The ANC had everything when it came to power: It was gifted a fully functioning nation, which had a respectable income. It was carried on the shoulders of the world’s moral endorsement, with a surplus of extraordinary international good will. It was to be the “Rainbow Nation”, the trumpet triumphal of Black success and capability. It was to be the final eclipse of “white exploitation”, and the mould for the world of the future. It was set to justify the “racial integration” of all the nations of the world, and the symbolic success of “multiculturalism”. It proclaimed a final defeat of the stratification of unique societies, and had succeeded in destroying the boundaries of societal identity expressed by culture and race.
How could that be? The ANC had no track record, no hard evidence of capability or moral commitment. Indeed, without exception, all black governed precursor societies in Africa
had failed as economic and social entities
A perception constructed.The European construct of a future South Africa as a highly desirable and successful society was a perception created entirely by Europeans. It was created by those who wanted to believe. Europeans structured a delusion, fuelled by an intrinsic belief in the ultimate triumph of Black Africa. The assumption was that “Africans are suppressed peoples” who, once released from their oppressors could only blossom into a new spring.
How did it start, this belief that Black Africa would eventually grow, prosper and blossom?
A stage set by missionaries.This expectation has been present for centuries, as shown by the zeal and extraordinary endeavours of the European missionaries. The missionaries’ belief had been that Africa was made up of nascent societies and all that was necessary to invigorate Africans was to feed the intrinsic capabilities, to teach counting, writing and language. They believed they could inculcate into their aspiring pupils (as they perceived them) those rich virtues which the Europeans had established over centuries to be the keystones of a workable, satisfying society.
The missionaries’ qualities reflected the source of their recruitment (Christian institutions). Although the overt theme may have been to convert to Christianity underlying this, and reflected by the establishment of thousands of schools, the aim was far broader. It was spoken aloud that the missionaries wanted to “civilise savages”. Read another way, they planned to replicate their own society,
Part of their motivation was probably to assure themselves that they too would be recognised as possessing Christian virtues.
The Parenting ImperativeWhat were the incentives that drove the missionaries (and colonialists) to attempt to convert alien people to be become “like themselves “?
The answer requires taking a further step back, and to acknowledge one of the powerful imperatives which direct human behaviour - the parental commitment to the development of the child, that all-pervasive contribution to the societal structure of the succeeding generation.
Humans have a constant, unrelenting and at times unflinchingly need to have their offspring grow up to be “just like themselves” (or an improved version of themselves). Whatever the inadequacies of the child, and however far that child might fall short of its sought-for destination as a wholesome member of future society the optimism of the parents will prevail supremely.
There are other entrenched behaviours, of course, such as charity, compassion and “fairness”. However it is when these inherent (and distinct behavioural mechanisms) directives become muddled, one with the other, that the human “social psyche” fails its possessors.
Given this powerful and all-prevailing predetermination to parent, the strongest likelihood must be that when the Europeans were confronted with societies which they viewed as socially juvenile, those parental emotions surged to the forefront.
The Europeans therefore, and uniquely, set about the parenting those whom they regarded as inferior on the assumption and hope that if they could exercise “good parenting’” the subject societies would become “is just like theirs”.
Many will confidently interject in support of civic proselytising of “undeveloped and poor” societies, saying “That is expected” or “That is just natural” or the rhetorical “How can anyone think otherwise?” Becoming more aggressive the assertions will become “That is heartless” or “If you do not believe in this (or that) you are deviant, or a monster, or execrable”.
Those with a smug moral superiority soon discover that they have a powerful weapon to force their beliefs on others, via yet another powerful inherent directive - the need of people to evade criticism and sustain social acceptance.
The prodding and emotive phrases listed above are, however, merely word shifts, synonyms for instinctive or inherent or intrinsic or intuitive. Said another way these self-righteous people are demonstrating (perhaps without recognising it) that their behaviour is not governed by reason, but is a fixed, instinctive response. Since there is no rationale, the behaviour of the sententious cannot take account of context or probable outcomes. Because it is narrowly blinkered with much room for unintended consequences, such rigid self-assurance is therefore highly dangerous
Necessary Delusions.For aspirations, motivation, and tenacity .to succeed, a favourable outcome must be assumed. It is the imagined outcome – when contradictory information is ignored, - which sustains most human affairs. Endeavours are wrapped in delusions. Humans cannot function without these delusions, be they delusions of immortality or the certainty that an intended outcome will be successful. If these are stripped away the psycho-personality collapses.
Politicisation of Missionary ZealThe narrow aspirations of the missionaries broadened into the 20th and 21st centuries. and paternalism strengthened. In both metaphorically and literal senses as the cry went out “bring these alien people into our homes They need encouragement, understanding, maturing, compassion. They need to be protected from criticism and from any reference to their racial background.” It became necessary to begin suppressing those foundational human instincts of self-preservation, demarcation of domain and the fear of alien intrusion.
In what then seemed to be a self –congratulating confirmation of their delusions Europeans began to precipitously proffer awards to those Africans who seemed to bear out their faith of their own evangelism. Robert Mugabe, for example, was awarded The Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1988 with the comment that his agricultural programs
"Pointed the way not only for Zimbabwe but for the entire African continent.”Mandela was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and a plethora of other awards were made to Africans – often awarded so precipitously as to exsanguinate all value and status from what had previously been prestigious awards
The Politician Supreme.
Catastrophically, and simultaneous with what individuals were doing to “integrate” aliens into their own cultures by destroying sociological (and racial) barriers, European governments were gaining unparalleled, seemingly unlimited, power over their populations. From being gentlemen Civil Servants, politicians began to see themselves in a role of grandiosity. Those in governing authority began to evolve an autonomy of their own, which served their personal ambitions, and sustained their tenure. It became practice for governments to begin manipulating their society, and to progressively suppress human instincts when these interfered with their security of authority and economic status. These governments began to appease one another in what Solzhenitsyn described as
“The United Governments of the World" They began to mutually gloat by displaying that they were non-racial, non-sectarian, and combined in reducing migration barriers.
The suppression of their populations increased too slowly for the people to realise how powerful was to be the strangling of their instinctive behaviours. The British government forced upon the population the cult of “non-racism” with a stronger propaganda than the Nazis would have dared to use with their cult of “non-Judaism”. To force the behaviour of their population into subservient complacency the British governments imposed a more severe and extensive legal infrastructure than the Nazis ever had. The British population was indoctrinated as to what it must think, and disciplined into what it could not say and how it must make value judgements. Expression of intuitive behaviour could be heavily and ruthlessly punished, notably where an instinctive response to the fear of an invading alien population spilled out.
When governments force onto people a behaviour which is contrary to their intuitive and highly sophisticated inherent patterns, that is tyranny. This may not the dictionary definition, but it is a more tangible and qualitative measure of tyranny.
