THAMSANQA D. MALINGA | Apartheid legacy Sona needs to go into dustbin of history

If there is one thing that history has taught us through documented evidence as well as through fiction, like the pen of George Orwell, is that when slaves “gain independence” by any means they tend to go overboard in terms of their assimilating the master who has “fled” the plantation.

Before you get lost in the slaves and master metaphor, let me get straight to the point. The state of the nation address (Sona) that takes place in the republic every February, is one of those apartheid legacies that should have been cast to the bin like the Founders Day and those apartheid celebrations where Die Groot Krokodil used to stand in front of military parades and marvel at SA’s military prowess.

But no, the South African Native National Congress with the slave mentality had to keep this pomp and just add the glitz. Every year taxpayers fork out millions for politicians to walk on the red carpets to have their egos all inflated as they try to be some form of Hollywood stars in a country that they have run down and they perhaps can’t bear the stench that is coming from it.

The stench of poverty they have caused is now nauseating to them. This event is probably their form of escapism from the roads they can’t drive without hitting potholes, the pavements they can’t jog on because they are filthy with rubbish that is uncollected for days on end.

So, it’s better to splash out money and have a make-believe event where they are stars at whose feet we kneel for autographs. Poor slave mentality. In 2022, the expenses for the Sona were budgeted to cost South Africans R4m and the budget for 2023 is R8m.

In some years the event is also known to have been budgeted to the amount of R9,2m. This is in a country where its statistics body said “as of 2022, an individual living in SA with less than R945 (roughly $54.69) per month was considered poor.”

In my treatise Blame Me on Apartheid I touch on the La Sape culture in Congo, which started as a result of how “The French had set out to civilise African people by providing them with European second-hand clothes as a bargaining tool to gain the devotion of the superiors” (Lyns:2014).

I argue that: “although the Sapeur evolved over time, we can understand how the colonialists saw native Congolese as ‘uncivilised’, just like the early SA missionaries in the Cape frontiers saw those still wearing their traditional clothing and using red ochre as ‘uncivilised’ and induced those that they had converted to change their way of dressing and adopt European-style clothing.

This then led to the "us" and "them" culture of amaqaba and amagqobhoka. This "us and them" perpetuated the being (centre) and "non-being" (periphery) as espoused by Dussel. The native Congolese houseboys, like the South African amagqobhoka, had, unbeknownst to them, been psychologically made to see their fellow countrymen, who were not dressed like them, as outcasts and as the uncivilised "other" who was not in their league or class, and was still an "uncivilised" barbarian (the latter being my own emphasis).

Unaware of it as they were, this was self-hate, although they just hated the notion of being uncivilised. This pomp and glitz of the Sona is nothing short of the La Sape culture of the French slave master that was introduced to the Congolese. It is nothing short of the “us and them” culture of the colonialist that divided South Africans into the civilised and the uncivilised.

I have followed the ANC’s NEC lekgotla and I noted the narrative that came out of the side lines. Hot air. Writing this piece just 24 hours before the head of state delivers his address, I can tell you that what will lace his speech is rhetoric such as cushioning the poor against the rising costs and load shedding, deepening social cohesion, forgotten people in the townships, strengthening the economy, fighting unemployment – I can go on and on.

It’s the same script. You might be reading this piece a day after the Sona and might feel a sense of anger and despondency at the truth.

The question though remains, is all the pomp necessary? Are the expenses necessary?

• Malinga is a director at Mkabayi Management Consultants, a political commentator and author of Blame Me on Apartheid as well as A Dream Betrayed