The progressive and complete liberation of oppressive societies and the undoing of the trauma experienced by its oppressed people take a very long time.
Politicians trade in slogans and sound bites. Liberation requires deep intelligence and intention. The South African diagnosis is that it’s a society that consists of large parts of its population suffering from untreated oppression-induced trauma who have been abandoned by its first doctor, its liberators.
Thereafter, quack after quack tried to tell the same people how bad their first doctor was, and then continued to intentionally misdiagnose their suffering.
The Multiparty Charter for South Africa is the latest doctor on the scene. The problem is that none of the politicians in the room are oppression-induced treatment specialists.
This is a case of the Democratic Alliance recruiting a bunch of people, giving them all white coats (excuse the pun), and telling them “you are now all specialists in our hospital to fix South Africa”.
If ever there was an abuse of black and oppression-induced trauma, then this is it. The DA’s corralling of parties and voters, with an “EFF is enemy number one” message, speaks to the DNA of the issue. It risks becoming a rebranded “swart-gevaar” message.
For those who know South African history, the Multiparty Charter for South Africa sounds like a 1948 Sauer Commission appointed by the Herstigte Nationale Party to install “swart gevaar” apartheid.
What the originators of this initiative fail to understand is the ethical and moral quandary white South Africa steps into when they speak of black political movements, black political parties, and ultimately its black voters as being “enemy number one.”
The political intention to unseat the ANC, which has an ever-diminishing governance track record, is fair. To have as its message soundbites reeking of appalling apartheid language, is the death of the initiative, even before a sentence is drafted.
Although the current parties in this multiparty charter movement will garner no more than about 27% of the national vote, the damage being done to the 2024 elections is that, once again, political parties are simply recruiting choir members and handing out song sheets and not policies or plans for fixing the myriad problems South Africa has.
The multiparty charter movement parties will ask voters from all hues and cultures to give them their vote, like many gave it to the ANC in 1994, only for those same voters’ aspirations once again to risk being ignored by the new political elites. Never again can power be given to anyone who has not shown their political plans or candidates.
It is time for all voters to reject their continued political seduction by political parties. The most important act that all voters – especially the black voter – can do is take back their power and reclaim their agency.
Taking back power and agency is when the black voter and the sufferers of oppression-induced trauma say to political parties that they are sick and tired of the incorrect narratives that are being spun about them.
That they are sick and tired of continued spatial and related apartheid. That they are sick and tired of being subjected to all forms of gang and state violence. And that they are sick and tired of being asked for their votes but not their voices.
With a failing ANC, the opportunity exists for the resurrection of hope in trustworthy political alternatives. Given the first round of what we have seen of the multiparty charter movement, the sufferers of oppression-induced trauma would be well advised to revisit 1948 political literature and read what grand schemes apartheid politicians had designed to deal with “the enemy,” all in the name of saving South Africa.
This movement is not the intelligent liberation we all long for. This is just more outdated control of the black body, the black narrative and black hope.
* Lorenzo A Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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