Opinion / Columnist
The MK Party and the contestation of history
11 Sep 2024 at 20:11hrs | Views
An angel of history is haunting the ANC - the spectre of the historical uMkhonto Wesizwe. The announcement of the MKP on December 16, 2023 by President Jacob Zuma conjured certain spirits or the ghosts of the fallen uMkhonto Wesizwe whose death was almost rendered in vain by the rise of markets in the discursive detour and possible policy trajectory in the ANC.
The establishment of the uMkhonto Wesizwe Party invokes the militant and radical tradition in the history of the liberation struggle thereby inaugurating a contestation of history. It also revealed who owns the history of the liberation struggle. It questions the ownership of the history as such. Akin to Walter Benjamin's assertion that the victors write history. The 30 years of apartheid-free South Africa have been marked by the ANC-ification of the history of the liberation struggle that desired to erase other anti-apartheid forces.
It's a fact taken for granted that there's another breakaway of the ANC, and the ANC would fight to tighten its grip on history while rewriting its history. There have been five breakaways since the establishment of the ANC. Does that mean that the history of the ANC is fragmented into five versions?
The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania took away from the ANC's history the radical Afrikanist dimension that was going to suffer with the adoption of the Freedom Charter because the Kliptown Congress was to open the ANC to the Communist Party of South Africa, the Indian Congress, and the Coloured Congress thereby enacting a nonracial ANC.
Outside the ethnic nationalism, it is difficult to locate the Inkatha Freedom Party in the ideological trajectories of the ANC. However, the late Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi claimed the name of the president of the ANC, Chief Albert Luthuli, as his mentor.
In the aftermath of the 2007 Elective Conference in Polokwane and the subsequent recall of President Thabo Mbeki, COPE has extracted the Kliptown Congress of the People as their own identity with its nonracial ethic. In the wake of the Marikana Massacre, the Economic Freedom Fighters arose. The EFF contested the radical history of the ANC with uMkhonto Wesizwe's militant lexicon. Finally, the inception of the uMkhonto Wesizwe Party exposed the neocolonial and neoliberal agenda of the broad-church ANC that reduced itself to the watchdogs of the "markets".
The emergence of the MK Party in the political landscape of South Africa has revealed the hunger of the ANC to monopolize the history of the liberation struggle. They still contest the history of uMkhonto Wesizwe in the courtrooms and claim trademarks, overlooking the idea behind the People's Army and the struggle itself. This shows the liberalism of the ANC for thinking that the struggle of the people is a privately owned property.
This is also the attitude of the ANC these days with its surrogate arrogance, a white arrogance that they are hot-spotted by the white capital with its anti-black media. This forms part of the long history of colonial racism that criminalizes black bodies without court trials, the same media that insults and humiliates President Zuma for being "uneducated", according to colonial standards of what it means to be educated. But it ironically affirms John Steenhuisen who equally doesn't have a university education. The MK Party is subjected to scrutiny with the fallacious claims that it doesn't have policy documents and the constitution.
These things happen because the media's fight against the MK Party is a way of protecting the now-liberal ANC. When the ANC abandoned its liberator character as the people's vehicle for shelter and food, it lost the support of the people. The 2024 general elections were the wake-up call but like many former liberation movements, the ANC made desperate moves to hold onto state power. The act of entering a coalition with the DA suggests that the ANC is no longer the vehicle for a better life for all.
What does it mean then for the ANC to marry the anti-black Democratic Alliance that strives to humiliate black professionals like Dr John Hlophe and others? Does it mean the ANC has given up the burden of being a liberation movement by taking on a different political identity, one that is agreeable to the DA and the white capital? It seems the ANC is exhausted by the burden of history; hence it is reluctantly handing over the baton of history to the MK Party.
I imagine Benjamin's angel of history, this elusive figure, who looks at history spellbound and agape. I see Jacob Zuma on that fateful December 16 as the angel of history standing in awe before the dung heap of history of all that has gone wrong in the ANC while it blows him to the future of South Africa way beyond him.
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Sankara Bizela, MK Party Cape Metro Spokesperson.
The establishment of the uMkhonto Wesizwe Party invokes the militant and radical tradition in the history of the liberation struggle thereby inaugurating a contestation of history. It also revealed who owns the history of the liberation struggle. It questions the ownership of the history as such. Akin to Walter Benjamin's assertion that the victors write history. The 30 years of apartheid-free South Africa have been marked by the ANC-ification of the history of the liberation struggle that desired to erase other anti-apartheid forces.
It's a fact taken for granted that there's another breakaway of the ANC, and the ANC would fight to tighten its grip on history while rewriting its history. There have been five breakaways since the establishment of the ANC. Does that mean that the history of the ANC is fragmented into five versions?
The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania took away from the ANC's history the radical Afrikanist dimension that was going to suffer with the adoption of the Freedom Charter because the Kliptown Congress was to open the ANC to the Communist Party of South Africa, the Indian Congress, and the Coloured Congress thereby enacting a nonracial ANC.
Outside the ethnic nationalism, it is difficult to locate the Inkatha Freedom Party in the ideological trajectories of the ANC. However, the late Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi claimed the name of the president of the ANC, Chief Albert Luthuli, as his mentor.
In the aftermath of the 2007 Elective Conference in Polokwane and the subsequent recall of President Thabo Mbeki, COPE has extracted the Kliptown Congress of the People as their own identity with its nonracial ethic. In the wake of the Marikana Massacre, the Economic Freedom Fighters arose. The EFF contested the radical history of the ANC with uMkhonto Wesizwe's militant lexicon. Finally, the inception of the uMkhonto Wesizwe Party exposed the neocolonial and neoliberal agenda of the broad-church ANC that reduced itself to the watchdogs of the "markets".
This is also the attitude of the ANC these days with its surrogate arrogance, a white arrogance that they are hot-spotted by the white capital with its anti-black media. This forms part of the long history of colonial racism that criminalizes black bodies without court trials, the same media that insults and humiliates President Zuma for being "uneducated", according to colonial standards of what it means to be educated. But it ironically affirms John Steenhuisen who equally doesn't have a university education. The MK Party is subjected to scrutiny with the fallacious claims that it doesn't have policy documents and the constitution.
These things happen because the media's fight against the MK Party is a way of protecting the now-liberal ANC. When the ANC abandoned its liberator character as the people's vehicle for shelter and food, it lost the support of the people. The 2024 general elections were the wake-up call but like many former liberation movements, the ANC made desperate moves to hold onto state power. The act of entering a coalition with the DA suggests that the ANC is no longer the vehicle for a better life for all.
What does it mean then for the ANC to marry the anti-black Democratic Alliance that strives to humiliate black professionals like Dr John Hlophe and others? Does it mean the ANC has given up the burden of being a liberation movement by taking on a different political identity, one that is agreeable to the DA and the white capital? It seems the ANC is exhausted by the burden of history; hence it is reluctantly handing over the baton of history to the MK Party.
I imagine Benjamin's angel of history, this elusive figure, who looks at history spellbound and agape. I see Jacob Zuma on that fateful December 16 as the angel of history standing in awe before the dung heap of history of all that has gone wrong in the ANC while it blows him to the future of South Africa way beyond him.
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Sankara Bizela, MK Party Cape Metro Spokesperson.
Source - iol
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