JOHANNESBURG—The governing parties of South Africa and Zimbabwe are fond of quoting Frantz Fanon, the Afro-Caribbean political philosopher and Marxist from the former French colony of Martinique.
Fanon was especially famous in the 1950s and ‘60s, publishing several books that became seminal texts for groups fighting against colonialism.
Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF and South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) used a Fanon text, “The Wretched of the Earth,” published in 1961, as encouragement to wage war against white nationalist regimes.
In the book, Fanon argued that violence was the only means available to impoverished populations to force “radical change” in societies ruled by powerful but illegitimate governments.
Today, the ANC and ZANU-PF remain adherents to Fanon’s philosophy of “liberation through violence,” even though their wars ended decades ago.
In South Africa, officials from the self-styled “Party for the People,” the ANC, throw one particular part of the Fanon archive at the nation when railing against the supposed ongoing control of the economy by white capitalists:
“What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.”
The ANC and ZANU-PF claim to be “redistributing wealth stolen by the white man” to the millions of poor black people in their countries.
But both are part of governments that have been mired in corruption since 1980 in the case of Zimbabwe’s rulers and since 1994 in the case of the party Nelson Mandela led into power following decades of apartheid.
Both the ANC and ZANU-PF encourage devout nationalism, with both condemning opponents as “unpatriotic” and even as “traitors.”
These parties blatantly ignore other key Fanon writings, including those in which he warned of the inherent dangers when liberation organizations become governments.
When former “freedom fighters” taste the power of government, the philosopher said, they inevitably become “racist oppressors” themselves.
He argued that such nationalistic organizations were simply incapable of building stable, productive nations, since they had been established to fight, not to govern.
“The national front which has forced colonialism to withdraw cracks up, and wastes the victory it has gained,” Fanon wrote.
He predicted that liberation leaders who had once embodied people’s aspirations for independence, political liberty, and national dignity would become “monopolizers of wealth,” using government for “private advancement.”
“Some have a double source of income and demonstrate that they are specialized in opportunism. Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs, while morality declines,“ Fanon wrote. ”The party ... reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilized.
“The party helps the government to hold the people down. It becomes more and more clearly anti-democratic, an implement of coercion.”
ZANU-PF leader and Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa recently won an election condemned internationally as a sham.
Even the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc, usually silent on human rights and electoral abuses in Zimbabwe, issued a report slamming the polls as “riddled with irregularities.”
Mr. Mnangagwa issued invitations to his inauguration to more than 40 African leaders, but only three turned up. One of those was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accompanied by a large delegation of top ANC officials.
Mr. Ramaphosa, in fact, took the unusual step of congratulating Mr. Mnangagwa for his “victory” before SADC—of which South Africa is the leading member—had issued its assessment of the election.
Mr. Ramaphosa’s endorsement of the Zimbabwean leader was criticized globally, not least by Zimbabwe’s long-suffering opposition parties.
Boitumelo Mpakanyane, a political scientist who heads the democracy program at the Rise Mzansi nonprofit in Johannesburg, told The Epoch Times that the ANC and ZANU-PF have always been “strikingly similar.”
“Both were entrusted with the hopes and dreams of an entire nation, both secured massive political freedoms for their oppressed majorities. However, not long after stepping into governance, both seemed to stop liberating,” he said.
“The ANC and ZANU-PF have been in power for too long. These elites are now arrogant and greedy, and they don’t care about what their citizens need.
“Witness South Africa’s highest unemployment rate in the world (35 percent). Witness Zimbabwe’s highest inflation rate in the world (105 percent). These are countries with vast natural resources, such as gold, but much of it goes into the pockets of the respective parties.”
Zimbabwe’s meltdown began in the early 2000s.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe unleashed his Central Intelligence Organization and ZANU-PF “war veterans” to imprison and persecute increasingly popular opponents, such as Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Many opponents were murdered.
The “war veterans” invaded farms owned by white people, often assaulting the farmers brutally and even killing them.
Up until then, Zimbabwe had been one of Africa’s breadbaskets. Today, it’s a net importer of food, and hunger is common.
The South African government, then led by President Thabo Mbeki, ignored the unfolding chaos in Zimbabwe, even as millions of Zimbabweans crossed the Limpopo River illegally to escape violence and growing poverty.
This mass migration of Zimbabweans into South African cities and towns continues, often sparking deadly anti-foreigner violence.
“This, more than anything else, represents the fundamental failure of the ANC,” Mr. Mpakanyane said.
“They may have liberated our parents and grandparents, but they have imprisoned us in an endless cycle of underdevelopment, poverty, and unemployment.
“We remain hostages to the ANC’s policy of party first, and damn the country.”
Unlike ZANU-PF, the ANC hadn’t rigged elections to remain in power, said Mark Heywood, a veteran Southern African civil rights activist.
“Not yet anyway,” he said.
Leading up to the May 2024 election, the ANC is polling at the worst numbers in its history in government, with many surveys indicating that it’s set to fall below the 50 percent mark.
If this happens, the ANC will remain in government only if it forms a coalition with a smaller party—most likely the Economic Freedom Fighters, with its central policy of “nationalizing all forms of wealth,” including white-owned farms, mines, and banks.
Mr. Heywood told The Epoch Times: “The true test of the ANC’s democratic credentials will come when it truly faces losing power that it’s held for almost 30 years.
“It’s easy to be democratic when you’re winning. When democracy turns against you, and you risk losing your access to vast wealth, what do you do then?”
He referred to a recent statement by Mr. Ramaphosa in which the president claimed that the “key pillars” of South Africa’s foreign policy included the “promotion of human rights, peace and stability, and strengthening trade and investment ties” with other countries.
“The human rights part of this is simply not true, and the ANC’s record since 1994 proves this,” Mr. Heywood said.
