Allan Boesak unpacks Walter Sisulu and SA's fight for freedom

IOL News

13-06-2025

Sixty-five years after Walter Sisulu's pivotal role in the anti-apartheid struggle, this article explores the historical context of his actions, the political dynamics of the time, and the ongoing legacy of resistance in South Africa
Image: Ai
By: Allan Aubrey Boesak PhD
Sixty-five years ago, in February 1960, Walter Sisulu was in an apartheid court, defending himself, the struggle for freedom, and his own principled reasons for being a part of it, as co-accused in the Treason Trial that ran from 1956 to 1961, all of them facing the death penalty.
Meanwhile, on February 3rd, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was in Cape Town, in the white, apartheid parliament. In a speech now known as the 'Winds of Change' speech, he was addressing the startling political changes sweeping across the colonised world at the time. The contrast could not have been greater.
While Harold Macmillan was articulating an imperialist, colonialist response to these challenges, calling not for fundamental changes to the existing global order, but for adaptation to the new circumstances, for more subtle ways of control, more sophisticated applications of white power – 'the breezes of deception' - Walter Sisulu was holding up a new vision of freedom, personifying the strength of our people in their determination to be free.
This is what I call 'the headwinds of freedom'. While MacMillan was trying to secure South Africa's place in the Western world's hegemonic aspirations, in the future of its political and economic systems and structures, Walter Sisulu was standing accused of treason for defending an anti-colonial, anti-imperial struggle, and the aspirations of his people.
In that bastion of whiteness and white power, no one talked about it, but South Africa's oppressed people already personified those 'winds of change', resisting the breezes of deception, and creating the headwinds of freedom, in four major turning points in our history.
They did so most vividly in the courageous rising of our people in the Defiance Campaign, in which Walter Sisulu's role in planning, preparation, and execution alongside colleagues such as Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela was crucial.
They did so in our people's amazing ability to articulate an alternative, humanised political vision for South Africa in the Freedom Charter of 1955 (which Walter Sisulu had to watch from the rooftop of a nearby building because of his banning order), and which was a direct challenge to the colonial-capitalist order MacMillan and white South Africa were so desperate to maintain.
They did so in the unforgettable Women's March of 1956, for which Albertina Sisulu was a key organiser. All this was a definitive shift, away from the colonialist paradigms of the politics of caution and diffidence, to the politics of mass mobilisation, people's power and nonviolent militancy. It was also an affirmation of the significance of women's role in the struggle, even though our patriarchal pig-headedness to this day finds that hard to deal with.
The Sharpeville Massacre, with all of its history-changing consequences, signifying yet another shattering of the paradigms, was just a month away.
Both men understood that they were in a struggle. For MacMillan this was a struggle for Western, capitalist, imperial hegemony, and more than guns or bombs, the thing that frightened him most was 'the strength of this African nationalism.'
Hence his warning to South African white power: 'The struggle is joined, and it is a struggle for the minds of men.' And this is the heart of the legacy of Walter Sisulu which this university now claims as its mission: the struggle for the re-awakened, conscientised, humanised, liberated, decolonised African mind.
Even a cursory glance at the (Western) commentaries on that famous 'Winds of Change' speech by the British Prime Minister confirms one major point of consensus: It is the British Government, between 1945 and 1951, under the Labour Party, that had, on its own, initiated the decolonisation process.
That process was briefly interrupted by Conservative Party rule until Harold Macmillan's leadership, who then again took up the noble, European cause of letting Africa's people go. In essence, Western media, political analysts, and academics claim that it is the British Empire's magnanimity whose blessing on Asian and African liberation movements made independence possible.
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Hence, we can find this sentence: 'The British government, under Labour Party rule, had started a process of decolonisation.' Not a word about African and Asian agency, initiative, or struggle.
But that is what happens when one's lens is consistently, and sometimes blindly, Eurocentric. We know, as these Eurocentric minds also do, that what was called 'independence' was not ever granted, or initiated by the ruling classes of white, imperialist, colonialist societies.
