Bongani Mankewu from the Infrastructure Research Development Centre. Picture: Karen Sandison, African News Agency, ANA.
By Bongani Mankewu
Some Pan-Africanists find the confusing media narrative of South Africa appetizing.
Rather, the narrative aims to illustrate how African values have degenerated to the point where African leaders have no idea what their character should be.
Demagogues who are in the business of political enterprises and who pronounce what is correct for their revenue sources are gaining ground under Media South Africa in this regard.
South Africa's 1994 pact was a dummy, we know that, and any Pan Africanist worthy of their name won't be involved in that Neocolonial project that modeled South Africa as a Western state for capitalists under the banner of pseudo-democracy.
South Africa's political elite and private capital are conspiring to wreck South African society regardless of their political affiliation.
Political entrepreneurs were born from the same process as capitalistic pseudo-democracy was deployed to developing nations of the world.
Since, under Mandela's regime, South Africa failed to create communities that are self-sustaining and thinking.
Thus, we get these political nascent who are willing to do anything to remain part of this horrible Neocolonial project.
It is important to remind each other that there had been two successive policy regimes since the Second World War that have temporarily managed to reconcile the uncertainties and instabilities of a capitalist economy with the need for stability in people's lives and capitalism's own need for confident mass consumers.
The key elements were/are Keynesianism, which is a general system of public demand management, and the Neoliberal turn to pure markets, which is a system of markets.
As a result of selling the electorate to capitalists for their survival, we observe revolutionary demagogues found comfort among the corporate shareholders.
Thus, capitalism's problems were resolved, but in a way that was ultimately unsustainable. Former liberation leaders and current political entrepreneurs found comfort in this space, parading themselves as leaders of society.
These are the lessons we need to provide to our societies. As one Comrade Veteran put it in reference to the toxic hatred of other Africans by some in South Africans, "Despite opportunistic speeches, the ANC has failed to teach society how to be African".
Instead, the African National Congress modeled South Africa as some Western dolly country in Africa, thus, we hear local expressions like "Abantu base Africa, abantu ababuya phezulu", what nonsense is that about us as Africans.
Create thinking and self-sustaining communities - this was the failure of the Mandela regime.
Our communities will continue to degenerate away from themselves if these failures are not addressed across the continent - thinking, and self-sustaining communities.
We are one Africa continent not by the pronouncement of some political entrepreneurs but by ourselves as African communities.
Bongani Mankewu is an associate of the Infrastructure Development & Engagement Unit at Nelson Mandela University. He writes in his personal capacity.
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