Nkosana Sibuyi

Posted by Nkosana Sibuyi: 29 November 2010

The essence of nature is that it detests the existence of nothingness. Nature and its impact on the universe are inestimable. Ordinarily, nature has the temerity to define the social, economic, cultural and geo-political landscape from which humankind inhabit. The titanic struggle waged by Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe, Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Ernesto Che Guevara, Agostinho Netto, Kenneth Kaunda, Mahatma Gandhi, Samora Machel, Yasser Arafat, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, Aung San Suu Kyi and others constitute a defining moment in the evolution of human-centred society.

All of these icons, have, to a remarkable degree, played a significant role in shaping a society which humankind seeks to collectively build. A society emancipated from fear, want, repression, forgetting and the utility of memory in the struggle for human emancipation. Their defining philosophies and controlling ideas were not in any away aimed at placing a lump in the throat or a tear in the eye of the people they sought to liberate.

The first three sentences in Dambudzo Marechera’s epoch making book, The House of Hunger says “I got my things and left. The sun was coming up. I couldn’t think where to go.” A critical reading and analysis of this book, set in Zimbabwe reveals the untold desolation, despair, sadism and psychosis that had come to symbolise the world in which compassion and care had created tactics for survival. It could as well be argued that the dimensional circumstances at the time created space and time for the survival of the wisest. It was not necessary about the survival of the fittest.

The utility of memory in the struggle for human emancipation has remained etched in the annals of history for many aeons. For instance, Pablo Neruda, in one of his eponymous poem, There’s No Forgetting (Sonata) writes:

If you should ask me where I ‘ve been all this time
I have to say “Things happen”
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
On the river ruined in its own duration
I know nothing save things the birds have lost
The sea I left behind or my sister crying
Why this abundance of places?

These are not memories that have passed each other
Nor the yellowing pigeon sleep in our forgetting;
These are tearful faces
And finger down our throats
And whatever among leaves falls to the ground
The dark of a day gone by
Grown fat on our grieving blood

The significant struggle in search of perfection, Marechera’s reflections on The House of Hunger and Neruda’s pursuit to dwell on stones darkening the earth brings into the fore Aung San Suu Kyi as the heroine of the Burmese struggle for liberation. Her father, Aung San, was gunned down when she was only two after he had liberated his country from the repressive hands of the British and Japanese. The death of her father opened up a monumental hole in the fabric of the nation thus creating a possibility for the emergence of a lame duck government whose agenda was biased against the needs of the oppressed.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Noble Peace Prize Laureate and the Burmese opposition leader of the National League for Democracy, upon her release from house arrest where she was imprisoned for much of the past twenty years said “democracy is freedom of speech. Please do not give up hope. There is no reason to lose heart.”

Aung San Suu Kyi’s tome, Freedom from Fear contends that “diversity and dissent need not inhibit the emergence of strong, stable societies, but inflexibility, narrowness and unadulterated materialism can prevent healthy growth”

Professor Cass Sunstein’s book Why societies need dissent complements the points made by Aung San Suu Kyi’s above when he warns that “organisations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Well-functioning societies benefit from a wide range of views, their citizens do not live in gated communities or echo chambers. Well-functioning societies take steps to discourage conformity and to promote dissent. They do this partly to protect the rights of dissenters, but mostly to protect the interests of their own.”

Broadly, it is significant to contextualise’s the role, nature and character of agents of social change in the current political discourse taking place in world polity. Notably, a gamut of concrete and practical political issues is playing themselves out in Burma. The political challenge is the extent to which, by and large, progressive icons have expressed alacrity to transform Burma onto a higher trajectory of political growth and development.

Although her release from house arrest has been greeted with approbation and appreciation, Burma’s military junta is more than determined to maintain the status quo. It should be recalled that in 1995 and 2002, Aung San Suu Kyi was released and as soon as she gained popularity amongst the Burmese hoi polloi, she was sent back to the University Avenue house. Since her recent release on 13 November 2010, progressive Burmese people believe that the same fate will not befall her as much as it did in 1995 and 2002.

