Liberation Papers: Dying To Live or Living to Die?
“The use of armed revolutionary struggle by people striving for independence, for freedom from tyranny, or for national liberation has been an important part of historical development. The privileged, history has taught, never surrender power, unless compelled by revolutionary violence. The collapse of 400 years of Portuguese rule in Africa testifies to this. At no time in the history of anti-imperialist struggles has armed struggle been the first option of the oppressed.” – (B. M. Magubane; Towards a Sociology of National Liberation from Colonialism: Cabral’s Legacy)
As we all watch with bated breaths the unfolding of ‘revolutionary’ events taking place in Tahrir Square, Egypt/KMT; it appears to be taken lightly that about 160 people have been murdered in the process. It seems that the dying of so many people is simply part of the collateral damage, besides, so many people people are dying daily elsewhere for less noble causes. If the death is that of a stranger, a person of another race and nationality, why should it even move us at all?
The Tunisian revolution that has preceded the Egyptian events which the news channels are calling ‘turmoil’, ‘revolt’, chaos, ‘stand-off’ depending on who is reporting, has left many families grieving. Perhaps we could view all the lives lost as collateral damage or as martyrs which are only necessary in times such as these, but is that not just a lie we have to tell ourselves so that we can carry on living or existing in the safety of our own nervous conditions?
It seems obvious that conquered people have a right and a need to defend themselves and defeat their enemies to re-establish themselves as truly free. Yet it appears that modern-day democratic processes and human rights issues curtail any efforts towards the total domination of one enemy since they too have rights protected by the law, this makes it very difficult to reconcile the sentiments of the oppressed folk with these notions of freedom that is only guaranteed by ballots and signing of papers.
The situation in Southern Africa is a clear case in point. We fought for many years to get back our land and when the time came to drive out the enemy, the many rounds of negotiations and reconciliation processes robbed us of our chance to fight amabhunu, instead of fighting and taking over their schools, houses and our ancestral lands, we were taught to embrace them and swallow our years of bitter anger. Something is wrong with this picture, or is this merely a trend and another attribute of a liberal agenda, the true meaning of democracy?
The whole world still cheers us for a very ‘smooth’ transition from the National Party government to the present African National Congress; but something is missing, something just does not add up in this equation. Amid all the Freshly Ground sentimentality and Tutu-style spirit of reconciliation, there is a sizzling tension and millions of discontented people who just don’t see where the New South Africa is. The victory celebrations always seem to pass them by and they only see their councillors around election time. How can we guarantee that these people will not resort to violence, directed at both themselves and state property? Surely there is something fundamentally flawed within our reasoning. There needs to be a total recall of why certain people actually gave their lives to the idea of real liberation, they wanted a systematic revolution so that so many innocent people did not have to lose their lives through the quiet violence of poverty, ignorance and disease. These teachers and healers such as Sobukwe, Biko, King Jnr and X did not choose to die, they were sacrificed so that others could be liberated and have abundant lives. There seems to be a tendency these days, to accept the suffering and ultimately inhumane deaths of others, whether far or close to us as just another natural give-and-take package of life, perhaps as one of nature’s laws. We are increasingly getting too close and too comfortable with the state of being dead and slowly dying.
Even some of the most celebrated philosophers, doctors and self-help gurus are churning out books and advice on how to live and co-exist amiably with our most feared neighbour ( Death), we are being collectively trained to accept decay without any grudges or misgivings. Some of these coping mechanisms are merely dealing with the effects and visible causes; none are dealing effectively enough with the root cause of this phenomenon. It is unfortunate that in our so-called technological civilization, we have been programmed to accept every injustice with cold ignorance. Countries with the most atrocious human rights violations are reduced to the sole responsibility of the United Nations/NATO and the Red Cross, while we ordinary citizens are content to take a back seat and utter words of shame and sympathy while others are content to pray away the pain. We tend to forget that China/India/Africa, places where a lot of human suffering is caused by ineffective social, political and religious mechanisms and greed for power have produced some of the most enduring ancient traditional views on Death. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, The Four Bardos, and The Egyptian Book of The Dead. All these works have become so steeped in mysticism and religious speculation that we neglect the fact that they contain thoughts and beliefs that were shared by the general population, thoughts that made the people more humane and understanding in both their earthly lives and knowledgeable about the state of death. But let me not digress into that topic, for it is a wide and heavily debatable one.
