Operation Fiela Ngwanana

A great African scholar and Town Manager of Emfuleni Municipality in South Africa Dr. Mmapusetso Bakane-Tuoane has received death threats as a result of her stellar investigative work with respect to some corrupt officials of certain departments. A Canadian educated Economist Dr. Bakane-Tuoane has uncovered some breath-taking levels of graft that she is working to uncover and clean up. Her incisive inquiry dubbed “Operation Fiela Ngwanana” a Sesotho expression loosely translated “Operation Go Girl Clean up the House” is a stinging encroachment upon those self-serving individuals and their cronies.

Calls have been made to beef up her personal security by adding more body guards around her. It was reported in the Sowetan newspaper on May 16 2008 by one of the great sons of the Mtimkhulus Mr. Godfrey Radebe that the latest incident involved five officials who became suspended after their corrupt practises were uncovered. Some of the threats against Dr. Bakane-Tuoane even reached her own home while others were conveyed via her cellphone.

Dr. Bakane-Tuoane and indefatigable daughter of the beautiful motherland South Africa stay the course and we are behind you. We love you and salute you from afar. You are doing everything right and keep on doing what you are doing.

Batho Pele! Siyaphambili ngomzabalazo wabantu!

Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa a Letdown

Like other conscientious people I was dismayed and blown away by the raw images of attacks against foreigners particularly Zimbabweans who form the largest segment of the immigrant population in South Africa. There were other foreigners also targeted like the Mozambicans, Nigerians, Somalis, and many others. These and many others are our family members. There is neither justification nor reasons for carrying out these attacks. This does not mean the Black South Africans’ grievances are not legitimate. The reverse is true. However as a civilized people we must condemn in strongest terms the unprovoked attacks against our African brothers and sisters. There is nothing that can give good reason for this state of affairs.


Embrace Our African Brothes and Sisters

As a liberated people we need to embrace our African brothers and sisters who played a pivotal role in our heroic struggle for emancipation from the apartheid iron shackles. I lived in Northern Botswana with many African exiles most of whom were Ndebeles from Zimbabwe. I shall write this blog from this unique point of view.


The Ndebeles Brutalized by President Sim II Sung Trained Brigade

The Ndebeles became refugees from their own land of Matebeleland as a result of the Fifth Brigade. Unlike the regular army command structures, the Fifth Brigade was directly and personally controlled by the President of Zimbabwe Mr. Robert Mugabe. The Fifth Brigade was an outcome of a military agreement that was signed in October of 1980 between Mr. Robert Mugabe and the ruler of North Korea President Kim II Sung. The Fifth Brigade was comprised by the ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) guerillas including some other battalions of Tongogara. This meant that they were Shona speaking soldiers who shared the same ethnicity of Mr. Robert Mugabe and the few Ndebele troops of ZIBRA (Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army) of the great Ndebele legend Dr. Joshua Nkomo were kicked out.

It was reported in South African media that over 100 Korean trainers arrived in 1981 in Zimbabwe to train the Fifth Brigade. It was the same Fifth Brigade that occupied the Matebeleland of the Ndebeles (Mugabe belongs to the Shona people as previously mentioned) and committed the genocidal atrocities that resulted in more than 20 000 unarmed Ndebeles killed.


Ndebeles in Northern Botswana

The surviving Ndebeles fled to Botswana as a result of the brutal Fifth Brigade. I later fled to Botswana as a result of the brutality of the racist and sexist apartheid machinery. I met the great Ndebeles whom I grew fond of in the refugee camp Dukwe Refugee Settlement operated under the anti-refugee Botswana Refugee Council also known as the BRC and financed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I got to appreciate the work ethic and kindness of the Ndebeles. I even wrote a poem The Ndebeleles in which I paid tribute to a great people. They transformed what was an untamed and parched jungle into a green land that produced fruits of varying kinds and they carved impressive works of African art using the tough Northern Botswana wood and rocks. Francistown, among others, was full of remarkable art works by these industrious artisans.

The Ndebeles were very kind and hospitable. I vividly remember whenever they cooked their favourite meals with ischwala they would invite me to join along with them to eat what they ate. It was their custom to share their bread and water with strangers and passers by. The Batswanas who were very unkind to the refugees, particularly ill-treated the Ndebeles. It is on this basis that I was dismayed by the savage attacks against these people in my homeland South Africa. Needless to say, like other South Africans, I was ashamed and embarrassed. I know for a fact that South Africans are very hospitable and kind hearted people and that these attacks are the work of an aberrant but organized group. Hopefully the South African government will hunt them down and bring them to book. We can’t allow a hard earned capital of liberation to be squandered overnight by anarchists.


Betrayal of a People’s Dream

In the meanwhile, as a country, we have betrayed the dream of our living legend Mr. Nelson Mandela and I have already referred to this in my other blog The Miracle Betrayed. The situation should never have come this far. Our intelligence knows about things that brew on the ground and the question is why didn’t our government act on that?


