Nkosana Sibuyi

Posted by Nkosana Sibuyi: 14 May 2011

What do Andries Tatane, Mohamed Bouzizi, Tunisia and Ficksburg epitomise, symbolise and represent?

Mr Mohamed Bouzizi, the Tunisian street vendor was unemployed and did everything in his power to earn a living. He was selling fruits and vegetables from his wheelbarrow in his village of Sidi Salah owing to the high rate of unemployment in that country. Bouzizi was arrested and beaten up by municipal officials for daring to make a living and for refusing to pay a bribe to be liberated from the brutality meted out to him. He was harassed, humiliated, persecuted and prohibited from his pursuit to be engaged in income generating activity from which his family depended on.

Given the humiliation, harassment and maltreatment that Bouzizi was subjected to, he decided, out of defiance against the system to set himself on fire and committed suicide. This is not an urban legend. It is neither a movie story nor a theatrical drama. It was not an act of cowardice. It is a veracious and real life story. This act of heroism and fearlessness triggered off demonstrations and a call to action including solidarity amongst hundreds of Tunisians against the cold-blooded state. This national revolution consequently led to the forceful removal Mr Zine Al-Abadine Ben Ali who had been in power for 23 years.

Mr Andries Tatane was a maths teacher, community leader and an activist. His contribution to the Maqheleng/Ficksburg community included proffering free maths lessons to the children. He raised a finger against the lack of service delivery, venality and incompetence inherent at the Setsotso municipality. On 13th April 2011, the community mobilised to demand from the municipality to provide them with basic services such as water and other amenities. They had marched two months before for the same services. It is soul-destroying to note that marches to municipalities (a state apparatus) are the voices of the unheard. According to eye witnesses, Mr Tatane had approached the police with a view to requesting them to intervene on behalf of an octogenarian (man) who found himself caught up in the crossfire although he was not part it.

It became patently clear that a political antenna at the Setsotso municipality is resistant to the commands, needs, and desires of the people. The brutal assassination of Tatane has remade 16 June 1976. It is a social commentary asserting to humankind’s ecosystem that we have won the liberation struggle in order to lose. We have won in order to lose.

The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) reports that more than a thousand people died in police custody or as a result of police action in 2010. The reliability, accuracy and veracity of statistical data around the number of people killed by the police remain in doubt and contestable. What is demonstrably clear is that a number of people are killed by the police, whose duty it is to protect them.

The ignominious obliteration of Tatane and Bouzizi signifies the emergence of many leitmotifs in the national, regional and international political polity. The themes inherent in this are multi-faceted and complex in both form and content. They could be delineated into seven theses:

THESIS 1
The state is an instrument of oppression, suppression and coercion. Dr Mongane Wally Serote’s poem, For Don M Banned notes the oppression by the Apartheid system of governance as a rejoinder to Don Mattera’s banning order from 1973 to 1982. It could be argued that both Tatane and Bouzizi are branches and leaves of the same branch in the tree alluded to in Serote’s poem. It is the tree that has felt, known and understood the pain of oppression. Don Mattera refers to the Sophiatown tree in his tome Gone with the Twilight.

The tree, believed to be over 100 years old, represents, epitomises and symbolises the survival of the removals of the community in both Tunisia and South Africa. From this standpoint, the people that Tatane and Bouzizi left behind such as religious leaders and activists will use to rendezvous under its branches. They are leaves on the branches objecting to be decimated by the state. In Tunisia, these are the people who revolted for Mr Zine Al-Abadine Ben Ali’s removal from power. The question that arises and occupies the mind is: what repercussions does this have for South Africa?

THESIS 2
The state has the propensity to wage a titanic struggle against the people it seeks to serve. It is impervious to the clarion call from the Freedom Charter that “the people shall govern.”

THESIS 3
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not protect Tatane and Bouzizi. The Constitutive Act of the African Union did not protect Tatane and Bouzizi. The The SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security did not protect Mr Tatane. The South African Constitution did not protect Mr Tatane. Instead, Mr Tatane and Bouzizi were guillotined by the people who had the responsibility to protect them. The state apparatus was effectively used to eliminate both Tatane and Bouzizi from the face of the earth.

THESIS 4
The inhumane manner in which both of them were martyred will usher in the emergence of a robust, organic and strong civil society. This will give a living profile to THESIS 7 to uphold and defend constitutional democracy. It calls for the reconstruction of a state guided by collegiality, social justice, compassion, caring and magnanimity. The Open letter to Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa from Sipho Pityana, chairman of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution redirects the germane need for a strong civil society.

