The last sentence of the powerful book, Parcel of Death, the biography of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, penned by Gaongalelwe Tiro, reads: “South Africa’s first democratically-elected president, Nelson Mandela, during a state visit to Botswana in 1995, visited Tiro’s grave to acknowledge his contribution to the liberation struggle.”
What a fascinating way of concluding a book whose protagonist paid the ultimate price for the ideal of freedom, the true liberation of the people of Azania! But, it’s incontestable that what Tiro and many other heroes, heroines and martyrs of the struggle died fighting for, remains a far-fetched dream betrayed at the altar of the rainbow in 1994.
But what is poignant in this context is what Gaoganelwe asserts, and actually laments, when he says, “the pre and post-apartheid authorities failed to bring Tiro’s killers to justice, and neither did they make any discernible, credible effort to do so”.
This is a very serious indictment. Not so much of the apartheid government (for it was expected from such a regime), but – calamitously so – of the so-called democratic dispensation of the rainbow, presided over by the ANC, Mandela’s party, for 28 years now.
By the way, many families of the victims of apartheid’s atrocious acts are still looking for answers, while the agents of that obnoxious system’s killing machinery are still roaming free in this rainbow country. Others, including the last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, have exited this planet without revealing the truth about what happened to the victims' loved ones.
And the news that some of these killers are now living large at the expense of the post-1994 state, after being released on parole, are emotionally draining.
I don’t want to believe that this government has been sponsoring the comfortable life of the murderous Vlakplaas commander Eugene De Kock since his early release from prison. It will remain a mystery as to why such an insensitive and lunatic consideration could be made by any conscious political leadership that is reasonably expected to appreciate the pain that our people went through during apartheid.
We need to remain focused on what leaders such as Onkgoposte Tiro died for: A truly liberated and united Azania based on equality in the practical sense, and not simply on paper. As he himself had declared, and really defined in 1972, such a nation shall be realised “when all shall be free to breathe the air of freedom, which is theirs to breathe”. The air of freedom, in his view, would be when we, black people, ultimately get “a fair deal in this land of our fathers”. Half a century after this observation, his rhetorical question, “My dear people, shall we ever get a fair deal in this land?” remains, hauntingly so, most imposing.
Yet, we keep on lying to ourselves that we attained freedom. I strongly believe that we should viciously intensify our attack on the illogic and false narrative of freedom that was manufactured in 1994 to lull us into a timid and sheepish condition of a defeated, divided people.
Moss Mashamaite reminds us that, “when humans believe a narrative, it becomes alive in them and brings with it its own particular magic... Let’s question legends”.
Why are we, like believers, clinging so much to these pieces of magic, which we are too eager to defend by any means necessary? The truth is, as in Tiro’s time, black people remain landless, continue to swim in a sea of poverty, are subjected to exploitation, poor education and squalid conditions of life.
How does one explain this under a government led by black people? Whose team is the leadership playing for? Are we back to Tiro’s 1972 descriptor of “white Black men”? As he had surmised then, are we still in the same milieu wherein “our so-called leaders have become the bolts of the same machine that is crushing us as a nation?” I would like to desperately believe that we are not. However, the practical reality dictates otherwise.
It is invigorating that the black consciousness-inspired Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) is hosting a commemorative session dedicated to this gallant hero, Onkgopotse Tiro, today at Masedibu High School at Seshego, Limpopo Province.
Tiro was murdered by the apartheid regime via a parcel bomb on February 1, 1974, while exiled in Botswana. Azapo’s newly-elected president, Nelvis Qekema, is expected to give the keynote address. Given the complacency induced in our people about the magic and false narratives of freedom, it is quite apt for the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and other Afrikanist organisations to up the ante to catalyse the realisation of our true Azania.
This year, particularly, the mission by the leadership collective to “relionise Azapo” is indeed commendable. It is with such spirited efforts that the barriers to our true liberation may be broken. But, how do these barriers manifest in a “post-apartheid” society?