Of course, it is a reality that whatever comes forth into the light of day must inevitably return to the darkness from whence it came, death therefore should be as normal as birth, right? In any case, if we cannot stop it or prevent its eventuality, there is no other choice but to accept it as inevitable and really just natural.
But the question we must ask ourselves is; could any revolution or systematic change be possible without loss of the innocent women and young people’s lives? Perhaps the answer lies in the very reasons why revolutions are taking place in the first place, could social and systematic change take place by any other means? This may be a stupid question because as a South African (Azanian) who grew up during township political violence which was supposedly aimed at dismantling the apartheid regime yet seemed to cause the massacres of many young people, and the destruction of private property until eventually everyone resorted again to reasonable dialogue.
The biggest problem for me has always been the nature of the aggression, most violence was directed at our own neighbours, no schools in the suburbs were ever burned, no English man or Indian woman was necklaced and White people’s families’ businesses were generally never disrupted. The violence appeared to me as self-destructive and therefore unnecessary. Although we were all aware of insurgence and Umkhonto WeSizwe’s struggles at our borders, the violence there also appeared to be Black on Black, while progress continued unperturbed in the White world. Even though this should not be about race, it increasingly becomes so when the power and sense of economic security remain within one race. The quality of their lives and the quality of their deaths, is it not a political issue? Today there is a lot of anti-imperialist rhetoric going on within the ruling party ranks, from the Women’s to the Youth leagues. Meanwhile, it is becoming even harder to reconcile all that revolutionary talk with the elitist and pro-capitalist lifestyles and actions of the leaders.
It seems that revolution means many things to different people, one revolution may be characterised by social change while another is based on a change in personal fortunes.
The Problem of Nationalism
As a person who has been raised as a speaker of the Zulu language, imbibing the cultural mores and traditional strains of the Zulu folklore and living within the borders of a province called KwaZulu, it should follow that I am a Zulu. But it is not that simple; My maternal parenthood is composed of a mixture of Xhosa and Zulu, the Xhosa side also being touched by European or coloured ancestry. My paternal side is a mixture of Zulu and Swazi, so it could be argued that I am more Zulu/Swazi than anything else. My surname is a more tricky part, seeing that the Maseko’s are known to be either Swazi or any of the Northern Tribes stretching from Northern Zululand all the way to the Southern parts of the Congo.
Perhaps what I am attempting to explain is merely the tribal part of my life, is there such a thing as tribal nationalism? When one looks at the history and politics of the people called Ama-Zulu, it is clear that this conglomerate of clans and surnames came together in a sweeping and infamous attempt to become the world-renowned nation that it claims to be today. But even within the Zulu nation, there have always been factions and clans who express the need and will to be freed from the term of Zulu who they see as just another clan or kingdom which should be independent from them.
In recent years there have been a lot of words thrown about between the house of Zulu and the house of Dlamini, both monarchies in their own right, the media has dealt a lot with that one and the intensity of the latter’s argument seemed to wax and wane in the light of public opinions. The public is often a very fickle mass of people who are speculative and strongly influenced by those who apparently wield power, so much so that whatever the general public may usually express is just the opinion of their superiors. In KwaZulu Natal as this province is so notoriously called, public opinion against the Dlamini claims for sovereignty often came very close to violence. Many people commented on national television and in newspapers, most of them standing by the well-established and nationally endorsed kingdom of the Zulus. And so the cries of the Dlamini were routinely silenced, at least for now, although there is no doubt that there are ongoing arguments and land disputes behind closed doors.
The very same thing has occurred since the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s between the Maseko/Ngcamane Swazi people and the Dlamini-Sobhuza-Swazi, but that is also another long and drawn-out war of words and it is based on various role players interpretations of historical truth. But the central point is the protection of each nation’s sovereignty and the difficult redrawing of the ancient borders that existed before the Europeans invaded us.
I am simply pointing these cases out to show that nationhood is a concept or idea that has been largely forced upon unsuspecting masses who would otherwise get along just fine despite their differences. It is the powerful and the power-hungry chiefs and their advisers who manipulate both history and people’s minds to gain a monopoly on land and other resources.
