How Anton Lembede saved the ANC from the White Monopoly Capital capture in the ‘40s

My aim is to show you how elites use information to make you sheep and followers to what is being said and to accept everything as if it was from the holy Bible or the Koran. The manner in which society (governments, capital, and others) manage information would make you realise that democracy is a myth, and that elites actually prefer repressive systems of government rather than those that encourage free flow of informati

                              Walter Sisuslu, Nelson Mandela and Anton Lembede

Elites are always fearful of the power of blacks in South Africa. A revolution by blacks is not around the corner because they are psychologically managed. Imagine if the whole of Soweto and Sebokeng were to occupy farms between Johannesburg and Vereeneging. Who can stop them? No one. Yet blacks stay put in Zone 10, Orange Farm and Phiri-Mapetla as if their power is not in their hands. Nobody has a gun or whip to control these masses but they continue to behave.

Information is a great tool to control minds of society. In a democracy, in particular, you don't need guns or the military to control crowds but words. Let me demonstrate how powerful the use of information is and what propaganda has achieved to date.

The struggle for liberation in Southern Africa and other parts of the country was to fight European imperialism and to regain lands lost. Other things were secondary, and I will go as far as saying irrelevant. The first wars fought by the Khoisan and many other tribes or kingdoms residing along the African southernmost east coast, what is today South Africa, were against brutal incursions by Europeans and to drive them out of their lands.

Remember that there was no pounds or rands to worry about. There was also no dependency on whites to feed Africans. So, arguments like a depreciating rand or food security did not hold. Africans acted out of pride and need to protect their lands and people. There was little or no space for brown envelopes. Sekhukhune gallantly battled the Portuguese.

Langalibalele, Bhambatha and Basotho tribes fought against English imperialists. Dingane dipped his spear in the heart of Voortrekkers. Labour was needed in mines and agriculture. Land was needed for agriculture and development of a modern capitalist state.

Blacks were hard to conquer until Boers and the English got together to form the Union of South Africa in 1910, under strict instructions from London. This is when the real conquest started, commencing with the Land Act of 1913 and all the way to the creation of the apartheid state in 1961. Britain was instrumental throughout.

In fact, London maintained a double agenda. The English collaborated with Boers to subjugate blacks, this is the part of the story that is known to all of us. Britain also collaborated with black liberation movements to manage aspirations of blacks. The English-speaking community in South Africa was placed in the minds of blacks as "liberal", meaning that they are or were as not venomous or racist as their Afrikaans-speaking counterparts. That made it easier for them to infiltrate the struggle for liberation by the African majority.

The founding of the African National Congress (ANC) was a splendid idea which had the support of King Dinizulu, whose Zulu monarch had lost large swathes of land to the English and others in northern Natal and Southern Mozambique (Delgoa). But the struggle was going to be led by "sanitized" blacks who had received their education abroad. The assumption was that these men still carried the fire of Zulu and Pedi soldiers who had fought Europeans in the 19th century. This assumption was correct but also flawed at the same time.

Indeed some of the leaders still identified with the struggles of ordinary people, but in the main many had been absorbed into the side of Britain. In terms of managing information, it is necessary to manage the "enlightened" (today's version of clever blacks) and to use them to manage howling crowds, the black majority in South Africa. Blacks had serious aspirations of driving out whites and to regain control over their territories. Their political ideals were however watered down over time using different strategies, primarily force and manipulation of the mind.

The establishment concort lies and misinformation (also called propaganda) with a view of attaining certain political outcomes.
A progressive theory of liberal democratic thought is based on the premise that there is a need to "manufacture consent".

This is achieved by using sophisticated techniques of propaganda by bringing in "those who are smart enough to figuring things out". These erudite individuals are smart enough to understand the inner workings of politics, they know what are white men's interests in South Africa, and by extension the entire region. They therefore have the capability to know things that "eluded the general public."

So it was logical to educate enlightened blacks at the time and to solicit their support in containing feisty and warring black tribes. Fort Hare was instrumental in the expansion of the elite political class that was going to govern in post-colonial Southern Africa. Architects of Poverty noted that English capital did not trust blacks enough to create a black capitalist class to run the economy. Instead, this was reserved for Afrikaners. So the English injected capital to Boerevolk companies and government to continue safeguarding British interests. The attempt to share the pie with blacks created via BEE has flopped. Hence, the agitation to see economic transformation now.

