SA: The third force behind national protests

Hardly a week after the announcement of the 2009 national elections, there were service delivery protests in Western Cape, complimented by threats by the MK veterans to render the province ungovernable. Since May 2009, protests in this province were characterised by protesters digging trenches, barricading roads with burning rubbish and tyres and hurling stones at buses, with the police often using rubber bullets to disperse crowds. We did not hear any word from our political leaders, the media and the so-called independent analysts about the violent nature of the protests in this province or the violent undertone behind the threat to render the province ungovernable.

Instead of calls for patience and restrain, there was in fact open endorsement and backing of the protests by the African National Congress (ANC) in the province. As a matter of fact, in the week of sporadic outbursts of protests nationally, there were at least three protests in Western Cape, in Du Noon, Khayelitsha and Samora Machel. When the Democratic Alliance (DA) suggested that African National Congress (ANC) activists were behind the protests, the ANC in Western Cape evoked the right to protest and stressed that the ANC will do everything possible within the law to support activities which seek to mobilise communities for a more equitable allocation of resources.

Now that the protests over lack of service delivery have spilled to all provinces of the country, there are propositions that there are some sinister forces exploiting the legitimate needs and demands of the poor to mobilise communities against the local and provincial governments. We hear leaders who should know better referring to what are effectively pure acts of exasperation and expression of despondency, desolation, and waning faith in the responsiveness of the state, as the work of criminals and a product of incitement by some faceless nefarious forces.

We are told that some opportunists are utilising the needs and demands of communities as a mobilising tool. The subtle undertones of this assertion are that poor communities are incapable of interpreting their conditions and the world in which they live on their own.

The suggestion is that the conditions of poverty and want are not sufficient to motivate the poor to galvanise themselves around their needs to challenge the system through mass protests. One way of understanding this is that the establishment does not believe that poor people have the expertise to mobilise themselves to rise against their marginalisation either by peaceful or violent means. The assumption is that poor people are too daft and dumb to, on their own, muster the courage to express their disgust and despair at the lethargic pace in the change of the quality of their lives in the midst of the hoarding, looting and opulence and extravagance by the bureaucrats, the political officials and the social ad political elites. In other words, the supposition is that the elite and educated have the monopoly over intelligence and force.

According to this theory, for poor people to rise, peacefully or violently, to push for sociopolitical and economic transformation and betterment of their lives there must be some ‘terrorist’ agitation. To put it simply, the uprisings over service delivery are but the work of some few rotten potatoes, the vast majority of law-abiding citizens are patiently waiting ‘tot piet kom’ for the benefit of economic growth to trickle down to them. I will be lying if I can say I understand the difference between this kind of mindset and that of PW Botha and the Nats. In the books of Botha, Malan, Vlok, et al, all the protests and talks about rendering the country ungovernable were the handiwork of some Moscow-bewitched terrorists. ‘Our Kaffirs are a very happy, peaceable and patient people; they cannot be the ones responsible for all this burning and looting. This is the work of communist, anti-Christian instigators. The police will do all in their power to ‘protect’ law-abiding citizens against these rubble-rousers.’

Without condoning all the means that are used in these protests, one thinks it is an arrogant expression of disregard of the intelligence of the poor to think that any form of expression of discontent and disgruntlement cannot emanate from the independent minds and activities of the poor; there must be an external force. It does not matter that there is a sea of poverty amidst pockets of massive affluence and opulence. It does not matter that the majority of the poorest of the poor battle for space and air and even share blankets and meals with rats, while a tiny minute section of the population live in huge, air-conditioned mansions and large chunks of barbed bed-wired plots of land.

It does not matter that the majority of the people walk hundreds of kilometres to work and cannot afford even a bicycle while one individual can own a fleet of cars worth amounts of money that could feed a million families for a decade. ’Our people are too submissive and docile to rise up in rebellion. This sort of violence MUST be the work of a THIRD FORCE.’

Oh, yes, there is definitely a THIRD FORCE, but this third force is not some amorphous, vague, abstract, faceless animal. It is POVERTY, HOMELESSNESS, HOPELESSNESS and DESPAIR. It is the ARROGANCE and INDIFFERENCE of the rich, the elites and the governing classes. The third force is empty promises, corrupt officials, looting of public resources, jobs for cronies, nepotism, and maladministration. This is the real third force. Otherwise there are only two forces, the poor and the rich, the haves and the have-nots, the rulers and the ruled, the exploited and the exploiters - or as the emcees would put it - the MOTHERFUCKERS and the fucked-up.

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* Mphutlane wa Bofelo is the provincial political commissar of the Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA) in KwaZulu-Natal and one of the prominent poets and spoken word artists in Azania/South Africa.
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