As a Rastafarian I have also been convinced, mostly through the rousing and revolutionary music of Reggae pioneers, that nationality is a fallacy that has no place in a peaceful habitation that seeks to support and look after the needs of many people who have been mixed through-our a tumultuous and foreign manipulated history. In other words, Rasta’s are Outer-Nationalists, citizens of the entire World, a world which does not discriminate in terms of colour, language or even race. I say this despite the influence of the Nationalistic and restorative agenda of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA, which preached ‘Africa for Africans, at home and abroad.’ That was a cry that influenced many of the political structures that exist today and as much as it helped galvanise and give national pride to the oppressed people, it too had its problems and obvious limitations.
This was and largely remains the ideal point of view among I and I, while many Rases practice it according to the teachings and utterances of HIM Haile Selassie, there are a lot of them who still act through their own personal prejudices. But disagreement or dissent never leads to violence. That is largely because the movement is spiritual without being Religious in essence. The essence is a desire for holistic humanity and the realisation of self-reliance, mostly for the Black masses all over the universe. In a world governed by corporations and shrewd politicians, a disturbing version of nationalism is forced upon people while it is contradicted by structural adjustment and other capitalist policies which are based not on racial discrimination but on wealth prejudice.
Within a religious framework, nationalistic sentiments always lead to war and strife because people are often forced to choose sides and that’s when xenophobia and hostility begin. Just for the record, here’s what South American author Mario Vargas Llosa has to say about Nationalism and Utopia:
“No nation has evolved from the natural and spontaneous development of a single ethnic group, religion or cultural tradition. They all came about as a result of political arbitrariness, dispossession or imperial intrigue, crude economic interests, brute force combined with good fortune, and they all, even the oldest and most distinguished of them, have erected their borders on a devastated terrain of destroyed or repressed or fragmented cultures, incorporating people who have been thrown together through wars, religious strife or out of a simple survival instinct. Every nation is a lie that time and history has given – as in old myths or classical legends – an appearance of truth.” –p.222
This famous Peruvian writer of books such as The War of the End of The World and The Feast of The Goat does not hold any punches to convince the reader of what he thinks of the debacle of nationalism. He even uses the writings of many of his contemporaries and historical writers to demonstrate that nationalism is just a reaction to other forms of mind control mechanisms and that it can only breed strife and violence. I have to say that I have been one of the defenders of what our politicians, especially the ANC Youth League chief call Nationalisation. I have half-heartedly spoken out in defence of this idea too as I have also been influenced by the well-meaning works of previous Africanist heroes who sacrificed their lives to preserve the dignity and national identity of Black People universally. I say that my support has been half-hearted because another part of me says that the identifiers such as Blackness and African-ness are a very complex matter, and when they are used to make political arguments concerning matters of macro-economics then it becomes even more complicated and even dangerous.
It is well known that race and racism are some of the many traits of nationalism. In defence of one’s own interests, it seems plausible that one must respond or react strongly or forcefully against any perceived foreign opinion or incursion. Nationalism is often shrouded in the fragile veil of collectivist security.
This is the very reason why this is such a problematic topic and it will require not only the sociologist, the anthropologist and the psychologist’s input to truly decipher, but it also will require that the people who are used as the pawns in this historical game to stand up and speak for themselves without the secret agendas and propaganda exerted by their so-called leaders.
Here is what Vargas Llosa has to say again, even more earnestly:
“Nationalism is the culture of the uncultured, the religion of the demagogue, and a smokescreen behind which prejudice, violence and often racism can be found lurking. Because at the root of all nationalism is the conviction that being part of a specific nation is an attribute, something distinctive, an essence shared by similarly privileged people, a condition that inevitably establishes a difference – a hierarchy – for other people. It is the easiest thing in the world to play the nationalist card to whip up a crowd, especially if that crowd is made up of poor ignorant people who are looking to vent their bitterness and frustration on something or someone.” – 223.
There is just so much that this elder has to say which is just so on point and agrees with what I think, but to be more objective, I will simply cease from quoting any more of his words. In the final analysis, it is even a risky thing to merely write about the vulnerability of the masses without sounding like another philosopher without any sensible solutions to offer.
In Azania (Southern Africa) there is a chance for people to actually turn the tables on their corrupt leaders. We are not a people who will take abuse lying down for too long, revolution as our heritage and as I have argued, does not have to mean massacres.
Events in the past few years even just before the FIFA World Cup clearly illustrated that the general African population is ready to see real changes in the status quo.
But the political machine is well-oiled with dirty money and as soon as they sense a revolution brewing, as in the many wage and other labour-related mass actions that took place even after the World Cup in SA (Azania), the Government and their media machinery have used many devices to divert attention from the problems that must be addressed.
