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When triumphalism trumps thought: A response to Floyd Shivambu

After the debauchery of the festive season, I read Floyd Shivambu's blog on the 1st National Assembly with indifference owing to January worries and other issues. Upon my first reading, what struck me about it was its triumphalist, rhetorical tone, but I choose to not dwell on that. What disturbed me the most was the lazy minded way in which he dealt with theoretical issues. For instance on point (a) as he explains the EFF's ideological posture he sleeps on the wheel and regurgitates the Congress position on South Africa's social formations: which is a mutation of the apartheid project of dividing our people along these lines: Whites, Coloureds, Indians and Blacks i.e Zulu, Xhosa, Pedi etc. This sees him erroneously celebrating the election of so called Coloured and Indian fighters in the CCT, apparently this proves the non-racial nature of the EFF. Anyone who has seriously wrestled with the black consciousness philosophy appreciates that Coloureds and Indians share the same mark of apartheid dehumanisation, so they are included in the Blacks rubric. This explains why Biko and his comrades created an inclusive political identity to mitigate exactly what Shivambu is celebrating. So, the question arises: Commissar Shivambu, why are you celebrating the election of these fighters? Are they not black like all the other blacks elected at CCT level?

The opposite side of this problem is his investment in the non-racialism red herring. The fight was never the fight for a non racialist society, only Whites and their SACP lackeys were obsessed with non-racialism. The fight has always been one against White racism to create a non-racist society. Perhaps I need to explain this further. Racialism is about positively identifying with ones racial grouping: there's nothing sinister there, unless you have uncritically absorbed the poorly conceived congress position on this issue. Non-racism is a different story all together, it's about the complete eradication of white supremacy, the source from which white privilege emerges. So I ask again, why elevate the attainment of a non-racialist society without ridding this society of it's inherent racism? Alternatively, can you have non-racialism in a racist society? Or a 'post racial' racist society? I think you can. History has shown that you can have a society wherein racism operates at the level of the unsaid, even though everyone claims to have non-racialist commitments - South Africa is a case in point. This realisation, sadly awakens me to a depressing conclusion: Our Deputy President has not invested the requisite time to understand the differences between racism and racialism, how embarrassing!! Perhaps Andile Mngxitama's Blacks Can't Be Racist would be a useful starting point.

On point (b) Our newly elected Deputy President floating in the air with triumphalism, proceeds and dwarfs the importance of Biko's philosophy, he says "the black consciousness character is one that appreciate while our people where exploited as a class they were also made to believe through various streams of subjugation and ideological work as Africans they are inferior and the struggle for economic freedom seeks to liberate them from their inferiority consciousness which had been inflicted upon black peoples lives over centuries". This is utter distortion of history! The Black Consciousness Movement( BCM) is and has always been clear that black people were subjugated because of their race not because of class. Class was an offshoot of their racial oppression. Frantz Fanon captures this issue very well when he says "in the colonial world the cause is the effect, you are rich because you are white and you are white because you are rich"; the same is true for blacks, we are poor because we are black not because we are unable to sell our labour power. Even when we do we are kept poor intentionally to keep us at the position of blackness, that is, the lowest rung of humanity. This is a race not a class problem. The inferiority complex he glibly runs to was created by slavery and colonialism which had class connotations, not the other way around as he incorrectly intimates. I would humbly, encourage our Deputy President to go and read Biko and Fanon (if he ever did) again to avoid further embarrassing assertions, in the foreseeable future!

Point (d) is the most glaring example of our Deputy President's theoretical cul de sac. In it, Shivambu bleeds his rigid Marxism, he says, whilst chucking history out the window, "the EFF socialist and internationalist character is expressed in the ideological conviction that ours is a class struggle against capitalism and imperialism and should be guided and underpinned by the principles of international socialist solidarity and common struggles of the exploited masses of the world."

