The symbiotic relationship between the colonisers and the ANC since its inception

By: Mzwanele Manyi

The deliberations at the recent National Conference on the Constitution 22 -24 March 2023 at the Gallagher Convention Centre pushed me over the cliff to eventually write this piece, in my personal capacity.

During this conference, I was provoked by the impassioned and what seemed to be an authoritative submission by an ANC scholar, who I hold in high regard, Professor Eddy Maloka who posited a view that 1994 ushered in an era of decoloniality, a break from the past colonialism and apartheid and entrenched the sovereignty of South Africa so to speak. Am diametrically opposed to this view and in fact I think the Constitution of South Africa with the help of the ANC, cemented colonialism and apartheid, albeit in sophisticated forms.

Over time, I have been reading the writings of eminent scholars like Siyabonga Hadebe who unpacked the role played by what was then referred to as Amazemtiti who were basically the grouping of the class of Africans regarded by the colonisers as people who understood civilisation and the ways of the west. Amazemtiti were the group of Africans who were exempted from some of the oppressive laws that were meted on the masses.

I also read the book by Moeletsi Mbeki, Architects of Poverty which went deeper in showing how Amazemtiti collaborated with the Colonisers including how they were rewarded. Furthermore, I also read a book by Roger Southall, Liberation Movements in Power, where he argues that various liberation movements moved into government embodying the hopes of the people at large yet their performance has been deeply disappointing. Southall even contended that their essence as progressive forces is dying and that hopes of a genuine liberation will require political realignments alongside moral and intellectual generation. Although I don’t quote extensively from these authors, but I must credit them for shaping my thinking.

In this submission I will be using the terms, Blacks and Whites grudgingly largely because my references use such terms, but I object to such terminology because I think that categorisation is in itself another assault in particular to the Africans if one had to dig into the etymology of how these categorisations came about. Am almost sure that my ancestors didn’t refer to themselves as Blacks. But I will avoid that distraction in this submission as long as we understand that I, Mzwanele Manyi consider myself an African, not a Black and I see the so-called Whites as citizens of South Africa who are European descendants and I must add that I hold no grudges against them.

Here is my take.

On 31 May 1902, the representatives of the Boer Republics and British government signed the Peace of Vereeniging. The condition of this Peace Treaty was that British culture and loyalty to the Crown would be the foundation of this peace. In order to make this peace acceptable to the Boer Republics, it was decided that Blacks would be excluded and not have the equality franchise with their white counterparts. During this process, Britain continued the subjugation of traditional African structures of governance through its policies of indirect government.

31 May 1910 the Treaty of Vereeniging morphed and South Africa became a Union where black people didn’t have a right to vote. This union was preceded by various unsuccessful deputations to England to seek the intervention of the British Government/Crown in the aftermath of the Peace Treaty. I hold a view that if Amazemtiti were included in the Union, they would be the only Africans in the Union and the masses would have had to see to finish. So, the ANC must thank the 1910 Union for its existence.

This view is backed by examining the class composition of those who constituted the South African Native National Congress (SANNC)/African National Congress (ANC), an elitist group until much later (more than 3 decades) when their exclusive character was not achieving their objectives. The current selfish behaviour of the ANC Leadership is a reflection of its innate character.

ANC bosses see nothing wrong in driving through informal settlements and squatter camps in their top of the range German cars and SUV’s. In fact, they expect the masses to ululate, applaud and heroeship them as “Leadership” as they drive past and leaving them with dust. They have absolutely no shame in flaunting their new found luxuries which they have institutionalised in their Ministerial Handbook. The Zemtiti DNA runs too deep.

According to South African History Online (SAHO) the following events unfolded.

8 January 1912, at Mapikela House in Mangaung Township, Bloemfontein, the Conference to form the SANNC took place, this is where Rev. Dube was elected the SANNC’s 1^st President at the conference in absentia. Plaatje was elected Secretary General and Seme was elected Treasurer General.

A committee was formed to draft a SANNC constitution so that an umbrella federation of all African organisations could be formed. The constitution outlined five basic aims

1. To promote unity and mutual co-operation between the government and the South African
2. To maintain a channel between the government and the black people.
3. To promote the social, educational and political upliftment of the Black people.
4. To promote understanding between chiefs, and loyalty to the British crown and all lawful authorities and to promote understanding between white and black South Africans.
5. To address the grievance of the black people

There is consensus among all the authors cited in this piece that the SANNC was an elitist organisation rather than a mass movement and consisted of educated members and those from chieftaincy or have a position in the community. Interestingly, women were not initially permitted to be members. It should therefore not come as a surprise that more than a century later, the ANC has never been led by a woman president and there are no such prospects even as we speak. So even the patriarchy in the ANC is strongly rooted in its DNA. The saddest part is that even the women in the ANC continue to vote for men.

