It is the symptom of bankruptcy of substance behind our contemporary politics that everyone these days seem to claim Steve Biko as their hero, and Black Consciousness (BC) as the only viable vehicle for black liberation. Not that there's anything wrong with BC but its popularity as a panacea of black liberation in our era is suspect.
Take for instance Setumo Stone in his piece here. In lauding the ANCYL president, Julius Malema, Stone confuses chauvinism with civilisation. We can argue until the cows come home about the meaning of civilisation; whether as a cultural phenomena or a degree of political and economic development towards material progress; or as the art of refined and tasteful living; or as spiritual and intellectual vitality. What is important is that civilisation implies integrating what's best from human experience into a living spirit of innovation and development. This has very little to do with race, since most civilisations have been an amalgamation and adoption of progressive spirit from different cultures.
The purpose of civilisation is to bring quality life to the widest possible number of people. Matthew Arnold puts poetically: ‘The work of civilisation is to speak to the ordinary self of its longing to become the best version of itself.' Civilisation always emerges where people, in freedom, develop love for ideas, objects of convenience, and intermingling with people of different backgrounds.
Chauvinism on the other hand is the attitude of imposing your own understanding of things on others: Of wishing to exclude, hoard and monopolise. It usually involves usurping whatever is good from others for your own benefit while suppressing their spirit of their development. Colonialism is a clear example of white chauvinism in historical terms.
As Stone points out, in this country it began with the arrival of Riebeck and his cabal. Clearly white chauvinism is something to be deplored. What is worrisome is when it is being replaced by similar black chauvinism and arrogance. That's a proverbial example of being defeated by the faults of your enemy.
Stone says; ‘Maybe we need to understand that when Steve Biko spoke about "liberation of the mind", he was referring to a conscious effort by blacks not to think, act and behave according a programmed historical perspective, but according to the demands of their own social reality.'
He gives no indication of irony, which leaves only one conclusion, that he has himself not done much ‘conscious effort' to liberate his mind from the historical context. His piece betrays him. Stone is still thinking according to a ‘programmed historical perspective'. Otherwise what, for instance, would make a liberated black mind take delight in the howling behaviour of Malema?
Stone writes, "I'm convinced that Julius Malema is holding the torch of total African liberation very high. There could be no better approach to African Renaissance." The problem with this approach to the African Renaissance is that it is static, and lauds mediocrity; let alone the fact that it is defeatist and fatalistic. Regardless of his (black) righteous anger and specious concern for the downtrodden, Malema is a megalomaniac who generates more smoke than light.
It could be he does well in showing the finger to white chauvinism but he has little idea of consequences of his words and actions. Even the manner by which the boy disrespects his elder is unAfrican.
In any case, what is the black social reality now that Biko urged us to consider then? Machiavelli was of the opinion that, "He who conforms his course of action to the quality of the times will fare well." Should black people be excluded from this because they've been wronged in the past? Perhaps Machiavelli is not revolutionary enough, and had never heard of let alone internalise the situation of blackness, which in BC parlance is not only a colour but a condition and state of oppression.
In July 1905, Lenin, writing in Two Tactics of Social - Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, described the tasks that then faced the Bolshevik Party:
"Undoubtedly, the revolution will teach us and will teach the masses of the people. But the question that now confronts a militant political party is: shall we be able to teach the revolution anything? Shall we be able to make use of the correctness of our Social-Democratic doctrine, of our bond with the only thoroughly revolutionary class, the proletariat, to put a proletarian imprint on the revolution, to carry the revolution to a real and decisive victory, not in word but in deed, and to paralyse the instability, half-heartedness and treachery of the democratic bourgeoisie?"
Shall we be allowed, let alone able, to teach the revolution anything by our contemporary experiences, our social reality? Not according to the followers of impotent dogmatic ideologies. Because capitalism has treated black people badly in the past we, who are in solidarity with the situation of blackness, must stand opposed to it, while plucking its fruits, mind you. We must remain ignorant and worship as Messiahs those who brought us our freedom, the pigs getting fat, in Orwell's language. Give them complete control of our lives in exchange for perpetual empty rhetoric of National Democratic Revolution (NDR) or whatever empty slogan they'll think of tomorrow.
As we speak South Africa is on 5th position out of 53 African countries is ranked 5th by the 2009 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The disturbing trend here is not that Africa's biggest economy is not first in governance, but that according to a similar assessment released recently by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, South Africa has slipped from fifth place to ninth place "because of lower scores in the areas of respect for civil and political rights and the rule of law."
To those of us with inklings in historical studies of the left, what is presently happening in our country now conjures up the ghost of Stalinism, moving ever ‘onwards and upwards!' to entirely new policies without ever feeling the need to account for the previous ones now failed and abandoned.
Look at how many programmes have been either dumped or rehashed with cosmetic changes; from the defunct RDP ministry to ministry in the Presidency of, National Planning Commission Planning; from RDP-GEAR to ASGISA. One thing that comes out clearly is the dearth of vision and lack ability to implement even good ideas. Of course if you are black and point these things out you ‘crucify the liberation under the banner of "civilization".'
To be a true revolutionary you must keep quiet even when the country rots away in a funereal pace. You must laud backroom fixers and backstabbers with no principle and ideas, who believe in nothing beyond their own re-election and power. You must believe in populist flash-in-the-pan rhetoric. You must call public expenditure used to mobilize political support deliverance. If you don't you don't ‘get nice things', as Malema will tell you.
A democratic system fails when the moral inertia, the tendency to accept traditions and status quo ethical procedures without challenge, overwhelms its people with lethargy. As free people we'll choose at any given moment the means and ways to organise towards bettering themselves. You can only fool some people sometime but never all the people all the time. Real revolutions begin at the heart of few individuals and are spread by remaining true to principle. It is expressed by the language of people's aspirations for dignity.
We did not come this far just to change the colour of the oppressor. If anything, history will judge who is in the right in the end. Time hath my lord, a wallet at his back, the bard would say.
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