On Saturday, October the 24th, we witnessed and jubilated to the crowning of our new Miss South Africa, Shudufhadzo Musida. A bald headed and curvy dark skinned woman took over the title of Miss South Africa! Last year Zozibini Tunzi was crowned Miss South Africa in her “fade” haircut. These are re-defining powerful moments that must not go uncelebrated or unrecognized.

The Miss South Africa brand has been premised on European beauty standards. For the longest of time, the criterion to excel on the competition has been “white or close to whiteness”. The emphasis was on extreme thinness, light skin and silky hair. These beauty standards of course exist in parallel with the indoctrination perpetuated by mass media that the parameter to measure women’s beauty is their appearance’s closeness to whiteness.

People like Christoph Meiners have gone as far as explicitly defining the category of “white” as the most beautiful or good looking of all races. Moreover, beauty has also been confined to being a class thing – where beauty is confined to being a proxy of wealth.  My criticism here is not that women must not wear weaves or be light skinned to be considered beautiful, however, the general public narrative had held that beauty is only confined to these afore mentioned and that is what is problematic – the idea that you cannot be beautiful in a dark skin or in your natural hair or as a certain size outside thin or residing in the rural.

Steve Biko conceptualizes these “black beauty dynamics” by saying that Black women have for so long looked at themselves though the eyes of their colonizers. Their efforts to looking beautiful (make up that makes you lighter, making your nose look slimmer, weave hair and skin bleaching) have been, conscious or not, a negation of their true state and in a sense, a running away from their colour. Once more, I must emphasize that this is in no way a suggestion that women who put on weaves or bleach their skin are less African or less beautiful, their choices do not strip away their identities or beauty.

This is in part, the biggest reason why the crowning of Zozi and Shudu are critical. They have shaken the narratives and normative ways of defining beauty.

Zozi’s win as the new Miss SA and subsequently Miss universe last year was amongst others, a confrontation of the exclusion of “African beauty” in contemporary modelling competitions. She paved way for many other South African girls who would normally feel less beautiful because they do not fit within the set criteria of what beauty is.

For the very first time in history, Miss South Africa looked African! The entries were versatile and archaic. We had girls who came in Afros, Wigs, Faded haircuts, etc. And this is what we must strive for, that Miss SA must reflect and represent African beauty in its most authentic form. Of note worthy is to recognize that Zozi did not single-handedly do this. Other contestants who were brave enough to enter Miss SA with their natural hair and dark skins even before Zozi played a critical role too in ensuring that these beauty standards are shaken. But an even bigger role was played by the judges who did not limit their judging to the confinement of boxed European beauty standards.

On Saturday another epic moment happened with Shudu being crowned the new Miss South Africa. For the very first time, we have a curvy Miss South Africa, in her dark melanated skin and bald head! This is extra ordinary, a Miss SA who is curvy. The competition has been exclusionary to women with bodies like Shudu. What Shudu has done, is to remind us that African beauty is versatile, it is not tameable or something that can be confined to one thing. 

As a girl from a rural village, she also reminded us that beauty exceeds class boundaries. In extension, she also ignited fire in the hearts and minds of other black girls whose beauty has been scrapped under carpets and relegated to ugliness, from all classes and perhaps, even races. Her win signifies broken societal constructs of beauty. It signifies African women’s bodies reclaiming their beauty outside the Western affirmation.

We are moving to an era where Miss SA will be a representation of what African beauty is. Where your beauty is not limited by size, height, skin complexion, the type of hair you have and class. Black women are timeless, they are multifacetedly beautiful. What are reasons for size 36+ women to not qualify to compete in Miss SA? Or Short girls or Albino women? Who decided these limitations, a European? Then we have no business conforming to that. 

Otherwise, Many Congratulations to the Venda Queen, Shudu!!!! In her, we see us. We stan.

As a meditation, this piece will be divided into two thematic parts as I intend to do two things: 

1. Pay tribute to the late Bathandwa Ndondo and to many other unsung and forgotten struggle heroes and heroines. 

And,

2. To explore how the function of heritage in constructing a broken society must, quintessentially, be a project concerned about national liberation.  

With that in mind, writing of this meditation really is done in the spirit of provoking engagement amongst comrades, conversing with peers around what could be issues of common interest, as well as putting my thoughts out to the public domain on the two themes I grapple with in this piece.  

The forgotten ones – Bathandwa Ndondo! 

