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Many simulated political analysts in the past week have let their minds fall in between the cracks of the Zondo Commission, and have come out like zombies with their analyses.
In fact, almost everybody, including former president Jacob Zuma himself, made us believe that the commission, which is looking into state capture, is about the former president.
A valuable contribution any self-respecting political analyst ought to have made by now is that whether the people are wrong or right, testimonies are biased or unbiased, there remains a set of facts in which the truth is dressed.
Still and all, when a people ignore a set of facts, when they insist in the face of the facts,in believing in opposition to the facts then the issue is not about truth.
So the idea then that the elders and their victims are going to have a truth crusade at the commission that will rescue us from insubordination to white power is an illusion and one they should rapidly get over.
Any nation that is on top today, that has respect today, is a nation that takes time to educate its leaders and educating its important citizens.
When studying our politics, young people should be mindful not to be swept away by the conspiracy approach. There is no problem with us determining what conspiracies exist – obviously, there are conspiracies, and it’s very important that we know about those conspiracies. However, we must remind ourselves that we cannot spend all of our energy into just trying to root them out. There is much more work to be done than the mere discovery of conspiracies.
We must also not get addicted to digging up conspiracies. For by the time we find out the conspiracy and whose behind it, it’s too late anyhow. It takes more than knowing about it to defend yourself against it.
Our ability to defend ourselves must occur before the fact. Our programmes to liberate ourselves and to defend our liberation, to enhance our quality of life, to overthrow white supremacy, must go on regardless as to what other people are doing.
Whether they are plotting or scheming, it does not really matter. We will assume that the whites are scheming. We will assume that there are spies within the ANC. There is no problem with that.
But we must build an inclusive democratic system that will secure us against spies or white conspiracy or any other ethical conspiracy in the country. Such is a positive approach. And so we have to watch out when we just get one-sided on issues and recognise we have to bring balance to the system.
Young political leaders and lecturers also have to be careful when they get into conspiracy theory and discovering conspiracies. Conspiracies have a way of seducing you and audiences, and creating pressure.
If you get built up in the conspiracy approach as a young political leader, activist or lecturer, and you get attached to an audience that way, and you know an audience is looking for this, you then start looking for enemies in people.
So while there is nothing wrong with studying conspiracies and nothing wrong with studying other people’s organisations, we have to be extremely careful.
What the youth of today needs to understand is that in order for us to be in the situation we are in as people, we have to be out of our minds. It is a political and economic necessity. It is mandatory. And this is not a rhetorical statement.
We are a rich people, and yet we perceive ourselves as poverty-stricken. But our richness is not as much in our lands. The ultimate wealth of a people is in their heads.
With the kind of situation that we see today where the people who have natural wealth in their land are starving and do not own their land, and people who did not own the lands are in control of it and in control of the wealth, one could facetiously say that perhaps Africans would have been better off politically, economically and otherwise had we not has wealth in the African soil. For we would then have been forced to use our minds.
The Japanese have no wealth, no natural resources, in their soil. In an objective sense, we should call the Japanese a very dependent nation. Their dependency has not made them poor. They are made wealthy by the people who supply them because of the consciousness that they project in the world.
It is for similar reasons toward the native South Africans that in 1960 the late Steve Biko, with Dr Mamphela Ramphele, founded the Black Consciousness Movement.
You don’t have to have any land if you’re smart enough to talk other people out of theirs or to take other peoples lands.
In other words, then, the ultimate determiner of wealth and power in the world is the mind of the human being. That is why then we are poverty-stricken. Not because we are not blessed with wealth, but because we have been robbed of our greatest wealth which is our mentality, and our consciousness as a people.
We would have to be out of our minds as a people to be in the condition which we are today – and to be dealing with almost a total reversal of reality that we deal with today. That those who own least, who were given least by nature are in control of the most, and those who were given most have the least. This can only occur when the minds of those who have least have been twisted and turned backward, and their consciousness falsified by the poor political and economic education which has been taking place on the ground.
If we do not transform ourselves within the next five to 10 years we will go into almost irreversible decline and perhaps genocidal demise. We do not have much time as the nature of the world is changing so rapidly and dynamically that we can no longer debate year in and year out about which way we are going. The best direction is that of forgiveness so that we may heal. It is that concept of each one teaching one, learning more from each other in order to produce more while fighting for our democracy to realise a restoration which will bring about the advancement of our national and social interests as a people.
• Collin Mdaka is an acting Gauteng provincial chairperson of the ANC Professionals League and ANC Youth League member. He writes in his own capacity