The first question is this: is capitalism a raceless endeavour? Or, put in a simpler way is capitalism without a racial character? If it does, why is this crucial aspect not finding expression on this point? Additionally, does this class struggle the EFF is supposedly engaged in not lose the particular or specific nature of the racist oppression that blacks suffer from in a white supremacist world order? Did the workers in Marikana die because they are workers or because they are black? What about Trayvon Martin, a young Black American boy who lived in a neighbourhood deemed a class bracket above basic blackness? Was George Zimmerman, his racist assailant, thinking class or race stereotypes when he stalked and killed him? Also, is it not a known fact that white workers in Australia doing the same work as those in Marikana earn and live in better conditions? How does the cherished class struggle explain this racial discrepancy? Also what in these common struggles makes us think racism gets elided or removed or lessened in its importance as our leader seems to suggest?

This erasure of race points us to an on-going attempt to remove Fanon from the holy triumvirate of Marx-Lenin-Fanon. After this is achieved, we will be left with a hollowed out Fanon, agreeable to a class obsessed, race-erasing movement that will punt socialism at the expense of the race problematic. A disconcerting development, if ever there was one!

I think here we are dealing with the Congress 'broad church mentality' which accommodated everyone at the expense of race as a governing tool of analysis. This flawed analytical frame was at the root of the "different streams with different parties" situation Shivambu seems to bemoan. The PAC radicals of Sobukhwe's generation walked out of the ANC precisely because of this imposition of rigid Marxist ideas to explain racial oppression. Hence, to posit the EFF as being engaged in a class struggle is to be self deceptive and ahistorical. It misses the point intirely, the fight is and has always been against White Supremacy, class has always been a composite element of that fight. The sooner Shivambu gets this there better, for the chances of economic freedom, or we will rue another missed opportunity!

　

　

Requiem for Gaji

I don’t know when I first met Luvuyo “Laganja” Gaji. It might have been at a hearsay influenced meeting at a poetry recital, or was it a drama gathering? Wasn’t it at Moxion (Hip-hop/Kwaito artist) CD launch at the Delft South Taxi Rank in 2006, with me invited to recite my dry angry poetry? But though I’m not sure I’m exact about how he made me feel- after our first talk he left me in an anxiously happy state of being: I was left thinking-“ yeyaphi leoutie?” it’s not like I didn’t know where he stayed in Delft, I had often heard people talking about him- some phrasing him others calling him out. But I was attracted by his love for life, and his masculine effervescence.

Gaji always seemed to be the centre of a group, with a discussion going on or just pure frolicking and goofing around. But there was always a tension in his face betraying an unfulfilled promise. A face tatooed a covenant that overburdened him- an ambitiousness that threatened to sink him. A deep-seated ambitiousness wrestling with the negativity that is ghetto life to hopefully emerge at the other end. Also, Gaji was an innovator by nature. Wasn’t it him who singlehandedly created one of the first drama groups in Delft: namely, Sophumelela Drama And Entertainment Group, with the theme of success being used to name the group?

Wasn’t he a founding member of Rainbow Arts Organisation (R.A.O), with many other cultural activists in Delft? Wasn’t he also intimately involved with the gospel group from Nyanga east called “Bless them all?” Did we not always push him to the forefront when we wanted the community hall from those corrupt anc councillors who held young people’s development with a contempt which always left us deflated, but not Gaji? However, there was a weakness that Gaji suffered from which was borne from his “succeed at all cost mantra” which seemed to dominate his life; that is, the inability to respect history and how we should archive it in our minds as blacks at the margins; for example in an article pasted on the R.A.O offices in Delft, where they are interviewed by the Cape Argus or some other mainstream newspaper, him and Sisa Makaula, in the article in question they erroneously claim they created a group which was created by a collective, I.e. Rainbow Arts Organisation, a gross error if ever there was one! This corruption of history or the correct historical story or narrative would later trickle down to cultural groups like Lingua Franca, where those who started it are erased from its inception and its character is diluted, and a success driven-happy-go-lucky-one-love deep- people movement is created under the guise of professionalisation.

