Swati rebels: Leave King Mswati alone and step into the new century – democracies are scams
By Hadebe Hadebe
A democracy is a tool for maintaining power relations rather than to create advantages for all...
During elections it’s not about party agents, presiding officers or the people (citizens) but the system itself. The big system maintains itself, voting is just a sideshow to legitimize the system in the eyes of the people.
In fact voting is nonsensical and should not be allowed to exist in the normal world.
All the time we are constantly focused on low level, insignificant issues in our understanding of what democracy is and what it is not. Democracy is often described as a ‘government by the people, for the people’. But things become rather interesting when the people get placed at the bottom of the pile when resources are shared or distributed. Political systems serve themselves and their owners rather than the people.
The philosophical foundation of a political system is not to serve political parties and or those who vote for them, but it has much more bigger aims that are even sometimes above the knowledge of those who participate in the voting process.
In his base-superstructure argument, Karl Marx alluded to the fact that society is divided into two clearly identifiable strata. The first and crucial level is made up of those who own the means of production and custodians of the political system [BASE]. The second level consists of social institutions: legal, political and cultural, and also ideologies and forms of consciousness such as law and politics [SUPERSTRUCTURE].
How this works is that the base shapes the superstructure in terms of how society should think and behave. On its part, the superstructure is there to maintain and legitimize the base.
In practice this means that the nature of politics or economic policies that are made available to us to partake in aren’t there for the sweetness of it but they serve a specific purpose, which is to advance interests of those in the base (primarily owners of capital and oligarchs). This explains why large companies would go out not only to fund political parties and individuals but also to dictate what policies should be adopted.
But ordinary people are required to vote with the belief that they are electing a government, political parties and or individuals of their choice. However, the truth is that those who own capital have a louder voice than a voter, even more power than a politician who is nothing but a general manager for the downtrodden society on behalf of a capitalist. In fact, a vote can be manipulated or discarded by the Electoral system (Commission) if it contradicts and threatens the interests of the base (capital).
This is where democracy and voting become a useless exercise that it is. If people were to know what is at play they would reject the electoral system with all the contempt it deserves.
Elections have nothing to do with transparency or fairness, but they are a tool to legitimize a system that in the end doesn’t work in the best interests of those who vote. In recent years elections in places like Kenya, Zimbabwe and Greece demonstrated how voting is generally bad for the people. Greece, for example, wanted to sever ties with the European Union but a heavy hand was deployed to keep the Greeks in line.
In the case of South Africa, there have been exactly five elections and millions of people have participated in all of them. When Africans started voting in 1994 they were poor. 27 years later they are still poor. Compare that to Stellenbosch oligarchs who own the banks, corporates and media houses; they have multiplied their wealth threefold. The likes of Johann Rupert know and understand the power they hold over the whole South African society: nobody dares touch them for who they are and what they are capable of doing.
ANC Treasurer General Paul Mashatile recently admitted that between 70-75% of ANC funding comes from business people and you still wonder why no Land expropriation without compensation has been executed yet?
The branches, the voters of the ruling party and all the previously disadvantaged people of South Africa were taken for a ride at Nasrec by certain senior leaders of the ANC who know the truth about how fake Western democracy is but are afraid to tell people the truth lest what happened to Chris Hani in South Africa, Samora Machel in Mozambique, Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso and John F Kennedy in US would happen to them.
Our research tells us that from King Shaka down to the recently deceased King of the Zulus Zwelithini Zulu, each King's death was, one way or another, orchestrated by the Rothschilds. Today they are trying to use a scam called democracy in Swaziland to overthrow King Makhosetive to maintain their old age western democracy scam to destabilise the only last standing monarchy governed country in Africa
Furthermore, the Oppenheimer family has always controlled the South African society and its coffers (Treasury) since the early days of white dominance. To this day, they have better access and privileges (like the evergreen mining licenses that no other ordinary person can have.
Their private Fireblade terminal at OR Tambo Airport [Side Note: That former Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba lost his job after refusing to sign its secession to the Oppenheimer family] is just but two illustrations to show that the base doesn’t need a vote to be ‘a leader of society’.
