By Gillian Schutte
A MEME declaring South Africa as the first African country to recolonise itself circulated widely on social media last week.
It was met with laughter and grim acknowledgement. The dark humour reflects South Africans’ ability to find levity in adverse circumstances, especially those rooted in truth. Indeed, the meme resonates profoundly. In July 2024, South Africa stood at a precarious crossroads, confronting a development that would have been unthinkable to the architects of its hard-won independence: recolonisation.
I speak of the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) which partners Ramaphosa’s ANC with the DA and other neo-liberal parties while sidelining progressive African parties such as the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party. The regressive step, promoted under the guise of economic stability and political reform, betrays the principles that guided South Africa’s Struggle against apartheid and colonial rule.
How did the unthinkable come to pass? Besides a citizenship that has been aggressively bamboozled by post-1994 liberal propaganda to vote against their own interests, what are the multiple forces and narratives that have facilitated the insidious turn? Was this a soft coup that took us all by surprise, though it has been long in the making? These are the questions that plague me as I bear witness, from the edge of my cognitive dissonance, to the clock being turned back by a century. How on earth did decolonisation become recolonisation?
The Mirage of Decolonisation
Decolonisation theory emphasises the reclamation of autonomy, identity and dignity by oppressed peoples in colonised nations. Ever since the call became part of the Fees Must Fall rhetoric, the backlash from liberal forces has been brutal. From liberal academics to liberal media, the decolonisation project was up against an obdurate wall of market ideological pushback that starkly repudiated the ideals of decolonisation. Added to the resistance to progress, the governing ANC did little to push the discourse and universities did everything they could to muzzle and repress the decolonisation project.
In this light, can we really claim to be astonished that South Africa has been handed back to the embrace of colonisation in 2024? Surely we can only feign surprise that the Ramaphosa administration made the decision to hand over power to foreign entities and global white monopoly capital by colluding with the DA instead of empowering its African citizens through an African-centric coalition? Many of us have long realised that the role of Ramaphosa, dating from the 1970s, has always been to finally open a market arena that replicates the dynamics of control and exploitation that decolonisation sought to dismantle.
To make matters worse, the recolonisation is marketed as a pragmatic solution to the country’s socio-economic woes. Citizens are virtually hypnotised into obeisance by a neo-liberal narrative that aggressively obscures the fact that inviting external powers to dictate domestic policies undermines their sovereignty and undoes any of the gains in economic and cultural agency that millions of South Africans fought and sacrificed for.
It is a narrative pushed with such vigour that it has crept into the social discourse of all classes in the neo-colonial settler land – a master signifier that the spectre of colonialism will continue to haunt the nation, lurking in the guise of economic intervention and political stabilisation.
The Post-colonial Predicament
Post-colonial theory provides a lens to examine the enduring impact of colonial rule on former colonies. South Africa’s slide back into a state of recolonisation testifies to the failure of post-apartheid governance to extricate the country from the shackles of its colonial past. The perpetual inequalities, corruption and social strife that plague the nation are cynically often created by and exploited by market-worshipping entities: the end game being to justify a return to colonial-style governance.
The regressive step of inviting the white-centric DA and other conservative parties into the GNU, as opposed to progressive African-centred parties, is not only a failure of domestic policy. It is also an inevitable consequence of the broader post-colonial condition. The global liberal order, with its neo-liberal policies and economic prescriptions, has continually undermined the ability of post-colonial states to achieve genuine autonomy and development. Rather, it has rendered the term “post-colonial” defunct. It can be only neo-colonial.
In South Africa’s case, the recolonisation narrative is propelled by external pressures and internal failures, creating a toxic blend that threatens to erase decades of progress – albeit not enough progress by any yardstick. Turning back time to an era as painful as colonialism is the worst possible conclusion.
The Capitalist Exploitation
Marxist theory underscores how colonialism was driven by capitalist exploitation, with colonisers extracting resources and labour for their gain. South Africa’s recolonisation in 2024 starkly continues the exploitative relationship. The nation’s resources – human and natural – are again placed at the disposal of foreign interests, cloaked under the rhetoric of economic revitalisation and foreign investment.
It is a duplicitous move that deeply betrays the working class and marginalised communities in South Africa.
Yet again, the hopes and aspirations of the majority to build an economy that belongs to them and serves their needs are dashed against the walls of their broken hearts as they witness another wave of recolonisation strip them of their agency. It is a nightmare scenario that draws eerie parallels to the Netflix series “Squid Games”, where participants believe they have agency but are soon turned into disempowered spectators of their own collective demise, save for the individual winner.
So too are South Africans turned into spectators of their own ruin, watching white colonists and their black lackeys re-establish a system where profits are syphoned by foreign powers in a vampire economy that leaves them further disenfranchised and impoverished. This is the logic of capital, a predatory and insidious monster, selling the people hope even while it sucks the blood out of their existence.
The Socialist Betrayal
From the outset, the ANC promised a socialist revolution. This has been a failed project, though elements of social reform have made small changes in the lives of many marginalised South Africans.
These are manifest in meagre social grants that do not keep abreast with inflation and a litany of social reform promises that are never kept. From a socialist perspective, recolonisation is anathema to the principles of collective ownership, social justice and equitable distribution of resources, including land redistribution. South Africa’s leadership, by capitulating to external pressures and abandoning the project of building a genuinely inclusive and egalitarian society, has betrayed the principles. Recolonisation is not a path to social justice but a surrender to the same forces of inequality and exploitation that have long plagued the nation.
The new GNU, particularly the DA, looks set to rid the new administration of as many of the last of its progressive policies as it can.
* Schutte has a degree in African politics, an MA in creative writing and a film director’s qualification from the Binger Institute, Netherlands.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.