By Prince Mashele – 16 May 2016 – 15:59
When asked to say something in response to the burning of more than twenty schools in Vuwani, an anguished local teenage girl said: “They have burnt our future.”
The future was burnt hardly a month following the announcement by Statistics SA that only 3.2% of black youth aged between 18 and 29 attended university in 2013, compared to 18.7% of white youth.
Investigations by the police are still under way, but it would be hard to imagine educated people buying petrol to burn a school.
Most likely the arsonists are young, uneducated, unemployable, probably drug and alcohol addicts. Of the suspects already arrested there is not a single white person. Racism cannot possibly be behind the burning of the black future.
What we are dealing with here is African backwardness of the worst order, the kind that is dangerous to the very people trapped in it. A few years ago, former president Thabo Mbeki used to claim that there was a thing called “African renaissance”, an illusion of a rising continent.
Mbeki never imagined that the Africans he thought were rising included arsonists in Vuwani, the Neanderthals who never want the children of black people to escape poverty and ignorance.
The European renaissance of the 14th to the 17th century was a period of awakening, marking a departure from the superstitions of the Middle Ages, the time when Europeans used to burn witches and indulge in all manner of barbarism.
That renaissance ushered in a new era of enlightenment, the blooming of ideas in literature, science, art, politics, architecture and other branches of modern knowledge. It was unthinkable that people could burn a school to express anger – for whatever reason.
Some people have suggested that tribalism is the real cause of the mayhem; that the Venda people of Vuwani do not want to be led by the Tsonga of Malamulele under the new municipality.
This is the same accusation levelled at the protesters of Malamulele who previously demanded their own municipality and also vandalised public property. It was suggested then that the Tsongas were rebelling against the Venda leadership of Thulamela municipality.
Tribal consciousness – whether by Tsonga, Venda, Zulu or Sotho people- is a mark of backwardness. Across the world, tribalists are characterised by low levels of civilisation – be it economically, politically or socially.
Civilised people embrace others, and view the notion of “other” as a source of cultural enrichment and learning. How do you learn without coming into contact with the external world? What we today call European civilisation is an embodiment of lessons from all over the world.
The idiocy of Vuwani is that Tsonga and Venda people are the same people. Other than the fact that they speak different languages – which, by the way, have the same linguistic structure – Venda and Tsonga are brothers and sisters.
May a historian from the nearby University of Venda please inform Tsonga and Venda people in Malamulele and Vuwani that they both come from central Africa, as indeed all Bantu people do.
Truth be told, it is not only Tsonga and Venda people who are still squirming in the mire of tribal backwardness. The Xhosa have their own stereotypes against the Zulu, the Pedi against the Tsonga, the Sotho against the Ndebele, and so forth. This is our curse as Africans.
It is the same curse that drove the people of Rwanda to massacre each other in 1994, and those of the Democratic Republic of Congo to slaughter each other for years before and after the dethronement of Mobutu Sese Seko.
In South Africa, some people claim that tribalism is a vestige of apartheid. This is not true. There was tribalism long before colonialism and apartheid. King Shaka used to murder Africans from other tribes. Mzilikazi also butchered Africans. The amaSwati waged wars against King Sekhukhune and his people.
Today tribal consciousness is more rife in rural parts of South Africa, and more diluted in urban spaces. Gauteng is the most de-tribalised province. Your tribe matters less in Gauteng, and more in Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and such places. Gautengers have attained a higher sense of South Africanness than ruralitarians elsewhere.
Vuwani manifests the unity of ruralism and tribalism. And so is Malamulele. The enlightened among us have the responsibility to expose the backwardness of tribalism, and to condemn the arsonists of Vuwani as enemies of black progress. Black communities have a bigger responsibility. The arsonists live in our communities, and they are well known.
If black communities do nothing when miscreants burn schools, the black nation as a whole will suffer the stigma of being an uncivilised lot, retrogrades who are still trapped in the Middle Ages.
Education is an escape route out of poverty, ignorance and backwardness. We black people must never allow drug addicts and alcoholics in our communities to burn the future of our children.