Professor BB Senokoane
What is happening in South Africa today, the revolution/revolt that is classified as a looting spree and criminality by the President (Cyril Ramaphosa) and those who are comfortable, is unled. I should not be misunderstood that the masses are not in charge of this revolution, but my reference and conclusion is regarding the silence of political parties.
Some of them, like the white DA, stands with the President that citizens must be arrested and prosecuted, meanwhile choosing to bluetick the real issues. It is for this reason that even SANDF is deployed against the citizens.
Other political parties are mute or sitting on the fence, waiting to see where this revolution/revolt is going so that they can jump towards the winning direction. They will flow with the flow. This is not a surprise because conventional party politicians always try to reassert their own claim to legitimacy and argue that problems can only be arbitrated by imposing the constitution, the laws, and existing structures.
Unfortunately, what all of them miss is that when the masses feel powerless about certain things that matter this might lead to further protests or operating outside of conventional structures or methods. The bottom message is; Black man you are on your own.
Inevitable, unled revolutions/revolts always face questions about their legitimacy and accused that their methods, such as violence and operating out of the conventional methods, is illegitimate and anti-democratic. But these arguments never impacted the revolution/revolt. Instead, the demonising of the revolution/revolt is nothing new and strange. It is expected from those in power and comfortable as their ultimate fear is to lose power and what they have.
The ANC itself was demonised for using unconventional methods, including violence, the formation of MK was not accidental but a deliberate action preparing military confrontation and violence.
The state itself has a military, and, at times, a state can be violent, of course using the law as an excuse.
Above everything, I grew up believing that the ANC is a leader of society. But the ANC of today has decided to distance itself from the society, including its own members, and recently, has chosen to lead by force, deploying military.
Whoever thought that one day, the ANC government will use soldiers to protect itself? The ANC never wanted soldiers to defend itself. The ANC was always protected by the people, not by the military. Anyway, all liberation movements, when they realise that they are no longer relevant and wanted by the masses, they use the military. We are dealing with a situation of us and them.
President Ramaphosa does not see any necessity to engage members of the society and/or at least the branches of the ANC to resolve this political quagmire.
The Jacob Zuma situation is political, and no one will convince me otherwise. The law is just a weapon to deal with him. I am equally disappointed that President Ramaphosa is a former unionist and participated in the Codesa negotiations, yet, he seems to undermine and disregard the basics of consultation, bargaining and negotiation.
Indeed, we are unled under the current circumstances, and there is an attempt from the president to bully society. Intimidation and censorship is implied in his speeches. Anyway, his reaction can be traced to all those who were not in charge of the masses. We are indirectly in an eSwatini situation.
We are in a mild state of emergency. Censorship is next, the suspension of freedom of speech and freedom of press. Social media has been largely criticised. Of course, there will always be some leadership on the ground, but a revolution without a specific and popular leader or a political party, does happen. Two examples could be the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people finally had enough and took to the streets en masse. The government in power was confronted and succumbed.
Mass protest movements are not new around the world. Over the years, we have seen several of them leading to the resign of political leaders and/or their overthrow. We cannot predict which agent or what might trigger revolutionary/revolt events.
But there seem to be multiple connections that lead to the rise and spread of leaderless movements. Citizens’ grievances are many but share a common theme, the failure of the ruling elite and political institutions to meet expectations of dignity, consistency, equality, and betterment.
Protesters are frustrated with perceived economic inequality, legal bias, etc. Usually and often, the protesters are not an organised opposition proposing the substitution of party politics or ideology but demanding their views be heard.
In South Africa, two former presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, were forced by the ANC to resign based on certain dissatisfactions. It seems for the first time, the citizens, like in other country want to be the ones removing the president, and this is not strange as they are the voters after all.
The voters must always have the power to put anyone in office and must have the power to remove. The voters must lead and must be listened to.
* Reverent Professor BB Senokoane is professor at the University of South Africa.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star