Some time in the late 1970s, president Thabo Mbeki was either in Tanzania or Lusaka. He received a visit from one of the leaders of uMkhonto weSizwe, whose name now eludes me. This man was complaining to TM, saying that theres a mass of young people back home in South Afrika calling themselves the Black Consciousness Movement. This group of young people, he argued, was ungovernable. It refused to join the ANC underground operations, it refused to subscribe to the Freedom Charter, it was just a bunch of anarchic youths driven by passionate hatred of White people. This leader was frustrated and asked TM what must be done with such anarchists. TM responded: Bring them into the ANC. TM posited that the ANC is not an organisation that throws its hands in the air and gives up on young people; it is an organisation that engages them and attempts to convince them. It takes them with their ideological flaws, their lack of strategies and tactics, their youthful arrogance, their misguided militancy and all their erroneous zones, and it polishes them up properly. If you study it closely, most of those young people who were in the struggle in the 70s and 80s, in spite of their BC orientation, went on to join the ANC and help grow it. Im thinking about this in light of how ANC comrades treat us today. Im thinking how today, ANC members are very quick to dismiss, label and insult young people who differ with the ANC or who dont find a home in the organisation. They call them all kinds of names. When we seek alternatives and join EFF, they say were frustrated fools. When we join the DA they say were sellouts. But at no point do these members take us by the hand, sit us down, listen to us and then engage us with the attempt of convincing us and winning us. Instead, with all the potential we have, they discard us, throw us to the wolves, and then claim were enemies of the revolution. So Im thinking that maybe thats precisely what the problem is: the ANC is full of members, not cadres. Members dont want the movement to be a home for young people, they want to close ranks and isolate them. They are antagonistic to anyone they perceive as posing a threat to their comfortable philistinism. They dont want to be challenged, they dont want anyone who forces them to back up arguments. They want sloganists and chantists, people who just say Amandla! ANC lives, ANC lead! They dont want anyone who says: But wait, this position is a detour from what the ANCs historic orientation is in pursuit of. ANC cadres would never call us frustrated fools. Never. Theyd never call Lindiwe Mazibuko a lost soul. ANC cadres are not labelists. Theyre not angryists. And they are certainly not emptyists. They are leaders, and it is the nature of a leader to recognise potential leadership and nurture it. Cadres take anarchists and makes them diplomats. Cadres, like TM, dont say: They dont believe in the Freedom Charter? Isolate them!, they say: They dont believe in the Freedom Charter? Bring them to the ANC. Good night members of the ANC, members of members, handlers of members and stooges of handlers!
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 21:31:45 +0000
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