So when they speak about State Capturers, you should know they are insulting those revolutionary Black people they consider as ‘rebellious slaves’ for daring to wrestle South Africa’s economy away from the icy grip of the Oppenheimer family and white monopoly capital.
As I have noted above; not even politicians have the kind of power that the monied class in South African society wield. Who votes for these oligarchs? Do they care about democracy? Most likely the Oppenheimers have never voted in South Africa during the apartheid era into democracy.
People often talk about South Africa becoming the next Zimbabwe. It can only happen if those in the base want it to happen. But in all likelihood that cannot happen if they feel their interests are cushioned. The reality is that things like land reform and nationalization will never happen in our lifetime due to the obvious reasons. The ANC know this… [Side Note: Lest the ANC starts an economic revolution that would culminate in another Battle of Cuito Canavale]. South Africa remains a settler-colony supreme, ahead of both Zimbabwe and Kenya, so it cannot be treated like other extractive colonies – its roots stretch to Europe, US and further afield.
[Side Note: Only a civil war that should involve the Eastern block of countries, namely the Russian Federation, including Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria could change this status quo. Like in Syria and Iraq, the Oppenheimers a.k.a the Rothschilds can only be bombed out of the country by superpowers today known as the Russian Federation because South Africa’s mineral resources, which today also include oil, amongst many of its other rich underground deposits like gold, diamonds and platinum, is funding about 70% of what is today known as NATO/US terror worldwide.
In South Africa; the emergence of the so called Covid-19 soon after the ANC officially declared that all stolen land should be given back to its dispossessed owners in 2017 is no coincidence. The target for this mythical weapon of political dictatorship and fear known as Covid-19 is no other country but South Africa and its Black population, for the country is unmatched with its mineral wealth that the Rothschilds are looting with a license from the ANC government to sell elsewhere for the purpose of paying terrorists that are occupying and colonizing smaller countries for their mineral resources in the Middle East, South America and Africa, leaving a trail of civil war destruction and mayhem, poverty and social conflicts in their wake.
So for the world to know peace, South Africa must first be decolonized from Western control by superpowers from the Russian Federation. But the question is why there is no ANC leader so far inviting the Russian Federation like President Bashar Al Asaad of Syria to come and bomb the Rothschild out of the country? Instead ANC leaders are wasting time and resources entertaining court cases that they know very well they will lose to corrupt judges. Is there a silly game being played here at the expense of the poor masses or what?]
It sometimes happens that the base and superstructure get misaligned. The rise of Donald Trump in the USA, Brexit in the United Kingdom and of course; the unexpected emergence of the rebellious former President Jacob Zuma in the South African political system are shining examples of this misalignment.
In addition, instances of revolutions in places like Cuba and Iran could be interpreted as a forceful way of reshaping the base in order to achieve different societal outcomes. As free countries like Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria have since realized, the base didn’t occupy and operate its own markets in colonized countries through democratic means, it bulldozed its way into these poor societies, thus it can not be neutralised through parliamentary systems or democratic means, for it is a bastard child born out of wedlock and political rape of societies.
The base will do all that is possible to misalign the situation to its favour. In the case of Cuba and Iran, economic sanctions are a potent tool to restore the power of the base. But interestingly Cuba has survived Western sanctions for more than 50 years now. So is Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. Countries who struggle to survive Western sanctions, like Zimbabwe for example, are countries that do not completely dismantle western systems in their countries when they transform the economy. Instead; they try to put new wines, so to speak, into old wine skins and the two become incompatible.
Mixing socialism and capitalism is like putting Jesus and Satan in one room with the hope that the two men would reach an agreement. Fat and water can not mix. Mixed economies have not worked anywhere in the world because capitalism crash competition in order to monopolise the markets.
The events at Nasrec three years ago proved beyond reasonable doubt how far the base is willing to go in order to maintain the old economic status quo and derail the Polokwane train of Radical Economic Transformation. The ANC elections were rigged in broad daylight in Nasrec the same way Donald Trump was forced out of power by hook or crook in US for his sceptism on Covid-19 ‘pandemic’. By the time the elections took place in May 2019 in South Africa the misalignment had already been achieved via the power of money. So to stop the whole madness you must destroy the monopoly markets.
