The passing on of the South African former President Mandela on 5 December 2013 has indeed attracted a flood of tributes from within South Africa itself and from all corners of the world, in fact the tributes and mourning are code named celebrations (which took over 10 days), celebrating his life and contributions for the betterment of human dignity. His memorial service was both a South African and high level global affair, attended by about 90 heads of state, presidents, prime ministers, business tycoons and multiple foreign dignitaries from all over the world. In attendance was a strong over 60,000 South African workforce the baseline for Mandela’s, party the ruling ANC. Mandela was commonly recognized as a hero by all including those who put him in prison and those for whom he went into prison.
One little detail did not coming out clear, and that is, why after a hoping 27 years of incarceration in prison, literally sent to rot, and annihilating vilification those who took part in his incarceration and vilification and their global supporters were equally part of this celebration. What are they celebrating? Why do they also call him a hero? What has he done for them to earn this title? At face value it will simply not make sense that these totally different and mutually exclusive interests could be celebrating the same thing in Mandela’s passing as those in whose interest he was sent to prison. Even the the so called black and white reconciliation will not adequately explain this.
This article seeks to go deeper and get answers to these critical questions, to establish who exactly is celebrating what and why, during this time of the end of Mandela’s life. What this article wants to test is the hypothesis that Mandela may have done different things to not only different interests, but contradictory and mutually exclusive interests, an act outcome of which has surprised many, aptly calling it a “miracle”. Has there really been a miracle? This is up for test.
To have a clear understanding of the above posed questions we need to understand upfront certain critical facts which determine why what happened, happened the way it did and no other way, which is, the natural law governing this process.
One such fundamental fact is that for over 200 years the world in which Mandela was born, grew and ended has been sharply polirised into two antagonistic and diametrically opposed classes-the oppressed workers and peasants (the majority in the whole world including South Africa) and the propertied class, the oppressing class (a tiny but actively powerful minority throughout the whole world, including South Africa). The only difference in the South African situation is that the oppression dynamic was given a legal colour code, (apartheid). This means that while the majority of the oppressed will appear as black, it did not mean that there were no oppressed in the white community nor that there were no oppressors in the black community. Thus a mere removal of the color code of the nature of the oppression will not necessarily take away the oppression. The oppression could go on as it is colour blind, as class difference and antagonism is by nature colour blind.
Sanguaged between the two big antagonistic classes is the so called middle class, which is always vacillating between the two main classes. This is a very well informed and therefore very vocal but a potentially reactionary block. It could support either class depending on the balance of class forces. Once again this class is color blind and in the South African situation it will easily camouflage and appear to be with the most oppressed black majority and will naturally, (because of its privileged status of being informed ) be part of the liberation leadership . Its opportunistic nature will show its ugly head in the event pressure from below drops, they will easily betray the struggle. However history has shown that the reactionary nature of this class notwithstanding, it is within the womb of this class that the best and some time genuine leadership of the oppressed majority emerges, and this happened only with one supreme condition, they must commit class suicide. Without this class suicide, they as a rule, are bound to betray the masses. As with all suicides, only a tiny few will take this route, no matter what the rest say and do.
Perhaps of critical importance is the fact that the ever continued polirisation and antagonism of the two big classes create continued pressure build up, making our world (and individual countries) look like a gigantic pressure cooker which will explode anytime without notice, unless safety pressure valves are turned on. The possible results of an explosion could be the birth of a qualitatively different society. The South African scene and the role played by Mandela has been a graphic confirmation of this fact.
