It is safe to say that there’s a dishonesty harboured by leaders who believe in the existence of God. These leaders are not different from labour brokers whose only role is to neutralise the anger of the proletariat, and delay the revolution. Leaders who believe in the existence of God are ahistoric and shy to the fact that we do not need God in the revolution, but, rather a clear strategy and tactics for combating the current oppressive system.

Think about it, if God really existed we wouldn’t have had Marikana Massacre, we would have been free from poverty and Africa would be economically independent. So a political figure who still believes there’s a God is not truthful. In the politics of superior logic the existence of God cannot have any meaning. If you look at the definition of God you can see that he is defined as the “Originator and the ruler of the universe”. It, therefore, only makes sense to apportion all the atrocities and oppression to him.

If you are a leader who believes in a superior being, you will not fully commit to the revolution as it is required, because you will in the back of your mind have an empty hope that the one above will be with us, effectively diluting the revolution. When embarking, for example, on a program of insourcing of workers, as leaders we tend to overlook skills to negotiate and of winning battles, rather, we subject ourselves to battles we know we will not win with a hope that God will take care of everything. Leaders tend to use the scriptures of exodus in the bible when Moses said “O lord, I’m not very good with words. I never have been and I’m not now, I get tongue tied, and my words get tangled” then God performed miracles for Moses to speak. So leaders tend to want to apply such in our real struggle and hope for victory, which is not possible. Our struggle needs strategy and tactics, not magic and miracles. Even politicians who still allow the opening of political gatherings with a prayer are very deceitful. Prayer has never proven to yield results ever in the history of humanity.

When one follows, correctly, the story of Che Guevara in Africa, Congo to be specific, during 1965, Che’s revolutionary journey faded into thin air because of the uncontrollable believe by the Congolese troops in the existence of God. Che left Congo 7 months after realizing his ideals won’t thrive in a society which believes in superstition. 55 years later the same Congolese citizens who believed in God still live in abject poverty, to this day.
It was Karl Marx, in 1865, who first prophesied that a truly democratic state can discard the existence of God. He went on to write that, “Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world; just as is the spirit of the spiritless situation… it is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusion happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.”

Some can argue that religion, through churches, is a good mobilizing tool for electoral victory, but, this is not true. Majority of the domestic rules of churches discourage congregants to participate in elections, saying elections are things of the world and participating or not participating in them will not give one an everlasting life after death.

When we make an honest observation of things that happen to us every day, for example, murders, rape, poverty, unemployment and disease, we realize that it would be mere superstition for a politician to really believe in the existence of God. Politicians who believe in God are not different from people who believe that breaking a mirror brings “bad luck”.

The reason why there is so much suffering in this world is that political spaces are harbouring politicians who believe in the existence of God.

Racism is not a conversation that we can skip anytime soon. Stephen Bantu Biko, father of black consciousness, defines Racism as discrimination by a group against another for the purpose of subjugation or maintaining subjugation. Biko, furthermore, to put meat on the bone, argues that to subjugate involves the Utensils of power. In other words, to have power here unfolds or rather shows abilities of who can control who.

By having power qualifies one the ostensible attainment of a privilege to control and dominate, creating exclusionary relations of superiority and inferiority. 

Now as we allowed Biko to lead us and extricate the philosophy of racism, appendage to apartheid here in South Africa, it was, and is, whites that have control over the majority (blacks), till today. When Biko said “to be poor in South Africa is expensive “, it was after his extensive interrogations of factors that contributes to poverty, which are ultimately given birth by racism.

To say those who have power to subjugate and dominate (inferiority and superiority) in spheres of living (who have the control in terms of the economy, who owns the land, who owns the banks…) in simplistic aura; who lives in dire conditions and who lives better in proximity of CBD (central business districts). Who lives in the outskirts of the town/CBD and consequently they must pay transportation to make their way to town in order to find means of living, who stays in the shack who subsequently have to buy paraffin or charcoal to use it as a means of energy, who’s at the mercy of constant violence and brutal murdering that occur every day, who’s subjected to poor health facilities, I mean all these points to a life of a black man. All these are warranted and birthed by a white man, who has the power to subjugate and to be supreme. A completely set of racism (power and control).

Having the totality of power over the majority who are the natives, further, goes to the argument that “black people cannot be racist”, at least concurrently. We do not have power/ institutionalized power to oppress or rather subjugate another race or group of people with alternative colour of ours. 

Biko teaches us that racism always presuppose that exclusion is for the purpose of subjugation.

That is why racism cannot only be concluded at the level of discrimination or rather be separated from power.  Racism is also a power to control the lives of those excluded .Racism is not a conversation that we can vamoose, not anytime soon as black people in South Africa and in the Diaspora of the world, so long black people across the continent still suffer by the virtue of being black. So long whites inherently and continuously benefit over their skin colour, to be white. As Dr Frantz Omar Fanon would say “you are poor because you are black and you are rich because you are white”, we cannot rush to solve other problem of the world.  Least we would be not doing any justice. 

Having said that it was through a conversation of racism by black student who were redundant of racism and had to react and amalgamate to establish SASO; furtherance to constellation and birth of Black consciousness by Steve Biko who learn extensively how malevolent racism was/is which seek to be a philosophy of identity and liberation to black people (black consciousness).

It was through a robust racism conversation, that Biko saw it to interrogate black ministries (religion, Christianity) when he was invited in a conference at Cape Town, where he fervently and succinctly ventilated and lambasted Christian colonial pedagogies. How irrelevant the preaching of those pastors was since black people found no message In the Bible, in fact even today.

It was through a lived experience of being a victim of racism and a conversation that lead to Dr Fanon to write a very robust, yet societal conscious awakening books, over racism and exposing how the lives of the black people have been annihilated, abused and subjugated.

This is by understanding that our problem as black people are not first and foremost of class struggle or rather contractions as Marxists or Karl Marx stresses the order of the struggles of the world, but as black people ours is to be black to say that “it is not only capitalism that is involved; it is also the whole gamut of white value systems which has been adopted as standard by South Africa, both whites and blacks so far. And that will need attention, even in a post-revolutionary society. Values relating to all the fields—education, religion, culture and so on. So your problems are not solved completely when you alter the economic pattern, to a socialist pattern. You still don’t become what you ought to be. There’s still a lot of dust to be swept off, you know, from the kind of slate we got from white society”- Biko.

Black consciousness, therefore, becomes a solution and a response to a white consciousness that sought to appropriate and dominate the consciousness inclusivity of the freedom of black people. It directly gives identity and liberation. 

Racism is very hideous, it’s very Poisonous. Jettison of our identity as black people for white genetic survival.  It has distorted every echelon of our existence and being. It is has tempered, distorted our way of living, our Religion facet, Our art, our history, societal norms (Ubuntu), and our education system, to name few . Racism has eaten up everything that paramount to significance of the black man.

Till then, Racism must be always interrogated and castigated; we must always speak about it.  How bad, heinous, and hideous it is. We must always lambaste it as soon as we catch its expressions. Any form we find is very malevolent. We must Deal with it.

Sibusiso Mabhola is an analytical chemistry student, at Vaal University of Technology.