*REVOLUTIONARIES DO NOT CONDUCT THEMSELVES THIS WAY*
Yearnings of glory and praise are never those of revolutionaries but those of pop-stars who join revolutionary organizations with the hope of inscribing their names into history books. These and their ilk will never join a revolution if it appears to be doomed. They wait for it to gain currency and then they hop on the bandwagon. One thing marks them out, they are not willing to sacrifice anything in the course of struggle. All they want is to don borrowed robes tailor made for glory. I suspect this is exactly what Shivambu’s recent articles which cast aspersions on every one else but the YL are actually about. Bravery, devotion, determination, selflessness and love are the lifeblood that propels the heartbeat of those that shirk all personal development for the development of all. Revolutions, rather than bring immediate glory to those who abandon their youth, instead result in poverty, incarceration and mostly death in the immediate. Many a revolutionary is shunned by their own communities, with family members calling them irresponsible, for leaving school or work to pursue something that brings them suffering rather than prosperity. The media often treats them with disdain, until worker journalists realize the importance of their actions. Revolutionaries are careful with their conduct and how it affects their organization because they appreciate the negative perceptions it creates about them and their organization to the oppressed and the demobilizing impact it can have on the struggle being pursued. Revolutionary discipline to them does not become a catchword but something to live by. They are well aware that because theirs is a contest with prevailing conditions, the act of revolution has highs and lows: times of heightened revolutionary ferment and those where there is not even an iota of revolutionary movement. They also understand that people’s organizations too are imperfect. What else can they be, they are a microcosm of the society from which they sprout after all and as a result at times slide into backward practices. There are times when one’s organization mistreats the best of its cadres and but because these cadres have deeper appreciation of the issues they sacrifice themselves for the greater good. They do not square up against their movement threatening to tear it asunder to save their skins. Where would the ANC be if Chris and others who felt the ANC had abandoned them while arrested in Botswana would have exposed all about the movement in order to buy their own freedom and save their own skins? The ANC knows that it clearly had not treated MK cadres very well in the early 80’s when these soldiers engaged in mutinous behavior, but still it was not the ANC that had to bow to the mutiny but the mutineers who had to trust the ANC’s capacity to correct its behavior and they laid down their weapons and soon the ANC realized that it was not the mutineers that were in the wrong but itself and labored to correct its wrongs appointing commissions and replacing those responsible and even convening the Kabwe Conference partly as a result of this. Had the mutineers chosen to continue with their mutiny, the ANC would not have survived exile and would not have fulfilled its struggle against formal apartheid. Thus not only would the mutineers saved themselves from what they were unhappy about but they would have delayed the acquisition of political freedom for many by decades. In the act of saving oneself, a revolutionary can put the lid on the candle of revolution for years to come. Clearly faced with what many cadres even those in the fray believe are weak charges and rather harsh sentences, Malema and Shivambu show their true colors. They square up against the ANC and drag its name into the mud for more than four weeks threatening that if the ANC does not back down it runs the risk of public attacks which diminishes its stature presenting it as a movement at war with itself. These felons would rather wreck the ship because they believe there is a problem with its captain and how he navigates the seas. Rather than quietly replace him and if they do not succeed and are thrown off the ship accept that the lives of those inside and those who depend on its success are too precious to sacrifice in exchange for the life of two they put themselves first. Shivambu can harp on about how the ANC has fell under a dictatorial spell but our wannabe Cassandra exposes his own lack of revolutionary blood: the yearning and the ability to self-sacrifice. Clearly, the ANC is in a trouble of a sort. Unlike the mutineers of the early 80’s, this time it is not faced with members who feel aggrieved but still have confidence in their movement but have only lost confidence in individuals, here it is confronted by a totally different animal. It is faced with people who would rather have the ANC struggle diminish the public stature of the movement in order to advance their own public credentials. When they said they will die fighting, I thought they would die fighting for Economic Freedom, I did not know that this actually meant they would die fighting our revolutionary movement. As far as I am concerned, if Malema and Shivambu are the revolutionaries they claim to be, they will realize the folly of their recent behavior and mend their ways. They must also be careful not to act as though they are saints nailed to the cross for doing nothing but good deeds. One thing Shivambu and his ilk ought to remember is that the weakness of the current charge does not absolve a criminal of previous criminal activity for which they have never been charged. *Lazola Ndamase is a member of the ANC & SACP Ntlangano branches* -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