It was always a struggle, a fight, and sometimes to the death. And it really did not start in 1945. India's fight for independence began at least as early as 1857, with the Indian rebellion, and Mahatma Gandhi's historic Salt March – perhaps the decisive onslaught against British rule in India – happened in 1930. For Malaysia, 1857 is also a historic marker in their struggles for independence with the uprising of the workers against the gold mining companies of Britain.
In Kenya there was resistance almost from the moment of formal colonisation in 1920 and organised resistance through the Mau-Mau started in 1942. The Mau-Mau rebellion of 1952-1960 simply further debunks the lie of 1945. South Africa's struggle against imperialist invasion started in 1510.
The winds of change might have been blowing through Africa and Asia, but it was imperial power, imperial political and economic interests, and the empire's needs and desires that set out to control the strength, direction, and effect of those winds.
Those Africans who understood the truth, understood also that this was not a time for unbridled celebration, genuflecting in gratitude to imperialists and colonialists for the condescension of letting them raise their own flags. They understood that those winds of change would be met with fierce opposition disguised as breezes of deception: neo-colonialist adaptations, fraudulent 'independence pacts', spider webs of international rules they did not control, the optics of power, and divide-and-rule tactics, fuelled by greed and the politics of internal betrayal.
The recognition of a new phase of struggle, the shaping of a different vision for Africa, with different consequences for their people at home and in the world, is what I mean by 'headwinds of freedom.' Those headwinds sometimes blow quite strongly, sometimes they subside, and then they rise again. But they never completely die down.
There are many reasons for my admiration of that singularly influential Indian social scientist and Christian lay theologian, M.M. Thomas, since I began to read him in the early 1970s. One reason is what he wrote in the early 1950s, about the 'winds of change' in Asia and Africa Macmillan would be talking about.
These are not mere 'rebellions', 'uprisings' and 'civil disobedience actions', Thomas argued. These are revolutions. They are revolutions in response to the people's demand for power, though not power for power's sake, but power 'as the bearer of dignity and for significant and responsible participation in society and social history.'
In other words, a people's power to enable them to claim their agency, their right to their role in the shaping of their own history and their God-given destiny.
Furthermore, Thomas insisted, (and those who have come to know me will know why I like this) people of faith should involve themselves in these revolutions because despite all the chaos and contradictions, the revolution is not just about a new political and social order – it is about justice and dignity, in truth, a new humanity.
And that's what God wants. A new African. A new Asian, away from the distorted, dehumanised, colonised creatures we have been made into: - renamed, labeled, branded, racialized, and depersonalised. I took that with me as I later read Iranian scholar Hamid Dabashi on revolution who writes,
Revolution in the sense of a radical and sudden shift of political power with an accompanying social and economic restructuring of society – one defiant class violently and conclusively overcoming another – is not what we are witnessing here, or not quite yet. Instead of denying these insurgencies the term 'revolution', we are now forced to reconsider the concept and understand it anew… The longer these revolutions take to unfold, the more enduring, grassroots-based, and definitive will be their emotive, symbolic, and institutional consequences.
Dabashi's argument opens new ways of understanding revolution. Revolution should no longer be defined solely by the presence, or degree of violence, as in the Haitian, French, Russian or Cuban revolutions, but by the depth of permanent and fundamental change.
Instead of one, cataclysmic event, there will be a series of historic moments, perhaps over several years, even decades, revealing a 'grassroots-based', people-driven, enduring surge towards fundamental change of society.
Through this lens, I see a continuation of revolutionary resistance over the long decades of anti-colonial freedom struggles with figures like Autshumao of the Cape Khoi from the early days of the European invasion; Dona Kimpa Vita of the Congo in the 1700s, rebirthing itself in the revolutionary masses of the 1950s, the seventies and eighties, responding to the calls of the Nkrumahs, Luthulis and the Sobukwes, the Lumumbas and the Sankaras; the Mandelas, and the Sisulu's, the Bikos, and now in this era, the Ibrahim Traores'.