So to bring down this economic monopoly monster to its knees you must first dismantle its core structure; the economic monopoly and replace it with a brand new majority controlled economy from scratch. Assuming that Marx is correct, then the question that arises is: what do people vote for and why? It is simple, they have no clue.
SMOKE FROM THIS ALTAR...
Siyabonga 'Hadebe' Hadebe
[Side Note: Ladies and gentlemen, comrades and compatriots; our war of economic emancipation is not fought by ordinary men and women. Horrible past and scary political situations shaped each and every one of us into what we have become. Here is how the hands of history shaped the astute and incisive political analyst Siyabonga Hadebe, otherwise known as Hadebe Hadebe…]
By Siyabonga Hadebe
Today l am going to write about conflict that exists within one as a person, and this conflict tends to shape one’s world in everything he does.
One great example that comes to my mind is to disclose that although l grew up in most politically volatile places and times that this country has ever seen, l am not what the books say. And also for the greater part of my life my father never lived with us. Psychology literature tends to spell out a disaster for a person who has had a similar upbringing that l have had. But all these awful things never happened to me.
I was born and also spent my younger years in the lush foothills of the Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal. I belonged to three places at the same time, namely Steadville township in Ladysmith and two locations in Estcourt, namely Kwa-Bhekuzulu (a rural area) and Wembezi (township). I am equally from these three places since they raised me. Some friends have questioned why I have so many ‘homeboys’ who come from different places as me. The reason is simple; l am one tree but with many roots.
In brief, l have always lived in troubled waters... But l survived to tell you my tale!
Welcome to my world, my mind is shaped upside down due to my upbringing and experiences. I am a medley of fruit whom my late uncle called “a white person trapped in a black body”. I am like a chameleon: l have learned to live and adapt to environments and stimuli, that makes me a black man. A man from the streets...
My life journey began in a village that was given to our great-great father Inkosi Langalibalele after his imprisonment in Robben Island and exile in Cape Town (Langa township is named after this great man). The village of KwaBhekuzulu is still to this day the headquarters for the AmaHlubi nation. It is located a mere 17 kilometers from Estcourt (yes, President Zuma was held in my home!) and the N3 highway in the KZN Midlands. The village was a place of my family’s exile after the English took away our lands and dignity. The village is a place where poverty and deprivation were made to break us as a people.
One day l will write about this place to show how white European settlers manufactured poverty. In my past article on ‘Amazemtiti: The making of a native bourgeoisie class in colonial SA’ a few years ago, l gave a glimpse into the structural makeup of the area but l did not give any detail. Nonetheless, the place gave birth to me and shaped how l see the world. I was born in exile within the land l used to own where l moved from being a king to a pauper who had nothing.
I was raised in typical black household with many siblings and other members of the extended family. But my biggest, stern test was getting exposed to political violence during the high school years.
I was a student at a school for the academically gifted kids but right in the middle of the township called Wembezi. Our school was unlike any other school in the area: it had white teachers, a packed library, a fully-equipped science laboratory, and had discipline. This was before power moved to former white-only schools in town. Class divisions were planted in our young heads at that time.
Nonetheless, the school sought to create influential members of the community. I sincerely hope that l have become what was intended. But l am perhaps one of the few people who made it in academics because many people got displaced in the middle of this very promising project. Political violence struck while we were busy honing our skills for the future: our dreams were seriously threatened and it was easy to give up. We could not access the school because the place was deemed too dangerous for anyone to attend school.
Almost a heartless child soldier but l survived...
At night, we couldn’t sleep at home in fear of nocturnal attacks that usually entailed gunfire and arson. I lived in areas that were controlled by the ANC, and our neighbour was a local chairperson of the SACP (Amabomvu).
We were being groomed into becoming child soldiers and lived as if we were in MK camps. I never went to exile but from our experience in the darkness, l got a sense how those camps in Angola, Tanzania and Uganda were like. It was terrible, exhilarating but fun at the same time. We were the ‘polished’ guns who could not carry a gun in the hand.
