Picture: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA)/Taken March 20, 2023 – Members of the EFF gathered at Church Square during the National Shutdown.The angry Charterists’ disenchantment with the moderate politics of the leadership of the ANC is the only correct thing about this imaginary myth by the militant founders of the EFF, the writer says.
By Masilo Lepuru
“The other face is that of the indirect and secondary enemy, who presents himself under the cover of a nationalist and even as a revolutionary thus making it difficult to identify him…” – Samora Machel
The “three hundred years” of white settler conquest have reduced some conquered Indigenous people to militant cowards and pragmatic traitors. The African race across the white world has reached a watershed point regarding their biological survival.
The barbaric humiliation Africans have been subjected to for the last “two thousand seasons” by their implacable and everlasting white enemies has taken a terrifying toll on our minds as a race. It is this sense that the African race must honestly confront their fear of whites who have been inflicting savage violence on them in an unrelenting fashion since they polluted the shores of Africa.
This fear of whites as the eternal enemies of African people is the fundamental problem of mental liberation which should precede physical liberation from these non-African predators and destroyers. The lack of confrontation and conquest of this irrational fear of whites has created a culture of militant and cowardly pragmatism of dealing with white enemies.
The so-called Economic Freedom Fighters have recently launched a national shutdown with the harmless objective of unseating the current president and addressing other less threatening issues of “politics of efficiency” like loadshedding.
While the EFF was recently founded as a result of the split from the ANC by militant Charterists, its ideology of Charterism and nonracialism have a long history. In its imaginary history of origin, the EFF likes to associate itself with the generation of the Congress Youth League of Anton Lembede.
This imaginary narrative has some element of truth. This is because what the founding leadership EFF shares with this generation of the ANC Youth League is the foregrounding of the masses in the struggle for African self-determination.
The angry Charterists’ disenchantment with the moderate politics of the leadership of the ANC is the only correct thing about this imaginary myth by the militant founders of the EFF. The historical conditions that laid the foundation for the founding of the ANC and EFF should be traced to conquest in race wars of colonisation by barbaric white settlers since 1652.
These unprovoked race wars of extermination, enslavement, and domination by whites from their cold caves in Asia resulted in a division in the African race. This split took the form of pragmatists and realists.
Depending on the behaviour of the white conquerors, pragmatists were either moderate or militant. But whether or not they are militant, these pragmatists have always persisted in the naïve idea that “whites are here to stay”. The realists on the other hand have always cherished the sensible idea that “whites are not Batho/Abantu and therefore should be returned back to the sea” where they emerged. In a nutshell the realists held on to the idea that “whites are not here to stay”.
This accounts for the realist persistent desire not to coexist with abelumbi/whites but to end the white settler world which was premised on the death of Sechaba/Isizwe of the conquered Indigenous people since 1652.
To paraphrase Cedric Robinson, realists were searching for historical being of an independent Azania while pragmatists were searching for actual being of a democratic and nonracial white South Africa. The realists fundamentally understood the true nature of whites as a ruthless and power-obsessed race which does not operate on ethics but on violence and domination.
They also understood the brutal reality that whites are hopelessly irredeemable and incapable of co-existence on the basis of equality and fairness. It is this “realist anthropology” which informed Amaqaba’s struggle to return whites to the sea and Poqo’s continuation of this realist desire to end the white settler world by starting with its creators.
The “pragmatist anthropology” of the pragmatists foregrounded the naïve idea that whites are as human as the Indigenous people and that they can be educated to be ethical and converted to the way of the African race.
This explains why the pragmatists are able to separate whites from their “bad” behaviour and condemn racism by proclaiming that they are not anti-white but anti-racist. Pragmatists were forced to be militant by whites who resisted their ridiculous idea of education and conversation. These frustrated pragmatists became “angry and radical humanists”.
This historical background is what is missing from the imaginary narrative of the EFF. The Congress Youth League of the ANC was premised on two ideological opponents namely Anton Lembede and AP Mda.
The militant Charterists of the EFF have inherited the “broad nationalism” of Mda which was based on Amakholwa’s dangerous embrace of the christian propaganda of universal brotherhood. The uncompromising Africanists of Poqo are the ideological successors-in-title to the “narrow” or “ultra-revolutionary” nationalism of Lembede ala Africa for the Africans as promoted by Garveyism.
The first cardinal pillar of the EFF which calls for expropriation of land without compensation for equal redistribution is in line with the “broad nationalism” which accepts the presence and future of whites in South Africa thus embraces the annoying fiction that South Africa belongs to all who live in it black and white … The militant Charterists of the EFF seek to “radically” restructure white South Africa so that the so-called black South Africans can have an equal share of their land ala “economic freedom in our lifetime”.
They lack the revolutionary political vision of our realist ancestors (Amaqaba and Poqo) who refused to compromise with and appease whites but to end the white settler world and its creators to restore independent Azania for the natives only as per “pre-colonial” African history.
These realist ancestors unlike the militant Charterists of the EFF want to return to “the moment before the white master”. It is in this sense that they are searching for historical being, the Izwe/Lefatshe of the Palm race as Mazisi Kunene calls the African people. The pragmatist anthropology inherited by the EFF dangerously misunderstands the character of whites. Whites are only willing to inhabit a reality in which they are in power and are supreme to everyone.
Therefore, the militancy of the EFF fails to admit that whites need white supremacy and that there is no historical record which shows whites living as equals with other people who are not white or European (whites cannot even live among themselves as equals).
As long as “whites are here to stay” there will always be white supremacy. Given their culture and history, whites will always fight for their supremacy over Africans even if it means dying while protecting their ill-gotten power. Only white supremacy can satisfy whites. The African race urgently needs a realist anthropology to deal with whites or perish trying to coexist with their enemies.
“The fighter must distinguish friend from foe/enemy even if the latter is concealed under the same colour, language, family ties or tribal markings as their own” (Samora Machel).
Masilo Lepuru works at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg.
