There will always be black sellouts of Africa and the African people

When Prince Mashele opens his mouth, he puts his brains on display. He is going nuclear about policy for a better South Africa. He claims South Africa has been betrayed by the ANC black government. I confess I have admired this young man for some time, even documenting his ideas as a policy for a better Saharan Africa. I should be excused for my absolute short‑sighted view about him. Prince Mashele, trying to prove that he is better than those who sold out black South Africans since 1994, including Ramaphosa, is exposing his ambition to be the better black replacement to protect and represent white capital in South Africa.

Prince Mashele started gently by telling us how much he welcomed white civilisation that brought sanity to African “primitive” cultures, especially the English language he admires most. The other day he spoke about the poverty his family was subjected to. His mother was a domestic worker for white Afrikaner families in northern South Africa; they ate crumbs of bread and bread crusts literally from the bins where his mother picked to feed her hungry black children. His gratefulness comes from the crumbs of bread that nurtured him and his family at a tender age. These crumbs were collected by a person he loved most, his mother, lending the eating of breadcrumbs a higher meaning; they nurtured him and his siblings.

My question is: this poverty he speaks about in detail, what was that black poverty in relation to? Evidently, Africans had their own civilisation, never in competition with other forms of civilisation. There is no evidence suggesting that before colonialism there was poverty in African societies. African populations survived climate change and several other life‑threatening situations for centuries. There was everything they needed to sustain themselves without white control and dominance. What is all this halloo‑baloo about deep gratitude to imperialists for colonising Africans and “civilising” them in the process?

Today Mashele is talking about his admiration of imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, how he developed the southern African region: vertical infrastructure of roads and railways, mines and all other developments are, to him, evidence of white supremacy against “primitive” black people. He does not question black people losing their dignity, identity, land and natural resources that were taken from the owners by force, forever. Millions of Africans across the continent perished during the processes of colonisation.

Prince Mashele does not mention the destruction and havoc of colonialism in Africa. He does not ask critical questions about how many black peoples of several ethnic groups perished in wars waged against land occupation and extraction of stolen natural resources that rightfully belong to Africans. It would have been fair if he acknowledged, at least, the use of natural resources to build the infrastructures and other visible colonial artefacts he eloquently cherishes more than the black lives that were sacrificed in the name of civilisation.

Imperialist Cecil Rhodes never brought capital from Britain to build infrastructure development in the region. He traded immensely with gold and diamonds to facilitate the development that Mashele cherishes beyond the loss of dignity and identity of local African populations of southern Africa. Mashele’s anecdotes fall far short of telling us that Africans, including himself, are stupid and unintelligent, and that white culture is a requisite to civilising the black mind.

He hides eloquently behind his emphasis on a new dawn in South Africa, based on blacks and whites working together for a common purpose. Hollow. The gallery he sings praises to about white supremacy reducing Africans is white. There can never be a better sellout than black Prince Mashele. His skin complexion is deep black in the sense of the word. Could it be the inferiority complex — his sentence to black colour he sadly carries his entire life — that makes him unapologetically angry about black people? Malema and Ramaphosa are his casualties when he starts ranting.

By any standard, it is not normal for a black South African scholar who studied political science at the University of the North, at master’s degree level, to sing loud praises about hard‑core imperialists of the moulds of Jan van Riebeeck, Cecil John Rhodes, Jan Smuts and all those who brutally occupied Africa and murdered Africans — mum about black lives that perished.

Owners of white capital must be listening pleasantly and interestingly when he insults black Africans. Mashele is creating his own space to please white capital. Whereas all other black pleasers of white capital are doing the same incognito, he is open with it. He says he does not care; he will say it the way it pleases him. Mashele praises Mandela as his last choice of admirers. He is privy to how Mandela equally sold the revolution. He knows he is not the only one who is selling out Africa and Africans.

I should be excused if I say Jacinta’s Match‑on‑Match movement was bankrolled by invincible white capital in South Africa. However, Prince Mashele will never tolerate competition. He crushed Ms Jacinta Ngobese‑Zuma in style — she has since joined Africom. He must be the only one to occupy space with white capitalists. He has suddenly become a better African than other Africans of his cloth: sellers of the African people and Africa.