Historiography reveals that parallels could be drawn between Burma’s struggle for freedom and Algeria’s struggle for liberation appositely captured by Franz Fanon in his book A Dying Colonialism. In one of the chapters of this book, The Algerian Family, Fanon posits that the tactic adopted by French colonialism since the beginning of the revolution has had the result of separating the people from each other, of fragmenting them, with the sole objective of making any cohesion impossible. Adolfo Gilly’s introductory note to the book is telling. “Life acquires a sense, transcendence, an object: to end exploitation, to govern themselves by and for themselves, to construct a way of life. It is this kind of struggle that the woman stands firm in her own strength, throws all the energy she has accumulated during centuries of oppression, her infinite capacity to resist, her courage. It is in this kind of struggle that relations change and the woman prepares for her role in society that is being built,” writes Gilly.

Undoubtedly, the antagonistic contradictions inherent in Burma and Algeria at the time called for public reasoning informed by the keenness to challenge, attend to the poverty of the mind, argue, engage, debate and shape the nature and character of the society to be built based on democratic norms and values. Owing to the objective reality of building social cohesion and identity, this will set the tone to stimulate repressed countries to honour the past, engage the present and shape the future in a manner that advances the public good.

The above cannot be achieved by relegating agents of social change to the backburners, often maligned, sidelined, sidelined and even victimized. Agents of social change provide opportunities and spaces that are required for future generations, beyond here and now, for incessant social renewal.

A number of significant questions remain: What lessons can be learnt from Aung San Suu Kyi’s experience? What message does her release communicate to all agents of social change and transformation in the whole universe? Of what use is her release if humankind becomes so timid to seize the defining moment in the creation of human centred society? What is the nature and character of the prospects, opportunities and problems does her release present to all freedom loving people of the world? To what extent can the revered international stateswoman resolve the challenges facing Burma beyond the de-establishment of the military junta?

Without any doubt, the rigour and vigour of any activist in any stage of the revolution is to read the mood and political temperature of the time. Subsidiary to this view, an appreciation and a clear-sighted understanding of the balance of forces and power in a given minute equip one with the requisite knowledge to craft an appropriate response which is relevant to the needs of that defining moment. This requires that the analysis of the objective and subjective reality of that time be synthesized to guard against misapplying the wrong antidote paraded as a panacea for all socio-economic maladies in society.

There is therefore a dialectical link between discourse analysis, understanding, opinion making and shaping, and influencing soul (ideology) of the nation in the process of nation-formation and nation building. This process of reflection (discourse analysis and shaping understanding) is a strategic necessity but not the only determinant for shaping the consciousness and orientation of society. This is often, intellectually, regarded as the development of the strategy and tactics as the necessary tools to analyze the balance of forces and the society within which we live.

Pablo Neruda’s There’s No Forgetting (Sonata) does recognise the essence on what creates parallels with the poem titled, Before the Sun written by the African poet (one of Zimbabwe's leading writers) Charles Mungoshi. The poem is about a boy who has convinced himself that he is a grown up though he is so imaginative and finds it difficult to suppress his childhood. The boy exemplifies the rising of the sun with the twinkle of a grown-up person. Mungoshi’s poems effortlessly acknowledge the difficulties of "Growing Up." They paint a multi-layered world of meaning and multi-dimensional idiom that offers space for various interpretations, but one that is deeply involved in the movement and multiplicity of the larger world. As in one of his eponymous poems, Mungoshi invites us to return into the home within ourselves - that unchanging part of humanity, the conscience to recognise that the past and present are inextricably interlocked in the future.

History will not absolve Burma as long as Aung San Suu Kyi is relegated to the backburners, maligned, silenced, sidelined and even victimized. Accordingly, opportunities are required for future generations to create a possibility for incessant social renewal and Burma’s regeneration. The past and present are interlocked in the future