Be that as it may, when I heard Luvuyo “laGanja” Gaji was no more, something in me seemed to seep out and I couldn’t take it back, it was like a broken tap that just won’t or can’t be fixed. I kept crying “what a waste, or God what a waste”, thinking of Gaji as that water that ought to quench the thirst of a thirsty community slowly dying of thirst.  Luvuyo Gaji was the water that brought us to life from the precipice of dehydration; this dehydration emanating from a herculean task of trying to fashion artistic careers in this desolate milieu or desert we find ourselves in Cape Town. As he leaves us with all his imperfections, we are left with a question to whoever is in control of these matters; we ask-“ how do you take Luvuyo whilst we still learning from him, learning not to be “intlama” or fools, learning to dream and be actional towards fulfilling the very dreams that overburdened and left him sombre draining his mellifluous saying, “halala gobongwana” of its symbolical substance, so, God or Qamata as he often called him, how could you impoverish us like this?

 God how could you allow Gaji to escape to the land of our defeated ancestors whilst he has not finished his individual and collective work, that is, the transformation of this society into one that doesn’t demonise black dreams but caresses and affirms them? How could you God?

 This has been the question that dominated my mind since Gaji left us almost two months ago. When this difficult question ambushes me, and I think about it, I’m often left emotional hence my absence from his funeral and nemilaliso, I kept asking myself, how could I face Gaji in that coffin knowing very well that we nowhere close to materialising all those utopian dreams we discussed at his house. How could I be there when I knew his child will never know how it feels to have him say to him or her, “uyintlama, mntanam” or his legendary adage when his surprised or happy- “halala gobongwana!!”

I couldn’t, I hope his family and friends will forgive me!

In 1961, the world famous Algerian/ Martinique revolutionary named Frantz Fanon on his death bed in a country he deemed a land of lynchers (U.S.A), a country, he had reservations about and  didn’t want to go to for hospitalization after he got sick, in a correspondence with Roger Tayeb, his friend, had this to say about death:

“Death is always with us and what matters is not whether we can escape it, but whether we have achieved the maximum for the ideas we have made our own….We are nothing on earth if we are not in the first place the slave of a cause, the cause of the people the cause of justice and liberty”.

Death might have robbed us of Luvuyo Gaji the person, but it has left us with a baton which Gaji dropped on that fateful day. Hence, it is up to us to pick it up and finish the race or to remain crippled by sorrow (something he would have accused us being intlama for if he were alive) or to do what we need to do- which is, to fulfil his mission in the Fanonian sense, and never ever betray it!

Hamba Kahle Mqithi, mna nditshayile okwangoku kwaye ndiyabulela!!!

Halala Gobongwana!!!

DO YOU BOO!.. On DA poets, hyper individualism and Black pain erasure

I lost my mother four years ago. Her name was Nowatu Linah Mpemnyama. Apparently her name was a bastardisation of this refrain, “Nokuwa-tu”, which means, you will all fail – fail to destroy her, derail her and so on. I figure issues of Xhosa jealousy paranoia, and witchcraft fears were behind her naming. Like most black females the intersectional nature of exploitative and oppressive social mores which dizzied most of her generation didn’t spare her too; but I glean and value her valour which was constructed from a position of weakness.

Her ability to resist is best represented by a spectacle they once created, her and her octogenarian friend whom we referred to as Magogo. They were at a Delft South ward ANC “old people”, end of year vote baiting feeding scheme. The story goes as follows: as they entered the hall, moans and groans emerged from the people – they had been verbally abusing the councillor for years, accusing her of being a chronic bungler, who along with her ward leadership always failed to implement proper service delivery. Because they were elders, they could not be denied the food parcels. So as they were leaving the venue they started again, calling the whole thing a farce, and calling out the councillor and her ANC lackeys on their corruption. The ANC people at the gathering got very angry. They yelled (I could hear them because our families house in Delft is exactly opposite the venue – the rent office, where the gathering was held – in earshot), “ningamaxhegwazana anjani? Nitya ukutya kwethu nogqiba niyas’thuka” basically meaning “how dare you eat our food and then swear at us, what kind of elders are you?” Magogo in her characteristic, shrill retorted back, “sitya ukutya kukaMandela apha.” “We are eating Mandela’s food, not yours”, and they left.