MacMillan made that speech on February 3rd, 1960, in Cape Town. Before that, on January 10, he had premiered the speech in Accra, Ghana, where Kwame Nkrumah, long-time freedom fighter and intellectual giant, was the first Prime Minister of the newly independent state.
In Ghana, reports tell us, the speech was received with mostly stony silence, clearly not making the impression Harold Macmillan had hoped for. In Ghana, they already knew the difference between Macmillan's hopes for the colonies and Africans' fight for liberation. In Cape Town, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was stunned for a moment, then rose in a spontaneous, spirited defence of white supremacy, neo-colonialism, and apartheid, which he called 'justice for the white man in South Africa.'
MacMillan's and the colonising world's primary concern was for the well-being of the British Commonwealth and its role in the shifting sands of global affairs, which South Africa left when it became a republic a year later. Britain knew not to be too worried though. English-speaking white South Africa, at first shocked at the idea of being severed from Mother England and all it meant for them, quickly overcame that emotional moment. Political, diplomatic, sports and cultural ties, as well as trade and commerce with Britain remained strong and even grew as the strategic position of white South Africa in Black Africa within the duopoly world continued to serve Western hegemonic interests. South Africa's politics were sometimes described as 'odious' but it was politics that favoured white people and imperialist geopolitics, so the stench did not drive anyone out of the room.
Thus, despite the initial wringing of hands, gnashing of teeth and clutching of pearls, they understood that nothing fundamentally changed. White solidarity, white political control, white economic interests and the overall solidified presence of white, supremacist, ideological and military power necessary to keep their Blacks in check and under control soon made any disagreements between English speakers' and Afrikaners seem superficial. White people had reason to believe that those winds of change, while not exactly at their backs, could be controlled, calmed down, and usefully directed.
Black people, however, soon found out what Verwoerd's 'justice for the white man' meant. The ongoing Treason Trial was quickly overshadowed by the Sharpeville massacre, followed by a decade of vicious suppression, the banning of the liberation movements, the reality of enforced exile, the Rivonia Trial, the life sentences on Robben Island, and ever-intensifying draconian white rule at home. Verwoerd's fight now was 'justice for the white man' – no longer justice for the Afrikaner, Afrikaner culture, or Afrikaner survival. That ominous, deliberately inclusionary term would mean continued Whiteness, continued colonisation, continued dehumanisation, continued apartheid, continued exploitation, continued denial of rights of any kind for Black people, and for us, continued struggle.
Hendrik Verwoerd did not understand it that day, but MacMillan was not demanding the abandonment of Whiteness. He was suggesting some palatable political flexibility, some trimming of the sails to the winds of change, a slight tilt of the prow into the coming waves – just enough to let Africans have a finger on the wheel, but with the helm firmly in white hands. P W Botha did not grasp it so well, F W De Klerk did better, but Helen Zille and Johann Rupert understand it best of all.
But underneath the surface, denied, suppressed and feared as they were, those winds of unbroken revolutionary fervour continued to stir, becoming the headwinds of resistance, the whirlwinds of rising consciousness, the storm that by 1976 would hit and overturn South African history, its reality and the direction of its future.
When Harold MacMillan spoke in Ghana he knew how the wind blew, for right in front of him sat Kwame Nkrumah, one of the most formidable African leaders of his time. In 1958, just one year after Ghana's independence, Nkrumah had called African leaders together to flesh out his vision for a united, truly independent Africa. MacMillan knew Nkrumah's mind was set on real freedom. Nkrumah spoke of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and genuine freedom. 'The essence of neo-colonialism,' Nkrumah told that generation, as he is telling ours today, is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent, and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.
However, Nkrumah also saw very early that the neo-colonialist grip on Africa was broad and comprehensive, as we are increasingly discovering today. Their methods, he warned, are 'subtle and varied.' Nkrumah elaborates, 'They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological, and cultural spheres.'
