Nelson Mandela, white capital and the ever-present keeper of the “third-world” the IMF hatched a brilliant plot in the early nineties to rule South Africa, through what we may describe as “Reaganomics” or Africa’s first version of Thatcherism. The benefits to the ANC lackey; the shell game that is BEE and $100 million in commissions from catastrophically wasteful exercise, known as the “Arms Deal.”
The long-term plan was for the ANC to act as guarantor to white business, a handmaiden to the billionaire oligarchy and high priests of that shiny capitalist temple, the JSE. As long as the ANC could keep their side of this “Faustian bargain,” they could “Rule till Jesus Comes” thus spake Zuma. So how did the ANC, a vagabond bunch of nervous, reclusive revolutionaries, who weren’t able to liberate one square inch of South African land from its future white partners do it? The answer is embarrassingly simple, the ANC didn’t need to invent or create a revolutionary new “strategy for rule,” they only needed to “cut & paste” what Lenin and Mao had done before them:
- Choose a charismatic leader that has mass (worldwide) appeal and the backing of big business.
- Use the media to present yourselves as the only and total solution to all of South Africa’s problems
- Co-opt the trade unions and the Communists into a broad church juggernaut.
- Co-opt the religious leaders of all the faiths
- Ruthlessly eviscerate any potential opposition like the powerful UDF and use whatever other means as may be necessary against other opponents.
- Present a united front of revolutionary zeal against the counter-revolutionary forces of the old Apartheid regime members and white capital (knowing they are your future partners) in a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge fashion, by relying on the fact that people love a “good vs. evil” narrative.
- Use the words democracy, democratic, forces, Apartheid, a new dispensation, hope and uplifting superlatives at every turn.
- Hire New York-style PR and marketing firms that have a long history in spin and propaganda.
- Rely on the political ignorance, innocence and naivety of a forlorn and broken people, desperate for redemption and new beginnings.
- Turn the first democratic elections of 1994 into the biggest American style show on earth. It helps if you hand out free tee-shirts and food parcels. The tee-shirts serve to create a sense of togetherness and the food parcels for energy whilst waiting all day to cast ones vote.
- “Rinse and repeat” but remember to give all the comrades a turn at the public trough.
Put differently, the methodology of the ANC rule is to maintain Apartheid inequality, not mitigate it suits our rulers that the odd white squatter camp or two is also feeling the twin evils of extractive, heterotopian, patriarchal, white supremacist, patrimonial, feral neo-capitalism and systemic corruption and that beautifully disguises their mission.
Our Father who art now in heaven, one Rolihlahla, in his first flush, swore he would build 5-million homes for our people and create millions of jobs. The second most powerful economy in Africa with the richest bourse was only able to manage the laying of pipes for water, no water, laying of cables for the electricity, no power and building 4-million cheap bachelor hovels at a “blistering” snail pace rate of 160 000 per annum over 26-years for a people that once upon a time had the equivalent of land the size of Egypt stolen from them. Our first-world shopping malls with its specials and “marked down” goods ironically stands in stark contrast to black people’s “marked down” income streams.
It took a little known virus, Covid-19, a bungled lockdown and an incompetent smiling billionaire President to expose the systemic rot of corruption that successive ANC governments have finally perfected, to lay bare the real problems of South Africa in its cruellest, starkest hue. For if a rich and politically connected man is willing to steal food meant to keep you alive and you still vote for him, then you deserve him and the tyranny he brings!
“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”
