Law?

There is a reason why revolutions happen. There is a reason why people wage (un)civil wars against other people. It comes down to this construct of borders and statehood. These things are fictitious constructs that we use to demarcate areas we can control. The truth is, The Law of another nation fails the natives. The law creates the poor in fact, when it is properly at work.

Now, we have been debating and arguing and (micro)blogging about the Land Question for many years, now., as South Africans. Yet injustices befall our people at the hands of foreigners and we have no adequate means to punish them. That needs a rephrase. We are punished by The Law when we apply the most adequate punishments to the infringements of our rights.

Let me make some examples about the failures of working within the confines of Law. If somebody steals your laptop from you. Depending on when you catch them, different punishments may take place. If you catch them in your house, you may beat them up or shoot them, afraid of the harm they may do to you while trying to take from you what is not theirs. You may or may not get away with with this. There is also the option of catching them later and handing them over to enforcers of the Law. Now, if someone is trying to steal your house, this is clearly a violation of your quality of life far greater than losing a mere technological fetish. You should fight them no matter how and when you catch such a thief. Now, if someone is trying to remove you from the land that your grandparents are buried, nothing short of the anglo-Boer War should happen to ensure that you keep your family and tribe safe. Now the Law that Europe has installed in South Africa ensures that land theft and property theft are actually legal. Banks do it, Law firms do it, Companies do it.

They forcibly remove native people from their land and get away with it because there have been silly stipulations on paper. Why we have not had another land war is actually quite surprising considering the time it has taken for the reality to dawn on us. The reality that the 1994 handover was nothing but a continuation of apartheid Law under a new guise. It is apparently clear that the Group areas Act has not been done away with. To properly remedy the damage, we have to move the people who were removed from the land back to their original homes. But we are too busy writing new laws and debating the pros and cons of “willing buyer willing seller” talk. While this happens, the wine estates and cattle ranches remain at the hands of a settler who stole with brute force from a people who welcomed them to their soil. In response to the repeated curses that settlers in South africa have thrown, they, to this day, insist that they are African., but only when it suits them. There is a not-so-funny tweet that says “Funny thing happened in 1994. Europeans became Africans overnight.”

To this day, the Afrikaans leaders have never apologized for their crimes against humanity and there is no court that will jail them from it. Because Apartheid and all its actions, was legal. There is a settler impunity clause somewhere in Law that has made it okay to steal currency, minerals and land, even people and get away with it. So I am surprised. Quite surprised that there are still groups like Black First Land first sending memorandums to Land and resource thieves. They are still playing on the board of the settler, and on their board, with their rules, the native will lose. Consistently.  If the Economic Freedom Fighters had any truth in their name, they would have fought against, not use the same old failing systems to try get economic freedom. Because these Laws are exactly what has kept the native from being free.

We perhaps need to have less respect for the global village. At some point, we need to claim Africa for the Africans, as Marcus Garvey put it. And lest ye forget, Garvey was a soldier. We perhaps need to say, "to hell with the Republic." Why in the hells are we using Plato's term to speak about Africa? Has The Republic of South Africa worked for the native? An obvious no. On the evening that I wrote this, Whites in south Africa, predominantly Afrikaans, wore black and protested against the killing of their people. The responses were many and much was said abouth how silly it is that a minority would cry over the deaths of very, very few people. When the majority in the country suffer more human rights violations under this same minority every single day. Being beaten and fed to crocodiles was one example. Or being forced into a coffin for kicks. Or being whipped unconscious while pregnant. Being assaulted while ordering the Colonel's finest wings. Being shot for just walking across the road. Revealing your wallet? Shot? Running after you basketball in the street? Shot? Having dreadlocks, locked up for days, years. And more and more and more. Yet when the native protests against injustice, oh you guessed it...shot.

So who is the Law for? It sure isn't for us. I can't say I like being a Law abiding citizens because that is like saying that I respect the leash around my neck and the chains on my wrists.  The Law has not saved anyone from the exploitative systems of colonialism. In fact, it has ensured that exploitation stays, under the guise of this Republic of South Africa.

Are we ready for the revolution yet?  It doesn't look like anyone here is.