Reflections: Blacks Are Fools? An Open Letter To Our Brother Slikour

I got my political education from my father first, a former APLA guerilla. Then from my uncle, Vusi ka Zwane, himself an ANC member with ties to the Muslim movement, Murabitun, whose members bombed banks at the order of their mentor (the actor Ian Dallas turned shaykh Abdalqadir As-Sufi) calling for an overhaul of not only the political but the economic system. But my awakening came after or rather while reading The Land Is Ours by P.E.M. Pheko - itself a badly typeset book, something i would've have ignored had i not been married to a publisher- a textbook on the political thinking of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe. It was on a train from that alleged bastion of white privilege, Cape Town, to that repository of some failed, some realized dreams of the new black about town- Johannesburg. The morning before my departure, i happened to be listening to a song by Slikour titled "Blacks Are Fools", no prizes for guessing what it's about. Naturally i was uneasy about both the name and the content of this shabby excuse of a rally to rouse the "ignant" black masses. After acknowledging that our brother Slikour must've have intended well, it is counterproductive and only played into the hands of the right wing who would only be too glad to make it their new anthem. Or the Swedish art minister who was recently spotted digging into a minstrel caricature cake of a black woman with exaggerated features in the name of calling to attention to the plight of women in Africa or whatever dreamed up misguided Captain Planet hogwash. But I'm losing my train of thought. Back to Slikour's song. It might as well have been Steve Hofmeyer rapping. Though to his credit he does acknowledge that he hoped we are better than that, it still reeks of insensitivity. This is no time for relatively well off blacks like Slikour to be callin out black people for problems that are not entirely of their own making. I would like to advise our brother to get some political education that will bring out a more compassionate way of dealing with these matters that he rightfully raises. At least he didn't make another song about girls shaking their bums. I gave it ten for good intentions, zero for taste.

We need to love our people and not talk down to them. It states on the tomb of the father of our struggle, 'ataturk of Azania', "true leadership demands complete subjugation of self, absolute honesty, integrity and uprightness of character, courage and fearlessness, and above all A CONSUMING LOVE FOR ONE'S PEOPLE." Now i do not for one second doubt our beloved brother's love for his people but love has conditions. You don't speak to the one you love as you wish. Even Moses, who was better than Slikour and all of us who pretend/attempt to free our people, did not speak down to Pharaoh, who was worse than any of our people even by the standards of those who call us fools. There is great wisdom in that. There are too many well-meaning blacks who simply need to learn not only how to speak to the great majority of our people in the slums but need to start backing that talk with the walk, including myself. It has become fashionable for the new black middle class to take up a cause or charity while our immediate family members sleep without a morsel of food in their bellies. Its time to come down from our our ivory towers (and recording studios) and go back to the grassroots. And in this again what a fine example the children of Azania have in the sublime Sobukwe who when a position was offered to him to take up a lecturing post at Rhodes University with the full pay of his white counterparts, turned it down. Not only that but resigned from his current position as a lecturer at Witwatersrand University to dedicate his time and energy fully to the cause. He is also known to have never taken other than the economy class where the majority of his people commuted in trains even though he could afford not to. Now our times do not even require that we follow these examples to the letter. We would do well just to embody the spirit of not feeling and acting like economic white superiority has been conquered just because we have been give some shares in it. Furthermore, the emerging black middle class is today at risk of becoming a class of house negroes, as the current e-tolling system in Gauteng will prove, by exempting public transport commuters (mostly the poorest of the poor) from paying. Who will pour out to the streets and march for us? Satisfied with the crumbs the massa throws at him, he rebukes his brothers left at the bottom of the rung, calling them stupid and lazy. We are still divided and conquered.

The cry of those on whose shoulders we stand today remains relevant, Africa for Africans, Africans for humanity and humanity for God. The Quran says something loosely translated as, "We have created you into different nations and tribes so that you may know each other, not that you may despise each other." At no point in the teachings of any of the three Abrahamaic faiths, which the vast majority of our people subscribe to, is it justified to look down on certain sections of any population that do not look like you. What more your own people?

Though most of the song's lyrics are directed at his fellow music artists and their wasteful ways, in which he has a valid point to call them out, i would rather he moved away from trying to come up with a controversial title for this clearly 'radio-friendly' single and balanced his argument by addressing the issue of predominantly white gatekeepers in the entertainment industry and other sections of our economy.

