Yesterday’s oppressors are today’s democrats

“In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defence of the fatherland. The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation.”

These are words which Nelson Mandela uttered from the dock at the opening of the defence case in the Rivonia Trial on 20 April 1964.

We ought to pay homage and tribute to these gallant fighters of our people whom Nelson Mandela correctly points out as defenders of our fatherland. In recent times there has been a liberal onslaught waged against the liberation movement and its rich history and heritage.

This liberal offensive hits hard at the belly of all those organisations and activists who fought the apartheid system many of whom are not recorded in history books – ordinary black men and women who ached white apartheid’s wrath.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) seems to be very adamant about it’s so called “know your DA campaign”. There is no confusion or uncertainty that the DA as an organization never had the opportunity to fight the apartheid system and its discriminative laws.

The DA (through its predecessor the Democratic Party) wants to associate itself with the legacy of struggle icons like Nelson Mandela and therefore lay claim to the history of our struggle over many years to defeat apartheid which they supported.

They want people to forget their contributory role in oppressing the Black majority.

Black born-frees are often told by their white counterparts to forget the past because it has nothing to do with them. We are told to never look back. But we know very well that some of the answers to present-day questions lie in the past.

Well, I chose not to forget the past because the past can help us identify the historical injustices against my people.

While current DA members like Patricia de Lille and Nosimo Balindlela might have been active in the liberation struggle through the ranks of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the African National Congress (ANC) respectively, it is incorrect for the DA to claim their individual contribution as though it is that of the DA itself.

Credit goes to those persons and the organisations they were part of at that point in time and not the DA!

The DA claims that it fought apartheid for 30 years yet no history archive anywhere has such a record. The DA never objected to the banning of the National Liberation Movements and now they want to honour our black heroes and heroines who were brutally murdered, jailed and exiled by a regime they supported and benefited from its policies.

The problem with liberals in this country is that they are hypocritical.  Liberals in South Africa have always displayed signs of ambivalence during the apartheid years.

The DA and its predecessors never objected when Mandela was declared a terrorist and incarcerated to Robben Island. For the most part, Helen Suzman was left alone in parliament to oppose the system in the presence of many other liberals.

Where was the DA?

The DA`s anti-transformation agenda does not favor the Black majority but nonetheless uses black faces and history to garner electoral support.

The DA doesn’t support Land Reform policies despite their potential to uplift blacks. The DA started exposing its inherent dishonesty and hypocrisy when it opportunistically declared that it has adopted the freedom charter before the 2009 elections.

The ANC’s struggle against oppression was not a civil action but revolutionary act for the reason that all options were shuttered.

Other scholars have defined it as an extra-parliamentary work hence the armed struggle which Mandela himself initiated. The DA must write its own history.