Dear Honourable former president,
It dawns now that when we had thought we were defending “our people” to eradicate Islamophobia and genocide against the people of Palestine, Sebutinde had adopted the same attitude as you, former president: “who is not our people”. Now I understand why it was your ANC that had allowed the perpetuation of whites only communities in your so-called liberated South Africa.
It is not surprising that it was your ANC that had engaged in a campaign to disarm black people while allowing white people to own as many guns as they wish. When your ANC had advocated for a gun-free society we were naïve not to realise that you meant black society. Your ANC had allowed secret military training for white people while our people are being forcefully demilitarised. Hypocrites and political chameleons are exposed when they cannot cope with their own lies. Your sudden U-turn on your “I will not campaign for the ANC” utterances, is one such example of a chameleon changing spots.
In the 80’s when everyone warned us against you, we vehemently defended you because we did not believe anyone in the liberation movement of our people could be such a sellout. Of course, the phrase “our people” was always in your mouth like all of us, little did we know that you did not mean the same thing as the rest of us when you referred to “our people.” At that time white people referred to your fellow black people as “your people,” today they are your people.
Your questionable relationship with Mr. Craig Williamson also did not raise much alarm because we thought you were politically conscious. Now it makes so much sense after so many years since the 70’s and 80’s why the ANC had adopted a deliberate campaign to obliterate Black Consciousness activists, because you and your movement never regarded them as “your people” since they were spreading self-love for black people, a concept that you hated because it did not advocate for the love for “your people”, the white folk.
You forget that the same Jacob Zuma that you have picked as your enemy number one today, had all the time to be with Goven in his last days when you were nowhere to be found. When comrade Goven questioned your relationship with Mr. Craig Williamson, who later confessed having killed Onkgopotse Tiro with a letter bomb, you defended him as an innocent white folk, again because after all “who in South Africa is not our people”.
You seem to believe that all that which is ANC is sacrosanct; your blinkered belief that the Freedom Charter is the holy book and therefore cannot be wrong is a dangerous poison fed to our youth by your ANC. That you hold the position of prominence in society does not mean your views cannot be challenged. In fact, it is the same reason why we should quickly correct the distortions you make, lest generations fall into the trap of neo-liberalism legitimised by your likes.
If the Freedom Charter was holy, then we would never have had the breakaway of the PAC from the Charterist Movement in the 1950’s. We all know the Freedom Charter is a liberal doctrine sponsored by white monopoly capital so it can accommodate the interests of white capital and the minority property rights.
The Freedom Charter was cooked in the talks that led to the Lusaka Declaration of 1969 which was sponsored by Britain and America. The Lusaka Manifesto of 1962 was also a result of that sellout programme. Needless to, the Harare Declaration of 1989 which was the gateway for the CODESA negotiations was the extension of that Lusaka sellout programme too. Today Africa is reeling from the spell of post-colonial independence through the sellout agreements such as the Continuation of Colonisation Agreement because of that Lusaka Declaration.
Your concept of “I am an African” is a plagiarised Eurocentrism sponsored by Britain and America just like the Lusaka and the Harare Declarations. We are not surprised to hear you ask the question: “who is not our people?” It is the same as the distortion: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” Today, white, and predominantly Afrikaner university professors are sponsoring a false and distorted African history by arguing in their dissertations that black people in South Africa are also settlers because they came in to the southern part of Africa, moving from central and western Africa.
I know that you spent most of your so-called exiled years studying economics, but it does not need a university degree in history to understand that black people in Africa had for many years lived a nomadic and agrarian life-style because they had to look for grazing land in their own continent, not in a foreign continent. You cannot be an African and be a settler in Africa.
Therefore, if the ANC does not have a clear political consciousness of who our people are, this confusion must not be thrown down the throats of our young people. In the interest of saving posterity from these dangerous historical distortions our people need to have dialogue on these matters.
We defended you when, during your reign, the likes of professor Sipho Seepe were critical of your political consciousness. We were on your side when you tried to make some uninformed academic debate on the causes of AIDS and whether HIV could be one of the causes thereof. We stood in between you and the public rant when you viciously threw an unwarranted clap on to the innocent face of comrade Winnie Madikizela Mandela at Orlando stadium, but now we know why that happened.
I do not know what role you played in the assassination of Onkgopotse Tiro and many others that died in the hands of your companion, Mr. Craig Williamson, but I know that the ideology of those comrades, BC, would have saved you from the slave mentality and you would have better understanding of “our people.”
Your recitation, “I am an African”, clearly does not have any revolutionary sense. I know this may be distorted as an anti-white sentiment, but I must state that being a believer in Black Consciousness and the salvation of black people from the bondage and mental slavery, is in no way an attack on white people, it is merely self love.
It was your ANC that had for years engaged on a campaign to make white people believe that both the PAC and the Black Consciousness Movement had an agenda to drive white people into the sea, yet you and I know that nothing had been further from the truth than this propaganda.
The terms of political settlement in South African had their foundation laid in the political advice offered to the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa, by comrade Leon Trotsky in his thesis of 1935 which your Stalinist ANC had rejected. The Lineage of your ANC to Stalinism lured the organisation into political oblivion and skewed political consciousness.
This also explains the ANC’s onslaught against Trotsky and his movement. All of this led to the current confusion you have of who is our people. It is your ANC that has up to this day been chasing after white people begging for reconciliation when the other party has been drifting further and further from the reconciliatory agenda.
The land question in this country cannot be trivialised and ridiculed in the way you do. I do not know what you mean when you say that the ANC you belong to does not advocate for “giving the land to our people.” Not long the ANC told us there shall be expropriation of land without compensation.
So, your attitude towards our land is a very dangerous one and is clearly sponsored by those who have the possession of our land. You have over the years made our people feel guilty for demanding their stolen land but it is not surprising given your political associates.
Vukile Theo Phanyaphanya is a retired teacher, and an author.
The Star