(ZIMBABWE GUARDIAN) South Africa on the road to indigenization

South Africa on the road to indigenization
By: Nancy Lovedale
Posted: Saturday, April 3, 2010 6:34 pm

POLITICAL change in South Africa is gathering momentum. Those who basked in the false sense of security that was accorded by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1995 are looking with amazement at the changes that are beginning to take shape in that country.

There can never be real peace and security until the millions of blacks who live in the South Western Towns (Soweto) and other poverty-stricken areas, are able to participate and benefit from their economy. That was the purpose of the anti-Apartheid movement; not just a change in the colour of the skin of those who govern.

The Right Wing white lobby in that country watches as events take an unprecedented turn.

First it was Jacob Zuma, who they campaigned against for presidency; now the tide has taken a different twist in the personality of Julius Malema -- the firebrand youth president who has called for the nationalisation of farms and industry.


Nancy Lovedale

With a black population of 79% of the total population, the ANC is likely to rule that country for the foreseeable future. Every black voter will most certainly vote the ANC -- the party that liberated that country from the white Apartheid regime.

From April 1994 when the first post-Apartheid general election was held in South Africa, i.e. an election when all adults could vote irrespective of their race, that country has only seen pockets of the black population advancing. The rest still live in absolute poverty, are victims of violence and have no access to basic sanitation.

In a sense, they are still fighting for their civil rights in 'independent' South Africa.

Groups like AfriForum, that model themselves as 'civil rights organisations' for an already privileged white population, will clash with this impoverished group of black people; some of them who saw the worst atrocities committed by the white supremacist governments of yesteryear.

The South African veteran freedom fighters are still very much alive. Through oral traditions in their poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, they are teaching the born-free about the struggle they went through. They are telling them of Sharpeville Massacre, the murder of Steve Biko and the June 1976 cold-blooded killing of young people who protested against Apartheid and Bantu Education.

An 'economic Apartheid' still exists in South Africa. That is why people like Malema still have a crucial place in that country. They appeal specifically to that group; and unless that group is uprooted from poverty Nelson Mandela's "Rainbow Nation" will remain a mirage.

The tide is turning and change is unstoppable; and some of us who had to flee that country into Zimbabwe remember very well how we were second-class citizens in a country of birth. As a 'Cape Cloured' as I was labelled then, I was treated like dirt and called a Kaffir. My crime was the colour of my skin.

Malema's call for the nationalisation of South African mines should never be dismissed as wishful thinking. The white commercial farmer and the industrialist in Zimbabwe ignored that call. The rest is history. Groups like AfriForum can try and use the courts to effect their 'demands'. They should simply integrate and accept black majority rule and start behaving like all other citizens, before it is too late.

The marginalised, if they constitute the majority, will always have the power to change things.

Companies like DeBeers who have enjoyed a privileged position in that country for centuries will have to make a move sooner or later to peacefully transfer a huge chunk of their wealth to the government of the day, voluntarily. The status quo cannot hold anymore. As long as millions live in poverty, they will always threaten the established business if it has a racial complexion.

The African Rennaisance is full on. There's no turning back. Zimbabwe's indigenisation policy has set a precedent in the region. Everything else is in auto-motion.

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Nancy Lovedale writes from Beijing in China. She can be reached via nancy_lovedale *** yahoo.com