By Mike Masube Masipa
One thing that is becoming glaringly clear, at least to my amateur political observer eye, is that there is room for a non-political organisation to fight for the interests, rights and real emancipation of Africans in this country.
A 2022 United Nations Development Programme report revealed that trust in political parties in Latin America had declined to a previously unheard-of low and at a steeper rate than trust in government.
The report noted that while trust in government fell from 46% in 2010 to 27% in 2020, trust in political parties declined from 24% in 2013 to 13% in 2020.
I see in it the untold story of the results of the May 29 elections here in SA.
Could the marked loss of support for the EFF and the reduction of the ANC to a shell of its glorious former self be pointing to a similar trend here?
The EFF, which may, as suggested by its name, have been mistaken to be custodians of the fight for economic emancipation, is now seemingly fighting for its life, with some prominent members leaving.
Once the third biggest political party, the EFF, for me, a casual and almost disinterested observer of politics, represented the best there could be outside of the increasingly irrelevant, faction-riddled ANC to carry the aspirations of the downtrodden.
May 29 left in its wake major upheavals that have left the political landscape and the EFF reeling and shaken.
The biggest loser was the ANC, which is now reduced to a pitiful lot left with no choice but to seek a hitherto unthinkable coalition with the old enemy after returning just over 40% of support — a far cry from the heady two-thirds majority of the Thabo Mbeki days.
It must be a potent toxifying agent of this state power that often renders hapless liberation heroes into arrogant, out-of-touch beings not to be bothered with the needs of their people.
The decline of the party of liberation, regardless of the emergence of Jacob Zuma’s toy MK Party, leaves Africans, who are still battling to shake off the effects of centuries of racial discrimination, in a conundrum.
But it is welcome, seeing that 30 years of political power have failed to deliver the promise of longed-for economic freedom.
Could this mean it’s time for a left-leaning, Africanist civil organisation without political ties to rise and carry the torch of economic, academic and social liberation? Methinks so.
The Afrikaners are doing it already through organisations such as AfriForum.
While parties such as the DA and the FF-Plus do the bidding in politics, the likes of AfriForum fight every inch of the remainder of the terrain to further the interests of their people.
We see examples of that around issues such as the Bela Act, where the weakened power of the ANC is on display, with the president forced to consider aspects of the law they are unhappy about.
While the pressure is ramped up politically, the fight will rage on other fronts, such as the courts, until concessions are made. Show me, anyone, an equivalent lobby group for the interests of Africans.
Meanwhile, the African populace, as attested by the latest employment statistics, continues to suffer economic exclusion. The face of poverty is black; the face of deprivation is black; the face of hunger is black.
Has the black skin not been persecuted long enough?
The situation is getting even bleaker on the economic front if cognisance is taken of how locals have lost their tenuous hold on Cinderella sectors of the economy, such as spaza shops.
The lucrative township retail economy in which the traditional general dealer used to hold some sway is all gone today — owned exclusively by foreign nationals.
Even the monopoly retail giants are zoning in, salivating at the prospect of slicing themselves a share of the estimated R900m-a-year industry.
Yes, nearly a trillion rands that should otherwise have been kept in circulation in black local hands leaves our communities, often untaxed, just like that. Where are the black African captains of industry when such a travesty unfolds?
AfriForum and like-minded sister organisations have built a university, just one of the examples of what can be done if people unapologetically pursue the interests of their kind.
Maybe, may I argue, the fact that our oppression under colonialism and apartheid — a colonialism of a special type — manifested itself more in politics and left us believing that it would be politics and politics alone that would liberate the African. Wrong!
The past 30 years have proved that nothing could be far from the truth. Intertwined as politics and the economy are, the solution today might require a rethink of the approach.
Is it a lost cause? I don’t think so. The promise and the dream of 1994 cannot be abandoned like that.
Yet the salvation is not going to come from the politicians. Those have proved that they don’t have the wherewithal to make a difference.
Any takers out there? We don’t have to reinvent the wheel; the blueprint is there already.
• Masipa is deputy editor and digital editor
