Province ANC
Mukoni T Ratshitanga
Northern Province Premier, Ngoako Ramathlodi, who breathed a sigh of relief when he regained his position as provincial chair of the African National Congress last weekend, faces a tough challenge of rooting out ethnic tensions.
The province is made up of three former homelands – Lebowa, Venda and Gazankulu – where ethnic groups were separated in terms of the apartheid homelands policy from the mid-Sixties.
But so successful was the ANC’s policy against ethnicity, that on his first visit to the province in 1990, Oliver Tambo, then ANC president, received a standing ovation at a rally at the University of the North when he spoke against ethnicity.
With this emphasis on unity, the ANC polled a 92% victory in the 1994 elections.
However, ethnicity gained currency in the province after 1994 and remains largely unresolved. Poverty, illiteracy and the bantustan legacy are among the factors currently under the spotlight. And there are fears it is unlikely to abate without political and economic programmes.
In 1995, Shangaan and Venda chiefs waged a bloody battle against a decision that gave them a smaller number of representatives in the 36- member house of traditional leaders. They argued for proportional representation for each ethnic group.
“I don’t see anybody, least of all the politicians, doing anything to neutralise ethni-city,” said Professor Eskia Mphahlele, author and former Wits academic.
“The education itself is so rotten. That could be the place where we could teach our children higher things than ethnicity. Nobody thinks of developing a curriculum that teaches our children that they are Africans and not Pedis, Vendas and Shangaans. It pains my heart,” he said.
Former homeland civil servants often complain they are being marginalised on the basis of ethnic origins.
A Department of Education official recently told the Mail & Guardian he feared a widespread purge of Venda- and Shangaan- speaking civil servants after education MEC, Joe Phahla, suspended his director general, Zacharia Chuenyane.
The official said: “The problem is that Shangaans and Vendas are unfairly treated.” But Chuenyane is neither Venda nor Shangaan.
The collective manner in which complainants talk has prompted some to think civil servants in the province are manipulating ordinary people into an ethnic thought pattern.
“Does ethnicity really exist?,” asked author, Maano Tuwani. “I think it is an elite thing. The ex-bantustan bureaucrats beat the drum of ethnicity to protect their positions. So will business people in the former capitals because the decision to have Pietersburg as capital of the province has meant a decline of business for them.
“The elite in the province – like any elite – is now talking about ethnicity in collective phraseology because it wants to further its own interests. They know that if they appeal to our baser feelings, then we will all listen with concern.”
Tuwani added that the ANC should develop a “management programme” to deal with ethnicity. “Even at this late stage, we need to devise a plan,” he said.
The ANC in the province has not been without its share of ethnic manipulation. Several party leaders are rumoured to have incited ethnicity within their constituencies; resulting in the rise of ethnic consciousness in the ANC.
Addressing a regional meeting last year, one party leader is said to have remarked that he was up against “Pedi ethnic tendencies in Pietersburg.” The official was never disciplined.
ANC Youth League provincial secretary, Silence Makhubele, this week said: “Some of our comrades resort to ethnicity when their views and interests prove to be unpopular. It is high time we all realised that this is intrinsically anti-ANC.”
Fears are abound that ethnicity will shift the priorities of ANC branches. Said one activist: “These elements are attempting to demobilise the entire movement. Before this mess, structures spent time mobilising communities around social inequalities. That meant that structures were challenging the government around issues of delivery. Now people are talking along tribal lines.”
Ramathlodi this week acknowledged the province was dogged by ethnicity, saying: “It is definitely one of our challenges. We have to make sure that no one feels left out in whatever we do. We are already working on it [ethnicity] and we are succeeding.”