The political maneuverings of the rich North should be understood in a wider context, he knew, and dissected through the lens of the Global South in order to truly understand the impact of these actions on Africa and other countries of the Global South. He understood what U.S. President Eisenhower was talking about when, in his famous last address to the American people, he warned America against the danger of 'the Military-Industrial Complex.' Nkrumah already then understood what we today call 'the Deep State'. Lurking behind all this, Nkrumah saw,
are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed 'The Invisible Government' arising from Wall Street's connections with the Pentagon and various intelligence services.
Looking at, and understanding the devastating history of U.S. interventions, coup d'etats, and regime-change wars across the Global South - from the assassination of democratically elected leaders who refused to do the bidding of the U.S. to the endless wars for endless profits and hegemony we are witnessing today, killing Global South citizens by the millions - one would be utterly foolish, blind, or wilful not to see the truth of this statement. Before, already, but especially after September 11, 2001, it is perhaps more appropriate to speak of the Military-Industrial-Financial-Media-Intelligence-Congressional Complex. None of it happened without a carefully calculated and coordinated plan executed by the powerful network of organizations, agencies, and institutions Nkrumah pointed us to, and which make the American Empire (with the UK and Western Europe hiding under its skirts) commit such deadly crimes against humanity, (not to mention its war crimes) on such a regular basis, with such impunity, and with such grandiose shamelessness.
Consequently, the United States and the UK collaborated to stir such dissent amongst Ghanaians that it led to no less than six coup attempts against Nkrumah and finally his overthrow in 1966. We know that from a now declassified State Department memo to President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. 'Nkrumah is leading Ghana towards what he calls African socialism, which is, in fact, a personal dictatorship,' Averell Harriman wrote, already manufacturing the justification. However, he assures the president, 'there are still forces at work within the country which may stem that trend…'
There is a similar document from the UK in 1966 discussing how Nkrumah could 'be overthrown and replaced by a more Western-oriented government.' Nkrumah's replacement was to be a General Arthur Ankrah, regarded by the British, according to the document, as 'a nice, but stupid man.' Exactly the kind the empire needs.
I do not have time to talk about Patrice Lumumba, who gave the same message at that conference. Or about Amilcar Cabral. All of them exposing the 'breezes of deception', setting the continent alight with their intellect, their fire, and their passion for real liberation, signifying the headwinds of resistance and freedom, setting the sterling examples of genuine leadership for the Sankaras of the future. And they all paid the ultimate price.
Among the many issues surrounding President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC under his leadership, one of the most disturbing is his and his organisation's captivity to white monopoly capital, here in South Africa and in the West, and the ways in which he has led South Africa further along the destructive path of neo-liberal capitalism as if more credible alternatives did not exist. That South Africa is today the country with the greatest socio-economic inequalities in the world is the result of an economic trajectory chosen by the ANC government since 1994, much to the satisfaction of world bodies like the IMF and the World Bank.
Critical analysts such as Patrick Bond and Sampie Terreblanche have seen this from the start, and have been ringing the alarm bells ever since. Economist Eugene Cairncross offers scathing, but entirely on point, critique in what he calls 'the triumph of capital' in South Africa's 'post-Apartheid' economy.
He mentions how tax concessions by the 'new' government, especially to the gold mining industry, have been preserved, and how the privatization and commercialization of state assets like the fuel producer Sasol, 'for a song,' has benefited as a private company with the post-apartheid state foregoing these profits. Under Mr Ramaphosa, with South African Airways and parts of Transnet basically already gone, and with Eskom and the rest of Transnet including our ports, on the chopping block, the list is growing alarmingly.
Cairncross gives a perfect, if dispiriting, description of this neo-colonialist process. He explains how ownership and control of lands, mines and major industries remain concentrated 'in the hands of a handful of capitalists' exactly as it was in the past. And not only that: ownership of major economic activities has been 'systematically transferred to foreign capital, either directly or through the stock exchange.'
