The stark reality is that if you don’t have land, you don’t have a country. That is why an overwhelming majority of wars in history have been fought over land and territory. In South Africa 8% of the population control 80% of the land and its resources. So, who are the real owners of the country? Meanwhile 80% of the majority in the country control less than 10% of the market capitalisation at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Who is fooling who?
Meanwhile our black politicians have become black assets for colonised capital. And that capital keeps knocking at their doors for them to facilitate economic returns to multiply their investments.
The most dangerous African today is the mentally colonised African. When you put them in leadership positions or as interpreters of the law, they are worse than your oppressor. They have no African or pan-African inspired ideological grounding. Some are confused by foreign belief systems.
In America these interpreters are called the House Negroes. It is what the father of black history Carter Woodson strenuously complained about in his famous book The Miseducation of the Negro. Woodson wrote, “If you control a man’s thinking you don’t have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him to stand here or go yonder, he will find his proper place. You do not need to send him to the back door, he will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit.”
When it comes to crucial economic issues and property matters, the same African cosies up with their elitist colleagues to sing from the same hymn book, spouting the Roman Dutch law of property.
But where is the indigenous law? It has been reduced to a footnote in your law schools. Where are the African value systems and customs of land, wealth and property?
Today, in the high echelons of our judicial system are these mentally colonised Africans, who have settled with the worldview and mindset of those who have dispossessed their ancestors. They are only too happy to lick the spittle of those who falsely claim superiority. The lack of confidence that permeates their rulings against their own speaks very loudly, while others, secure in their agenda, clap behind closed doors.
There is a need for an overhaul of a justice system that does not work for Africa and Africans.
If the law does not sufficiently address the issue of the food fight, the law will fail and inevitably it will play out in the streets. We have a neoliberal constitution, with foreign inspiration, but who are the interpreters? And where is the African value system of this constitution and the rule of law? If the law does not work for Africans in Africa, then what is the use of the rule of law?- Mail and Guardian
(319 VIEWS)
Lindiwe Sisulus’ must set the stage for some honest introspection within the ANC about what democracy means for majority of Africans in the face of grinding poverty while the erstwhile oppressors appear to be the major beneficiaries of the new dispensation.