“It sides with brutal regimes in China, Russia, and Iran. For decades, it has turned its back on the people of Zimbabwe. It has blood on its hands, preferring to cover up for the sins of its ZANU-PF comrades than to defend human rights.”
In 2010, largely because of campaigning from the South African government, SADC suspended its tribunal, which, in theory, could have prosecuted and sanctioned ZANU-PF leaders for human rights and other abuses.
Professor Sean Gossel, a political economist at the University of Cape Town, said the ANC had shown “ominous signs of autocracy” in recent years, as decades of misrule, corruption, and economic stagnation had eroded its support base.
“The ANC is more and more insecure, but at the same time, it remains defiant, arrogant even, in the face of criticism of its obvious failures and its deep-seated corruption,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Listen to the speeches made by leading ANC members. They’re always filled with self-aggrandizing statements like ‘We are Africa’s oldest liberation movement’ and ‘We will rule until Jesus returns to Earth.’”
Mr. Gossel said a strong judiciary, independent media, and vociferous civil society organizations were presently “fighting to unite” South Africa, and not the ruling party.
“The ANC likes to stand on podiums and preach national unity, but in reality, it cannot even unite itself, and intraparty factions continue fighting one another for access to wealth and opportunities to plunder the public purse,” he said.
“The signs of South Africa becoming yet another of Africa’s failed states are strong, for as long as the ANC remains in charge of the show.”
Mr. Gossel argued that under the ANC, much like in Zimbabwe in the 1980s and ‘90s, South Africa had never developed into a “true democracy” and remained a “hybrid democracy.”
“These kinds of democracies, the ones that emerge after decades of authoritarianism, seemingly do their best to adhere to liberal democracy,” he said.
“They establish all the usual democratic institutions, and they draw up grand constitutions spelling out all the civil and political liberties that the regime they replaced denied citizens.
“But gradually, the veneer falls. You find that many of the institutions and laws exist in name only. And all the grand policies meant to concretize equality and human rights remain stillborn. The ‘new' governments begin to openly demonstrate authoritarian qualities.”
Under the ANC, like in Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF, citizens witnessed the burgeoning rise of populist politics, unaccountable leadership, and opaque decision-making processes.
These include the failure of state-run institutions; corruption; government institutions staffed by party loyalists instead of experts in their fields; failure to deliver basic services such as water, electricity, health, and education; and political change driven by the political elite rather than by the electorate.
“In this context, it’s no small wonder that the ANC and ZANU-PF are such firm friends; they are cut from the same cloth,” Mr. Gossel said.
Like many analysts, Mr. Mpakanyane argued that only a defeat for the ANC at the polls in the near future would save South Africa from becoming another Zimbabwe.
“At the moment, it’s a stay-away vote that’s keeping the ANC in government,” he said. “Millions of South Africans have rightly lost faith in the ANC.
“But, partly because of the role the ANC played in defeating apartheid, these millions just cannot bring themselves to vote for the few political parties with plausible manifestos, because these people consider that to be a betrayal of the liberation struggle.
“So they just don’t vote, and the ANC continues hanging on to power and driving us all ever closer to being a failed state, a la Zimbabwe.”
In February, Mr. Ramaphosa passed an amendment to South Africa’s hitherto respected Electoral Act.
The amendment contains several barriers to the future electoral participation of independent candidates and new political movements that could threaten the political establishment.
One is the excessive cost of registering political parties to contest elections.
“We need electoral reform in South Africa to rescue us from a greedy, incompetent political elite, but that alone won’t be the magic bullet,” Mr. Mpakanyane said.
“We need a radical reawakening of political consciousness, a consciousness driven by a united civil society that points the way to a new liberation struggle, liberation from all political forces, most notably the ANC, who lie to us and tell us they have our interests and welfare at heart when they clearly have only their own interests in mind when we vote them into power, like lemmings unable to stop ourselves from plunging to our deaths into the sea.”
Approaching the 2024 election, Mr. Mpakanyane said, the ANC’s message was the same as it had always been: “If you don’t vote for us, then you are unpatriotic. If you don’t vote for us, you betray the blood of your forebears who fought to liberate you.”
The analyst said that leading into the polls, civil society must take charge of intensive voter education urging citizens to “think for themselves” when hearing sloganeering from all political parties.
“In South Africa, we continue to pray for the day we have a government that rids the executive of all incompetent political appointments,” Mr Mpakanyane said.
“A government that’s transparent, that abandons the culture of secrecy that has allowed corruption to become endemic.
“A government that puts merit above the party line and that depoliticizes public service, free of patronage networks and toxic trade union dynamics.”
He said these were the forces destroying South Africa and “stamping on the graves” of people who had lost their lives battling apartheid, not those currently working to undo the damage done by decades of ANC misrule.
In a response to The Epoch Times, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said: “Most of what these analysts pass off as ‘ANC failures’ are lies.
“We have made mistakes, but most problems are just growing pains of a young democracy. Those who think they can take advantage of our so-called weaknesses are dreaming, and ANC is confident of an outright win in the 2024 elections; we won’t need to go into coalition with anyone.”
ANC insiders told The Epoch Times that despite the party’s well-publicized cash shortages, it was “giving tens of millions of rands” to local party branches to prepare them for the campaign ahead.
They said the ANC government was about to spend the equivalent of $5 billion on “social programs” in areas where party support had dwindled.
John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance, the ANC’s main opposition in parliament, described this as “further disgusting misuse of taxpayer money by a party that’s becoming more and more desperate” as its hold on South Africa slips.
“It’s attempted bribery,” Mr. Steenhuisen told The Epoch Times. “We’re confident though that citizens will see it for what it is and will reject the ANC on election day.”
