Black Nationalist Thought in South Africa: The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation

375 Pages·2016·3.67 MB·English

by  Hashi Kenneth Tafira (auth.)

AFRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES
BLACK NATIONALIST
THOUGHT IN
SOUTH AFRICA
The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation
Hashi Kenneth Tafira
African Histories and Modernities
Series Editors
Toyin   Falola
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin ,  Texas ,   USA
Matthew   M.   Heaton
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg ,   Virginia ,   USA
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we think about African and global histories.
Editorial Board
Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University
Kwabena Akurang-Parry, History, Shippensburg University
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Barbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas
at Austin
Emmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island
Akin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
More information about this series at
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Hashi   Kenneth   Tafi ra
Black Nationalist
Thought in South
Africa
The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation
Hashi   Kenneth   Tafi ra
University of South Africa (UNISA)
Pretoria, South Africa
African Histories and Modernities
ISBN 978-1-137-59087-9 ISBN 978-1-137-58650-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58650-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940966
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This work is dedicated to my late mother … you are living and you are
watching Ma Ndlovu.
To Azanian youth trapped in the township struggles and trying to make a
meaning of it…hold up.
To Grandpas, Mavimbela Christian Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Va Chimusoro
Kenneth, this is for you; your wishes are fulfi lled.
To the Great Spirit that dwells in water, Nzuzu, I am eternally grateful for
the gift and the honour.

F
OREWORD
ALUTA CONTINUA! (THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!)
What does freedom mean to black people whose very being (humanity)
was questioned? What does blackness on a world scale mean? What does
decolonization mean in a modern world in which the very modern world
system remains impervious to decolonization and the global order is resis-
tant to deimperialization? These foundational and fundamental questions
have received very weak answers. In South Africa, in particular, freedom
and liberation have been reduced to democracy and human rights. The
negotiated dismantling of juridical apartheid has been hailed as signifying
arrival. Those who spent all their time fi ghting for freedom and liberation,
they eventually got democracy and human rights as fruits of their sacrifi ces.
Are liberation and freedom translatable to democracy and human rights?
Did Stephen Bantu Biko, Solomon Mahlangu and Robert Mangaliso
Sobukwe die fi ghting for democracy and human rights? Why is the legacy
of Biko and Sobukwe continuing to haunt postapartheid South Africa?
To respond to these questions, we must go back to the foundational
question of dismemberment of black people. This foundational dismem-
berment took the form of questioning the very humanity of black people.
It entailed pushing black people out of the human family. Once pushed out
of the framework of the human family, black people have since the earliest
times of colonial encounters, been existing (as opposed to living) in what
Frantz Fanon termed the ‘zone of non-being.’ What divides the ‘zone of
non-being’ from the ‘zone of being,’ is what the Portuguese decolonial
theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos described as ‘abyssal thinking’ that
vii
viii FOREWORD
separates human species into two zones. The abyssal thinking produced
what the black American decolonial theorist William E.B. Du Bois termed
‘the colour line.’ In short, we need to fully understand the birth and fos-
silization of racial hierarchization and social classifi cation of human spe-
cies in accordance with assumed differential ontological densities as the
foundational modernist/imperial/colonial sin. The very idea of ‘black’
and ‘white’ people cascades from this politics of paradigm of difference to
borrow a term from the work of Valentin Y. Mudimbe.
The paradigm of difference is not innocent. It is an enabling paradigm—
enabling enslavement, colonization and apartheid. Because of imperial/
colonial logic informing the paradigm of difference, black people could
easily be commoditized. Genocides, epistemicides and linguicides were
enabled by the paradigm of difference. The paradigm of difference is not
only backed up by scientifi c racism but also by the paradigm of war. The
paradigm of war is justifi ed in Western thought through ideas of h omo
polemos that naturalizes and routinizes war. The slave trade, imperialism,
colonialism and apartheid were all underpinned by a paradigm of differ-
ence and war.
South Africa as a named geo-political and social entity is a construc-
tion of imperial global designs. Its genealogy is traceable to the activities
of Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama. This makes the birth of South
Africa to be coterminous with that of the East Indies and the Americas.
Jan van Riebeeck’s 1652 landing at the Cape inaugurated enslavement
of black people and colonization of space. Colonization of space could
not happen without battling the indigenous people and land disposses-
sion. The question of stolen land legitimately occupies a central place in
black liberation thought, which is detailed in this book. Stolen land and
inferiorization of black people provoked the rise of black consciousness
movements of which Biko is known as its most able articulator in South
Africa. But genealogically speaking, black consciousness is traceable to the
Diaspora. Those black people who were forcibly captured and transported
to the Americas as cargo suffered linguicides as part of dehumanization.
This was not surprising because coloniality was inscribed through map-
ping, naming and owning.
The leading African decolonial theorist and novelist Ngugi wa
Thiong’o spoke of dismemberment of African personhood into continen-
tal and Diaspora Africans. This was followed by The Berlin Conference of
1884–1885, that further dismembered Africa, fi rst into various European
spheres of infl uence and later into full-fl edged colonies. The Dutch and
FOREWORD ix
the British were actively involved in the making of South Africa into a
colony. The Dutch had metamorphosed into Afrikaners, and they repre-
sented a colonial impulse. The English pushed forward the imperial logic
of anglicization. Both colonial and imperial imperatives converged on dis-
possession of black people and their reduction into colonial subjects avail-
able as sources of cheap labour.
Black people have a long history of resistance and thinking about how
to extricate themselves from coloniality. The African struggles for libera-
tion date as far back as the time of colonial encounters and enslavement.
This is why the birth of Haiti as a black republic occupies a special place of
pride in African liberation thought. Black fi ghters such as Marcus Garvey
occupy an important place in black liberation thought. But in South Africa
specifi cally, the San and the Khoi Khoi became the fi rst indigenous people
to confront and resist dispossession and colonization. The Xhosa-speaking
people offered stiff resistance to Dutch encroachment. The Zulu, Ndebele,
Sotho and Tswana fought to retain their land and autonomy. The Battle of
Isandlwana of 1879 in which Zulu forces engaged and defeated the British
forces is still work of celebration in the genealogy of black struggles for
liberation. The Bambatha Uprising of 1906 demonstrated the undying
spirit of resistance.
Kenneth Tafi ra’s book is focused on black liberation thought. I. B.
Tabata, Biko and Sobukwe, rather than Nelson Mandela, are privileged
in black liberation thought. Biko, in particular, has come to represent
a black spirit that continues to inspire resistance and pan-Africanist re-
imaginations of South Africa. It is resonant among the disfranchised,
unemployed, disempowered and frustrated township youth in such locales
as Soweto. These township youth are engaged in a struggle to fi nd mean-
ing for their lives within a neo-apartheid society that continues to be hailed
and celebrated as a model of democracy. The black township youth are
entangled in a postcolonial malady born out of protracted anti-apartheid
struggle and problematic negotiations. These youth fi nd themselves poor
in a rich country, and this has awaken them to the reality of the myth of
liberation, if not outright betrayal by a African leaders who allied with
white liberals and communists to produce a neo-apartheid rather than
postapartheid democracy. Black consciousness, in this thesis, articulated
as a spirit and an emotion, ‘fi nds a new meaning with each generation.’
The book excavates the genealogies of the black thought and crystal-
lization of black consciousness in South Africa. Tafi ra is not shy in engag-
ing the highly contentious “race and class” debates and how the leading