Exactly 58 winters ago today, 3 000 delegates gathered at the piece of ground in Kliptown dedicated to freedom and named after struggle veteran Walter Sisulu.
Legend has it they had traveled the length and breadth of the country – from the towns and the hinterland, to chisel and shape their political aspirations into what emerged out of that gathering as the Freedom Charter. Men and women of all hues; some of the women, we are told, with babies strapped to their backs, left the comfort of their homes to nail their colours to the mast and declare ‘South Africa belonged to all who live in it, black and white’.
This day – 26 June – has always been important in the political calendar of the oppressed masses. It was on this day too in 1952 that the Defiance Campaign unfolded and saw thousands of our forebears courting prison as they deliberately broke unjust laws.
The Congress of the People, as that august gathering came to be known, should, by all accounts, be held sacrosanct by all with a vested interest in the history of liberation. Had they had the presence of mind to do so, those pioneers who met on the day under the glare of the Security Branch should have ‘trademarked’ the event with a warning to posterity to ‘beware of cheap imitations’. This done, their memories would not have been fouled by the shenanigans of the serial litigators who took this name after they had served divorce papers on the glorious movement of the people in 2008.
The original Congress of the People came on the back of the successful Defiance Campaign where, for the first time in the history of the oppressed, all race groups came together under one umbrella of protest to vent their mounting disquiet against apartheid. Those who were in the ANC at the time and agitated for radical change as opposed to the pacifist stance of the founding fathers, planted the first seeds of how seriously the coming together of minds should be viewed, even by the generations that followed.
Fast forward to 2013 and the pace of events has shown that the coming together of 'Shikota' stands as an affront to the memory of the men and women who chose to forego whatever niceties of their lives under apartheid to brave the elements and meet in the open in Kliptown, risking life and limb. Some, like those from Natal, had arrived on the 25th so they could wake up as one with their compatriots.
Surely, this is a sacrifice worthy of the highest honour.
But all Mosiuoa Patrick Lekota and Mbhazima Sam Shilowa have done with the institutional memory of those who met in ’55 has been unending appearances in court, thereby soiling this memory that should, by right, be hallowed.
In just four short years, these ‘sunshine revolutionaries’ have hauled each other to court a record 11 times!
The Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign, Nelson Mandela, was a modest man born into leadership in the royal house of Aba-Thembu. His actions, which spoke volumes about the content of the man’s character, duly earned him leadership, and respect. What Shilowa did with the tag merely serves to blight the collective conscience of those whose task was to hold aloft the ideals of 1955, especially given subsequent allegations of misappropriating party funds while in Parliament.
In 1955 leaders led from the front, not from the courts. The people were fed a choice of ‘Soup with Meat’ and ‘Soup without Meat’, while the self-styled leaders of the modern-day Congress of the People are Epicurians who smoke cigars and own wine farms, ‘eating’ alone.
Lekota and Shilowa are sons of the soil, children of the movement who are steeped in the traditions of the ANC. Even the misguided missile that ‘did not join the struggle to be poor’ is moored in the ways of the People. So too is Mluleki Editor George.
All they can do now in fitting tribute to the memory of those whose frail bodies took time to thaw from the cold of June 1955 is to return the Congress to the People.
Power mongering is a human failing and it can be forgiven. After all, none of us is infallible.
Power, as always, to the People; not to leaders foisted upon them!
- Makatile is a book critic and holds a Master’s degree in creative writing from Wits University
Shilowa and Lekota soils memory of those who met in ’55
Exactly 58 winters ago today, 3 000 delegates gathered at the piece of ground in Kliptown dedicated to freedom and named after struggle veteran Walter Sisulu.
Legend has it they had traveled the length and breadth of the country – from the towns and the hinterland, to chisel and shape their political aspirations into what emerged out of that gathering as the Freedom Charter. Men and women of all hues; some of the women, we are told, with babies strapped to their backs, left the comfort of their homes to nail their colours to the mast and declare ‘South Africa belonged to all who live in it, black and white’.
This day – 26 June – has always been important in the political calendar of the oppressed masses. It was on this day too in 1952 that the Defiance Campaign unfolded and saw thousands of our forebears courting prison as they deliberately broke unjust laws.
The Congress of the People, as that august gathering came to be known, should, by all accounts, be held sacrosanct by all with a vested interest in the history of liberation. Had they had the presence of mind to do so, those pioneers who met on the day under the glare of the Security Branch should have ‘trademarked’ the event with a warning to posterity to ‘beware of cheap imitations’. This done, their memories would not have been fouled by the shenanigans of the serial litigators who took this name after they had served divorce papers on the glorious movement of the people in 2008.
The original Congress of the People came on the back of the successful Defiance Campaign where, for the first time in the history of the oppressed, all race groups came together under one umbrella of protest to vent their mounting disquiet against apartheid. Those who were in the ANC at the time and agitated for radical change as opposed to the pacifist stance of the founding fathers, planted the first seeds of how seriously the coming together of minds should be viewed, even by the generations that followed.
Fast forward to 2013 and the pace of events has shown that the coming together of 'Shikota' stands as an affront to the memory of the men and women who chose to forego whatever niceties of their lives under apartheid to brave the elements and meet in the open in Kliptown, risking life and limb. Some, like those from Natal, had arrived on the 25th so they could wake up as one with their compatriots.
Surely, this is a sacrifice worthy of the highest honour.
But all Mosiuoa Patrick Lekota and Mbhazima Sam Shilowa have done with the institutional memory of those who met in ’55 has been unending appearances in court, thereby soiling this memory that should, by right, be hallowed.
In just four short years, these ‘sunshine revolutionaries’ have hauled each other to court a record 11 times!
The Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign, Nelson Mandela, was a modest man born into leadership in the royal house of Aba-Thembu. His actions, which spoke volumes about the content of the man’s character, duly earned him leadership, and respect. What Shilowa did with the tag merely serves to blight the collective conscience of those whose task was to hold aloft the ideals of 1955, especially given subsequent allegations of misappropriating party funds while in Parliament.
In 1955 leaders led from the front, not from the courts. The people were fed a choice of ‘Soup with Meat’ and ‘Soup without Meat’, while the self-styled leaders of the modern-day Congress of the People are Epicurians who smoke cigars and own wine farms, ‘eating’ alone.
Lekota and Shilowa are sons of the soil, children of the movement who are steeped in the traditions of the ANC. Even the misguided missile that ‘did not join the struggle to be poor’ is moored in the ways of the People. So too is Mluleki Editor George.
All they can do now in fitting tribute to the memory of those whose frail bodies took time to thaw from the cold of June 1955 is to return the Congress to the People.
Power mongering is a human failing and it can be forgiven. After all, none of us is infallible.
Power, as always, to the People; not to leaders foisted upon them!
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