 |
| (C) Agence France-Presse |
The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.
Harold MacMillan made his Wind of Change speech in South Africa in 1960 heralding the era of African de-colonisation. The Union of South Africa had already been operating under a formal policy of segregation since 1948, and neighbouring Rhodesia had a similarly white-dominated political system. Both were alarmed by the Wind of Change - South Africa became a republic in 1961 and was denied continued Commonwealth membership because of apartheid, while Rhodesia's government issued the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 to sidestep Westminster-mandated desegregation prior to a grant of independence. Rhodesia was immediately hit with sanctions and unrecognised by the world because it was only a self-governing colony, while South Africa was a nominally independent dominion. From these positions, the struggle to end segregation in both countries played out differently.
Rhodesia was increasingly isolated as the Bush War went on while the rebels were well stocked with Soviet and Chinese aid. By 1979 the members of the Commonwealth were pressing for a resolve of the Rhodesian issue. Reportedly a walkout was planned while the Queen was in attendance which forced the issue and led to the Lancaster House Agreement in 1980 - an end to the Bush War and segregation, and recognised independence for Zimbabwe. Mugabe is still in power today. Bizarrely for a Maoist, he was a big fan of Maggie The Cold Warrior after this. The strangest of bed partners.
On the other hand, South Africa had it relatively easy through the 70s. Although sanctions were beginning to pile up, there was no outright civil war. The UK shunned Rhodesia, yet while the flawed Lancaster House Agreement was being forced into effect, South Africa was given the light touch. The US too, under Thatcher's beau Reagan, was a believer in 'constructive engagement' - that is, basically doing nothing. For the two Atlanticists, South Africa was to be viewed exclusively through the prism of the Cold War - despite the fact they'd all-but-handed Rhodesia to a belligerent Maoist. Though Thatcher received PW Botha in 1984 and urged him to dismantle apartheid, very little besides talk was being done. Actual support for the anti-apartheid struggle was coming from the Soviets, China, and Cuba (whose military were present further up the coast in Angola). Just as Nobel Peace Prize winner Kissinger said of the Chileans voting the wrong way in 1970, the rights of non-White South Africans could be tossed aside so long as the West had an advantage against the Eastern Bloc.
For a while after my essay in February I wondered whether, incredibly, the virtual defence of apartheid by the US and UK had prevented the situation in the 80s from degenerating in the same style as Rhodesia the decade before. However, the only thing the UK and US can lay claim to is bucking the international consensus. The rest of the world, particularly other African and Asian states who had gained independence from the decolonisation process, were pressing for action. Voluntary resolutions for embargoes and sanctions began in the mid 60s progressing to mandatory resolutions by the late 70s, and South Africa was famously culturally and athletically isolated. For the Western powers, economic co-operation with South Africa was practice of the conflation of capitalism and democracy they espoused. Some of the arguments for continued trade included paternalistic concerns about the damage to black employment and ripple effects on surrounding black majority rule states - even while exiled anti-apartheid activists were calling on these measures to be taken. If anything, this prolonged apartheid since it staved off economic collapse long enough for a change in circumstances to force their hand. That change was of course the fading of Soviet power-projection from the mid-80s as Gorbachev focused on domestic issues and the Sinatra Doctrine ended the propping-up of allied states.
The balance of power shifted and the South African situation was quickly reinterpreted. Apartheid had been founded from the start on anti-communism, and with the fall of the wall the entire rationale for the suppression of the majority black population was undermined. It could reasonably be argued that the political forces behind the anti-apartheid struggle would never have come to identity or align with the Soviets had the free West not shielded South Africa in the first place. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy to defend South Africa as a bulwark against communism because the Eastern bloc were the only ones willing to throw their weight into defeating it. In a way, they knew the power of armed struggle. The ANC tried the MLK method in the 50s and it got them nowhere, because as I've said before: Gandhi wouldn't have gotten far in a despotic regime. Take your pick from some of the low points of the 20th century: the Congo Free State, or Nazi Germany, or Khmer Rouge Cambodia.
