FOR A HISTORY LESSON - MARIKANA MASSACRE AND ITS AFTER-SHOCKS

The ANC was caught completely off-guard by the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, a result of police killing protestors in a march led, not by the ANC, but the two-year-old PAC - which ended in a bloodbath as the Apartheid police shot into a crowd of PAC members and supporters. The Langa march meanwhile was led by a young and charismatic 22-years old Philip Kgosana, also of the PAC.

On the day of the Sharpeville Massacre, the ANC did not lead. The PAC did. But such was the strategic, intellectual and political depth of the broad ANC national leadership at the time that the ANC's reaction to the after-shocks of the Sharpeville Massacre allowed it to eclipse the PAC as the militant standard-bearer of the radicalized and militant black politics that subsequently emerged.

The ANC's capturing of the mythology around the Sharpeville Massacre away from the PAC has been so definitive that Sharpeville Day is today called Human Rights Day, and this year was commemorated, for the first time, but most likely not the last, outside Sharpeville and in Kliptown, to boot, where the Congress Movement, led by the ANC, adopted its Freedom Charter in 1955. Today very few South Africans know who Philip Kgosana is, even among young PAC activists of today. 

Lions, the Kings of the jungle, continue to write their version of history.

Despite being based in exile together with Mozambique's FRELIMO - where both maintained very close political ties - the exiled ANC was completely caught off-guard by the pro-FRELIMO rallies organized in the mid-1970s by Steve Biko's BCM activists like Onkgopotse Tiro and Cyril Ramaphosa, based at Turfloop University at the time. Again here the ANC did not lead, but followed in awe. The BCM of Steve Biko led. Today there is hardly any national commemoration or 67-minutes in honour of Onkgopotse Tiro.

The same happened two years after the pro-FRELIMO rallies by the BCM, this time with the June 1976 Soweto uprising, led by the Soweto Student Representative Council (SSRC), under the leadership of Soweto students like Tsietsi Mashinini and Kgotso Seatlholo. Here again the ANC did not lead. It followed events, despite some ongoing attempts at historical revisionism on its part.

But the talents of its exiled ANC leadership, especially the young ANC representative in Swaziland, Thabo Mbeki, allowed the ANC to recruit the largest number of erstwhile BCM youths, fleeing into political exile from Apartheid persecution, far eclipsing the recruitment drives by AZAPO, the PAC, and even by Tsietsi Mashinini and Kgotso Seatlholo themselves. Such was the strategic brilliance of the ANC leadership in exile, under OR Tambo, and on Robben Island, under Nelson Mandela, that it drew very correct lessons from its failures to provide "actual" leadership on the ground to three of the most defining uprisings of blacks against Apartheid in the 1960s and 1970s.

Later the ANC went on to provide truly amazing strategic and political leadership to all uprisings of our oppressed black people across all fronts of the anti-apartheid struggles throughout the 1980s, and until the attainment of Freedom in 1994.

So, from its 1978 Vietnam visit to study how to prosecute a "People's War" against SA's racist rulers right until Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as our first democratically-elected President in May 1994, the ANC led, from the front, in all theatres of the struggle against Apartheid, across the length and breadth of South Africa, and, most importantly, with regard to international opinion on Apartheid. The ANC led. It did not follow, nor did it just watch events unfold in the hope that the events, like meteors, would just burn themselves out. And so for the first time since the Sharpeville Massacre it completely eclipsed the strife-torn and faction-ridden PAC, and the over-intellectualizing, and ideological pure BCM/AZAPO. Thus ANC/UDF/COSATU leaders at all levels became the faces of our Freedom Struggle from 1978 until the Marikana Massacre of 16 August 2012.

With the Marikana Massacre, and subsequent events, are clearly demonstrating that the ANC under the less than inspiring leadership of its President, Jacob Zuma, has for the first time since 1978 fallen into the very unfortunate habit of passing the leadership of the revolutionary activism and uprisings of our people over to other political forces in the country. This is largely the result of bureaucratization of ANC politics, arising out of the intersection between the ANC and the SA State.

Post-Marikana the ANC no more leads. It is not even clear that it even wants to pretend it is listening. This is a very different ANC we are dealing with here. Even though it is a governing party, and the biggest party political formation in SA by the measure of paid-up membership, the ANC has abdicated its revolutionary leadership mettle.

What are the real causes of this political leadership paralysis on the part of the ANC? Are the other national political forces in the country benevolent and sufficiently strong, as well as capable and organised enough, to fill the post-Marikana Massacre leadership vacuum created by an aloof, withdrawn and even outwardly uncaring ANC national leadership?

Can the ANC repeat its past political feats, and harvest the greatest political benefits from the current national political turmoil, out-foxing its political foes, as it did after the Sharpeville Massacre, pro-FRELlIMO rallies, and the Soweto Uprising? Can it achieve this feat despite the fact that it is currently not in the lead, but following and reacting daily, and in an uncoordinated manner, to explosive manifestations of anger and discontent across the country?

I submit that the ability of the current ANC national leadership to ensure a favourable outcome out of this complex political situation (which, undeniably, is a disaster of great magnitude for it), will indeed determine whether the ANC will see its second Centenary. Because, unlike what some pundits believe, history shows that the ANC does not really have to always lead, even as a governing party, to survive and triumph. It can also follow and learn. As long as it is able to draw correct lessons from experiences and arrive at the right strategic conclusions regarding the way forward. But what the ANC cannot afford to do is to fail to turn the post-massacre fall-out and after-shocks to its own positive political capital.

If the ANC allows these to over-run and overwhelm it, at a strategic level, then we may be at the beginning of an end. This in my view is the most unlikely scenario, under current political circumstances. Well nigh impossible. But it is not a completely unlikely scenario. And here is a vital pointer: 

In all its hundred years of glorious history, ANC leaders have never feared to confront their own constituency, whatever the problems, as seems to be the case now. More tellingly, there has never been a time, in all the history of the ANC, when so many blacks feel free to vent their open frustration with and anger at the ANC (and its government), as is the case now.

It looks like the ANC has ceded the SA streets to other political forces inimical to its national leadership of the country, in the wake of the Marikana Massacre. This is new. So, maybe President Jacob Zuma fears to face the protestors out in the streets, because he dreads to be shouted down, and rejected, like Romania's Ceausescu in 1989, during the anti-Soviet popular revolts across Eastern Europe. He may also be too aware how Hosni Mubarak's rule in Egypt ended during the recent Arab Spring Uprisings that swept through North Africa and the Middle East.

Trying to prove to the world and yourself that you are at one with those you rule, when in fact a gulf has developed between you, can be a very risky political gamble ending in bitter tears. What is however beyond dispute is that we are all currently bearing witness to epochal events in SA's history.

Some of us are merely trying to post the first drafts of this epoch-changing history. None of us can tell with certainty and clarity how South Africa will look like when the current dust finally settles. Yet we are at a juncture where a shift, even by a single particle, can cause a massive political storm for our country and its future. We are all holding our breath, waiting with great anticipation, to see where the rolling can will settle.

Isaac Mpho Mogotsi is Executive Director of the Centre of Economic Diplomacy In Africa (CEDIA) [email protected]

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