The emergence of the "young Turks" with the formation of the ANCYL in the 1940s was an attempt to catch the rot within as a result of the British agenda. The "pacificist" ANC had been in the pockets of English capital for too long and the wheels of the revolution were too slow as a result. Mzwakhe Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo rose into prominence because they felt that they needed to redirect the struggle. These young leaders were instrumental in the adoption of the  Programme of Action in 1949.
 

The Program of Action
 
The Programme of Action "called on the ANC to embark on mass action, involving civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts and other forms of non-violent resistance, similar to the 1946 Passive resistance campaign mounted by the South African Indian Conference (SAIC).

Notwithstanding the fact that the Programme of Action was adopted and that the trio of CYL members Sisulu, Tambo and Mandela were elected to the party’s National Executive body, the key brains behind the internal revolution in the ANC as Lembede had died under mysterious circumstances in 1947.
 
Lembede died with his Africanist element which disliked the presence of white liberals and communists, who by the way represented the antithesis of the British continued control of the South African state as it were. English capital supported the struggle as it supported Afrikaner nationalism.
 
The radicalisation of the ANC took place at the same time as the rise of the Nationalist Party, which finally took over the reigns in 1948. Still not to be deterred, British capital persisted in managing the ANC through the predominantly white South African Communist Party (SACP) as it is trying to do right now.
 
The SACP played a key role in two areas. Firstly, it managed to sway the clever blacks of the time into accepting that South Africa was not black by declaring that it "belonged to all who lived in it".  Today it is trying to convince the ANC that Radical Economic Tranformation should not hurt the economy, a euphemism for protecting white land thieves.
 
The adoption of the 1949 Programme of Action and formation of the PAC and MK was supposed to follow the upward trajectory of removing the black struggle from white influence. But it was never to be. British capital was worried about militant erudite blacks who already did what Lenin despised. For example, the opposition of Pass Laws had to be met with a barrel of gun. The Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 was a response to cooperation between smart blacks (the vanguard of the revolution) and the masses.
 
A second plan was devised to divide the revolution through banning of the PAC and MK (militarised smart blacks), in particular. The propaganda of the establishment helped us to understand the political struggle in South Africa the way we do today. The main aim was to control "bewildered herds" (or masses) to follow a specific pre-determined destination rather than what their forefathers yearned for when they fought the Battle of the Blood River, among others.
 
At the end, the struggle for liberation delivered democracy and no land. Isn't it suspicious that blacks have to demand "Expropriation of land without compensation" from the Constitution that they never wrote or formally adopted by means of a vote?
 
Also, one tends to question why did black people engage in a very prolonged struggle for liberation if land, control of the means of production, and restoration of their dignity were excluded in the Bill of Rights?
 
The release of Mandela and subsequent push for him to be elected as president and the adoption of a neoliberal constitution that does not speak to the aspirations of the Black majority were major achievements for British capital. Although blacks were said to have won political power, which I doubt, the economy was left intact under English capital. The "servitude" housing Afrikaner capital was equally protected.
 
Britain facilitated the negotiations to end apartheid but they already knew what path liberated South Africa had to follow. The direction was always going to advance or protect British interests.
 
A democracy works on information but such information must be sifted and controlled. Masses have to be given what they need to know, and nothing more. Every media gives the value of the rand and prices for major commodity prices. That is enough to manage your mind. Once masses are told that, for example that Britain has no single gold mine but sets the price of the bullion, masses would demand reasons to this anomaly. Also, nobody will tell you that minerals get mined in South Africa but only those in America and Europe get to enjoy profits on the backs of African labour.
 
Propaganda means that the masses have to be entertained. No wonder International sporting bodies decided to award rights to South Africa to hold the Rugby and Soccer World Cups in 1995 and 2010 respectively. The masses thought our country had finally arrived while they were being managed away from asking too many questions about what really happened to their economic liberation. On top of that, popular culture helped to keep the masses entertained and to forget about politics. Political consciousness must be muted. That’s the job of the apartheid media.
 
In a democracy, the bewildered herd has to be distracted and also "indoctrinated in the values and interests of private power and the state-corporate nexus that represents it." Elites see themselves as best judges of public interests. Gupta shenanigans were promoted ahead of the Steinhoff scandal. Evergreen contracts at SOEs continue to be hidden as corruption but Nkandla and Trillian sagas were reported on for many weeks and months. Without the use of force, the public followed suit and believed all they were told. That is a masterstroke of the apartheid media propaganda.