Nkosana Sibuyi

Posted by Nkosana Sibuyi: 15 March 2011

we do not choose to be born
nor do we choose the way we will die
and when death comes
we know lots about how we lived
so
let it be
since time, by putting us where we are now
has taught us ways of death poses
that violence can wipe sight away
even throttle ears
or surrender our lips to silence

i can say
as we watched your footsteps seize your life out of many kinds of deaths
and you were thrust into a flight dance -
the way our eyes moved
from you
paging through many other faces and eyes
paving, seeking assurance
was the only scream we had come to use
a hope pitched in hopelessness

- MONGANE WALLY SEROTE

As I reflect on the conundrum and contradictions in North Africa or the Arab World, an array of words competed for hegemony, acknowledgement and recognition in my imagination. Egypt, Tahric Square, Swaziland, Lesotho, Uganda, Cameroon, Tunisia, Sudan, Libya, Cote d’IVoire, Yemen, Morocco, Dyibouti, Libya, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ermelo, Tripolli, Balfour, Benghazi, mass killings, genocide, revolution, social media, twitter, facebook, blogs, democratic governance, participatory democracy, Hosni Mubarak, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Laurent Gbagbo, Alasanne Quattrara, Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai, Jimmy Manyi, Paul Ngobeni, Trevor Manuel, Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga.

What is significant about these words is that all these countries and their respective attendant developments give us the capacity to dream and think with renewed determination. A collection of the above words, guided by the absence of sophisticated or empirical understanding of the historical issues at hand, has, to a remarkable degree, deepened despair and paranoia. The words constitute a medium to tell a story that had been waiting to be told as Mongane Wally Serote wrote “we do not choose to be born nor do we choose the way we will die.”

The slogans sang at Tahric Square such as “Revolution, revolution, all the way to victory. We are not going. He is going” represents the effectiveness of collective action for the achievement of key political objectives. This could only be done through the rigour, vim and zest to engage in Chimurenga.

The impression has been created in the countries alluded to in the prelude that people had hook, line and sinker to arrive at their nirvana. Consequently, this was not allowed to add enormously to their irritability factor. Lo and behold, the emergence of a revolution underscored the volte-face to create one human family under one heaven. Ordinarily, the significance of bringing about social change and transformation was applauded even by people who embrace mediocrity. Such is the complexity of governance. The matter ebbs and flows in the intellectual, scholarly, public, academic and political discourse to fulfil a great historic mission.

Afrika’s case may seem to exist in the realm of abstraction or beyond the realm of debate. As we often muse on these challenges within the orbit of our lives, the unasked question is: If the leaders have failed to provide direction, stewardship and leadership, should they (leaders) vote people out? This may be perceived to be rankles to those with a fetishist attitude to strategic leadership and management though remained undermined by their own structures.

For Afrikan people, there is a reprise of the observation made by Can Themba, in his story The Will to Die, when he posits that “some folks live the obsession of death.” In the timeless conflict staged in the continent, the future will not only be artificially guided gestures of depthless generosity. It is gravitating towards impatience and anger, what Serote calls “a hope pitched in hopelessness.” Once people have been oppressed for many years, they explode and embark on a revolution that seeks to change the direction of the country and the world. It cannot simply be about optics.

Undoubtedly, the heroic efforts of the people in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and others are informed by different themes, tactical and strategic postures. The themes are enumerated as follows: One of the central themes is that the revolution was desirable and practical in that given moment. Second, the monumental struggle was led by young people. Clearly, history and destiny are on the side of young people. Third, social media was a mobilising instrument used to rally people around one common agenda which is the displacement of autocrats. Fourth, it was patently clear that repression and oppression of the people is not sustainable. People cannot be oppressed in eternity. Fifthly, cadres who played a defining role in the liberation of the people must not use that achievement as a licence to stay in power eternally. The objective reality that leaders participated in the emancipation of the people through the displacement of colonialism and apartheid, crimes against humanity cannot serve as a barricade towards change. Change is indivisible. All of these themes teach humankind not to run against the winds of change.

Owing to the need to change the human conditions of the world in which they exist, people have defined the power, authority and legitimacy of the actions required to bring about meaningful transformation. In essence, People’s Power provided a more compelling social experience of them towards cooperative action as opposed to the silence of emptiness.

In his seminal volume, Party Work in the Masses, Lenin said “not a single class in history has achieved power without producing its political leaders, its prominent representatives able to organise movement and lead it.” The availability of political leaders and prominent representatives to organise and lead a revolution provides a perfect template for social change and transformation. It is not a comment on whether stones found on the moon had water but a simple defining moment to allow oxygen to flow into the transformation discourse.