Now this scene enters my mind when I think of a recent Poetry Workshop I attended. Facilitated by one Dejavu Tafari and Vus’muzi Phakathi, ‘poetically’ themed- ‘with these words’, with an air of apprehension I attended. To my knowledge and from what I saw, the workshop was about how to perfect the art of performance poetry quilted with efforts to construct a united front to create a thriving poetic/artistic market. To their credit the two handled the workshop very well. But I was not there for that, I was there for the discussions that were promised after the performances. As I mature in art I’m beginning to appreciate the discussions more than the art.

Before the workshop ended all of us performed a few of our pieces and peer critique was offered and accepted in a jovial comradely fashion. Now as we were about to leave, I eventually got a chance to ask the question that brought me there in the first place. I asked on the link between art and politics and the role poets should play in the cultivation of the African mind. I even went further, to drive on the point; seeing that South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world, what should poets do with this disheartening reality?

Vus’muzi’s postmodernist leanings betray him as he wisecracks in a polished accent “do you boo.” Apparently this saying is from one Mfundo Ntobongwana, whom, as it seems from these poets, to have brought finality to an annoying debate. With shock permeating my face, I pressed on, “but isn’t that a cop-out for socially aloof art. Didn’t groups like Mdali and Mihloti from the Black Consciousness Movement (B.C.M), as well as the Black Arts Movement settle this debate in the 60’s and 70’s respectively?”

I could see I was annoying those people, and another poet, who told me straight to my face he didn’t enjoy my “political” stuff, suggested that in the history of poetry there have always been, even at times of war, poets that only wrote on love. He made a self- referential example, “me I write about God, I could write about those Nigerian girls [abducted by Boko Haram], but I don’t, I have no desire for that, do you my brother” he said with the others. I tried to give my take on the dangers of this ‘do you boo’ business, I failed.

On my way home my thoughts lingered towards my mother and one of her famous sayings – ‘sofa sifundisa’, meaning we will teach till we die. I also thought of all those poets, writers, painters, who just can’t crack this ‘do you boo’ nonsense, what happens to them?

So I went on Facebook to update my shock at this hyper individualised poetry which seems to be a standard today. The ‘do you boo brigade’ came to my wall to defend themselves, and as I watched I was struck by how all these defences reminded me of Lindiwe Mazibuko. At first I christened this sort of poetry ‘D.A poetry', but that didn’t go far enough. It didn’t wrestle with the racial hues of these blacks that have popularised an ‘art for art’s sake’ right wing political canon. So I called it ‘Lindiwe Mazibuko poetry’, and I personified it, thus: Lindiwe Mazibuko poetry is characterised by hyper individualism, a suppressed contempt for black people and their pain as well as deep seated desire to gloss over reality with Godly, Buddhist invocations. I went on to advice: if you are a ‘self-respecting’ darkie run away when you encounter Mazibuko poets.

I felt I had not done enough to explain this Mazibuko matter, so I augmented my theory thus: Lindiwe Mazibuko poetry also has at its core the desire for a post racial South Africa, which is rooted on the notion of a raceless nirvana.

Still reeling, I stumbled upon a Centre for African Poetry article of an interview with Kelwyn Sole, shared by a friend on Facebook. Defining beautifully the tension between art and politics, in it, the poet/academic Sole meditates as such:

“In the decade or so after liberation, some quarters in South African literature were arguing that politics as a theme was made redundant by the end of apartheid. Over time this view has been shown to be implausible. Moreover, whatever their intentions, those who argue it ended up in effect blocking political and social criticism at a crucial transitional stage. This being said, I guess my own definition of the word “political” has always been inclusive, because many aspects of our lives have a political dimension or are caught up in political issues. This of course includes our personal lives (although I don’t like poetry that gets to wrapped up in the personal it can’t see anything else.)”

Now with Kelwyn Sole and my beloved mother affirming me, I say to those ‘Lindiwe Mazibuko poets’ and many other like-minded artists, NOWATU!!! Some of us won’t and can’t get swept up by your black pain unseeing post-modernist hogwash. In a racially unequal society like ours the cultivation of a socially sensitive black aesthetic offers more for the future of this country!

I say do TRUTH boo! We don’t care much about YOU.