A funny story involved one of our neighbours who was a young teacher at the time, but he liked the holy waters. One evening he assured our group that he had a new 9mm gun and told us we were all safe. Almost four hours later he fell asleep and we got worried. We asked one of my cousins who was close to him to take the gun from Makhurana (that was his name). To our shock, the bulge on his waist were shear blades for cutting grass. We were furious but Makhurana was drunk and sleeping. We still share this joke until today.
Makhurana wanted us to feel safer, and we did. For him what was important was that we had to mix with the herd to ensure our safety - since we always faced a serious threat of being killed when the IFP and SADF soldiers attacked. War mercenaries were the worst though, they attacked in private vehicles. One would witness peers die in a daylight ambush and houses being torched. For many young men (and women), it was a matter of survival and death. They had to fight back.
We had the likes of Harry Gwala from Pietermaritzburg who always spoke to us and assured us that we would be fine. Yes that was important to learn this because there was no hope but fear and grief. We were like little kids in Gaza when we hurled stones at soldiers and police. Many people died and never got to reach adulthood. Others were messed up by prison but many more disappeared without trace.
The peace between the IFP and ANC forgot about all these young people who were impacted by war. Of course, there was always a price to pay for the country: KZN will never be at peace since violence breeds violence. I was fortunate to get the support from my family and friends, and that is how l escaped death, poverty, desolation and prison. Even more so, l was fortunate to turn out the way l did.
My peers weren’t so lucky.
I first lived with my cousin whose husband was a teacher but later lived with my uncle who was also a school principal. So, l was always under pressure not to lose focus. Tragedy in our family struck when my cousin was brutally killed with an AK47 at close range when their vehicle they were in from work was ambushed at an intersection close to the township. We got a call that “Your mother sebemshayile ku ambush!” It felt like the world was crumbling down. The future was becoming uncertain.
Other people kept on dying and many becoming homeless due to displacement. I was becoming radicalized and hanging out with very naughty and violent groups as a way of protecting myself and others close to me. I was doing matric when SACP leader Chris Hani was assassinated in 1993. My late friend Steven Memela and l went to Pietermaritzburg to listen to Harry Gwala, Winnie Mandela and Peter Mokaba speak.
We ransacked shops and stole food and clothes. Individuals were shot, injured and imprisoned. On our way back, there were always risks of our bus getting ambushed. This was normal for all travels to and from rallies, that often took place in PWV (Jozi), Durban and other places. Being a comrade then had nothing to do with cushy positions and tenders - we were the young ‘comtsotsi’, so to speak, and others that were braver were part of self defense units (SDUs) to defend our communities from sporadic attacks.
I once turned down an invitation for a trip to KwaNgwanase (close to the border with Mozambique). Many guys frequented these trips since the only way to get weapons was through cross-border smuggles. When l heard why we had to go there l created a crisis and disappeared. I was not ready to carry a gun after l had made a commitment that the best I could do in our struggle was to collect wood and water for everyone to eat (in simple language, l was part of a group that stole anything from food, clothes and other necessities).
My deep involvement in dangerous politics worried my family members. My father spoke to my uncle and author NF Mbhele “to look after me”. That is when I was taken under their wing: his wife, a school principal, made me her project on weekends l was no longer allowed to mix with crowds. I spent most weeks in Hilton (near Pietermaritzburg) where l had an opportunity to attend classes in Ndumiso College or at nearby Plessislaer Technical College to prepare me to for matric exams.
In turn, l would teach other matric students who went to unfortunate schools. I taught them biology, physics, maths and English. I almost didn’t get exemption since l spent most time teaching them instead of focusing on my school work. That was life! There was a reason for this, one was terrified to sleep at night in fear of being attacked. So, we would spend evenings at a local school in candlelight studying while the noise of guns and petrol bombs sounded nearby. We were not going to be fazed.
When the year ended my uncle shipped to Pretoria University to study. I have not lived in troubled Natal ever since.
