Racism unleashed at our people for voting ANC: Diversion from real issues

We have recently been awakened to the reality that in our country, there is still a group of people who still see South Africa through a prism of racism where black people carry a burden of acting to satisfy the white master's word.

On 28 May 2014 the Eye Witness News published a cartoon on its website that contain racial undertones and insults - painting ANC voters as blacks who are "clowns" and "poephols".

On 30 May 2014, The Star Online edition published a story, titled "SA voters like abused spouses - Thuli", in which the Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela characterizes ANC voters as "abused spouses".

On 3 June 2014, Democratic Alliance Deputy Chief Whip Michael Waters circulated a racially offensive picture on Twitter, which depicts ANC voters as dogs lining up to vote for the party - represented by a poster of President Jacob Zuma on which they urinated "to cast their vote".

All these racist and sexist insults are hurled to our people for one reason, and one reason only, that they voted the ANC back to office with an overwhelming mandate to take our country forward. The racism and sexism unleased at our people for supporting the ANC are a stark reminder of the persisting legacy of colonialism and apartheid, no matter how it is masked, so even after going through a painful process of truth and reconciliation which was meant to heal the divisions caused by the colonial and apartheid past.

These shocking racial slurs took many down the painful memory lane reminding us that even as we were going through the process of truth and reconciliation, many in our society kept asking whether this was not a one way process where the former oppressed were put at the same stand of cross examination and judged based on the same standards as their oppressors.

We were reminded of how, during this and the negotiation period leading to the 1994 elections, the oppressed were expected to forgive and forget whilst those who benefited in economic terms from national and gender oppression and class exploitation remained in their position of economic power, placing them at an advantage as the real ruling class above those in political office.

Through these recent racist insults which happened after the ANC victory, we were reminded how we agreed to a number of qualitative compromises in order to achieve a smooth transition which was devoid of economic socio-emancipation for our people.

We were reminded that actually at the centre of the reasons which led to the ANC being questioned by many even within its ranks, were the compromises it made in negotiations so that there could be national reconciliation, peace and stability for the benefit of all. We had already begun to convince ourselves that "steadily, the dark night of white minority political domination is receding into a distant memory."

These recent racial insults invoked painful memories, reminded us of many other similar experiences in the past. We could not help but recall that just in the recent past in 2009 in Sun City, President Mandela was called a kaffir, and a song sung to this effect. In the same period the name of Mandela Drive was replaced with that of the racist killer Clive Derby Lewis, who killed our liberation leader comrade Chris Hani.

We were reminded of the Pick & Pay manager at Canal Walk shopping mall who had made his routine to refer to workers as baboons and monkeys and has even on occasion locked a workers up in a cage in the store for a petty issue. We could not help but be reminded of a white farmer who killed a Zimbabwean farm worker Jealous Dube, whom he said he had mistaken for a baboon.

In 2008, an 18 year old black youth was put into a fridge and subsequently made disabled. We have painful memories of how dogs were set against an African black domestic worker at Moedvell, which injured her severely. Three young farm workers were electrocuted in their private parts. We were reminded of how a racist farmer, Teiusen Broeres in Morokweng, set dogs against his domestic worker.

As if all this was not enough, we had the DA calling our people refugees in their own country, and just when we thought that the project of reconstructing South Africa was on track, we woke up to a nightmare of Peter Mulder who, like his ancestors, told all of us that "Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa: the Bantu-speaking people moved from the equator down while the white people moved from the Cape up to meet each other at the Kei River. He argued that there was sufficient proof that there were no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and North-western Cape. These parts form 40% of South Africa's land surface".

It is as if only one group of the South African population which is largely but not exclusively constituted by the historically oppressed has a responsibility to defend the dream of a non-racial South Africa while by and large some from among those who benefitted from oppression seek to conserve its legacy. If it so, then those who hold this dream dearly should stand up and openly crush the demon of racism in its interconnectedness to sexism and class exploitation.

But even as we fight racism, we should therefore avoid making a mistake of fighting it without paying attention to the underlying economic interests upon which it is predicated.

A fallacious view regarding the capacity and the role of the masses

But more importantly is to understand that the form and content of these recent insults which followed after the ANC election victory in the fifth democratic general election represent a continuation of old racist assumptions that the masses are an ignorant bunch which needs to be led to the right direction for them to take correct decisions.

This fallacious assumption often moves together with another assumption, that the masses follow a great man or woman who might as well be imposed to them by the ruling class. It is these wrong and deceptive assumptions which led to the opposition party like the DA renting a black president as a ploy to woo the masses to vote the DA. It is now part of the recorded history that this came back like a rotten egg and spilled on their faces epitomised by that deceptive kiss between the AgangSA and DA leaders - symbolic of their deceptive political views.

The deception was also seen in the manner in which the failed Obama replica campaign which elevated Maimane as a black face of the DA in Gauteng. This was based on a fallacious belief that one man who happened to be black will attract millions of black voters which would allow the DA to take over the province which is an economic hub of South Africa and the continent.

Based on another variant of these fallacious assumptions, we also saw individuals and the opposition parties including those claiming to be socialist in orientation, whereas they are in fact not, committing a deadly mistake when they invested on attacking the ANC President as an individual and even elevating the former leaders of the ANC as individuals above the organisation. This include the ill-conceived "Vote No Campaign" which was predicated on an assumption that, because it is spearheaded by some known figures who had been associated not only with the ANC by with the socialist left, and therefore the assumption that people would accept the campaign without questioning.

All these were proven in practice to be flawed by the standards of logical, rational and scientific thinking. It is unfortunate that these mistaken assumptions are littered with racism, repeating insults which characterised the bases of grand Apartheid.

