Writing on the wall for African liberation movements

The children of the revolution are turning against the liberation movement.

For now, a handful of insider top thinkers have expressed their disillusionment on the decline of the political integrity of liberation movements. In fact, they have gone on record to say: liberation movements will, ultimately, betray the people!

There is a new wave of insurgent African intellectuals who may be breaking rank with the liberation movement by taking a critical examination of what they have delivered after the euphoria of uhuru, if anything. This new intellectual attitude is epitomized by Moeletsi Mbeki and Dr Z Pallo Jordan, among others, who seem to have unflinchingly subjected Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF, for instance, to critical examination.

Of course, both Mbeki and Dr Jordan grew up in the belly of the liberation movement, so to speak. Thus it is a very complicated and sensitive development for them to turn intellectual guns against Mugabe, who is one of the last remaining African nationalists who have led the war for total liberation of his people.

But this new wave of African critical thinking is one of the most positive developments to take place in the first decade of the 21st Century. In a nutshell, both the younger Mbeki and Dr Jordan — who are highly esteemed top thinkers in the African National Congress — have gone on record to accuse Mugabe of having betrayed the struggle for liberation. They insist, for instance, that by not allowing the people of Zimbabwe to choose their own leader, he has become an enemy of the people. They assert that he should immediately resign and hand over power to the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai.

This is a revolutionary development, indeed, to ‘accuse’ a custodian of African liberation of being more oppressive than the tyrannical and racist regime. But the truth of the matter is that when the people of Zimbabwe had overthrown Ian Smith for turning them into slaves and foreigners in their own country, they did not expect him to be replaced by another tyrant, especially a fellow African.

It was for this reason that they launched and waged ‘chimurenga,’ as it was called, to totally eradicate Ian Smith’s power hold which militated against the aspirations of the people. Their dream, of course, was to install ‘one man, one vote’ system where the people would decide who they wanted to be President and thus lead the country.

Countless unsung heroes made the ultimate sacrifice because they instinctively knew that no tyranny lasts for ever. By 1980, despite the humiliation, torture, jail, imprisonment and death that the people had to endure, the struggle was supposed to have triumphed. What this achievement illustrated was that nobody could destroy the will of the people who were determined to be free to not only take their own future into their own hands, but to choose their own leaders.

But that was then.

Someone like Mugabe was riding the political crest because he was an educated man who was highly articulate in expressing the aspirations, hopes, wishes and dreams of his people. But now, after 28 years in power, he is viewed as part of the problem. The new thinking of insurgent African intellectuals teaches that it is possible for liberation movement leaders to betray the struggle for freedom and self-determination. They say Africans need to be aware that celebrated liberation heroes of yesteryears can also turn against their people. It is for this reason that they are demanding that former liberation leader Mugabe hand over power to Tsvangirai.

It is, indeed, a sobering thought for Africans to awaken to the reality that it is easy to move from white tyranny into the hands of black tyranny. Of course, over the last 28 years, Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has been the worst example of how a liberation movement can lose its vision and thus turn against the people. Today, even the masses regard it as a shameful disgrace.

It is the new thinkers, especially the younger Mbeki, who first sounded the alarm bells. His utterances and writings have helped to highlight the strange and self-contradictory logic common in self-deluding liberation movements. He has long pointed out that those who have been revolutionaries easily slip into the shoes of the regime and forget about serving the interests of the people they claim to have fought for. Thus Mugabe is now, rightly, regarded as a “former liberation hero.” It is his overstay in power that has seen him transmogrify into an anti-revolutionary who is violently opposed to what the people want for themselves.

Nobody wants to listen to the long held view that liberation movements are the custodians of freedom who are destined to rule until the Second Coming. Instead, liberation heroes like Mugabe, for instance, have assumed a two-faced devil profile who abuse highest political office in the name of the people. Unfortunately, the people have come to realise that nothing has changed in the status quo but the colour of the people in power. The people must always be reminded about the promise of the revolution. The new thinkers say the people have no business to support those who do not fulfil their aspirations and continue to allow them to be exploited.

Naturally Mugabe and Zimbabwe, for example, provide interesting lessons for the people the southern part of the continent. For far too long the people have suffered in the name of freedom and democracy that has only benefited the few elites. It is a significant fact that these insurgent African intellectuals are people who grew up in the oldest liberation movement in the continent.

Their thinking sees them turn their back on comrades who are not delivering. This is, indeed, the most positive development to take place in the liberation movement. It marks the dawn of a new day in African politics. The writing is, now, on the wall for all liberation movements.