Last Sunday on 29 April etv's Justice Factor programme at 9:30 focused on the PAC and AZAPO as declared modern representatives of Sobukwe and Steve Biko respectively, with Letlapa Mphahlele and Jacob Dikobo as guests. These two gentlemen were such PR disasters that anyone who sympathised with the Azanian Tendency could have wept.
It was simply put to them why it was that such great organisations declined (+47000 votes for PAC and +30000 for AZAPO in the 2009 general elections) and how are they going to recover. Mphahlele blamed lack of finance and Dikobo concurred, further blaming apartheid and the incumbent government. Mphahlele went further to admit that it costs next to nothing to issue a press statement, and that his administration could hardly organise a website that works. These are basics that a political party needs to communicate its ideas. The man was smug and nonchalant as if he was addressing a bizarre forum of idiots. Dikobo similarly hummed and hawwed, forgetting that AZAPO were in boycott in 1994 and dramatically in partnership with the Charterists in subsequent years. His predecessor Mosibudi Mangena was a cabinet minister, remember. We in the creative arts say that in literary theory that you need to grapple with form and content to make your writing effective. Politically you need to express content (subject matter) that educates and appeals to a wider audience (constituency) to make yourself relevant. Form is the ability to articulate your ideas succinctly in a manner that appeals to your audience. These two poor fellows wasted the precious 20 minutes mumbling hot air, and if you were blind to Africanist epoch making ideology you could have concluded that Sobukwe and Biko did not inspire a whole generation of revolutionaries to change and transform the country. They are a poor version of what Pan Africanism stands for. Period. We are clearly dealing with incompetent and stubborn retrogressive agents, who will do their damnedest to block and prevent strategic change within these organisations to happen. This means they undermine the historical mission to unite the African people and to establish a union of socialist states under a monolithic African government, as envisioned by Sobukwe, Nkrumah, Mothopeng and others. Get the etv copies and do a case study with your comrades of how a political party can do harakiri (the Japanese method of suicide) by warriors who shamed and dishonored their great movement. Jaki Seroke Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you! -- Sending your posting to [email protected] Unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected] You can also visit http://groups.google.com/group/payco Visit our website at www.mayihlome.wordpress.com
