South Africa became a democracy in 1994, following over four decades of the Apartheid era marked by the state-sanctioned murder, imprisonment and brutalisation of Black people. It was the (formal) end to a system that, like colonialism and slavery, functioned on the framework of inhumane treatment of Black people. Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the African National Congress (ANC) becoming the country’s first Black government, signalled a new dawn and more importantly, hope. Almost 27 years later, the hope has all but vanished.

Zimbabwe obtained independence from the British in 1980 following 90 years under colonialism. The Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) had a landslide victory during the elections with Robert Mugabe becoming the Prime Minister and then president of the country for the next three decades. As with South Africa, there had been much hope for Zimbabweans under Black governance. But that hope steadily devolved into what is now a failed state.  

The political trajectories of both South Africa and Zimbabwe, while different, are similar in how the political parties which liberated both countries from racist systems have morphed into offshoots of the very same structures they fought against. This is the case for many African countries. And while the failures of these political parties have been laid bare for all to see over the years, they continue to use nostalgia as a tool to keep citizens forever indebted to them for their liberation. It is as if, in instances of mismanagement, maladministration and bad governance, these liberation parties subliminally ask citizens, “How can you vote out a party who has done all this for you?” as opposed to accepting warranted criticism on the basis of what the party is doing now. 

Recently, the Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, attributed the high youth unemployment rate in South Africa to the legacy of Apartheid. Last year, Eastern Cape health MEC, Sindiswa Gomba, blamed Apartheid for spending over R10 million on scooters meant to act as rudimentary ambulances. In 2019, TIME magazine featured two vastly different South African residential areas on its cover. On the left, was the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Primrose and on the right, was the impoverished informal settlement of Makause. The current South African government places all blame on Apartheid for the gross inequality that prevails in the country while they continue to loot funds meant to redress racist spatial planning that still places poor Black people“on the other side of the tracks.” The government points to Apartheid at their convenience without accounting for the structural damage done beyond that. 

Undoubtedly, the effects of Apartheid have been long-lasting, permeating through South African society in various ways. Additionally, the ANC inherited over £11 billion worth of debt from the previous regime— a debt which no doubt impeded their ability to govern optimally until 2001 when the debt was finally settled. However, the lasting effects of Apartheid have been more a result of the distinct lack of political will from the liberation party than anything else. The lack of infrastructures such as running water and electricity, a failing public healthcare system, alarming unemployment and poverty levels, as well as a national gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide crisis, is the result of a Black government that refuses to admit that their claim to fame are political conquests of the past and minimal progressive results in the present.

Winnie Mandela Will Not Be Written Out of History

In South Africa, every election year is the same. Members of the ANC don regalia with the faces of late political stalwarts like Mandela, Steve Biko and Chris Hani, and make their rounds in poor communities, handing out T-shirts or food in exchange for votes. The seeming undercurrent of these visits is a backhanded reminder to South Africans that no matter how bad their lives may be, they will never be as bad as they would have been under Apartheid. The ANC would have Black people believe that nostalgia is all about remembrance; remembering all those who fought during the struggle for freedom when in reality, it is about nothing more than cheap propaganda. Zimbabwe bears a similar status. The ZBC, Zimbabwe’s national broadcaster, does little else than churning out similar propaganda during election time while members of Zanu-PF hold rallies across the country and remind Zimbabweans of late political veterans like Joshua Nkomo and Solomon Mujuru, never addressing the reality that Zimbabweans are unemployed and starving, the country has no currency of its own while basic services have almost ceased to exist. 

What the ANC, Zanu-PF and other African liberation parties fail to realise is that there is an expiration date on nostalgia. As they attempt to lengthen their tenures through what once was, they become grievously out of touch with citizens whose daily lived experiences are embedded in what is. This is how someone like President Cyril Ramaphosa, a man who has experienced oppression under Apartheid, could describe his ministers “struggling to make ends meet” on R2 million-a-year salaries, just shortly after South Africa released record numbers of unemployment this year. The politics of nostalgia are intimately woven together by dismissal, complacency, and empty promises. The heyday of the past should not exempt liberation parties from fulfilling their duties to citizens in the present.

Take, for instance, many of the public holidays celebrated in South Africa; those are entire days where nostalgia is peddled and promoted. There are day-long memorial events, rallies and content around these events on the public broadcaster’s channels. The deliberate posturing around where the country has come from and not where it currently only serves to highlight the stagnancy and lack of socio-economic progress. We have Freedom Day but South Africans are still not free in many spheres of their lives. We have Women’s Day but the country continues to see an alarming rise in gender-based violence and femicide with perpetrators rarely being brought to book. We have Youth Day but students have been brutalised and killed by the police or left starving to death because of corruption and incompetence within the government’s subsidy programme for university studies. We have Human Rights Day but millions of South Africans have no electricity and running water and kids are still having to walk for hours, crossing dangerous rivers, just to get to school. 

Six South African Creatives On What Freedom Day Means To Them

The politics of nostalgia are an insidious form of gaslighting where citizens are guilted for bringing up legitimate issues with the current government on the basis that they should be grateful for what was done for them historically. In this way, African liberation parties are the heroes who have lived long enough for us to see them become villains. They show minimal desire to govern better and even less desire to relinquish power. It is no coincidence that many of the political parties that won independence for their respective African countries, have been at the helm for decades and in some instances, made these countries de facto one-party states. 

Admittedly, South Africa is not spoilt for choice in terms of opposition parties, but we need to take a leap of faith and put an end to the rule of the political elite who have dubbed themselves messiahs. No more “better the devil you know,” as true freedom does not lie in rhetoric. We must demand and fight for better and stop the demand to pay off an endless figurative debt to liberation parties. And if ever a debt existed, surely it has been paid in full with the continued suffering and blood of innocent Black people? It is time, instead, for us to become the heroes in our own stories.