Aside from the universal challenges of violent crime and youth delinquency, the South African public rarely uses violence to deal with problems. Does this mean that we are not capable of revolutions such as displayed by the people of Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and even the student’s revolt in the United Kingdom? Not really.
South Africans are no strangers to aggression; this is even more so when it comes to violence against African people whom we choose to call foreigners. This kind of violence which is labelled as Xenophobic must be the most disturbing to observe because it fits right into the neo-colonial plans to divide and conquer us.
When people are controlled through the illusion of money or loss thereof they are capable of murdering their own brothers and sisters.
The irony of it all is that some people are more foreign than others and poor people appear incapable of distinguishing between white foreigners and black ones. I have never heard or read a story where a Norwegian, Scottish or British national has been harassed and beaten for not having the right papers to work or live in this country. But the politicians are always making a fuss about how much they loathe racism, and how much South Africa has transformed and allowed the assimilation of so many colours, cultures and even products.
At the end of the day, there should be a renewal of the way we view and define ourselves as the people of Southern Africa. Africans should start by investing in Indigenous Knowledge Systems, by becoming creators of our own philosophies, academies and cultural economies, Africans will not depend on Eurocentric models of civilization, they will have a well-established and holistic reference point whereby they can draw solutions in times of struggle. There is a paradigm shift in the world and violence is gradually losing its power.
This way of being and seeing should not be influenced by whatever the democratic culture which dominates the rest of the imperial nations recommends. We should and can define our own destiny in a new way, without even referring to what the great battle strategist King Shaka Ka Senzangakhona had to do, without even looking to the Karl Marx’s and all that those well-meaning European thinkers said and wrote. Their Godless dogmas and scientific social doctrines have only created the kind of politician we have now, one who cannot even be in touch with nature.
This is evidenced by the way they fail to act on the most basic environmental policies; they constantly choose profits before nature or people. Their very education and mentality are based on different levels of psychological violence. They cannot solve problems because they are ill-equipped to do so; it is no longer possible for them to reach the place of conscience.
The unique people that reside in this land have a very special purpose on this earth, to give humanity its dignity by activating and living the well-known ideal of UBUNTU.
Ubuntu is what is missing in all of the world’s politics, it may be written within the constitutions but whatever else goes on in the powerful business and media world is directly contradictory to the principles of Ubuntu.
The Revolution therefore should begin within each individual, to see oneself as the greatest actor or activator within the universe. This can be done through self-knowledge and understanding of others’ purpose too, no nation has ever given anyone that divine sense of purpose. The nation has only created the illusion that I am because we are. It is an illusion that has so long been disguised and clothed in the robes of truth.
Conclusion; A word from our elders:
“The violent usurpation of the Black world’s productive forces and its freedom of development constituted the principal and permanent characteristics of our domination and quite obviously, genuine freedom can come about only when the productive forces of the Black world have been completely freed from every kind of foreign domination. In short, recovery of the resources that have always been usurped is simultaneously the recovery of our destiny.” – (Magubane, 421;The Political Economy of The Black World – Origins of The Present Crisis).
I began writing this letter* as a response to what I see as an increasingly violent rhetoric within the political systems in Southern Africa. Many citizens also live within the sphere of violent crime. All these are the direct result of a systems failure. Our poverty and ignorance is leading us into the same fate that capitalism is suffering, which is Death. Capitalism cannot survive because it is intrinsically flawed, it is time to teach the young Southern African’s and indeed Africans everywhere, that their destiny does not have to be tied to the fate of such a dying system, one which is based on pitching the strong against the weak. There needn’t be any competition involved in the workplace, the learning institutions and homes because these are places where minds should be nurtured towards natural progression.
The Rastafari singer Sizzla laments the fate of a people who ‘can’t nyam no food without no money…’; Which basically means that we have been reduced to slaves for something as material such as money. Many of us have land but we have been estranged from the soil.
We constantly go hungry because we have been programmed to think that we need money to buy food, we cannot imagine what we would do without cash, in a way we have become actual prisoners to virtual reality.
Hip Hop MC Guru once rapped, “We need a new reality, a higher level of consciousness…”
Without shying away from solid needs, this is the revolution that I am calling for and I am willing to not die but to Live for.
Nabiy ©
Green Ankh Works 