A role-model for African Liberation?
On January 8 — 112 years ago the continent’s largest liberation movement — the African National Congress (ANC) was born.
Arguably, the birth of the ANC was an epochal anchor of the liberation trajectory against colonialism, which essence had given legality to imperialist plunder, looting and exploitation of the African continent.
Everything owned by the colonised including their land and whatever they produced was taken away from them.
So, the birth of the ANC epitomised the reconstruction of African dignity and the formative path to obliterating the future of colonialism.
The 112 years of the ANC’s existence gestures the triumph and longevity of anticolonialism.
Therefore, the stability of the ANC and the lack of it points to the status of the decolonisation project.
The existential threats to the ANC are existential danger to African nationalism.
The dialectical trend patterns from the ANC mirror either the progressive or retrogressive contradictions confronting most African liberation movements today.
History and its weight on political legitimacy
The launch of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party on December 16, 2023 expresses the current magnanimous contradiction within the ANC.
This political formation was endorsed by South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma.
Historically, the MK was the military wing of the ANC formed in 1961.
The MK gave fraternal and operational solidarities to many military initiatives which contributed to the overthrow of colonialism.
The MK partnered with the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Party (ZPRA) in the landmark Sipolilo and Wankie Battles (1967-1969).
The original MK’s formation is linked to the doyens of South-African liberation like Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Joe Modise and Chris Hani, among others.
The recent appropriation of the MK label can be seen as a self-positioning tactic of the Zuma-endorsed outfit to posture as an incarnate entity of the founding fathers of the MK and modern-day South-Africa.
In the same vein, the ANC is the formal custodian of the original uMkhonto we Sizwe and has legitimate ownership to its legal personage.
While fronting the new MK’s campaign, Zuma has declared his membership to ANC.
In the process, he has openly disassociated himself from the “ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa” — which he links with current political-economy challenges facing South-Africa.
In so doing, Zuma wants to position himself to both aspects of history, first as a member of the ANC which organised the masses' challenge against apartheid rule, second as a supporter of the MK which claims to represent a nationalist renaissance challenging the ideological inadequacies of the ruling ANC.
Meanwhile, the ANC is justified to use its history as a resource to canvass support in the coming election.
With these scenarios the forthcoming South-African election will be contested based on the two parties’ claim to being on the right side of history.
The anti-Ramaphosa argument
Those opposed to Ramaphosa have accused him of failing to dismantle the remnants of the apartheid political-economy structure.
His administration is blamed for perpetuating inequality and poverty. Some of Ramaphosa’s critics see him as a trojan horse of white monopoly capital. If these allegations are anything to go by, then one wonders how Zuma can be exonerated from the same allegations of being a proxy of neo-apartheid forces during his term as president.
This follows the permanent stagnation of the project of transferring a sizeable position of the economy to the black majority.
The unfinished business of the Marikana legacy also haunts the Ramaphosa government.
On the other hand, there is also a firm belief that the formation of uMkhonto we Sizwe could be aided by another faction of white monopoly capital, which has suffered disenfranchisement from the Ramaphosa administration.
Whether true or false, this conspicuous conspiracy assumptions depict how much African politics has not weaned itself out of neo-colonial manipulation.
These claims delegitimise and eliminate the existence of an organic agency in African politics.
It is as if Africans can only find political expression under colonial tutelage and support.
Contradictions in African politics is seen as manifest expression of external and neo-colonial forces interests.
This explains Africa’s current fixation in debt clearance priorities to multilateral institutions whose existence is tied to the historical under-development and looting of the African continent and most importantly Africa’s uncompensated loss of land and colonial genocide.
Instead of uniting against poverty and inequalities which foreground Africa’s underdevelopment, our politics is divided along West and East global power competition intricacies.
In some jurisdictions policies are tailor-made to win validation of global comprador forces against the very principles of our protracted struggles for independence.
In some jurisdictions policies are designed to support the extractive appetites of established and emerging global capital players.
Communities, which suffer the geological pillage and endure the brunt of climate owing to excesses in industrial linked environmental violence.
These same people are further subjected to personality eulogistic short-termism of partisan interests.
This reality is an existential threat to the liberation agenda set out by the ANC of 1912 and its successor liberation movements throughout the African continent.
Ideological consistency
While it could be seen as a reactionary action which is conflict with the nationalist tradition for a pan-Africanist of Zuma’s stature to disown a formidable organisation like ANC, Zuma’s connection claim to the MK trademark substantiates his consistent leaning to the African liberation political culture.
