Our lives should not be dominated by politicians

I can claim with a modest degree of certainty that Floyd Shivambu exists. I reckon that he is fairly tall — and taller than Julius Malema. I can describe his skin tone, the timbre of his voice and probably claim that he is of above average intelligence. The essence of Floyd Shivambu is his appearance to us in the mode of a human being. 

He cannot hide his human form. And, by extension, he cannot deny speculations that, sometime during any given day, he will have to have a meal. As Jean-Paul Sartre puts it (in Being and Nothingness), by his appearance we are acquainted with the essential Floyd Shivambu. 

But what about the political Floyd Shivambu? How can I describe him politically such that, from that description, I can make certain predictions about his next political move and do so with a modest degree of certainty? 

On this score I am at my wits’ end. But my predictive impotence may not be unique to me simply because I am galaxies away from the core of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Many South Africans, including political analysts, have illustrated that they are yet to arrive at a definitive explanation for why Floyd Shivambu left the EFF.

But Floyd Shivambu is not the main subject of my discussion. His case merely introduces us to the dark tunnel to which almost all post-liberation politics tend to consign citizens. In this dark tunnel we do not know where we are going. We compensate for that blinding tunnel darkness by following the familiar voices of our political leaders.

Be it the ANC, Democratic Alliance, United Democratic Movement or the government of national unity, trailing behind them are followers who are under the illusion that they know where they are going and that they will arrive at that destination by following those familiar leadership voices. 

Yet, history is littered with dead bodies and regrets because of following the voices of political leaders without thinking. Many of them were shocked to realise that those voices were leading them to piles of dead victims of the Holocaust or Rwandan genocide.

American citizens were deceived into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Of course, inside the tunnel the US citizens did not know — or were perhaps vaguely suspicious — that those claims were false. But they followed the voices of George W Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, among others. 

Millions of Iraqis lost their lives and their country was left in tatters; an egregious deadly violation of another sovereign state, based on lies to the US citizens and the world.

But what if we broke the politicians’ spell and behaved as thinking entities who exist independently of the politicians’ minds? Personally, I would strive to be a Cartesian man. “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) does not only say I can reason, it also tells the world that, even as a follower, I am more instrumental to the cause of the leader when I think freely.

And we, not just the politicians, are capable of thinking about our position in history and where we want to go. We do have the capacity to find the political coordinates that can guide us to our destiny. We possess the cognitive ability to ask questions, analyse the answers and synthesise them to produce thoughts that we can call our own. 

Some of the companions to our thinking minds are, naturally, the questions, “Why?” and “What do you mean?” When Floyd Shivambu says “progressive caucus” or “Marxist-Leninism”, it is well within the rights and cognitive capacity of an independent thinker to ask him, “What do you mean and why?”

But the point is not to undermine the politicians and their political intellect. What I advocate for is the emancipation of citizens’ minds from the voices of political leaders. Every person in this country should use the gift of intellect to reason honestly about the questions facing their society. It is now, in this era of post-ideology, that individualisation of critical reasoning is needed most even if, ultimately, we must work together as a team.

I called it an era of post-ideology relative to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet socialism with it; the adjustment of the Chinese ideology from pure communism to capitalism with Chinese characteristics. It is because of China’s adaptation of communism to capitalism that a thinking human being should ask how these ideologies would function in South Africa.

As a corollary, is the sum of all that is bad about capitalism (domestically and internationally) a matter of ideological revolution, a sharp political intellect to domesticate capitalism through regulations or the stabilisation of state governance?

Again, I must say my argument is not for a society that is free of political leaders. That is not possible. What I am advocating for is the revitalisation of social brain trust, critical reasoning and the fortitude to question authority. Educating organised communities, and stimulating their will to be part of governance, could make political parties and the government take the people seriously.

So, the mystique surrounding Floyd Shivambu’s departure from the EFF is of secondary importance for now. What is more important and urgent is when are ordinary South Africans going to take back their brain power from the politicians and use it to reason about issues by themselves. The issue is not that South Africans are not intelligent. The problem is the sacrifice of the intellect to make way for total surrender to the political leader — another fallible human being.

Civil society should organise, be politically (non-partisan) educated, revitalise its intellect to become a force to be reckoned with in the political landscape. 

Floyd Shivambu’s political future is not more important than the future of South Africa.

Mzwandile Manto kaB Wapi is an independent philosopher and community activist.