The revolution must come full circle

Submitted by Garikai Nyaruwata

revolution noun [C] a deep-seated change in method of thinking often designed to effect fundamental changes in the political and socioeconomic situation.

Earlier this year the University of Cape Town ANC Youth League distributed a number of posters on campus containing a treatise in commemoration of Chris Hani. A substantive portion of this piece was dedicated to criticising UCT’s “liberal character” and in particular the activities of its main student outreach volunteer organisation, Shawco. To quote directly: “We are aware of organisations like Shawco, whom give our people fish and do not teach then how to fish …”. In addition, the piece states that, “we will convince, mobilise and act against the reactionary forces of this time. Which also include immobilised, reactionary and liberal black Africans … and many whites.”

This piece and the subsequent discourse that it prompted bothered me for a number of reasons, not least of which is its inaccuracy. While Shawco started out as a charity organisation in the 1960’s, it has changed substantially in keeping with the evolving needs of Cape Town’s impoverished communities that it serves. As a result, more than 90% of its activities centre on either educational support or medical assistance. I have had a very hard time understanding how offering pupils extra tuition in support of the school curricula can be conceived of as not teaching people “how to fish”. Moreover, as a past project leader for one of its projects, Masizikhulise, which offers entrepreneurial, job search and IT skills to unemployed youth from the Nyanga and Khayelitsha communities, I am very skeptical of this claim. I’m pretty certain that if you were to ask any of the numerous participants who’ve subsequently started successful businesses or who gained employment whether they felt that Shawco amounts to a hand-out scheme, their answer would be an incontrovertible no!

Inaccuracies aside, I think the criticism is indicative of a more nationally prevalent and worrying trend. ANCYL president Julius Malema’s enjoinment to “Kill for Zuma”, in my understanding, speaks to a desire among our would-be future leaders to assert their relevance in the political domain by representing themselves as militant revolutionaries.

It would seem that reflecting on the roles played by liberation heroes like Mandela, Sobukwe, Hani and Biko, has lead most of our youth in political leadership to the conclusion that making any significant contribution to the liberation of Africans will require the adoption of the exact same strategies, approach and even diction of their predecessors. Indeed, failing to adopt such a radical stance will fast earn you the title of a “black reactionary” or open you to being portrayed as a gimp of the “white liberals”.

This trend is problematic from a number of perspectives. The media and the South African Human Rights Commission have gone to great lengths to make apparent the dangers of such unconstrained militancy in the public realm. I agree with these criticisms and believe that they provide sufficient grounds for youth in political leadership to rethink their current strategy. That said, I believe that even from the perspective of a revolutionary, the modus operandi of the current youth leadership is a non-starter.

I believe that the underlying premise of their approach is that being a revolutionary like Hani or Biko requires not only that we accept their aim or goal, but that we also employ the same methods that they used in pursuing that aim. This view, however, fails to acknowledge the fact that we are at a different point in the process of revolution, and as a result, may need to employ different methods to achieve those self-same aims. The holistic liberation of African citizenry envisaged by Seme, Msimang and Montsio at the inception of the SANNC in 1912, encompassed political, economic and social emancipation. Political youth militancy proved an indispensable weapon in the pursuit of political emancipation. In an environment where there was a clear adversary who was unwilling to talk, except through the barrel of the gun, the ability of the radical approach to commandeer support and incite the stoic will to resist made it an outright necessity. Post 1994 and with political enfranchisement won for South Africa’s citizenry, we must however, question the continued utility of this approach in attaining the remaining aims of economic and social emancipation.

A fundamental limitation of the radical approach in attempting to bring the revolution full circle is its inability to deal with the increased complexity of the task at hand when we consider economic and social emancipation. While resisting political oppression is an incredibly demanding endeavor, common knowledge of who the enemy is makes the use of mass rallies, political protest and targeted action that much easier and effective. The reality when it comes to economic and social issues, however, is that it’s a hell of a lot more difficult to define who the enemy is. Who is really to blame for food inflation — government, Eskom, The WTO and European farmers, the burgeoning Chinese middle class or Tiger Brands? Who is to blame for the increase in single headed households — the media, ARV-producing pharmaceutical corporations, government, the educational system or deviations from our cultural practices? While there is definitely still a role for adversarial pressure on the government with regards to corruption or seriously botched economic planning, the truth is that economic and social emancipation is less a question of stopping direct oppression than it is one of finding innovative ways to create value and capacitate people.

Take education for an example. With illiteracy rates of 24% for adults older than 15, and numerous schools reporting learner teacher ratios in excess of 45:1 it is clear that the South African education system still has a long way to go before it provides its students with skills they need to succeed in life. That said, the underperformance of schools is not a clear-cut case of government neglect. Indeed, South Africa has continued to spend approximately 20% of the government budget each year on education — significantly more than most other lower middle income countries. In such a situation the attainment of a founding stone of economic and social emancipation — sound educational access for all — is unlikely to be yielded by an adversarial and militant political approach. Instead, what is needed is constructive engagement and initiative by civil society so that innovative approaches to enhancing educational effectiveness can be found.

It is in this light that the UCT ANCYL treatise is so frustrating. The organisation, in keeping with the militant strategy, chose to sit on the sidelines and criticise those who are actually getting their hands dirty with the nitty-gritty details of social and economic emancipation. Getting more poor South Africans to have better access to better quality education does not require grandstanding, finger pointing or “anti-reactionary” compellation. It requires a willingness to organise people to give of their own time to support pupils who have missed classes due to mass strikes. It requires mobilising private-sector players to invest expertise and capital in developing educational tools that can be used in the most remote of areas. It requires changing social norms regarding the value of entering into the teaching profession so as to combat the increasing shortage of teachers. Indeed, ensuring that the revolution comes full circle requires those who would consider themselves as revolutionaries, adopt the methods and strategies that are most aptly suited to addressing the issues of their time.

The reason that Biko’s willingness to die in the struggle for liberation should be so revered is not that revolutionary action exists solely in the domain of military engagement. Rather, what we should revere is that leaders like him were so unwaveringly committed to the revolution that they employed the strategies that they believed would be most effective in achieving this, even when this meant death. The challenge for those who dare follow in their footsteps then, is to commit to forms of political engagement that speak to the complexities of economic and social emancipation and consequently posses the potential to ensure that the revolution comes full circle.

Garikai Nyaruwata is a B.Bus.Sci Economics Honours student at the University of Cape Town and is bent on harnessing Africa’s entrepreneurial vitality for the purposes of social justice.