‘ampoer' baas/‘Capitalists Niggers’ or ‘uncle Toms’ to be gate keepers of the bread crumbs such that we have to work for our own brothers to attain what was stolen and wrestled from us. How did this happen such that in a supposedly ‘free country” we live in, this sick nature exists? The Sunset Clause created this nervous condition. The advent of Freedom Charter/Cheater was a harbinger for what is now inculcated in the current constitution, that is the protection of racially acquired status by a supposedly nonracial constitution. It is clear that one of the trade offs between the now ruling party and the then apartheid government was to ensure what was acquired criminally must be kept in the coffers of the descendants of the colonialists, by intertwining self determination and human rights in the form of the property clause, that happens to be longer than any clause in the current constitution document. The property clause together with the freedom charter slogan , ‘the land belongs to all who live in it’, regardless of how some acquired the land, protects current ‘white’ capital that maintains white supremacy and ‘black’ poverty. It also sustains and institutionalises cheap black labour since the advent of poll taxing and forced migrant labour systems triggered by southern african mineral/industrial revolution (or lack off). The honourable Robert Sobukwe states: "We are being wooed internationally at a time when in South Africa the naked forces of savage Herrenvolkism are running riot; when a determined effort is being made to annihilate the African people through systematic starvation; at a time when brutal attempts are being made to retard, dwarf and stunt the mental development of a whole people through organised “mis- education”; at a time when thousands of our people roam the streets in search of work and are being told by the foreign ruler to go back to a “home” which he has assigned them, whether that means the break up of their families or not; at a time when the distinctive badge of slavery and humiliation, the “dom pass” is being extended from the African male dog to the African female bitch”. This is still perfectly playing out in todays society . It is no wonder that Sobukwe was arrested for nothing else but his thought, not a crime. His thoughts alone were capable of a paradigm shift that would turn the stays quo on its head. its not surprising that he left the current ruling party, they were already on a path to maintain white supremacy. South Africa has never been decolonized. There has never been a single successful attempt to galvanise this. Sobukwe identified that the freedom charter protects white minority rights in 1960. He was never a free man again. His vision saw Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyers facade in the form of the CODESA negotiations that ushered the current fraudulent constitution beyond the grave when he noted: “Against multi-racialism, we have this objection, that the history of South Africa has fostered group prejudices and antagonisms, and if we have to maintain the same group exclusiveness, parading under the term of multi-racialism, we shall be transporting to the new Africa these very antagonisms and conflicts. Further, multi-racialism is in fact a pandering to European bigotry and arrogance. It is a method of safeguarding white interests irrespective of population figures. In that sense it is a complete negation of democracy. To us the term “multi-racialism” implies that there are such basic inseparable differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democratic apartheid. That to us is racialism multiplied, which probably is what the term truly connotes”. Verily, the constitution today talks not of non -racialism but multi-racialism. It promotes racial tolerance not human acknowledgement. What then does this say about the survival of the African in his/her home soil that has been stripped from him/her and then in the same breathe being held ransom to be beggars for work, social welfare, social and biological security whilst what was taken is being dangled in front of him as a prize to be attained upon fulfilling tasks for the uncle Tom, who then goes and pays poll tax wages to the master with our cheap labour? Migrant labour institutions like TEBA and the likes that forcefully/institutionally through ‘induna’ /‘ampoer' baas/‘Capitalists Niggers’ or ‘uncle Toms’, channelled our fathers and brothers in their physical prime capable of working for self and provide and protect their women and young, only to return chronically sick or in coffins, have surfaced again today as ‘black’ proletariat wage earners in multinational ‘white’ owned institutions. They act as owners of capital yet they are also mere wage workers. They form BEE driven companies with their acquired wages and in return employ the ‘jobless’ in an effort to get affirmative action scores such that they qualify for government funding. All of this is allowed by this constitution under the claim of job creation, poverty alleviation and opportunities for all. Tell me then, who owns earning/salary power? Working in South Africa is a criminal activity towards the have nots propelled by the haves and the constitution again protects this nervous condition. The conditions are not humanising, in fact its what I call an ‘alienating pedagogy’ (anti-thesis being a critical humanising pedagogy of Hope, of the Heart of the Liberated as Paulo Friere would say). They only aim at making us be the satraps or stooges of supremist power blocs. We refuse. I refuse. No more. As Prof said, "We stand committed to a policy guaranteeing the most equitable distribution of wealth. Socially, we aim at the full development of the human personality and a ruthless uprooting and outlawing of all forms or manifestation of the racial myth". Sibusiso L Mnyanda 5 October 2015, JHB

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