Thee Maverick Aquarian 🕯

It is no coincidence that land return, land justice, radical economic transformation and nationalisation have been pushed off South Africa’s political agenda. In the scramble for service delivery and the provision of the most basic necessities — things citizens have every right to expect — the broader struggle for Black liberation is being deliberately diverted and stripped of its transformative purpose. This is the quiet mastery of white supremacy: to shift the focus away from structural inequality, historical dispossession and the unfinished business of liberation, while allowing the political debate to revolve around the failures of ANC governance alone. As the governance of the country is reconfigured, we cannot afford to confuse administrative change with structural transformation. The starting point must be a direct confrontation with neocolonial power relations, the enduring economic architecture of apartheid and the unfinished project of historical redress. Changing who governs without changing the underlying relations of power is not transformation.