Having faith on the masses and learning from them

Those who are propagating this perspective - Having faith in the masses and learning from them - should be humble enough to learn as the ANC has done over the years that to win the support of the people requires having faith in them, relying on them, respecting their initiative, learning wholeheartedly from them, not to identify with them as the DA seeks to do but to be them and to accept that in the process your own consciousness will rise to another level and change altogether as a result of being influenced by their practical experiences. If you honestly interact with the masses and come out of that process unchanged it would mean that you were not honest in the first place.

This is where the dishonesty of the DA and other opposition parties got exposed. It is impossible to connect with the masses and still be ambiguous about the need for the transfer of wealth to the people or about deciding firmly on which side of the class divide your policies should be skewed or still call them refugees or still see them as dogs or as unthinking or even use the metaphor of them being abused women in relationships. Those who are making these racial and sexist insults are also supposed to pull back and go to their dark racist and sexist corners to ask what has been their contribution to the destruction of racism, sexism and to nation building.

The most important question they should ask themselves is not why our people voted the ANC because the answer to that will be found in the qualitative and quantitative advances made by the country not only under the ANC government, but also under the leadership of the ANC in alliance with the Communist Party and the progressive trade union movement to our liberation struggle. But the question should be why our people did not vote for the other political parties to power, particularly the DA.

By now these racists should know that our people are not fools. The difficult daily experiences of continued racism, sexism and class exploitation in the workplace, schools, communities and in all aspects of life, is the story of the journey they have traversed in the process, gradually intensifying awareness about who stand for a vision for a just, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society.

It is these practical experiences of life and not the election advertisement and newspaper articles which prepared our people to know what the DA stands for, and to know the differences between the ANC and other political parties even if they dress themselves in borrowed robes, stealing its colours, misappropriating its history and its leaders, stealing its songs and slogans.

Our people may not have the means to regularly speak on the media, to articulate their views and refute the lies which have been consistently peddled in the media since the ANC took office in 1994. Our people know the sincerity of the ANC on better life for all and to move South Africa forward, now based on a programme to achieve radical socio-economic transformation.

Fighting racism as a manifestation of class interests: deepen and advance the programme for radical economic transformation.

In his second term inauguration speech delivered by the ANC President, amongst others he said:

"Today marks the beginning of the second phase of our transition from apartheid to a national democratic society. This second phase will involve the implementation of radical socio-economic transformation policies and programmes over the next five years."

This sends a clear message on how serious the ANC is, about the radical economic transformation. The insults are an expression of opposition to the radical economic programme to which the ANC continuously shows its commitment without reneging an inch.

It is therefore important that we should not make the mistake of being drawn to fight what is actually a manifestation of class contest in a narrow terrain of a war against racism. Our movement has consciously chosen to pursue the struggle for a non-racial society and this struggle is pursued through non-racial means. So we should refuse to be dragged into a racist sewerage where only those who have mastered that filthy terrain will win the day. This does not mean that we should not fight against racism whenever it raises its ugly head. It must be crushed and be destroyed. But this should be fought based on an understanding that racial domination is actually a precondition for the exploitation of our people as a class.

All the racist insults hurled at our movement and at our people should be a reminder that all exploiting classes will by no means make their exit from the stage of history of their own accord. Nor will they easily give up their reactionary theories after being overthrown by the revolutionary people. Racism in South Africa today is a continuation of the ideology which was used in the past to gain economic dominance over the majority of the people and which today is being used to try to maintain that same minority class domination gained under colonialism and apartheid. Their class interests are now more seriously threatened by the turn to a second, more radical phase of our transition. The SACP Central Committee characterised this transition as a phase to eliminate the key structural features of our economy that reproduce inequality, unemployment and poverty. Those who are stoking racism are doing so to divert us from this programme.

The racial slurs and open insults are actually being deployed as a diversion. It is logical for our class enemies and all those who stood to gain from the unchanged colonial patterns of ownership to look for an issue around which they can unite. They have mobilised around attacks on the ANC President. In the process they have lost the plot and revealed their essential racist character and exposed their racial hatred against our people.

"The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history" (Mao Tse Tung)

Let us not be diverted. Let us advance forward with a second, more radical phase of the national democratic revolution. This should include:

1. Taking forward the 2013 Alliance Summit Decisions addressing the genuine concerns raised by the SACP and COSATU regarding the National Development Plan, particularly its economic epicentre.
2. Taking forward and concluding discussions on strategic nationalisation, including the re-nationalisation of monopoly industries such as SASOL and Arcelor-Mittal SA and other radical steps to transform the ownership and control function in the commanding heights of our economy.
3. Support the ongoing process of the development and expansion of the state-owned mining company.
4. To hasten the agreed establishment of the state owned pharmaceutical company, the state bank, and also establish state-owned construction and cement companies in order to strengthen its power and capacity to drive transformation.
5. Establishment of a state-owned food company to take forward Polokwane resolutions on sustainable livelihoods and agrarian transformation.
6. Set limits on foreign ownership in strategic sectors of the economy, and ban foreign ownership of land in South Africa.
7. A radical shift in macroeconomic policy to target employment and industrial development, and ensure that the financial system is controlled to assist in the development of our country and to serve the people. This will include the need to implement the resolution of the Alliance summit of October 2008 on the review of the macroeconomic policy framework in the context of New Growth Path as part of the fight for a new phase of economic transformation.

Sidumo Dlamini is COSATU President and SACP Central Committee member. This article first appeared in the SACP's online journal, Umsebenzi Online.

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