The Big Read: ANC is oblivious to history

08 July 2014 - 02:00 By Justice Malala
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TAKE NOTE: Forcing children, and adults, to sing the national anthem will not miraculously bring about social cohesion
TAKE NOTE: Forcing children, and adults, to sing the national anthem will not miraculously bring about social cohesion
Image: THULANI MBELE

What an absolutely ghastly idea. What a failure of logic. What woolly thinking. What an embarrassment to the forebears of the African National Congress.

What a blow to the idea that our MPs apply their minds to an issue before they open their mouths.

Last week, ANC MP Lindiwe Michelle Maseko ventured into our blessed lives with a stonker of a bad idea. She said the SABC should broadcast the national anthem twice a day. Why? To foster patriotism, she said. Maseko said South Africans were not patriotic enough and suggested the anthem be played by the national broadcaster every day at 6am and noon.

I expect before long Maseko and others of her ilk will suggest we stand up straight in our houses whenever the anthem is played. She might go further: why not throw those who can't sing the full version - such as some leading politicians who always mumble through the Afrikaans lines - in jail for being unpatriotic?

I jest. In all the mirth about Maseko's suggestion, here is the seriously flawed part: Maseko reportedly said that when she was growing up in the "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, the radio and TV station played the national anthem twice a day. She believed the SABC should do the same. She claimed this would strengthen social cohesion and moral regeneration.

This is my disappointment with some ANC "leaders" of today. They don't seem to have a clue about the history of their own organisation or what it stands for. In fact, even though she claims to have grown up in the late, unlamented and murderous former Bophuthatswana, it seems Maseko was one of those people who was either not present, or seems to have thought the Bantustan was something to be proud of.

I grew up in the former Bop. We were forced to sing that asinine "national anthem" of that discredited entity every morning at school, and listen to it on radio.

If Maseko was around in the 1980s, she would know the same schoolchildren who were forced to sing that anthem rose up against Lucas Mangope. In Winterveldt, Mabopane, Hammanskraal and many other parts, thousands of young people were arrested, tortured and imprisoned by Bop "leader" Mangope's tinpot dictatorship.

The fact that we sang that "national anthem" did not make us pay allegiance to Mangope. No amount of singing the anthem can bring about social cohesion, unless the lives of people are meaningfully and tangibly moved forward by the powers that be.

The ANC can institute all manner of singing of the national anthem, but so long as the people of Mothotlung and other parts of the North West do not have water, there will be no social cohesion. Instead, the low-level war over service delivery will escalate.

It is not what you sing. It is not what you tell people from the comfort of your Mercedes-Benz. It is what they see around them.

Right now they see corrupt municipal leaders and managers. They will protest. You cannot pull the wool over the eyes of the populace with meaningless edicts to sing the national anthem. Their lived reality is what will make them patriotic and cohesive, not songs sung on empty stomachs during electricity blackouts. The people are not fools.

In March 1994 I drove to Mmabatho, capital of the Bophuthatswana homeland, where protests had erupted after Mangope had refused to take part in the upcoming April elections. On the morning of March 11 1994 the Bophuthatswana national anthem had been played on BopTV, on radio and at the local army barracks. On the streets young and old were protesting against Mangope. The right wing rushed in to help the little tyrant.

It was all in vain. That day, the army turned against Mangope. Young people marched triumphantly through the town. Three rightwingers were killed and their fellow white supremacists were run out of town.

I was there. I saw it and reported on it. No amount of singing the national anthem could have made the "people of Bophuthatswana" (Mangope loved referring to them as "Batho ba me" - my people, or, in his mind "my minions") patriotic while Mangope made their lives hell. It is not the gimmicks that politicians come up with - like singing the anthem - that make us one people. It is their success in providing education and making a meaningful contribution to the lives of people that matter.

It is very sad to see ANC "leaders" claiming Mangope as an example. History has taught them nothing. They shall be punished for failing to learn from it. History is a cruel master.

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