AZAPO’S OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA

Greetings Mr President,

To act in this uncharacteristic manner is a desperate attempt to grab your highly contested and congested attention and redirect it to the voice of the voiceless.

The fact that you cut your political teeth in the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), of which I remain an activist, gives me the assurance that you should care about the plight of black people. It is not for me to remind you of your deeply religious upbringing which got you to embark on trains to preach moral regeneration to blacks.

Among many great and powerful political leaders, you consciously chose Steve Biko as your choice; and his SASO as your political organisation.  It is perhaps your political acumen and your undying love for black people that you succeeded Pandelani Nefolovhodwe as the SASO Turfloop Branch Chairperson in 1974.  You can’t forget how you were arrested for your BCM activities which included the 1974 Viva FRELIMO Rallies. 

Following the reprieve created by the 1977 Wiehahn Commission to legally recognise black trade unions, you know that your BCM activists like Phiroshaw Camay and Mahlomola Skhosana formed the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) in 1980; and that you were an obvious choice to be approached to work in its legal department.  It is your effective absorption and reflection of Black Consciousness values of being down to earth that convinced CUSA leadership that you would be instrumental in the formation of their National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).  It is that high level of trust that you were earmarked to lead such a strategic component of CUSA.

As inseparably close as you were to AZAPO founders like Ish Mkhabela, Lybon Mabasa and Griffith Zabala, all from your Chiawelo township, you know every step that were taken and the difficulties that were suffered in forming AZAPO.

Your Excellency, I had to start there just to remind you how deserving I am of your audience.  AZAPO is starving for your audience when the country is talking about a National Dialogue that the government you lead saw it necessary to convene to afford the citizens a platform to talk about the issues of national concern.  When you became this honest and called for popular intervention in the face of the failure of governing, in AZAPO we knew that your submerged Black Consciousness must have rebelled and resurfaced to repossess your soul.

This rebellion of Black Consciousness in your bosom must have been activated when you and the ANC crawled towards the forming of the so-called “Government of National Unity”, which was captured by the very recycling of white supremacist political parties like the DA and FF+ into the corridors of power.  In what way did you and the ANC think the anti-black political parties would help you deliver black people out of coloniality, landlessness, unemployment and poverty? 

Aren’t these the same reactionary forces and their extra-parliamentary organs that have been travelling to Ukraine and the US to mobilise for the destabilisation of South Africa?  They recently set you up for the most degrading humiliation in the hands the US President Trump, who is busy boiling water to throw at you and your ANC Comrades by way of sanctions.

Instead of the so-called “GNU”, you could have forged a coalition of progressive political forces under a Minimum Political Programme to aggressively liberate black people and foster their development in the meaningful facets of their lives.  Of course, your party is at odds with some black political parties.  However, those differences are a mere irritation that should never be deemed as antagonistic.

As the product of Black Consciousness, you cannot be surpassed by the racist Nationalist Party in its resolve to address the problem of the poor Afrikaner.  In less than 20 years in political power, the Nationalist Party had eliminated Afrikaner poverty and developed Afrikaans into a language of law, commerce, science, mathematics, research and development.  They repurposed the Volkskas (People’s Bank) and funded the commercial ventures and agrarian development of the Afrikaners.

The racist Nationalist Party never beat about the bush. The subjects of their apartheid development state were the Afrikaners and the white population to the exclusion or underdevelopment of black people. They were not rainbowist or non-racialist about it.  The 1929 Carnegie Commission had already been established to investigate and address the problem of poor whites. Your Excellency, in the 30 years of democracy under your ANC, what commission has been established to investigate and resolve the problem of poor black people?

You are kindly reminded that the racist Nationalist Party either inherited or established industrial and development institutions some of which they nationalised. You can talk about Iscor, Telkom, Eskom or Railways.  All those interventions were done to develop white people. On the contrary, your government is hellbent on seeking to privatise the public institutions.  And you know that black people don’t have the capital to buy those enterprises. It did not occur to your government to make a capital scheme available to help black people buy the Firestone rubber company in Gqeberha when it closed down in 2020.  And now the Goodyear rubber company in Kariega will shut down its manufacturing plant in December.  Any ideas in favour of black people, Your Excellency?

It is in this context that AZAPO urges you to reimagine and reconstitute the National Dialogue into the Black Dialogue. You will agree that the people most affected by the failure of governing are black people. It is black people who are landless in the face of the 74% white ownership of land.  While others live in towns and suburbs, black people are trapped in the townships and shacks. Ownership and redistribution of wealth are as distant as the sun to black people. Nobody complains anymore about black children studying in mud schools and under trees on empty stomachs. Black children being condemned to being street kids and smoking nyaope has become a norm.

Violence has itself become so anti-black that it targets black people and their small businesses with the imposition of the so-called “protection fee” followed by the senseless killing of those who would not comply. Criminal syndicates have now introduced another crime which is characterised by the kidnapping of individuals for the payment of a ransom.  Meanwhile, buildings are hijacked by criminals and rented out to black people who desperately need shelter.  How long must black people live like chickens, defenselessly expecting to be snatched by hawks any moment?  We ask this question because your government inexplicably dissolved the crime-busting Scorpions in 2008.

You should agree that it is the Black Dialogue that makes sense under these circumstances. There have been countless Commissions of Inquiry since 1994: the TRC on victims of apartheid killings; Marikana Commission on the massacre of workers; Seriti Commission on the arms deal; Zondo Commission on corruption by politicians. All of them amounted to the wasting of the taxpayers’ money.

The R500 million earmarked to be spent on the National Dialogue must fund the Black Dialogue where black people will be able to close ranks and talk about the issues that affect the black community.  We don’t need “eminent persons” to drive the Black Dialogue because there is no black person who enjoys eminence under landlessness, poverty and coloniality. With respect, the people don’t need your government to determine content and outcomes of the Black Dialogue process. 

You have to admit that your government is part of the problem as things stand. And your ANC-led administrations have plunged the country in this mess over the past 30 years. It is about time that you allowed black people to talk about what matters to them as the people who bled and died in the liberation struggle. They know what it was they fought and died for.

The Black Dialogue must be truly set up and driven by the citizens.  For it not to be elitist, the Black Dialogue cannot be restricted to the universities and the cities.  It must take place in the townships and villages, and in the indigenous languages of the people. 

Please Your Excellency, give the people the guarantee that the product of their public discourse will not be subject to a Parliamentary veto. This can’t be difficult for you to appreciate because your Freedom Charter promises that “the people shall govern”.  The Black Dialogue demands less than that – the freedom to talk.

My Best Regards,

Nelvis Qekema

President of AZAPO