Eusebius McKaiser crippled analysis

 

 

Eusebius McKaiser, as an individual epitomizes the post-94 “Jack of all trades” mantra; which centers itself, as an ideology, on being good on many fronts. McKaiser is a juggling act aficionado of note: part academic, part social commentator, part author, part radio personality. The problem with this is that you become stretched, such that you never master anything. This often leads to what is called in ghetto football parlance - ‘ukushay’ithembisa’- feigning doing something when you are not. Now ‘ithembisa’ or feigning is synonymous with football; when a player feigns a strike at goal posts to trick defenders to facilitate scoring – Jabu Pule is a feigner of note. So is Eusebius McKasier – unfortunately.

In a poorly written article titled ‘EFFwould be perplexed by power’, McKaiser erroneously accuses the EFF of having a political vision lacking clarity, feasibility, and coherence in its ideology. He fails to follow his own supposed clear argumentation by grounding his take on a misreading of what an anarchist is; this from a supposed serious social commentator is astounding! 

Recently, when Barack Obama was commenting on the racism scandal by the Los Angeles Clippers owner, he intimated as such:

“When folks want to advertise their ignorance we must never stand in their way”.

If you are a serious reader of all revolutions, and the many strands of thought which animated them, you will appreciate that an anarchist is an anti-state ideology which seeks to wilt or destroy the state without even capturing it – a marked difference from the EFF which is a Marxist/Leninist/Fanonian movement. The EFF expresses an unashamed need to capture the state and make it respond to the needs of the majority; a clear distinction if you ‘don’t advertise your ignorance’ for the whole country but actually take time and read its easily available literature.

This first horrible misreading leads McKaiser  to make other embarrassing claims like the analogy of a post revolution moment when EFF is confronted with governing and they suddenly realize they never signed up for such a daunting  task. What this claim suffers from is a glaring failure to characterize the EFF adequately. This is the hallmark of ‘ithembisa’ – you feign thinking and being engaged until your baseless claims become truth, but only to you and your lackeys. Another disconcerting advert for ignorance.

 Let’s allow Mr. McKaiser to speak:

“They are (EFF) anarchists who simply enjoy critiquing life in post-democratic South Africa as horrible for black people and filled with institutions that are inherently anti-black and illegitimate to the core.

That’s the tenor of their criticism of the current government and of their analysis of life in our country in 2014.”

What the EFF wants to do in as far as transforming all anti-black social institutions is to capture them for the sole purpose of what they ought to be utilized for in the first place i.e. being used to lessen the heavy load of poverty, landlessness and nihilism which the ANC government has failed to arrest since it came to power. So why EFF would be hesitant at such a joyful moment beats me.

The Malema and Mngxitama quip on this aspect does not wrestle with a simple fact: radical leaders are multi-faceted and can adapt their politics in many spaces. The assertion that the commander-in-chief Julius Malema and Commissar Mngxitama would be too bored with parliamentary subcommittee meetings is another embarrassing baseless claim. Now it seems we have a pedagogical problem with Mr. McKaiser, which can be exorcised with these rather simplistic lines: Eusebius my brother radicalism doesn’t get washed away by being in an institution you fundamentally dislike or disagree with. Hasn’t the likes of Thomas Sankara, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Morales et al showed us this? What happens is a thorough contestations of ideas in a struggle terrain not of your making to invoke an in vogue Marx adage.

What slowly emerges as one critically analyses this article and many others from the White Left is a lazy minded anti-intellectual rejectionist failure of analysis. Most of these Quaker social commentators often accuse the EFF of demagoguery and anti-intellectualist-rabble-rousing-trite-shouting but they are what they criticize. So essentially McKaiser’s accusation of being ‘perplexed by power’ changes to – and faces him as its inverse opposite – him being ‘perplexed by analysis’. McKaiser clutches at straws instead of reading EFF literature to get its clear, coherent and – I’m quick to add – feasible, vision of a new path that it hopes to walk with societies; provided it gets the mandate after the election on May 7.

The EFF is moving in that direction and no mean spirited lampooning will prevent it from discharging its historical mission.