The above preceding paragraphs, in my view expose the fundamental flaw in the DNA of the ANC. Here you have patriarchal African leaders who spent the whole year on a sea voyage to England to bow to the Crown to plead for acceptance into the Union for their class. When they get rejected, they come back and sheepishly form SANNC to amongst others seek to be the channel between the racist government and the black people, and to pledge loyalty to the British Crown. So, what exactly is revolutionary or even liberational about this approach?

It is therefore not surprising that in the latter years the ANC characterised and glamourised the conquer by the settlers with a defeatist characterisation,” Colonisation of a Special type”, meaning the coloniser and the colonised share a common habitat. This is a characterisation of defeat.

As confirmation that indeed there was no war between the ANC and the colonisers, some of the ANC leaders lived in London, got their education and that of their children in London whilst back home they were extoled as heroes in exile that were fighting for our liberation. Think about it, how can it be that anyone can fight colonialism whilst based in its Head Quarters in London?

In 1955, the Congress of the People in Kliptown launched what they called, The Freedom Charter which till today many still see it as revolutionary document that contained the aspirations of the People of South Africa. In hindsight there are many questions that arise around the Freedom Charter.

• How did the Freedom Charter escape the notorious banning as a literature that was subversive?
• How come a search on the authors, with the exception of Z.K Matthews, seem to bring up mainly the Jewish authors? Where were the African scholars?
• What informed the formulation that says South Africa belongs to ALL who live in it? Basically, the Freedom Charter endorsed and legitimised colonial settlers and land dispossession. The unscrupulous gains of colonial conquest were sanitised and colonialists were naturalised and given the status as indigenous people of South Africa. This explains the current difficulty that the ANC has in reclaiming the land and their lack of appetite to amend the Constitution accordingly.
• Why is it that the Freedom Charter said the land shall be shared amongst those who work it, when by that time the 1913 land Act had cramped the Black people into 7% of the land which was largely not arable?
• How did the Freedom Charter fathom that you could work the land you didn’t even have?

May 1961 Verwoerd for his own nefarious reasons managed to withdraw from the Monarchy system of the Commonwealth and established a sovereign Republic of South Africa.

December 1961, the ANC launches its military wing uMkhonto We Sizwe. Yes, let’s agree that the banning of the ANC in 1960 was a chief contributing factor.  It’s however an interesting sequence of events that the patience of the ANC ran out just after the withdrawal from the Commonwealth. Who exactly was behind the formation of MK to fight the Boers? It’s also interesting that some in the high commanding structures of MK were based in London.

1976 June students protested against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. Many young people died and others went missing to this day…. all for English? I hold an unpopular view that the 1976 riots could very well have been another proxy war of sorts between the Afrikaner and the English and that the Soweto youth was just used. Am struggling to understand why so many young African students died for English, why not for any of our African languages, particularly because the leadership in that space was largely Black Consciousness Movement. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

During this difficult period of atrocity, also because at 12 years old I was young, I may have missed a message of sympathy or support either from Lusaka or London where the ANC leadership was exiled.

1976 is a story for another day.

Let’s fast forward to 1994.

1994 represents democratisation not liberation. It is neither victory nor liberation if the former coloniser gave back nothing; didn’t do anything in the form of reparations or atone for anything. Instead, they got more entrenched through a Constitution which had as its pillar the protection of the so-called property rights which in fact is a euphemism for the minority rights which both Britain and the USA set as a condition for the ANC since the 1970’s for them to even contemplate the ending of Apartheid. So, the ANC despite its revolutionary platitudes as a liberation movement in the final analysis it has been nothing but a colonial surrogate even to this day.

With Mr Ramaphosa at the helm, the surrogate is both malleable and obedient. The 2/3 majority that the ANC got in 2004 where the Constitution could have been amended was another wasted opportunity for the ANC to do the right thing. The ANC has never had decolonisation as a program since its inception.

In 1994, the very 1^st thing that the ANC comrades did was to take the country back to the clutches of the British Crown through signing up South Africa as a member state in the Commonwealth, probably driven by the support the ANC received from the Crown to pacify the Boers and their Apartheid. Elsewhere Moeletsi Mbeki argues that the reign of the Apartheid regime was allowed by the British in the first instance for the Afrikaners to look after their mineral interests and that later the British thought this “colony” perhaps must be managed by the ANC.