Conclusion

We could have preempted this tragic turn of events. Now we have betrayed and let down both our leaders who have gone before us and those still living among us like Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Chief Albert Luthuli, General Holomisa, the great King of Mtimkhulu and Bhungane the Supreme King Langa Libalele and his rightful descendent Ingonyama Prince Muziwenkosi Langlalibalele II, the great legend descended from the famed Zimbabwe’s Monomotapa, medicine woman and woman warrior Mbuya Nehanda, the great monarch Isilo King Goodwill Zwelithini ka Bhekuzulu of Nongoma, the warrior extraordinaire in his own right General Sonshangane of Mozambique’s Delagoa Bay, the irrefutable King of Makholokoe Morena King Wetsi, the indomitable Queen Mofumahadi Manthatisi, the great legend of the unconquerable Mantsopa, the famed King Sabata Dalindyebo and his rightful descendent King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, the great Northern King Skhukhuni, the legend of the great Rain Queen Mujaji and many indomitable queens and kings and unsung heroes and heroines of the beautiful motherland South Africa.

The Miracle Betrayed

I read with interest the article “Madiba’s Baton” by Marisa Berndsen published in the South Africa The Good News website. The author rightly pointed out, it wouldn’t be unfounded to say the Madiba dream was “lying in the gutter with no one to pick it up.” The writer’s question “Have we all - black, white, rich, poor - been sucked into a culture of entitlement and forgotten our responsibility in building this democracy?” evokes many profound thoughts.

The ability of the country to honour Mr. Nelson Mandela’s dream of a united and prosperous rainbow nation is a function of how soon we can address in good faith the socio-economic divide or economic apartheid (as I like to call it, see the poem “Economic Apartheid” in my book A Goodbye To My Little Troubles) in order to have a fair and equitable rainbow society.


Mandela’s Dream

The honourable Mr. Nelson Mandela wants us to remember where we came from and cherish the ideals that we have set out to pursue as a people regardless of our racial backgrounds. We should be pursuing this. He announced when he received the award of the City of Tshwane last week that this was the last award he would receive and the baton had been passed on to others. However there is an unbridgeable gap between what we should do as a people vis-à-vis what is happening. It has become an increasingly formidable task to do what we should do in terms of upholding the ideals of ubuntu. Why is this?


The Economic Divide

I believe the problem lies in the economic component of our ideals. We didn’t put together a good economic plan as part of the 1994 miracle revolution (at least it seems that way to those not privy to the negotiations) and today we are paying dearly for it. Our lack of such a plan (whatever it may be) exposed the African families to extreme suffering while the White families continued to prosper and enjoy a relatively better life.

Sometime ago I nearly died when I saw a photograph in the Sowetan newspaper of African mothers scavenging for food on garbage dumps in what is otherwise the land of plenty. There is no way a human being is subjected to such extremes without losing their ubuntu (humanity, spirit of togetherness). That is exactly what we have done in South Africa. In 1994 the powerful White land owners (Whites own more than three quarters of the land) had reached an agreement with the ANC that 30% of the land would be transferred to the African people before the year 2000. In 1999 the ANC announced that it was not possible to transfer that much land. The powerful White land owners had reneged on their promises putting South Africa on an inexorable path to another Zimbabwe phenomenon. Only an infinitesimal percentage of the land has been transferred to date. Using that microscopic rate of land transfer it would take nearly 600 years to transfer half of the land to the African farmers. That sucks! What will happen to ubuntu?

Some of the White farmers or at least some of their descendents, in the meanwhile, brazenly do incredible things in defiance of the new South African dispensation like shooting African boys and girls, feeding Africans to the lions, spray painting Africans, forcing African mothers to drink their urine, hanging African mothers on the roof tops and still getting away with it under the current justice system.

In terms of the struggle to redistribute the land the most current announcement of the ANC today projects that 30% of the land will be transferred by 2014. Based on my above calculations, we may see yet another postponement unless the new administration takes a radically different approach in terms of expediting what has been denied to the African mother i.e. more land so that she can feed her babies and those of the nation. So what we have done here? Shifted the goal posts? Betrayed the Mandela’s dream of togetherness? Economic justice delayed is economic justice denied and we must act quickly to avoid igniting an unexploded bomb.


A Vibrant Economy

In the meanwhile the South African economy is doing very well and so is the perpetual apartheid debt. I never understood the biblical concept of eternity which is synonymous with perpetuity. Before 1994 our GDP was $111 billion US. The apartheid debt (we shouldn’t have assumed) was a small fraction of that. Today that debt is more than twice the 1994 GDP despite the billions of US dollars thrown at it. What’s wrong here? Is this another pipeline, among many voodoo economics pipelines, that diverts the wealth away from the African families to the White families in South Africa and foreign lands? Our GDP is nearing $700 billions US making us richer than many European countries and yet the African families continue to be subjected to extreme suffering.


Conclusion

This is what I believe is the basis that has led to the betrayal of the South African miracle of 1994 and that is the economic apartheid. Unless a design change is made in this regard, we will be prescribing wrong solutions and missing the target and wondering why the country is failing to uplift the African mothers. The African mother is a keystone in the African economy and if she is economically disenfranchised the African family will collapse and thus betray Mandela’s dream. Instead of the African mother enjoying the fruits of her labour, she is eroding under the new economic apartheid.