Slogans have the capacity to make or break countries, institutions, and communities. Thoughtless and dangerous catchphrases should be replaced with positive messages of care and much consideration if this nation is to live up to a promise of a better life.
Nation building is undermined when leaders utter reckless words and slogans. I sometimes think of them as “slogan pandemic”. Like flu, the pandemic is unleashed closer or during the electioneering season. We can only hope that as we draw closer to next year’s national general elections, leaders will display sound judgment while campaigning – and pay special attention to their public utterances or expressions.
Words have consequence, and therefore, context, motive, occasion matter.
I have been thinking of these issues since the outpouring of public outrage that followed the “Kill the Boer” chants of Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema and his supporters at the party’s 10th anniversary bash at the FNB Stadium last month. The chant is the bastardisation of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania’s “one settler, one bullet” rallying cry, which was incorrectly deemed to have advocated for the killing and driving the colonialists into the sea.
But slogans help to communicate falsehood or truth, serving to express joy or despair. They also might inspire hope, fear, or rage. Victims of class, cultural and race oppression – and exploitation – have used and are likely to continue to use slogans – to express their unhappiness.
The 1789 French revolution slogan, “Freedom, liberty and equality”, remains valuable to conscientious people.
The industrial workers of the world popularised the motto – an injury to one is an injury to all. The motto has inspired our own trade union movement in their fight against low wages and racism and oppression. The slogan “Workers of The World Unite” has played a vital role to promoting international workers’ solidarity and rally the working class against exploitative global conglomerates.
The Knights of Labour, an American labour federation active in the late 19th century, used the slogan “an injury to one is the concern of all”.
A variant usage of the same slogan includes, “a victory for one is a victory of all” and“one for all, all for one”.
These slogans or mottos inspired cooperation and mutual aid within the cooperative movement of the world over.
Can the slogan “Don’t forgive or forget” contribute to the building of good relationships? Could it build communities of care, mutual recognition, love, and common purpose? Friends, families or, for that matter, communities of nations do not need such type of talk.
Several slogans, songs and chants have helped to rally and restore black pride as well as other racial and ethnic groups that have over centuries continued to experience discrimination, humiliation, exploitation, oppression, lynching and enslavement by others.
My favourite slogan “Black is beautiful!” comes to mind. A fresh one, “Black lives matter” is exceedingly positive.
We need not ignore the value of words such as “ubuntu”, “dumela” or “sawubona”, among others, in our country.
One hopes political leaders will think and reflect on how we could translate positive messages and slogans into healthy points of discussions. Our nation bears deep scars and festering wounds inflicted on us by the apartheid system, a system that condemned many South Africans into poverty, stripped of hope and purpose.
Community and national issues confronting this country require positive and constructive slogans. Violence and crime against children, the aged, women, the vulnerable and marginalised, deserve appropriate sayings and slogans to rally one another.
“It takes a village to raise a child;”; “Don’t mourn, organise”; “A fair wages for a fair day’s work;” “Your offspring is your immortality”; “We need a system outside the system”; “Keep the pressure on”V and“ 2024 is our 1994” should enthuse and cheer South Africans as continue to chant “Forward ever, backward never”.
As we conclude our conversation, we must take note of the historic ironic slogans. Apartheid architects adopted “Unity is strength” while carving our country along racial and tribal divisions . Irony of ironies.
The United Democratic Front proclaimed that “UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides”, while in fact showed no tolerance and mutual recognition of other dissenting national groups and legitimate parts of the country’s fragmented liberation movement. We forget lessons of our past at our own peril.
- Mkhabela is a professional community organiser, chairperson of the Steve Biko Foundation and member of the National Leadership Collective of Rise Mzansi
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