BY Iryumugaba Biko ILLUSTRATION Alex Westfall DESIGN Sara Van Horn
THE EFF AND THE ANTICOLONIAL STRUGGLE It has been nearly three decades since Black people in South Africa emerged victorious from the bitter struggle against apartheid through a social movement spearheaded by the African Nation Congress (ANC), the party of Nelson Mandela. Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail for resisting an oppressive racist regime, is remembered for leading a peaceful transition of power from the white Nationalist Party of Fredrik Willem de Klerk of South Africa to the now-centrist ANC by championing a program of unity and reconciliation. However, the impact of Mandela’s decisions has reignited a divisive debate in South Africa over whether he made the right choice by opting for land reform over repatriation during this historic transition. The land reform policy asked millions of Black people to put in more time and labor by filing claims for compensation, and those who had no land had to wait for the government's programs of land redistribution. This is where Mandela made the compromise, for the burden that was to be shared by both Black and White people was left to the Black people. While the security of property ownership was guaranteed for whites—meaning they practically had to do nothing to maintain their properties—who acquired them through colonialism and apartheid systemic displacement, economic freedom relied either on faith and patience or injecting more time and labor for Black South Africans who had undergone 400 years of white terror. As early as 1995, for instance, people like Dr. Henrik Clarke, professor and pioneer in the creation of Pan-African and African studies, were raising questions about Mandela and ANC’s land reform. Clarke exclaimed in one of his speeches that he remained “a little less enthusiastic about Nelson Mandela, for he has never asked for land.” Indeed, Nelson Mandela never asked for land. For Clarke, land is the basis of the nation. In making an inventory of nationhood that contains the hopes, aspirations, and dreams of Black people as well, land is of great importance. If land is not available for Black people to cultivate, build on, mine, or rent, how could they flourish in a territory that is economically hostile to them? +++ That Black South Africans who are indigenous to the African land cannot live in a country that feels foreign to them is what Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) seeks to confront. Colonization was a process of violent cultural and physical confrontation between European settlers and indigenous Black South Africans. The process of economic oppression and displacement created alienation that was characterized by extreme living conditions that undermined the humanity of Black South Africans. It is this alienation that oppresses the ego, that sense of self-satisfaction that inhibits every soul, that EFF deems the root cause of most problems. In the EFF understanding of core problems of South Africa, land is central because it is a marker of justice, the ultimate restoration of African pride. According to Floyd Shivambu, the deputy president of the EFF, “the problem with the ruling party is that they say the problems are inequality, poverty,
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WHAT CAN STUDENTS LEARN FROM SOUTH AFRICA'S FASTEST GROWING POLITICAL MOVEMENT?
starvation, and joblessness. But those are the symptoms. The root problem is landlessness.” Mr Floyd’s articulation re-affirms Frantz Fanon’s assertion in his book The Wretched of the Earth that “for a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all dignity.” It comes as no surprise, therefore, that some young South Africans claim that Mandela was bought out by Oppenheimer and the South African industrialist and mining magnate, among other white businessmen. Some argue that he sold out because of a sense of hopelessness resulting from his 27 years in prison, while others maintain that the decision he made was intended to preserve the social fabric of South African society. The EFF carefully avoids naming Mandela as a “sellout.” The EFF believes that Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Winnie Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Walter Sisulu can fight to a certain point and it is up for the generation to follow to pick up from where they halted. The fact that Mandela’s wisdom and decision are now being questioned, however, reveals the deeply entrenched conditions of economic inequality that have persisted in South Africa until today. White South Africans who only make up 8.9 percent of the population still own 72 percent of the land. The ANC, which had originally promised to redistribute 30 percent of the land within five years, has only redistributed 8 percent after 25 years. In addition to the recent resignation of Jacob Zuma, the former ANC President of South Africa, who was acquitted on charges of corruption and embezzlement of people’s funds, this failure of redistribution only highlights the systemic abuse of power and mismanagement of resources that has plagued the country for decades. This unresponsiveness created a political vacuum that needed to be filled. +++ “Expansion is everything,” once said Cecil Rhodes. “I would annex the planet if I could.” Imperialism and colonialism mark what Europeans call “expansionism through discovery.” This expansionism signified different realities for the colonized individuals: invasion and displacement. The economic system that justified ownership and expansionism was private ownership financed by European credit markets in partnership with the European state-financed Catholic missionary. When Christopher Colombus
and his successors set in motion a violent pattern that initiated the transatlantic slave trade, and when European leaders met in Berlin in 1884-85 to carve Africa into nations (with a new notion of national sovereignty), they were initiating a process that would create conditions for the expansion of European states. The German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote in her book On the Origin of Totalitarianism that imperialism assumes that “without the imperialist expansion for expansion's sake, the world might never have become one. Without the bourgeoisie political device of power for power’s sake, the extent of human strength might never have been discovered.” This logic is at the heart of the logic of imperialism and colonialism. The assumption deeply ingrained in this imperialist sense of reality is problematic for two reasons. First, the doctrine of economic growth is predicated on the idea that future resources are unlimited. How did economics, the discipline created to manage scarce resources, end up with a doctrine that assumes that those resources are unlimited in the future? This is the primary contradiction of imperialism. By trusting that the future will yield more than the present, governments and banks can circulate money that would be made from selling increased production of the future to finance current investment. Financing growth with future resources only keeps nations in permanent states of debt, and the unlimited injection of money into the economy is concerning to say the least. Second, even if future resources were unlimited, at what point should the expansion of production and property end? The EFF takes a stand against imperialism because this force is responsible for the misery of most South Africans and Africans in general. It is currently embedded in neo-liberal policies put forth by the Reagan and Thatcher cult that emerged in the ruins of the Soviet Union that advocated for less state intervention. This cult was threatening nations of Africa with words like “Privatize or Perish” or “There is no alternative.” This irresponsible economic practice that sought to minimize the role of the state in regulating economic activities has been beneficial for imperialists while condemning the greater majority of poor and oppressed people. The insidious role of imperial power is integral to the occupation and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. British imperialists in partership with Zionist forces are also key cases of how this force manifests. The EFF recognizes that to be successful, it must ally with other social movements against the economic and racial injustice perpetrated
24 APR 2020