Perhaps let me start off by providing a much clearer context to this particular aspect of the meditation, which in essence, is about excavating those left behind discourses of national liberation because of the racist anti-black and reactionary documentation of historical narratives in this country; a project which, in the main, is hell bent on erasing black freedom fighters from public memory, political imagination and national consciousness.

It is for this reason that I have decided to pen down this piece as a loud speech that is critical of this discursive act of making black bodies invisible and voices silent. It is in essence a push back against the prevailing invisibilization offensive. Bathandwa Ndondo is the singular figure I will focus on in the piece and through him illuminate some memorialization of all forgotten and unsung freedom fighters in our long struggle for national liberation.

Bathandwa Ndondo, although also a relatively unknown figure to our generation nonetheless stands in the pantheon of South Africa’s freedom fighters quietly and stocking the flame. He stands alongside people like Abram Onkgopotse Tiro, Tsietsi Mashinini and Khotso Seatlholo, amongst others. He stands tall, as figure to be reckoned with, not because he too died in September, a month archived as the traditional Biko month, marking the death of leader and philosopher of the black consciousness movement, Steven Bantubonke Biko, who was killed on the 12th of September 1977. 

He contests his legacy beyond the coincidence of the month death as confirmed by my recent discoveries and searches about this figure. Also, biographically speaking, it is important to note that Biko was not the only one who followed a dangerous path that saw his burgeoning political activism ended in this historic month of September through capture and murder by apartheid police forces. Bathandwa Ndondo followed a similar fate as he was killed in the same month too, albeit years later than Biko. He died on the 24th of September 1985 to be exact. 

As a young man charged by his commitment to social justice and national liberation, Bathandwa Ndondo started his political activism at the University of Transkei in 1981 where he later served as the Student Representative Council (SRC) Vice President and would participate in both the radicalization and politicization of the student populous including organizing a commemoration of banned events such as the Sharpeville massacre. 

Ndodo would later be suspended by University authorities over charges of inciting students to be involved in political activities and rebellion. As a consequence, it was this bolstered commitment to the politicization of students that placed him in conflict with the powers that be and ultimately got him expelled from the University. 

Remaining true to his convictions, even outside the pay walls of the University, Ndondo was involved in a number of insurgent acts and insurrectionary interventions in the 80’s, such as the Umtata fuel depot bombings in the Eastern Cape and the planning of mass protests, amongst other things. As an externalization of their rage, young people turned against the apartheid state in their sweeping and blowing numbers armed with only ideas and a resolve for freedom. 

As such, those who were close and have worked with Bathandwa have described him as a “developmental activist” to underscore the broad scope of his political framework; in other words, to reveal to us how his politics covered many things from student activism, to community involvement, and even retaliatory acts of self-defense. And that alone made him enemy target number one of the apartheid state. 

In addition, the notoriety that shadowed the 1980s period is best captured in the popular slogan of the time, “the 1980 was the era of secret slaughter”. This is a slogan that would now reveal to us how the hydraulics of the apartheid state machinery were unleashed to stamp out any form of resistance or act of defiance from black people especially with a target of the youth, and invariably young activists were being abducted, detained and some even killed. 

The CALUSA foundation on their online website have characteristically captured that dark moment in our history in the following words; 

“The viciousness and racism of apartheid grew to a crescendo just before its collapse was imminent. Activists disappeared and freedom fighters died suspiciously while others in the resistance were incarcerated, banished or banned. Brutality rose, torture was more widespread and ‘the era of secret slaughter’ began in earnest in South Africa in the mid-80s.”

It is within this context of organizing in the face of extreme apartheid repression and terror that Bathandwa Ndondo must be located. This is where he claims his space as a fearless freedom fighter. Together with his peers, who today have been forgotten and written out of popular discourses and historical narratives, their entry into the political space came at a price and they knew the consequences as choosing to take on the structure of racial antagonism to re-situate black people as fighting agents was criminalized under apartheid.

It is for that reason that Bathandwa Ndondo and his generation of freedom fighters, as people who engaged in the sociopolitical issues of the country at that time their courageous actions must serve as inspiration to us the succeeding generations, because their story is one with our story. Their quest for freedom and the brutality they suffered is a pain written in the canvass of our bodies. 

All of you who shall have the misfortune of reading this meditation now can no longer hide behind ignorance and say “we don’t know who Bathandwa Ndondo was and how he contributed”. Now you know, even if you knew before and did nothing you’re now called upon to memorialize the names of our martyrs and eternalize their sacrifices. This is because it is out of the gallant actions they took, that we learn that an oppressed people are always presented with two choices; to fight or perish.

Long live to all forgotten struggle martyrs of our land. 