It seems nothing was left to chance. Under the ANC government, exchange control became another tool of enrichment of the few, albeit that 'the few' now included the few Blacks from the new elite and the political aristocracy. Cairncross writes,
During the period of 1998 to 2002, the six largest corporations – Anglo American, Glencore/BHP Billiton (mining conglomerates) Old Mutual, SAB (South African Breweries) and Liberty – moved tens of billions of Rands off-shore, and listed as 'foreign' companies. Two major consequences of these actions are initial movement of the vast amounts of capital offshore, out of the control of present or future South African governments, and the future profits made in South Africa would be exported to the now externally listed and domiciled companies. [South Africa's] current balance of payment deficit is to a significant extent attributable to the continued export of profits and dividends to these and other) now 'foreign' companies.
One should perhaps highlight just three further issues related to this state of affairs. First, those exported profits, though created here in South Africa from the minerals taken from our soil, should have benefited the development of the people of South Africa, who, instead have to carry the loss of these benefits through the taxes they have to pay. Second, one need not look too far for the relationship between the continued impoverishment of South Africa's Black majority, and the sudden, spectacular enrichment of the few, under the guise of Black Economic Empowerment, yet another breeze of deception. Third, consider some of the personalities involved, their role then and their positions and immense wealth now through their political positions and choices. All this is at great cost to the masses, but this is what Prof. Jakes Gerwel called South Africa's 'rapid deracialization of capital.'
The rest of the African continent does not fare much better, and as in the case of the so-called 'independent' Francophone countries, the former French colonies, even worse. The successful negotiation gambit, offered by France, is outrageously scandalous. Africa was never meant to be independent, successful, in control. Here is an analysis by socio-economic analyst Siji Jabbar, who describes the utterly fraudulent independence France negotiated with all its former colonies in Africa.
Under the overall title, 'The Colonial Pact,' it is a system designed for the complete benefit of France and its economic and political interests, and called, fittingly perhaps, although stunningly cynically, 'a system of compulsory solidarity.' The word 'compulsory,' preceding 'solidarity,' and encompassing wholesale, premeditated fraud, already blows the mind, but is perhaps entirely fitting for what France has designed, and those African countries have conceded to. This system of 'compulsory solidarity,' Jabbar explains, obliges former colonies to put 65% of their currency reserves into the French Treasury, plus another 20% for financial liabilities. This means that these African countries have access to only 15% of their own money. Furthermore, France has first right of refusal for all government contracts, even if better deals could be secured elsewhere. On top of that, France also has first right of refusal to all and any natural resources discovered in those African lands. In its attempt to appear subtle, France could not have been more blatant.
Today these countries are in the news, and for entirely different reasons. They are the 21st-century signs of the headwinds of resistance and freedom sweeping from west to east, and from north to south.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has discovered how its rich mineral wealth, instead a blessing for its people, have become a curse. Since the hidden Holocaust of King Leopold II taking the lives of perhaps 15 million Congolese, millions more are dying in a manufactured instability they call a 'civil war' while the country is being looted by corporations from Europe, the US, Israel and South Africa.
And as always, the illustrious names that make us proud, have to be mentioned in the same breath as the names of those that bring us shame and anger: from General Ankrah in 1965 to President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2025. The cultivation of House-Negroism has always been an indispensable weapon in the arsenal of imperialism.
However, the headwinds of resistance are rising, and blowing from the North-West of Africa. The new Alliance of Sahel States (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso) is a confederation ushering in a new kind of politics. Young Captain Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso, like a Sankara redivivus, alongside presidents Assimi Goita, and Abdourachman Tchiani, are not only telling Pharaoh to let their people go, they are telling pharaoh to get out. Literally! Before our very eyes, the Sahel nations, together now with Namibia and Botswana, and promising signs in Ghana and Senegal, are creating a new Africa. They are reclaiming the mineral wealth of their people, are cancelling or re-negotiating contracts with foreign companies, and learning from South Africa's fraudulent BEE practices, pursuing genuine economic empowerment for their people.
They are creating real jobs and educational opportunities on measurable scales for their youth. They are closing foreign military bases, rearranging diplomatic relations, genuinely fighting corruption, forging alternative regional alliances that serve the aspirations of the region, and resurrecting our dignity and pride in being African. They are the embodiment of the new Africa rising, and the youth, from Nairobi and Abuja to Kampala, and from Abidjan and Kinshasha to Cape Town, are responding to the call. They have become the personification of the headwinds of anti-colonial resistance and freedom I am talking about. This is the leadership and politics Africa desperately needs.
