The history sketched by Tony Heard in City Press, April 10, is what Patrice Lumumba described as history of Washington and London. It is fraught with omissions, effectively distancing itself from the truth. Foremost in the omission is the exclusion of the thinking of Africans and the philosophies they expounded in reflecting on their circumstances and oppression.
Surely when you want to talk about the French Revolution you have to talk about Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau. The Aushimotos, Hintsas, Ndlebe, Mzilikazis, Moshoeshoes and Sekhukhunes did not wage a war to acquire human rights.
They were defending their land. When Pixley ka Isaka Seme pointed out that it was now futile to fight back as separate nationalities after all the areas being defended were now consolidated into one area, it was not a quest for “human rights”. It was mobilising the unity of Africans to fight for their land.
Anton Lembede pointed out that oppression was a barrier to our development, therefore the need for freedom was the need for an atmosphere in which we could develop ourselves and contribute to the development of the world. Robert Sobukwe advocated the restoration of ancestral land of Africans – Africa-to the rightful owners, who are the Africans.
He coined the phrase “nonracial” to make us all understand that we are human first , hence the maxim: “there is only one race – the human race”, and that you cannot see identity before you see a human being. Steve Biko rose up when Africans were most subdued and gripped with fear. He set up a programme to take them out of that fear, interpreting freedom as freedom from mental slavery, further urging a belief in the self such that they become confident about their capacity to do anything.
The Tony Heards of this world see history from their narrow angle of white supremacy. He is more enthusiastic about what the apartheid regime did to some white activists, thus blurring oppression as though it did not have a defined perpetrator on one side and a defined victim on the other.
Hendrik Verwoerd, JG Strydom or whoever described as prime minister or such were not individuals who just took it upon themselves to be in such positions. They were elected by most whites through laws decided by themselves without any consideration of the presence of Africans. Incidents that had the most impact in shaking the apartheid regime were Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976.
Accelerated changes to the apartheid legal structure followed Soweto 1976 and in particular the assassination of Biko, which evoked the sanctions debate and implementation. Such change to apartheid thinking led to approaches to Mandela in jail. It is not as though somebody just walked out of a prison after 27 years to bring peace in SA as Heard seems to imply.
All that matters to the likes of Heard is the amorphous “human rights” as though human rights are objects that can be dispensed. That Africans like all humans have their ancestral land is excluded from its place as an inalienable right of Africans.
The tendency is to define for Africans what their “rights” are. It does not include their right to be compensated for what was done to them. Reparations are not for them. It is completely forgotten that Africans had no say in the creation of SA in 1910, including definition of its borders.
Neither did they have a say in the creation of the new SA in 1994, which was between apartheid Nationalist Party (elected in open elections among whites) and a group selected among Africans by the very NP.
Africans did not participate in any elections despite being majority inhabitants. Neither did they participate in a referendum similar to that which whites were subjected to in order to make their input on the creation of the new order. But such dispensation is recognised as democratic.
• Dr Mosalakae is a Sowetan reader
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