Not unlike Gorbachev, FW de Klerk succeeded the very old guard to become president and saw the writing on the wall. History was moving fast in 1989 and the whole system had to go - reform of the 1983 ausgleich variety was unacceptable. When Mandela was released from prison it must have been embarrassing enough for right-wing apartheid apologists to see history leave them behind. It must have been compounded four years later when they'd have to shake his hand as a Nobel laureate world statesman. But therein begins the reshaping and co-opting of the ANC and Mandela - by their own hand as much as by the great powers. For one thing, Mandela, as the embodiment of the struggle, had to personally prove to the nation he could go from leader of an insurrection to statesman. When it came to the ANC's electoral victory in 1994, they had to blunt much of their founding principles. Unless you did some independent research, you wouldn't know the ANC was a socialist party. It rarely gets mentioned, and the name of the African National Congress supplies only a vague contextual notion of its historical status as a liberation movement. Thus, in order to prevent economic collapse on their watch the ANC government had to accept IMF money and all the conditions that entails.
If you want to know why Jacob Zuma gets booed and Robert Mugabe gets cheered, the answer is so unbelievably obvious. The great failing of post-apartheid South Africa is the widespread poverty that still exists. The World Cup in 2010 was a stark demonstration of corporate interests trumping human interests. 'Freedom of speech won't feed my children'. Mugabe has enriched himself as much as Zuma has, but the man with the Hitler moustache took land from the few remaining whites and redistributed it. He's a racial Robin Hood to many - steal from the whites, give to the blacks. He's stayed in power by playing the race and colonial cards quite adeptly. The Western powers may have twiddled their thumbs throughout the 80s to prevent the southern tip of the continent becoming a Soviet base up the point the Soviets were removed from the equation, but the same absence altered the ANC's platform in the 90s. Rather than becoming orthodox Leninist as the West feared, it became neoliberally orthodox.
I was quite irritated to hear Colin Powell on the World Service saying Mandela had renounced violence. He never did. The uncomfortable fact, as also seen in Northern Ireland, is that taking up arms does change things. There would never have been a Good Friday Agreement if Sinn Fein's policy had been to just lie there like deflated blow-up sex dolls. This is why Mandela was co-opted as a funky grandfather who liked to tell jokes as if he was Bill Cosby from an alternate reality. Admittedly, he played into that more than anyone for the sake of national unity. In conceding the promises of social and economic equality they further cemented their submission to the Anglo-American business interests - the very same ones making a mint in the 80s thanks to UK-US engagement.
The future of the ANC is as an institutional party of the revolution, and all that entails. Kwame Nkruma went from riding into power on the back of trade unionism to banning industrial action within a decade. Now look at the Marakana massacre. The past of the ANC, however, is being written as much as its future. The Mandela memorial service this week was scene to some of the most blatant historical revisionism ever witnessed. Barack Obama's speech consisted of spurious parallels between Mandela on one hand and the venerated non-violent leaders Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. It's regrettable that the military wings of the ANC and the PAC and others had to kill lots of people to achieve what the world now considers a universal right, but that was the only option left open to them. Democracy is rarely handed to you on a plate. The Wall Street Journal and the far-right have made much play of Mandela's links to the SA Communist Party and socialism in general, yet his speech from the dock in 1962 made quite clear he was a democrat and willing to die to achieve it.
It would have been nice to see the US ride to the defence of freedom in South Africa as much as Obama believes it did (or rather, wants you to believe it did). The truth is the US rode to the defence of capitalism in the name of realpolitik - the same as Nixon opening relations with the third ranked mass-killer of the 20th century. Only come October 1986 did congress override Reagan's appeasement, and beyond that the ANC was still a registered terrorist organisation in the US until 2008. The Iron Lady infamously denounced it as a "typical terrorist organisation" while also supporting the Khmer Rouge at the UN. Yet it was Castro that Mandela first visited on winning election. The thing about terrorism is that it is a tactic used by a minority in order to further their aims. Apartheid was a system that disenfranchised 22 million black citizens. The minority was the white government.
Having seen the world's leaders universally fawn over the image of Mandela they have perpetuated for global consumption, you have to wonder how apartheid ever survived until 1990 in the first place. Then again, you might as well ask how the Holocaust ever transpired.
[1863]
No comments:
Post a Comment