No, brother Slikour blacks are not fools. In your convenient myopia you forgot that from the vineyards on the winelands of the western Cape to the mining town of Carltonville outside Johannesburg, in between and to the north in Groblersdal up to the mango plantations in Makhado, we are still just cheap labour. Anyway thanks for your concern but we know the problems, how about on your next single you propose some solutions?

Malik Mahlangu

Reflections: Better late than never

[In this image above found in "The Land Is Ours" by S.E.M. Pheko, members of the Apartheid regime on Robben Island Prison have come to check if Sobukwe had changed his views about land repossession by his people and African majority rule.]

Everyone is outdoing themselves trying their hardest to write the legacy of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe off from the pages of our glorious history- the media by not covering him as much as they do their propped up father of the struggle Nelson Mandela and opposition politicians by blatant lies. Or simply relegating him to one month like they have other great stalwarts like Steve Bantu Biko on September the 12th, the day of his assassination. Who's this guy that was once the ANCYL president?, he is infamous for claiming that anti-Pass Laws marches that resulted in the Sharpeville Massacre were organized by the ANC and not the PAC under the leadership of Sobukwe. In March 2012 the Tshwane City Council announced 27 street name changes amongst them Steve Biko, Solomon Mahlangu- no Sobukwe in sight- they even got the DA patting them on the back for extending Nelson Mandela street up to the R21 adding that the street was currently too short for a man of his stature. Nothing about the man who Nelson Mandela mimicked and imitated. Sobukwe was the pace setter for what culminated in the overthrowal of the Apartheid regime. He was the first to come up with concrete, practical steps when the ANC was happy with just asking the white minority government to change their ways, he demanded their total overthrowal. The anti-Pass Laws campaign of 1960 is the most famous but not the only proof of this. After he and several of his comrades were arrested for treason in orchestrating that blow on Apartheid that ushered the era of the black who had finally become not afraid of the guns of the white oppressive government, it is only then that you find the ANC mustering some courage to take the war to the oppressors. Among them is Mandela who famously burns his pass in Alexander township. When he (Mandela) is sentenced in 1963, Sobukwe is serving his final year for treason. Sobukwe was the first to ask not to plead in an Apartheid court citing a conflict of interest in that he was a black man tried in a court of laws made for white men and carried out by white men, essentially that you cannot apply unjust laws justly. Mandela repeats the same notion at his trial some years later. Consequently, the Freedom Charter, that bone of contention between the Pan-Africanists and the ANC is quoted freely in the media while the words of Sobukwe are banned, even after his death. Today you would swear that ban is continuing in a supposedly free media. What Sobukwe achieved dwarfed what any of those who outlived him have achieved for our people. The only in the history of SA law to have a clause enacted especially for him. This is the same man who envisioned the fall of Apartheid in 1963, no easy task facing one of the most brutal if not the most brutal government and police force on earth then. So shaken was the National Party by his vision and drive that they imprisoned him further without trial after he had served out his initial sentence.

The leadership of the Apartheid machine called Sobukwe "a heavyweight compared to the then ANC president, Chief Albert Luthuli." It is dishonest for people like Julius Malema to today act as if the ANC always had a history of militancy. Yes Sobukwe borrowed this from people like Kwame Nkrumah, Anton Lembede and George Padmore but he had no qualms acknowledging that. The same way the time has come for the so called militant and controversial elements in the ruling party today to put aside their petty factional politics and acknowledge that Sobukwe is the father of those who today call for things like the exchange of land ownership without compensation. To go back to the Freedom Charter, the departing point between us and them, the lapdogs of industry forced upon them by white liberals, is found the mad notion that the land belongs to all that live on it, black and white. No, the land was stolen from it's owners. So how can the owners now have to buy it back? They forgot this when they were drunk with independence in 1994 and now again they want to go back to the pace setter- even after his death- now that we are reaching a sobering 20 years since independence. We say better later then never.

To their credit, the ANC declared March Sobukwe month as part of their centenary celebrations. We declare the next years in our struggle for "freedom again" the Sobukwe years. A man who was ahead of his time. A man whose time has finally come.

Malik Mahlangu