The most concerning thing for any member state that purports to be sovereign is that the deal breaker in being a member of the Commonwealth is that member States MUST accept that the Crown will always be the head of Commonwealth. From where I sit, being in the Commonwealth means being a subject of the Crown. The fact that all Presidents of South Africa without exception have to pay a “ceremonial” visit to the crown shortly after their inauguration and wear that maroon diagonal band across their chests must mean something. The fact that English is basically the 1^st language in our Courts and the fact that our legislatures are modelled on the Westminster system are the clearest examples that South Africa’s sovereignty is FAKE. Loyalty to the Crown is a golden thread in everything that the ANC led South Africa does.

Even the fundamentals of the Constitution of South Africa are premised on a British document called Magna Carta. It must be a concern that not even one African State was consulted during the drafting of our Constitution. Surely, we could have learned a thing or two from Ghana. Our Constitution is said to be the best in the world, yet no-one is following it. Our Constitution even allows a foreigner turned citizen to stand for a public representative position, which could lead to that person being the President of South Africa. This is absurd. In America, their President must be born in America. This is a serious security issue.

Furthermore, the Constitution of South Africa in section 25(7) has a cut-off date of 19 June 1913 beyond which a person or community dispossessed of property as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices including the vicious colonialism are prohibited by law to get redress. In other words, the Constitution of South Africa says land robbery and theft between 1652 and 1913 is not up for discussion, and the ANC agreed to that in the CODESA talks and in the adoption of the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Republic.

The ANC is basically the proverbial wooden handle of the axe that mowed down the forest whilst the trees were voting for it thinking the wooden handle is one of their own.

I therefore conclude that 1994 ushered in sophisticated colonisation with the express permission and collaboration of the ANC. The ANC is the centre of frustrating the liberation of South Africa.

The Zemtiti DNA of the ANC and their founding objectives as an organisation as outlined in their SANNC founding documents clearly demonstrate a desperate need for assimilation instead of decolonisation. Referring to the ANC as a liberation movement is actually a misnomer.

Truth be told, programmes like Employment Equity and Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment are actually tools of assimilation which I naively participated in thinking they were tools of transformation.

I can’t think of any Black executive right now on any board in the corporate sector and even some in the state-owned companies that can escape being labelled an assimilated executive who get handsomely rewarded to drive the narrative of the establishment. I call on all the beneficiaries of these programmes, me included, to do their part in transforming the society for the greater good than selfinterest.

In Conclusion

South Africa needs a new beginning. The Constitution must be reviewed and made to be Afrocentric instead of its current Eurocentric posture. The African value, UBUNTU must take the centre stage so that even the basic respect for the elderly can return.

Our Indigenous knowledge systems must come to the fore and give us an edge in the global village. South Africa must resign from the Commonwealth and assert its sovereignty, just like the Indonesians did. The country must follow the American model and industrialise at a grand scale so that we can have our own internal capacity to manufacture instead of being an assembly warehouse of the world. The education system must be changed to prioritise technical skills, not philosophy. We need more factories, not more promises. Our people don’t want hope, they want jobs to feed and take care of their families. They want their dignity back. There’s no dignity in being fed by the state when you are physically fit to work.

The ANC is too compromised because of its endemic corruption and its symbiotic relationship with the Crown. It cannot be trusted to lead the reset process; its DNA has a factory fault. The most revolutionary thing that the ANC can do right now is to ask for forgiveness for misleading the nation for all these years and disband. Real heroes like Chris Hani were probably killed because they were true liberators. People like H.E President Zuma are ostracised because he and Chris Hani drank from the same well.

The recent letter dated 29 March by H.E President Mbeki addressed to the ANC Deputy President, comrade Paul Mashatile on the subject line National Assembly Votes et.al constitutes compelling evidence that the renewal project of the ANC has been dismal failure and that the ANC has within itself normalised corruption and keeps failing to learn from its past mistakes. If the ANC has failed so badly to renew itself it would be irresponsible to entrust it with a major responsibility of taking South Africa to the promised land. I actually feel vindicated for reading Mathew 5: 13 to the ANC when I resigned in Jan 2019. Indeed, the ANC is like salt that has lost its flavour. It cannot be revived; it must be discarded.

Opposition parties must rise to the occasion and work together to fashion the South Africa that we all yearn for. If South Africa is to rise to the occasion the ideological demagoguery from all the parties must not be imposed on the cooperation agreements.

Business, Trade Unions and Civil Society must be engaged by the collective of the Opposition Parties as a matter of urgency so that the solution must reflect the will of the people of South Africa for our country to be truly sovereign and globally competitive.

Psst! In 1987, long before the ANC was unbanned, I got my NQF Level 7 qualification in Economic Geology and I was employed throughout my professional life. In 2009 when I joined Government as DG, I took a 40% salary cut excluding bonuses because my attitude was that it’s my turn to do National Service. For the record, I was never a beneficiary of patronage and I have never applied for any Government tender.

*Mzwanele Manyi is former President of Black Management Forum (BMF)