With the advent of the proclamations of “freedoms” in the 1960s and 1990s, history bears witness, the ‘freedomania’ evoked in our people by politicians, could not be measured up to by the subsequent harsh and disgruntling realities that followed.
“What started out as revolution against oppression of Black people…ended up being a revolution against Black people”
-Ben Ammi, God the Black Man and Truth.
“BLACK BETRAYAL”
Black Betrayal is when a black fat cat tries to intellectualize our suffering;
And reason away our liberty
It is a vulgarization of our struggle to
Multiracialization of public toilet;
It is a mixation of faeces
Black Betrayal is to say we must not criticize;
A government of Black people by Black people for white people
Our struggle is spoiled by people coming from chicken licken family background”
-Mbongeni Khumalo, The Apocrypha
In 1994 it was proclaimed in South Africa that Black people were free. Hype was created that kindled the ‘freedomania’ in our people. When their supposed government could not measure up to the hype, a famous retort and a cliché “Our democracy is still young”, was conceived. There was a meticulous interchangeable usage of the terms ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Notably, the post -1994 era could not be called the freedom dispensation. Instead, “Democratic dispensation” or “Constitutional dispensation” was the terminology. Could this have been an innocent words variation or a crafty language invented within political and legal fraternities to simply bury the pain of our people under jargon? Although South Africa annually celebrates Freedom Day on April 27, freedom dispensation has not yet been ushered into.
Surely, ‘Freedom Day’ did not mark the beginning of the freedom dispensation. If democracy does not spell freedom, and an impression has been created that it does, one actually lives in a hypocritical dispensation. The famous retort from the ‘powers that be’ that says “Our democracy is still young”, leaves much to be desired as one wonders how the so-called young democracy which does not suffice to redeem a wretched Black soul has been paying so much great dividends to politicians. How do they get fat paychecks out of it? Isn’t this a rather strange or abusive way of nursing, nurturing and bring up the ‘baby democracy’?
Why does this democracy seem to be flourishing and thriving in a climate where poverty is necessary for the gluttons to recline on the table? You only free to step on everybody in order to get what you want- greed and evil ambition are organizing forces. A social system that has been engineered is the one feeding on degeneracy- destruction of people’s moral fiber and distortion of their spiritual make up. As a result, you have a society that is apathetic to its problems. There is not a communal sense of collective responsibility, so, a concerted effort is not made to try and address these problems.
With higher rates of illicit drug use, alcoholic consumption, criminal convictions, domestic violence, and so forth, our society has shown itself to be the most vulnerable. Maybe we need to check the parameters of our security. What forms that? It is the leadership, as stated above. The black society remains vulnerable and completely permeable such that all forms of negative and destructive energies, be they emotional, be they psychological, be they political, be they cultural, be they mental, for the simple reason that the security has been breached. We have been watching helplessly the disintegration of our society and have never had a fleeting thought as to who allows all these vices that destroy the moral fiber and the spiritual composition of our people.
It has only become so hypocritical, if not naïve and myopic, of this society to gauge its success in terms of political representation, massive buildings, cars, more houses and easy access to technology but very poor at heart. The Black society has become so individualistic, individuals are lovers of money and of themselves and they have learnt not to feel and relate to a fellow man.
Whatever means, as a people we may think we have to bring about meaningful changes to our lives in order to create a new social order; we must remember and keep it foremost in our minds that every substance is material advent of a pre-conceived thought. The transformation must begin with the mind.
Transformation is a trite and mostly deliberated upon concept in institutions of ‘higher’ education within the domain of what is called student politics. To these naïve Black student activists, transformation is dissected within the context of access to and exit from these institutions. The transformation agenda entails fighting against academic and financial exclusions, fee increment etc. They have gullibly taken education given to them as innocent. The content of the curriculum is never questioned. The level of critique, if any, does not penetrate the higher regions of the definer’s intellectual sphere.
The genius that has engineered all sciences constituting the University faculties is never deciphered. No wonder the type of education our youth receives makes them so aloof of their immediate surroundings, their own realities, own people and own selves. They are Africans studying in institutions that do not, through curricula and syllabi, encapsulate the African essence in respective areas of academic persuasions. With the Eurocentric curriculum, what is taught radiates and responds to the promptings and yearnings of Europe and turns a naïve and unsuspecting Black child into an agent of that response.
Clearly, norms, ideas, values, principles and beliefs are the basis of every school of thought, be it political, be it moral, be it economic, be it social, be it cultural. All these different intellectual spheres are a frame of reference in the conceptualization, formulation, establishment and implementation of sciences. Educational institutions form a bridge between conceptualization and implementation processes. It becomes vivid that a true transformation can only be brought about with the eradication of an old mind whence from new definitions and depictions will provide a new intellectual framework based on new ideas and principles for the new social order and arrangement. However, this is not an easy task, the major ingredient one needs posses in carrying out this profuse mission Ben calls the power to define. :
How could we have gotten along with an anomaly of playing a game against an opponent who is also a referee in that very match? Europeans seized the power to define and provided us with “solutions” that have placed us in perpetual pupilage under them. They defined God, salvation, angels, heaven, hell and satan. God was defined as European, angels as being winged white women wearing nightgowns, heaven and earth as being mythical and satan a body-less spirit. The great effect this ruse had on Africans was programming them to readily and credulously sanction everything European as being sacrosanct. In all our efforts, to try and make common causes with the white establishments we have done nothing but invited more contempt and alienation. We have set ourselves up in motion to being infused with ideas of white superiority.
In every revolution, the primary target of the enemies of the revolution is the leader of the revolution. His life is danger for as long as the objectives of the revolution are not yet realized. When we see his life starting to change for ease and comfort, we have to conclude that the revolution has either been successful or betrayed and abandoned.
Considering the enormity by which a ruse called religion was propagated and perpetuated with the turning upside-down of African values, one is forced to conclude that there has been a serious breach of security because it is the African mind that has been broken into. The gravity of this onslaught lies in the fact that it is the mind that carries the control instruments over all substance. The revolution was miscarried for our susceptibility to the influence and control of Europeans. Africans were tenaciously coaxed in the illusory color-blind world of integration depicted by white liberals and black apologists as ideal for them. On the contrary, a world in which right is actually wrong and heaven actually hell was created.
Left with no value system of their own, Black people sought to make common causes with the white establishment. This is where they ironically started to invite for themselves more contempt. They presented themselves to their enemy on a silver platter. Africans were psychologically prepared for the inculcation, by Europeans, of a new thought, new world view, and new image that would turn an African into his own worst enemy and enemy of creation and everything that is good. Our adversary had simply taken on a new form. He had deceptively transfigured himself to an idea, thought, concept, style and belief. Chains of oppression and slavery which he had removed from our feet, he has now put in our minds.
The new form our adversary took made the liberation task more difficult for it was the one unidentifiable and unopposable. The very enemy we were up and fighting against has vanished and the African mind is his ultimate hiding place. Your enemy is now the very foreign mind you posses, the new idea you implement of which the culmination has always been us finding ourselves walking towards a direction that is relative to his dictates and objectives.
Our world view was narrowed. We were given a world view through which we could see the world only in terms of what it observable and not what it stands on, the foundation. Our value ascriptions to objects we see is informed by how those objects are imaged in the culture that a particular value system carries. Culture is not just traditions; it is taught, studied, believed and then practiced. It is clearly rooted in a belief. You affect a person’s world view if you influence their beliefs about they see, feel, smell, hear and touch everyday, most significantly what they see in themselves. Our enemies defined for us the problem and the solution. They became both referees and players in the same game we were up and playing against them.
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