Questioning icons

May 05, 2004

We were visited by two international icons last week. It is indeed not strange how by and large people who have attained such stature, by the sheer dint of long, historic contribution, are never, ever questioned or criticised.

Such icons are people who possess tremendous power and influence, and it matters precisely because of their great moral authority and command over the affairs of millions of human beings that they always be questioned.

No leader, particularly he or she who wields such awesome power, should ever be deemed sacrosanct. And one's age is to be given no consideration in this regard.

General Giap and Ho Chi Minh were octogenarians, and their beloved country had fought and repelled invaders non-stop for well over 45 years. In fact they fought all the dominant powers of the western world, the French, the British and the Americans, the latter of whom they warned: "...if you invade Vietnam, you shall have to fight to the death every single Vietnamese age nine to 99..."

When the Americans were finally fleeing Saigon, it is only then that they saw whom they were fighting—barefooted boys and girls of the Viet Cong.

The apartheid regime of South Africa, founded by the white Boer invaders, had consigned Africans, the vast majority of the population, to being non-humans in their own land for decades and got away with that. Then it was not fashionable to support the anti-apartheid struggles and anyone who dared to do so was tagged either a "raving communist" or a "black power terrorist" by all the western powers.

It was not until the horror of the Sharpeville massacre of unarmed Africans in March 1960 that the critical consciousness of the modern world was ignited and the pressure of world opinion in terms of economic sanctions and blockades, and cultural and sporting alienation, began to force the apartheid regime to begin to countenance change.

During the visit of the two freedom-fighters, Mandela and Tutu, accolades were graciously heaped on every Tom, Dick and Harry who contributed in any which way to the destruction of apartheid and the establishment of democratic governance.

Yet not a single word about the Cuban armies who left the Caribbean to established a buffer zone in the jungle of Angola and beat the hell out of the supposed superior South African apartheid military forces and pushed them back across the border. Not a single word!

But we who were abreast of the developments knew that the victories of the Cubans on the border between Angola and South Africa triggered the turnaround.

Interestingly, the then T&T Government never took up the request to refuel the Cuban planes in T&T for the flight across the Atlantic. A time of great shame for those of us here committed to the liberation of the continent from which we originated.

But what the Cuban soldiers accomplished then brought great pride to us and was indeed reminiscent of the great Haitian armies of the previous century who repelled western powers.

That is the history of our Caribbean stock, a history about which our children are never taught. But our visiting freedom-fighters are not burdened by such ignorance, so why not one word in salutation to the Cubans?

And what, pray thee, has really changed in South Africa since 1994 when the ANC assumed governance? Ten years really comprise too short a time in terms of social development, but what we are looking to see is whether in fact certain particular seeds are being sown.

We said elsewhere: "...There is always grave danger whenever a progressive social grouping achieves power by way of a process that does not itself dismantle the state. The ANC assumed state power with its facets and structures and arrangements and system of social relationships all intact and operative.

"History tells us that the state apparatus is intrinsically conservative by nature and logic. Once the state is left intact, its structures will by their own dynamic remain self-perpetuating. Everything tends to remain fundamentally as is..."

That's why the highly trumpeted Truth and Reconciliation Commission, no matter how much confessions it extracted, the extent of the compassion displayed and apologies received, could not be anything but idealistic melodrama and great theatre.

Desmond Tutu himself told us last week that under apartheid, the whites, 20 per cent of the population, took 87 per cent of the land mass, while Africans, 80 per cent of the population, had to contend with only 13 per cent of the land.

Then ironically Tutu says to us, "...You helped us to overcome apartheid, now help us to alleviate poverty..." But how can poverty be alleviated? It begins with land reform.

The ANC government has the power to do it and it must be done immediately. The masses of people have to be brought through land reform into the process of wealth generation and accumulation.

Mbeki must be warned that, though Mandela's and Tutu's key role has been to project progress, development and revolution as a gradual rather than a confrontational process, he cannot continue indefinitely to manage a situation in which vulgar opulence exists side by side with townships as small as the Queen's Park Savannah.

These townships are inhabited by as many as 30,000 Africans and devoid of basic amenities, wherein people are unemployed and unemployable while large tracts of land remain unutilised and in the hands of a white minority.

The masses will not wait forever, because sooner than later they will rise up violently to better their human condition.

Mugabe in Zimbabwe did nothing for years until the situation blew up, then, to save his own skin and that of his rich black friends and relatives, he begins to exploit the land issue just as some politicians in T&T exploit the race issue.

Be warned, Mbeki! You are not an icon to be spared the questioning!