By the mid 1980s, after years of class antagonism camouflaged in a fa├ºade of colour scheme, the South African class antagonism had reached an explosive point, with the working masses and poor literally revolting and getting organized into mass organizations such as COSATU, creating massive strikes and protests . The unlimited repressive state machineries were getting blunt and hopelessly useless in the face of mass protests. The intensity of the pressure created cracks on the cap holding the explosive pressure, in the form of the ruling class political leadership split between the hardliner camp led by PW Botha and the reformers led by FW De klerk . The latter camp clearly understood that something had to be done to stop the imminent explosion. In other words safety valves had to be switch on as a matter of urgency and without any hesitation. This means easing the pressure through appeasing the masses with the removal of the color code of the oppression, apartheid, and stopping there, thus blocking the possible transformation of the society which was going to be created by the explosion. By transformation we mean the birth of a qualitatively new society and that means a change of ruling classes, the oppressed taking over state power, with a long term view of creating a classless society. This is not the same thing as “majority rule,” which simply has no change in quality, but just quantity change.
The social agent who switched on this safety valve was President De klek, and he did this with utmost care as the situation remained hugely fragile throughout the period with the unprecedented massacres that took place during the period. Some even question the wisdom of De kleck to switch on the safety valve, but he had no option if the eminent qualitative transformation had to be stopped. The safety valve switching came in the release of Mandela and other political prisoners and rolling out the negotiations, again ensuring that the qualitative transformation remain outside the negotiation table (after all nowhere in history have we seen this been a table matter, its always a street matter).
After 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela got transformed into a very important trigger, which if pulled could ignite the already almost inevitable explosion and strategists of capital understood this very well. This explained why they could not even dare kill him as they did with others, though they had the means. This would have been stupidly suicidal. Those who had the potential to push for total transformation but had not yet got transformed into equivalent triggers for the explosion or were overshadowed by the still alive Mandela had to be instantly eliminated, and they were. One such case is Chris Hani. It cannot be true that he could have been assassinated by a lonely lunatic.
Here in then lies the real reasons for the seemingly common celebrations of Mandela’s passing by the two big antagonistic classes; the oppressed class celebrated Mandelas’ supreme sacrifice while the oppressing class celebrated his historic retreat that saved them from annihilation as a class.
There cannot be any doubt whatsoever that Mandela and his comrades were instrumental and demonstrated supreme personal sacrifices for the removal of that monstrosity- apartheid. Naturally the masses saw in him a complete messiah who made them have a smell and taste of freedom from racial discrimination, oppression and state sanctioned indiscriminate unbridled slaughter, where even unarmed women and children , the elderly and the sick were massacred by very exited murder squads in cold blood without any provocation . It therefore remained legitimate that they wholly and with uncontrollable tears including those of joy and disbelieve celebrated his passing at his advanced age. He naturally remained an undisputable hero for them, in life and death.
Knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously, Mandela also acted as a safety valve to ease the explosive pressures and in the process block the inevitable total transformation of the South African society into a qualitatively new society. He was so handy in this regard. He did this by retreating on what he always stood for, the basic tenets of the freedom charter- nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy and nobody in the majority rule government is allowed to stray into this area. Before he went into prison Mandela, in 1959, said, “It is true that in demanding the nationalization of banks, the gold mines and land, the charter strikes a fatal blow at the financial and gold mining monopolies and farming interests that have for centuries plundered the country and condemned its people to servitude. But such a step is imperative because the realization of the charter is impossible, unless and until these monopolies are smashed and the national wealth of the country handed over to the people”. Upon leaving prison Mandela repeated his call for nationalization. “Nationalization of mines, banks, and monopoly industry is the policy of the ANC and the change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable”.
However Mandela did not take long to retreat on this stance, under intense pressure from the global and South African propertied class and certainly some middle class opportunists. Mandela’s’ courtship and engagement with the propertied class was in the period 1991-1996, with the bridal shower carried during Mandela s’ visit to the World Economic Forum where the former chairman of Global mining giant ,De Beers Consolidated Mines , Harry Oppenheimer was the chief bride maid. One ANC leader, Ronnie Kasrils call this period, the battle for the soul of ANC, which was lost to corporate power and influence. That was the fatal turning point. I will call it our Faustian moment when we became entrapped-some today crying out that we sold our people down the river”.
