Most southern Africa countries are included among the world’s least developed and low-income countries.
South Africa escapes this because of the liberation dividend that a tiny number from Sandton to Stellenbosch flaunts, while we retain the shame of being the most unequal society on Earth.
Even the countries where there has been a rich history of liberation struggle, and the promise of a better life for all, have failed to deliver meaningfully to their citizens.
Instead, in stark contrast to the rhetoric that prevails, a new class of politically connected beneficiaries prosper at the expense of the vast majority, almost defiling the very arduous and noble struggles that cost countless lives and broken spirits.
The disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and its devastating consequences have added to the tribulations and lack of cohesiveness of the region.
A quick overview of the liberation struggles may help us to locate what happened, assist us in understanding how we lost the plot and took people for granted, squandering the real opportunity for reconstruction and development.
Recall that in May 1994, one Jay Naidoo headed such a lofty and critical Cabinet portfolio, which was geared towards RDP dwellings. The Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 1974 – celebrated as Portugal’s Freedom Day – witnessed the armed forces movement and popular civil resistance overcome the Portuguese dictatorship, without a single shot being fired.
The stage was set for the independence of the former Portuguese colonies of Guiné-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola. Those were days pregnant with expectation among the majority in South Africa, but fraught with rising fear among the illegitimate minority, reaching a crescendo with the June 16, 1976 uprisings.
We shared a common border with Angola – Namibia (called South West Africa) was under SA’s occupation – and Mozambique, with which we share a common Xitsonga language.
In five southern African countries, liberation movements were waging guerrilla struggles for their independence from apartheid, British and Portuguese colonialism. Although apartheid strongman BJ Vorster met Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda on the Victoria Falls Bridge on August 25, 1975, to get Rhodesian Ian Smith into a negotiated settlement in Zimbabwe, South Africa was directly involved in destabilisation, military intervention and infiltration throughout southern Africa.
The horror haunts the region some 48 years later, even when all of us are supposedly free. Some of those agents of destruction remain in our midst, even benefiting from our hard-won democracy, in defiance of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) recommendations.
A few are beginning to face trial, although most are likely to continue evading accountability until they are lionised by their kind or outed in death.
The MPLA was the first of the southern African liberation movements in 1961 to wage an armed struggle to free Angola, declaring independence on November 11, 1975.
The MPLA perhaps bore the brunt of SA’s onslaught until the seven-month bloody Battle of Cuito Cuanavale ended decisively on March 23, 1988, supplanting South Africa’s military might. This critical day is celebrated as Southern African Liberation Day.
The MPLA, which continued to see civil war until Jonas Savimbi was killed in 2002, has since been wrecked by nepotism, corruption and self-interest.
The ANC announced its armed Struggle on December 16, 1961, and gained power on April 27, 1994. The ANC is embroiled in corruption, factionalism and often shooting itself in the foot when it should be holding the higher ground.
The other parts of the liberation movement – the PAC and Azapo – have been fighting rear-guard battles since the dawn of democracy, but a more competent and youthful leadership is emerging. Frelimo waged an armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism in 1964.
After the Carnation Revolution 10 years later, its representatives opened their offices in Maputo (Lourenço Marques). The “Viva Frelimo Rallies” were organised by the SA Students Organisation and the Black People’s Convention to celebrate this liberation milestone on September 25, 1974, resulting in some 200 activists being detained and tortured – President Cyril Ramaphosa was one of them.
Eventually, S Cooper and eight others were tried at Pretoria’s Palace of Justice and convicted under the Terrorism Act, serving time on Robben Island – former ANC national chairperson and Cope leader MGP Lekota, MP, was one of the accused.
Mozambique has, like the other liberated Southern African countries, experienced wide-scale civil uncertainty, corruption and high rates of socio-economic insecurity.
The Zimbabwe armed struggle, from around 1963, resulted in a negotiated settlement that saw Robert Mugabe assume leadership on April 18, 1980. A bloody civil war ensued, consolidating Mugabe’s hold on power, which ended with a palace revolt in 2017.
The legacy of corruption, maladministration and decline persists, adding to South Africa’s woes as a significant percent of Zimbabweans are domiciled here, fuelling the Afrophobia that dominates our landscape. Swapo began its armed struggle in 1966, celebrating its independence on March 21, 1990.
While Namibia appears to have less socioeconomic upheaval, the liberation dividend has not penetrated most of the citizenry. One in seven experience hunger, with unemployment and poverty rife. Of the liberation forces in the region, the ANC was the last to gain power, but perhaps has spectacularly squandered its liberation dividend.
The glaring lessons of what was happening all around us with the other post-liberation governments were ignored, excused or worse. So much was our notorious South African exceptionalism ingrained in our thinking that we believed that we were better.
Without much to back up our ability to be better and truly serve the majority in South Africa, who exist beyond the pale of our blunted understanding, narrow sensibilities and middle-class comforts.
We constantly avoid a long, hard look in the mirror, disavowing our faults, denying the ticking time bomb, where three out of mid-teens to mid20s are out of school and out of gainful democratic engagement, let alone the false notion of being employed in our hi-tech world that discounts people, rendering them surplus and effete.
Our seething majority is a convenience for slogans, especially during campaigning, but consigned to deliberate memory loss otherwise. The majority has simply become an inconvenient burden in the frenzy to be on the party ticket, in a highly compromised electoral system where party bosses, not only at national headquarters but also at provincial sites of murderous contestation, continue as if clear and present danger is absent.
Self-seeking, loudly strident, but often listless, heartless and soulless toadies strut their stuff, across the political spectrum. Most not even bothering to spout the lofty liberation principles that get trotted out on national days, as we painfully heard on March 21 and we’re likely to be mindlessly subjected to on April 27.
These are heroically revised in a last-ditch appeal to liberation credentials, in mind-numbing lectures, memorials and self-congratulatory webinars – another normalised pandemic outcome – which the vast majority, especially our children and youth, refuse to hear.
They are fed up – of us, of our lame excuses and our defence of the indefensible and impossible self-correction mouthing. Our future, our children, our broken country demand principled, fearless persons from civil society and from across the erstwhile liberation movement, joining together to save South Africa from ourselves.
The era of narrow political tendencies, limited vision and ineptitude are over. If South Africa is worth saving, now is the time to do so. Louis Pasteur said, “the future will belong to those who have done most for suffering humanity”.
The time has come to show we are made of a greater compassion than our own selfish needs, to enable kith, kin and country to be liberated from our past and terrible present.
*Cooper is the President of the Pan-African Psychology Union, a former leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, a political prisoner and a member of the 1970s group of activists.