The mantra of the authoritarian governments is the repression of dissent and suppression of participatory democracy. The intelligentsia and intellectuals are effectively been locked out in the process. They have not suspended their emotional maturity, critical and ground-breaking thinking to change the direction of society. They have demonstrated their enormous appreciation and recognition of the fatality of pessimism in the midst of adversity. It is encouraging that the African Union (AU) is now asserting its legitimacy, relevance and appropriateness in the peaceful resolution of conflicts. The AU’s recent pronouncement of its position on the situation in Cote d’IVoire is a sober reflection for the future to give the world a humane face. Although competition for resources and opportunities along the way is legion, all systems of social engineering designed to produce a peaceful society is practical, possible and desirable.

To paraphrase from Mandla Langa, many more died of despair, the bottle and the rope – and not a few went mad and took that long and returnless journey into oblivion. Clearly, in the world where the centrality of social media such as twitter, facebook, blogs and other new media, Africans cannot afford to be armed with devastating ignorance. The mass killing of civilians must come to a complete halt. For instance, the elections and announcement of the results in Kenya in 2007 was marked by ethnic violence between the Kikuyu and Luo. In Cote d’IVoire, President Laurent Gbagbo allegedly refused to hand over power to Alasanne Quattrara after he lost during the democratic elections. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe continued to cling to power against the political realities of the time in 2008.

We need to honestly respond to the fundamental question: What lessons can we draw from that? The conundrum in the Arab world’s aspiration for freedom and emancipation bring with it the need not to lose sight of the strategic objectives. There is an ideological battle around end of history and clash of civilisation. Samuel Huntington’s tome The Clash of Civilisations deconstructed the theory in response to Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man.

Huntington’s considered view of human society and nature is that inter-cultural strife has the greatest possibility to find expression in global polity. In comparing worlds of realism, parsimony and predictions, he holds that the forces of integration in the world are real and precisely what are generating counterforces of cultural assertion and civilisational consciousness. Meanwhile, Fukuyama contends that recognition is the central problem of politics because it is the origin of tyranny, imperialism and the desire to dominate. Based on the current developments in North Africa or the Arab World, Fukuyama and Huntington’s counsel provide theoretical justification for the creation of the world with a civilized similitude at peace with itself.

What is certainly clear is that the possibility of the uprising in the Sub Saharan African can only be ruled out at our own peril. That is not improbable. It may not happen here and now. It is on its way and when it happens, we must not feel like the country has been attacked by the tsunami. It definitely will. The other possibility is that change is inevitable and irrevocable. People are the solid leaders in any country. Sub-Saharan Africa has much to learn and gain from the revolution that swept across North Africa or in the Arab world. The suggestions to the effect that boycott, sabotage and isolation could be adopted will not assist. This cannot be done in isolation but requires the active participation of all affected stakeholders.

The economic injustice in the Arab countries contributed to the Arab Renaissance characterised by highly uncertain and unintended political consequences. Owing to the objective reality that the countries in the Arab world are OPEC members, countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and United States are the biggest importers of oil thus creating minimal possibilities for international peace and security. This is informed by the west reaction to repression and oppression in those countries.

The challenge is that pride, hope, humility, focus, purpose and direction assists in overcoming decades of fear. The home-made people’s revolution has a possibility to discourage and avoid the emergence of autocrats and personality cults away from marginalisation, exploitation and passivity.

Judge Albie Sachs on the occasion of his Inaugural Lecture at the University of Cape Town on 20 May 1992 made profound suggestions demonstrating and displaying an astonishing appreciation and recognition of governance in a democratic epoch. In this address, Perfectibility and Corruptibility: Preparing ourselves For Power, Judge Sachs said:

“Answerable to the present, accountable to the future, ideas of our times, we are eager to demonstrate the broadness of our vision. I fear for intellectual fatigue, a loss of imagination and élan, a gradual descent into ad hoc-ism and improvisation. Ideas advance, not so much when good and bad notions clash but when beautiful concepts collide with each other. Banal questions, on the other hand, get banal answers.

What matters is how government in the country can be organised so as to promote the great objectives of the Constitution: freedom, equality, democracy and development. Constitutions doe not make people. People make constitutions. The elements of affordability and enforceability would thus have to be built into the warp and woof of the original constitutional concept, not to undermine it but to give it real substance.”

We are often reminded that there is virtue in stillness. There is virtue in
silence. But these virtues can easily assume the level of meaningless and
uselessness if the complex human landscape is characterised by oddities and
putsch. The values of broad-mindedness, responsibility, justness, openness
and dialogue make sense within such a context. It is too much sound and fury
yielding little meaning, orientation and national consciousness. The process of
becoming and making sense of all the noises shall profoundly define a
humane world landscape in a rapidly changing polity. It will not bring the
purposeless measure of life without value nor instability but a sense of
predictability and solidity. It will usher in a relationship of inter-dependence.

I opened the epistle with a poem, which some might say is characterised by ambivalence surrendering our lips to silence, a hope pitched in hopelessness and seeking assurance.

we watched your footsteps seize your life out of many kinds of deaths
I would therefore like to end with a poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, especially, after the First World War. Yeats had witnessed the brink of catastrophe that characterised the world and the troubles that worsened human civilisation. This calls upon humankind to build common values and social cohesion in a manner that creates a possibility for the centre to hold.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?