As Ben Morken rightly observed the consequences of this are that” today inequality is wider than it was under apartheid”. Why then should we be astonished when these chief beneficiaries of this inequality join in the celebrations? It is this and this alone, the retreat of Mandela and its consequences that these people are celebrating and this make a lot of sense, it is something worth celebrating. During the mourning period of the passing of Mandela they were immensely excited by his legacy of ‘national reconciliation and national unity”. This was music to their ears. This is like pleading with a chicken you are about to cut its head off for a meal to cooperate and behave. As Ben pointed out,” the aim is clear, try and hold the masses back try and block their path to genuine emancipation. There is clearly nothing miraculous in the success of the strategy.
Other requisite regimes such as the historically time tested opium of the masses; (religion) had to be mobilized to ensure the masses are sufficiently hypnotized less the simmering pressure escape. This key role was well played by none other than Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. During the Memorial service while responding to the masses expression and disdain to President Zuma and ANCs’ handling of their livelihoods, the Bishop made the following absurd remarks, pretending to be echoing the sentiment of Mandela, a lifeless body still in the mortuary “It is not what Nelson Mandela would have wanted “.This is gross misrepresentation of Mandela of the masses and it is done with the full knowledge that he cannot represent himself nor get any credible representation from middle class leadership and its elk . Let us invite Mandela to respond from the mortuary to this respectable clerical ideologue. “If the ANC do to you what apartheid did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to apartheid”, Mandela addressing COSATU congress in 1994. The Bishop knows these words, but he can say what he likes because after all Mandela is dead and nobody in the leadership can credibly represent him.
If this carnage and ideological rape of Mandela’s legacy can be started during his memorial service, while his body was still awaiting burial, you can imagine what will happen with the remaining period, post his burial.
This then is the real reason for the seemingly common celebrations. Both local and foreign strategic of capital had a sigh of relieve, not only by his leaving prison alive, but by the manner in which he handled matters of the state from beginning to the end. Their tears are not at all crocodile tears. He saved their system from going into extinction. The opportunistic fast developing black middle class was also waiting with abated breath, in utter fear of the possible explosions, knowing that they will be the chief beneficiaries of the fall of the racist regime and the aborted social transformation. Not surprising that the blacks who were the chief negotiators at the negotiation table are now some of the filthy rich South Africans from nowhere, owning the very mines the Charter demanded their nationalization when the conditions of the masses are worsening day by day, what a shame.
One thing is certain, and that is the pressure build is still continuing and the inevitable explosion cannot be avoided permanently. It is not a question of whether or not there would be an explosion, but when. The unexpected and embarrassing booing of the president by the masses of the workers during the memorial service, in front of all global leaders , to their great astonishment, demonstrated that any time when a chance present itself for the these pressures to express themselves they will and the explosion itself will come without notice.
This is happening even at a global scale, including at even the least expected corners of the world. The so called Arab Spring, (which followed the Latin American revolts ) where the Arab world was involved in popular revolts by people previously considered docile, apolitical, submissive , deeply religious and class unconscious, the regional revolt triggered only by a lone boy who set himself ablaze in reaction to social rejection in Tunisia, setting off regional revolutionary blaze that saw one despot after the other toppled , including those with the best of western support, the darlings of imperialism. This says anything is possible. The strategist of capital ignores these signals at their own peril. The gigantic pressure cooker when it explodes there are never warnings nor notices and no place to hide.
SA like the rest of the world is at cross roads and there is only one way out, which is , take the enormous wealth of the country, and put it to use for public need, not for profit, to nationalize the commanding heights of the economy and put production under rational and democratic plan of production, avoid the anarchy and chaos of competition and the blind market through the socialist transformation of society. The alternative to this is simply inevitable economic stagnation, crisis, austerity, falling living standards by the people. If the ANC leaders don’t consciously take steps to do the needful, nature will inevitably do it for them and this will, very sadly, be at a premium price.
May Mandela’s’ soul rest in peace. His spirit has already got stuck irretrievably into the minds and hearts of the South African down trodden, who now know it is possible for even them to have a civilized existence and they now know that the strong are strong because they themselves are on their knees and that if they stand up , the rest will be history.