It would have been a tragic contradiction for ex-president Zuma to find himself endorsing a neo-colonial political formation or a pro-apartheid party like the Democratic Alliance (DA).
During his presidency, Zuma set out a radical pro-black economic democratisation agenda to minimise excesses of White control to the South-African economy.
Just like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Zuma’s fight against Africans’ economic marginalisation still makes him an enemy of the beneficiaries and proxies of colonial loot.
It also inspires some confidence that Zuma still claims his membership to the ANC while he is endorsing the newly formed opposition, uMkhonto we Sizwe.
In as much as Zuma’s dual allegiance to the ANC and the MK presents a dialectic extreme, it also affirms his subscription to the organic balance of forces currently defining the roadmap to South-Africa’s 3 February election.
This gives optimism to those of us with faith in power contestation that is grounded in the African liberation experience and its broad-based agenda.
The dilemma of Zuma’s position to claim ANC membership and still emphasise his support for the MK also gives prospects of negotiation and resolution of this dialectic complexity.
The MK factor and voter behaviour
Zuma’s endorsement of the MK party ahead of the 2024 elections will attract the support of the disgruntled South-African populace.
This will serve as a massive vote puller to the MK from those constituencies that are traditionally fond of Zuma’s economic democratisation ideological predisposition.
The support Zuma has displayed to the MK will automatically position it as an alternative force to extricate South Africa’s majority from the fringes of economic participation.
The MK as a pro-liberation alternative will steal a popularity fraction of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
The MK and EFF’s manifesto linkages to the economic fundamentals of the South-African national question are a cause for the ANC to introspect on its shortfalls in this regard.
The mutual calls for the return to founding liberation ideas should serve as a reckoning point for the ANC to reflection.
While it is credible to narrowly attribute the exit of its members from the ANC, the EFF under the leadership of Julius Malema, and now the MK present a genuine case for ideological renewal of the ANC.
The ANC has even conceded to the fate of renewal or perishing.
Back to the future
As the ANC presented its January 8 statement on January 13 one would expect focus to be on addressing the internal ideological contradictions which have created the current political complexities.
As guided by the tradition of this annually initiated Oliver Tambo rite, the January 8 statement articulated the progress of the ANC in the prosecution of the armed struggle and setting out the objectives of the Party to direct the anti-apartheid mass action.
For former president Thabo Mbeki, the January 8 proclamation made him to “understand the tasks of leadership, including the necessity never to tell lies, never to make false and unrealisable promises, never to say anything you do not mean or believe, and never to say anything that might evoke an enthusiastic populist response, but which would ultimately serve to undermine the credibility of our movement and struggle”.
Building on this philosophical foundation, the ANC must be able to reclaim the support it is losing to the Zuma-backed MK formation.
Contrary to the claims of its antagonists, the ANC must be able rearticulate its role as a liberation movement whose existence transcends partisan thinness.
While the ANC will win the forthcoming election, this democratic wrestling will afford all political parties an opportunity to share their ideas with varying persuasive effect in minds of all South-Africans.
Lessons from Zimbabwe
I am optimistic that the ANC will win the February 3 election regardless of the growing factional off-shoots emerging to threaten its existence.
In our first post-independence election, Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) encountered the same from Edgar Tekere who had formed the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM).
Tekere was one of the top liberation stalwarts during Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence.
However, his aspirations for presidency outside Zanu PF did not gain any traction.
Others alike include Simba Makoni of the Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn party in 2008; as well as Dumiso Dabengwa who forfeited the terms of the Unity Accord by purporting to revive the Zapu of Joshua Nkomo.
He never became Zimbabwe’s president
Likewise, the then expelled vice-president Joyce Mujuru formed a political party which did not have a fair share of appeal to the people of Zimbabwe.
Recently, she has made indications of registering her allegiance to Zimbabwe’s ruling party.
On the eve of the 2018 election the late African liberation icon and former president of Zimbabwe Robert Gabriel Mugabe endorsed the opposition and Zanu PF still prevailed.
I deploy this walk down the memory lane to express the extent to which it is difficult for liberation stalwarts to grow their fame outside their established political homes which have enjoyed intergenerational support of the electorate.
Nationalists -and particularly our liberation patriarchs must always find common ground and must never allow any form of contradiction to escalate beyond the dialectical extremes like the ones South-Africa is currently facing.
- *Richard Runyararo is a Zimbabwean academic whose literary work is committed to promoting policy, decolonisation and African memory preservation. Feedback: rasmkhonto@gmail.com