It is amazing that with all the difficulties one went through I turned out normal without any assistance from anyone. Perhaps the survival skills were learned in do-or-die environments of political violence. I have not seen or consulted a psychologist or therapeutic sessions like millions of black South Africans who continue to experience hardship, violence and pressure to do drugs or to join violent groups.
My story isn’t different from what every black male go through, whether in townships and squatter-camps or rural areas. We spend most of our young lives pre-occupied with survival and fear of dying. When we become older we get canonised as violent types who not only oppress women, but who are at war with them. Imagine spending all your life running away from the criminal element but when you are old and thinking that you are safe, someone calls you trash and a killer.
As the late US rapper Tupac Shakur puts it, we as black males spend our lives fearing to die. Black males fear death like everybody else. They carry guns, knives or resort to violence as a way of self-defense against the very same criminals and killers that terrorise people. There’s no time in our life that we grow up not knowing a killer and or somebody who can potentially take your life. We fear them, we witness them killing or intimidating others and run away from them.
However, in most cases we have nowhere to go and are left with no option but also to kill and steal as a way to survive. It is no wonder to see that of the thousands of people who get assaulted, jailed, killed and kill, over 89% cases involve black men. As black men we grow up understanding one language: in order to survive you need to be able to handle violence, if not you will perish early. No wonder around 80% cases of black male deaths are incomparable to women and other races who get killed each year.
What’s even more perplexing is that even public policy is least concerned with improving the condition of black males. And even without any support in the economic front, these ‘monsters’ somehow forge ahead in life and in the economy. Equity laws rank black males below white, Chinese and Indian women and possibly black women. Black men are cornered both in the streets and in professional life, that is if they have made it.
Zola 7 sums up the life of a black man through his song ‘Umdlwembe’:
Yewena!
Ungazongihlanyisa wena
Ungazongihlanyisa wena uyabona
Kushukuthi kumele wenze into yakho
Ngizakuphula ikhanda lova, ngikushay’inhloko baba
Phuu guluva ngiyakukhafulela
Bhande lami, wena ukhomba mina?
Bhande lami uzongihlanyisa
Kuyof’insizwa kuyosala abafelokazi…
Only the strongest survive in the wild world where men live, that is why we die in numbers. Society has normalised our violence, pain and death. We have to live, we fear death and that’s why we arm our selves because we’re fearful. Nobody wants to hear our plight. Nobody wants to save black men. In no time we’ll cease to exist. We will depart with the seed needed for the black nation to grow.
Going back to KZN, it would be interesting to know what happened to child soldiers of the prolonged conflict in the province. Both sides of the debilitating, small scale war had child soldiers. Can we be surprised that violence and killings continue in KZN to this day? The former child soldiers are now men in their 30s, 40s and 50s. None of these people were rehabilitated after growing up in a war zone starting from 1979 all the way to around 1995.
The same maybe said about young men from East Rand and the Vaal who also went through the same ordeal. They are not counted anywhere as their brothers in KZN. Nobody has apologised for making us automatic killers and or for exposing us to a war. Yet, these men are expected to be normal after all they had to endure. Please talk about GBV, bank robberies, unemployment, poverty and violence, all these things conceal a wanted person and his suffering: a Black man.
The recent uprising occurred in places with former child soldiers - they have nothing to lose. They are no ethnic mobilisers but they are simple people who were inducted in the hall of fame for their lack of fear of death. Hostels, prisons, taxi ranks and some of the country’s hotspots are populated by former child soldiers from KZN Midlands, Bhambayi, Thokoza, Soweto and Boipatong. The child soldiers are forgotten in the post-apartheid democratic project, they have no future, no jobs, and are without hope.
No reconstruction and building took place in KZN after its low scale war ended in 1995. Absence of the sound of the gun or smell of human flesh was not a sign of peace. KZN and other places across South Africa are like Somalia and Yemen, they have guns and war buried under a rock. Unfortunately, if war is not properly addressed it will replicate itself after every decade.
Child soldiers like me were left to fend for themselves when political leaders were ready to hug and embrace. The little child was ignored in their shadow of victory.
Si ya yi banga le economy!