No African is allowed to be speaking with white globalists who have some power matrix in the broader scheme of things except the one and only Mashele. How proud he is to dine with them, show them how he can now eat with knife and fork. When an African sells out his own, he or she does so absolutely, leaving nothing to chance. For someone who grew up eating breadcrumbs from white families during the apartheid period, Prince Mashele’s life of survival is catapulted to a higher level. This survival of eating breadcrumbs is pitched higher; never the loss of meaning. It is the life he has known ever since he was born — to sup what the white man has dropped from his or her table. Further, he praises and glorifies them. There is a reason to do so: his mother was allowed to collect bread crusts to feed her family. According to him, this is the way of life — surviving at sub‑titles of life.

I am at pains with Prince Mashele’s anecdotes on social media. They stink in the nostrils of decent peoples. They do not replicate the average black South African in any way, making them somehow extraordinary. What history did Mashele learn at school, at colleges, at universities? Saying black people are apolitical is to insult the entire black population in South Africa. The black South African population is bamboozled by the people they trusted most — the ANC especially. Evidently, the black population does not trust ANC because it brought nothing to transform black lives politically, socially and economically. That aspect of Mashele’s critique is spot‑on.

It has come to my realisation now what internalising white supremacy means in the larger scheme of things. Inadvertently, I could be a casualty of this thinking also. Internalised white supremacy is so subtle, most Africans suffer from it. Bleaching of faces to be white; the wigs they wear remove everything visually African. Whiteness is superior to black skin and African hair.

Prince Mashele was employed by former President Thabo Mbeki as a speechwriter. It means he knows how politicians before Mbeki sold the revolution. The revolution was sold by the people we trusted most. Tata Mandela’s handling of negotiations had hallmarks of betrayal when he left Robben Island. He was already compromised by white capital, evidenced by the words of Ma Winnie Mandela. She never minced her words: Mandela did not betray her; rather, he betrayed the revolution of decades of fighting the apartheid regime, she said.

Millions of black people lost their lives fighting the most brutal apartheid regime. For Prince Mashele to speak openly, appraising a brutal apartheid system, is abominable. He learnt while he worked in Thabo Mbeki’s office that one could benefit abundantly if one cooperated with white capital to feed his family only, and never about the black South African aspirations of removing themselves from abject poverty and ushering in decent living conditions and a better future for coming generations.

Prince Mashele never utters a word about land reforms. He never talks about a South Africa floated on the New York Stock Exchange. He talks about building two‑roomed houses for shake‑shake dwellers to improve their lives. Is that transformation of black people’s lives to be proud of after 32 years of independence? Mashele will invite Elon Musk and all globalists to come and invest in South Africa to improve employment opportunities for black people. A mascot, a “trinket black boy”, can come up with such suggestions as solutions to South Africa’s problems, turning the nation into a microwave society.

I have a problem with this thinking as a solution to black unemployment. I will need to squint a lot to understand it. It factually means that blacks will be perpetual servants of white capital: wood and water collectors for the rich white population. It is wholly insulting to think that millions of blacks will be given two‑roomed houses to barely exist. In his wisdom or lack of it, blacks will be grateful for such development coming from white capital. Humans are tribal creatures that never think beyond their stomachs.

It will take another 120 years from now to nurture once more the causes and effects of a revolution. The love of short‑term gains of money from globalists betrays the African child perpetually. The Ramaphosas, the Masheles — sellouts cut from the same cloth. How do they vouch for white capital and hope to get black development? Inadvertently assisting the land to be colonised again. We shall not be alive to witness black South Africans leaving their homeland to settle in other parts of Africa, fleeing repression from a brutal apartheid regime. I hope one day Prince Mashele will be able to stew his juices.

I end my article sharing with you a quote from CG Jung, a Swiss philosopher. He says: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” The shadows of Prince Mashele could be mine too, in one way or another. Thinking can be very challenging in most cases; for this reason they judge him — me included.