THESIS 5
There is a realisation that the Chimurenga or Revolution that occurred in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Swaziland has a strong possibility of playing itself out in South Africa. Mr Tatane’s brutal murder epitomises and represents a particular epoch that has descended on the public political discourse. Democracy was not achieved in 1994. The true test of democracy will be achieved the day when the African National Congress (ANC) loses election and willingly relinquish power without resorting to violence and resistance. Such is the defining challenge facing myriad national liberation movements.

History has taught us in most African countries that it does not bode well, as the national liberation movement can easily turn into the masses’ worst oppressor. This includes refusing to accept the outcome of the democratic elections as expressed by the people of the country. For instance, the second round of the November 30 presidential elections in Ivory Coast between the political opponents Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Quattara bears a living testimony to this. It emerged that former president Laurent Gbagbo did not want to accept the convention that the people have decided to elect Alassane Quattara as their new president.

Do not look somewhere else. Look at the uprisings that occurred recently in North Africa, and ask the fundamental question: what has gone wrong?

The ANC must take profound lessons from the strategy and tactic of an iconic leader like Kenneth Kaunda. Having been in power for 27 years, Kaunda decided to call for multiparty elections- with three years of his term still left.

Kaunda accepted the convention that the people’s wisdom could be greater than his. He invited his nemesis, Frederick Chiluba over to State House, introduced him to the staff and duly congratulated him. Contrary to the resistance by military who vowed not to accept the concrete expression of a democratic election process, Kaunda gave them a lecture on democracy informing them that the people have spoken and decided that Chiluba must become the new Zambian president. This Zambian experience imposes an obligation not only on South Africa but on the African continent by showing us roads we should not travel and mistakes to be avoided.

THESIS 6
The ANC must be taught a lesson. The national and international opprobrium around the killing of Mr Tatane, to a remarkable degree, also mobilised people to decide that the ANC must be taught a lesson. If South Africa decides to go the route of other failed African states, how will the current and future generation defend memory against forgetting? Don Mattera’s book, Memory is the Weapon, compellingly depicts the past South Africa inherited and the future she seeks to create.

There are different schools of thought on how the killing or Mr Tatane could have impacted on the political ecosystem of the country. The South African Constitution’s Bill of Rights, section 17 states that “everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions”. This constitutional section did not protect Mr Tatane who was demonstrating peacefully and unarmed. The Constitution failed him, the Ficksburg community he represented and the country in totality.

Attempts were made to find palatable words in the dictionary to explain his mysterious death. The Ficksburg community took to the street not because they hate the ANC. It was pathetic and lamentable for one to draw parallels between what was going on at Prichard Street (Equality Court) where Luthuli House senior officials spent its valuable time to defend the song and in Ficksburg, Free State. The reason why we fought apartheid is because it took our voices away. The question that arises is: Of what use should our government deliver only when it is put under pressure to do so? Why is like that?

It is incumbent upon activists in the country to study and monitor the transformative discourse manifesting in South Africa. The brutal murder of Tatane must be understood in broad terms, as a reflection of a deliberate struggle against the people. It is an artefact of societal suffering of the trauma due to the lack of basic service delivery. It limns the efficacy, relevance and appropriateness of citizen activism in the consolidation of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Mr Tatane was killed when he was trying to improve the quality of life of the people in his community. His death necessitates restorative justice. Fairness, sprite and impartiality are owed to Mr Tatane. Contrary to the constitutional right to Freedom of Expression inherent in the Constitution, his right to exercise it has been criminalised although it was a lawful. The right did little to protect him. Indisputably, the Constitution is becoming a paper tiger.

THESIS 7
Tatane and Bouzizi’s death affirm the centrality and significance of upholding and defending the constitutional democracy.

CONCLUSION

Tatane and Bouzizi’s deaths could be equated to that of Bantu Biko in 1977, Chris Hani in 1993 and Hector Pietersen in 1976. Further, it represents a sad reminder of Mathew Goniwe, Vuyisile Mini, Mapetla Mohapi, Rick Turner, Johannes Nkosi and Ahmed Nkosi. It brings back memories of Boipatong, Sharpville, Soweto, Kwa-Shobashobane, Bisho Masaccres and 1946 mine strike. An analysis of the developments at areas where service delivery protests took place such as Ermerlo, Weseldyn, Balfour, Ficksburg, Zandspruit calls for a patriotic conversation to find sustainable solutions.

The next phase of our democracy calls for an engagement in debate and discussion about these harsh realities and the future we seek to create. It is about speaking “truth to power”. It is not about optics. If the intelligentsia is silenced, our country and young democracy will die a slow but painful death. The country will slide into turmoil and instability. We are trying to understand the ANC. We have won liberation in order to lose. Mistakes were made since 1994. They must be acknowledged and corrected. The ANC must renew itself.