On Heritage as an Instrumental of Liberation! 

I watched as the nation yesterday celebrated the symbolism of national Heritage Day in style, dancing to the popular global hit song; Jerusalem by a local DJ artist, Master KG, and one pervading thought in my mind was to lament the falsification of the public imagery. 

In other words, visitors to South Africa after watching how we observe Heritage Day will likely either be overawed by what appears to be a rich, diverse, multicultural and nonracial society that has dealt with the apartheid malaise and is now a one nation; or they would  be totally flummoxed at the thought that 26 years into the post-apartheid dispensation the national question remains unresolved and the native majority who are systematically destroyed and are still subjugated by a settler white minority. 

But how did this anomaly happen? 

Well it happened because as a nation we have failed to understand heritage as a question of who you are vis-a-vis who you are not.

Stated differently, heritage is about identity and about who you are in the prevailing power relations. The weak or the strong! The dispossessed vs the dispossessors, owners of land vs the landless slaves, the conquered vs the conqueror etc.  

As such, the collective heritage of white people in the settler colonial imagery is ipso facto a heritage of power, control, domination and land theft. This is the cardinal pillar that unites all white people in South Africa both the rich and poor to remind them of their colonial power over the indigenous peoples. It is this collective heritage that shapes their social imagination – both the Boer and the English.

The antidote to White Power is Black Power. Simple as that. Consequently, the antidote to this White Heritage is Black Heritage. But to understand this dialectic first requires an understanding of what black heritage is and how it manifests itself? Black heritage is not the useless grandstanding of a fake display of our Africaness through traditional apparel when we don’t have land.

That is, heritage is not reducible to dressing up in traditional apparels and feasting on African cuisine. It is much more than what the eye can see. In essence, it is about the right to call our souls our own and therefore, in the context of national oppression and an ongoing people’s war against the invading forces, our heritage functions as the reconstitution of the agenda of national liberation. It becomes a struggle that we have inherited from those who came before us. This determination to fight for national independence is what characterizes a people-hood and constitute a nation. That is heritage, proper! That is the national wealth we can be proud of as a people. 

Viewed from a dialectical point of view; white Heritage as a violent Heritage of dispossession and plunder will only be negated by a determined black Heritage of resistance. This is the dialectic we must introduce into South Africa’s heritage discourse and practice. 

For it is naive to suggest that whites and blacks share the same heritage by virtue of being South African or both living South Africa.

They do not. 

The relationship between the two is characterized by a deformed power structure and reality. The former is landed and is a cultured settler, the latter is a landless native and his culture has been battered out of shape. 

Therefore to reclaim our heritage back as black people the answer is very clear; we must get back the LAND and real power in order to free ourselves culturally, economically, socially and politically. Without the LAND and real power any talks of heritage is foolishness and its celebrations amounts to acts of self-delusion. 

It is only with power that comes with taking back the LAND after completing national liberation-cum-decolonization can we effect re-Africanization of our public imagery and symbolism and inroad radical changes in the economic, cultural and political life of black people, thus adding meat and blood to the empty slogan of black heritage. 

26 years of democracy has not changed the condition of the black majority. 

Black lives under the ANC government have been a disaster zone. Black lives matter little.

All areas of black lives are engulfed in major crises; from healthcare (in the wake of Covid-19), education (in the era of E-learning), deepening levels of poverty, housing question, racism, sexism and landlessness just to mention a few.

These issues call on us to take stock of what has happened in the past 26 years in political terms and then begin to deliberate on whether it is the brand we want to leave behind as a people that must be remembered for by generations to come? Is this the heritage we want to celebrate, continuously? 

In the final analysis, the white man can still run back to Europe when things are not well for him and his family. The Chinese has his Asia to run back to. The Indian man has his home in India as a place he can call home. The Pakistan merchant has his country back in the Middle East. When they arrive, they will find love and warmth. They will easily be re-integrated back into their people’s cultures and social norms as an expression of their shared heritage. Accordingly, their lives will proceed peacefully as expected.

But for us blacks things are different. Africa is our home ground. There is nowhere else in the world that you can find a black majority. Africa is our cultural reservoir, our land is our economic base and our children are the bearers of hope. The return of the land and the struggle for national self-determination is a function of heritage in action until liberation is attained. The heritage of struggle. 

It is not about narrow cultural grandstanding or rhetoricizing in vernacular. It is about the reconstruction of a new social order. The reconstruction of new power relations, and above all, it is a necessary process in the re-making of an African. The creation of a new heritage.