We know that, in order to entrench itself, the apartheid regime divided black people and further instilled fear, through torture and death, among them. It is the brave and gallant BCM generation of the likes of Tiro that shook the stranglehold of fear created by apartheid as from the Sharpeville and Langa massacres of 1960. It is, therefore, imperative that we interrogate what the stranglehold now is, more than sixty years after Sharpeville, in a so-called free society? Why is South Africa not falling, in order for Azania to rise?
It is clear the “post-colonial” African states have exposed our fallibility and gullibility as Afrikans, and further inadvertently connived to vindicate stereotypes created by other races about us.
You just have to look at how we have spectacularly failed at governance, economic development, education, sustenance of livelihoods, environment, our education, health and infrastructure. It is so painful to experience these failures on what would have been a beacon of hope for Afrika, our country Azania.
The mere sight of the dismembered railway infrastructure is enough to break the camel’s back. The idea of “things fall apart” is no more a simple catchphrase. It’s a reality!
It is a big concern that what resulted from the costly freedom struggle is the continuation of the colonial/apartheid state presided over by black bodies. A case of a colonisation baton passed on with prescient splendour!
The black leader of the post-independence Afrikan state has perfectly fitted in the shoes of the erstwhile coloniser. White systems and rituals, cultural practices, education, laws, languages and blessings are hugely embraced and vehemently defended. Afrikan thought leaders attributed this sickening attitude to the malleability of our minds as the victims of white supremacy and oppression.
In the 28 years of the widely-sponsored rainbow dispensation, we have seen a government that has consistently protected the ill-gotten privileges of the oppressors in various ways, including the stymying of land repossession imperatives, nationalisation of strategic sectors of the economy and the mines.
But, what hurts most is the deliberate undermining of black collective power. The Black nation is at war with itself.
I have come to the searing conclusion that the logic of failure of black government is driven by the stomach. It can make even the seemingly most upright and powerful do even the most unthinkably egregious acts. It can blur chasms between the principled and the unprincipled, truthfulness and untruthfulness, loyalty and betrayal, as well as trustworthiness and untrustworthiness.
I therefore think that most of our problems as black people, historically, can be blamed on the stomach. An incisive look at expressions like “three pieces of silver”, “sell-out” or “betrayal” all boil down to the power of the stomach.
It has been such a discovery to realize the stomach as a critical enzyme for most of our aberrations. This logic has been a useful tool of analysis for me to, lately, interpret the anti-black socio-economic realities of our existence in this magical rainbow society.
For instance, it aids in the scrutinisation of the political associations and alliances we form in various sectors, the governance coalitions, and many other policy decisions we take. It is evident, in such circumstances, that the point of departure has been the stomach. In essence, the “politics of cheese and stomach” is a critical role player in the post-1994 society.
I think the oppressors have trillions of reasons to laugh at us, at our malleability, gullibility and mediocrity as black people. It must surely be mirthful for them to experience the loss of our collective anger and outrage, the loss of our shared responsibility as well as the dismemberment of the black force, black unity and solidarity.
We assist our oppressors in the various platforms, particularly in the white-controlled media spaces, labour settings, academic corridors and corporate institutions to finish one another off. All because of our proxy roles induced by the power of the stomach. Events that should ideally be used to rally us together (such as Sharpeville, the June 16 uprisings, etc) are cunningly used to dilute and distort the collective pain and memory for the sustenance of the anti-black status quo.
So, we should halt the repetition of misnomers of “freedom”, because, truth be told, it’s not yet uhuru. Frankly, we save our blushes by holding on to the false narrative of “best Constitution” as if the struggle was a (beauty) contest about the production of good documents.
In that historic speech, Tiro was crystal clear that we “should say nothing else but the truth. And to me truth means practical reality”. We thus need to conquer the power of the stomach and the predilection to be affirmed by whiteness.
That’s where the problem lies. As we join Azapo and other unapologetically pro-black organisations and activists in commemorating the death of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro today (as with other events on our calendar this year), it should serve as a constant reminder of our complacency, lies, gullibility and betrayal.
One Azania, One nation! Viva the spirit of Onkgopotse Tiro!
David Letsoalo is a Sankarist, an activist and law academic
Sunday Independent