But these developments are shining a light on South Africa. The end result of the May 29th elections is the coalition between the ANC and the DA with a few very small parties, like a street with only half the lights on, which they insist on calling a Government of National Unity, even though it is nothing of the kind. Those breezes of deception, disguised as winds of change, are once again blowing.
The DA is not only claiming ownership; it is firmly establishing baasskap. Afriforum and Solidariteit understand that perfectly. And so does Donald Trump, who recognizes South Africa as fertile soil for the toxic seeds of rejuvenated white supremacy. We have to be vigilant here.
One reason, besides the will of our oligarchs, why the GNU still exists, is that there has been so little substantial difference between the ANC and the DA, briefly (almost) interrupted by the Zuma era, but finally eroded under Cyril Ramaphosa. The argument that the GNU will collapse because the ANC and the DA are 'too far apart' does not hold, in my view. Thirty years of pretence has just played itself out. Our economic policies alone make the point. Our foreign policies are not far behind. The Zionist/sub-imperialists, with Western neo-colonialist support and direction, just as the DA requested and planned, are determined to keep control. When the collapse comes, it will be for other reasons.
What a year ago I raised as a serious question, namely whether under this GNU, policies intended to embody justice, security, and dignity for the vast majority of South Africa's people will survive, while policies that buttress neo-liberal capitalism and all its deleterious effects will be further entrenched, is now, with the Ramaphosa/Musk/Starlink hideousness, a grim reality.
And it is not at all about unity. It's about what remains in whose hands: from our land to our minerals to our oceans and what is in and under them; from the Reserve Bank and the mines and the ownership of production to the minds of our children.
For a few years now, I have been speaking and writing about 'the politics of vulgarity' as a global phenomenon. I suppose that still is an apt description of what our politics is subjecting us to. But political scientist, public commentator, and activist Vijay Prashad is offering us a more appropriate concept which I think helps us greatly understand our unfolding political dynamics, globally and here at home. Dr. Prashad speaks of the 'politics of decadence.'
Political decadence, Prashad explains, is the politics of a ruling class 'caught in the habit of rule.' It cannot perceive of itself as not holding power. When that happens, it seeks reasons for its loss of power in everything external, unable to do self-reflection, self-critique, self-correction, let alone renewal, even if the state of its decay is vividly displayed in every decision taken.
The politics of decadence has no vision for itself, for the country or for the world. It has no compelling narrative that can capture the imagination, stir the energy of the people or inspire confidence in itself among the people, because it has no imagination or creativity left. It serves no purpose except self-preservation through corruption and blind pursuit of the status quo. It has no goals but for itself, so caught in the downward spirals of self-absorption, it always reacts violently to those who want to assert their right to inclusion, justice, dignity and equity. Hence marginalisation, aggression, and even destruction of those who dissent and refuse to bow to their will and power.
I believe that this is correctly, and precisely, describing the situation in the post-democratic West. All the pretence about democracy and the so-called rule of law is gone. All their inherent fascism is exposed in their complicity with Israel's genocide and their response to their people's solidarity with Palestine.
Prashad's definition is also precisely describing South Africa's DA/ANC coalition. I called the GNU a monstrosity not just because of the unwieldy, ideologically wholly incompatible, and horrifically costly cabinet. The deliberately manufactured unsustainability and incapacitating in some portfolios like Land, Land Reform and Agriculture, as well as Home Affairs are mere examples. This 'GNU' is a viper's nest of political contradictions held together by an unhealthy sense of entitlement, an unholy disdain for morality, and an insatiable hunger for power, driven by expediency and self-serving interests. The unbelievable display of arrogance and disdain by the Minister for Higher Education in the recent committee session simply proves the point.
Despite our self-glorification about the ICJ, and in defiance of the obligations that come with those rulings, South Africa's diplomatic and especially economic ties with the unrepentant genocidal state are unbroken, with companies connected to the president prominent in their shameless fuelling of and profiteering from the genocide. Because the Zionists – from Helen Zille to Gayton MacKenzie – are firmly in charge. The President's complicity, DIRCO's silence, and Minister Park Tau's lame excuses are so many stains on Mandela's memory, though they invoke it at every shameful turn. That is the politics of decadence. Just how much damage will they do to our people before they are done?
Another question I raised a year ago, is now perhaps the crucial question about the GNU: Are we the first people who, having fought a struggle for liberation and won, are turning around, begging our oppressors to rescue us from the failures of our own making, the betrayal of our own people, and the misrule of leaders of our own choosing? There truly is no substitute for dignity and self-respect.
We are the country we create.
In the last thirty years we have created a country where corruption is not only rife – it thrives, is encouraged, and is fiercely protected – from the President's office on that hill, to the small Sassa office in the township; from Judge Zondo's forgotten lists to the fake academic certificates of people in high places, to a justice system choking to death in the dust gathering on those unopened files.
We have created a blatant, neoliberal, capitalist state where social cohesion, like Noah's dove, cannot find a foothold, because, not only have we not eradicated apartheid, we have sat back and watched it metastasize while a few, enormously rich and scandalously ostentatious, benefited from it. We knowingly, deliberately, and against the Constitution, re-instated it by re-racialising our society and racially re-categorising our people. We reinforced it, for the sake of rich rewards for the few, deaf to the cries of the excluded.
We have created a country where we have allowed racism to flourish and be normalised by disguising it with deceitful terms such as 'meritocracy' and 'fit for purpose', discarding historical and political context, even while scandalizing the true purposes of Black economic empowerment and historical redress, and trampling upon the ideals of genuine economic inclusion.
Our wilful silence makes room for the authoritarian tendencies revealed in the ANC's proposed security laws quietly giving government the right to spy on religious institutions, civil society organisations, on any person who raises a voice of dissent. Heaven help us once Starlink is in place. The imperialist divisionism in the DA's Western Cape Power Bill with its insane demands for what will be essentially white control over large swaths of our lives and our land. And what shall we say about the return of one of the most despicable characteristics of apartheid, detention without trial, such as meted out by the highest court of the land to Mr Zuma not so very long ago?
We have a president whose visit to the United States was not the representation of a proud, free country but rather a shameful display of submissive sub-imperialism. Trump's insistence on the presence of a white oligarch whose underserved, generational wealth was built on the undeserved, generational impoverishment of Black people, as well as the politically irrelevant presence of two, enormously rich white golfers who have made no discernible contribution to the struggle for freedom and equality, nor to a reconciliation process built on repentance, remorse, repair, and reparation that could have resulted in justice, restoration and healing in our nation, made it absolutely clear that this was not a state visit of two counterparts, let alone two equals. This, not those transparent, childish, and malignant lies about white persecution and genocide on the screen, and Afrikaner refugee anguish in Texas and Nebraska, was the intended insult to our people, the deliberate sign of disrespect, the public proof of our re-colonization.
The fake agenda was on the screen. On the real agenda was not the representation and protection of our sovereignty, dignity, self-respect, or the nobility of our struggle, but a back-door deal with a neo-fascist, neo-Nazi oligarch for whose appeasement – and the enrichment of the usual few - we are willing to change our laws, undermine our Constitution, and sell our soul. Walter Sisulu's words are ringing in my ears: 'The people are our strength, in their service we shall face and conquer those who live on the backs of our people.' For those in the Oval Office that day, still eating off the backs of our people, it's as if these words were never spoken. But we take Walter Sisulu seriously. We shall face and conquer them.
We are the country we create.
There is a new world, a new Africa arising and South Africa, a country with such a rich history, such a courageous and gifted people, and such enormous potential, but with politics without substance, leadership without vision, laws without the remedies of justice, a constitution without constitutional authenticity and authority, is not nearly in a position to navigate these new winds of change.