THE ELITE ARE RATTLED INDEED (PART 3)

Selby Vusimusi Moyo
PAC Activist

By Selby Moyo
Activist

For what it’s worth, and whichever way you look at it, the rising up of the masses is keeping the elite class on an edge.

Even those who say they won’t resign get more frightened by the voices of ” lumpen revolutionaries” than they are by Parliamentary impeachment processes and motions of no confidence.

Yes, rising masses can make even the most stubborn politician go berserk, and who knows how many of them have actually peed or shed in their pants due to the fear induced by the masses?

Now matters become worse when these “lumpen revolutionaries” realise how much potential power they possess over the elite!

What frustrates the elite is that they do not know what to expect because when grassroots movements erupt everywhere, it becomes difficult to predict what will happen next; because they do not know how much more they can grow, or what else they have planned.

The elite fear a disciplined mass movement with leaders who are as consistent, resolute, unsurrendering and fearless as those of March-and-March movement.

Also, it must be scary that the police, who are supposed to keep order, now work closely with members of the community as we have seen happening recently.

The police can easily be influenced to sympathise with rising communities, because they live among those communities and they experience what the communities experience.

The police are part of the poor masses and once they identify with the cause of the communities, they can become allies of the masses instead of antagonising them.

And then the soldiers too…. they are part of the poor lot and they only need to realise that they are tools used to keep the system working for the few.

In some ways, the protests in South Africa could turn things around, for the rising up of people in one place could have an effect on people in other places.

The fact that Southern African Development Community ( SADC) leaders meet to “discuss socio-economic challenges” is a clear indication of the voluminous messages that the escalating protests in neighbouring South Africa are sending to them as leaders.

Masses rising in Southern Africa can throw the region into massive crisis and the uprising may come in two forms: unorganised and organised, and either way people will strongly register their grievances and loss of confidence in their respective governments.

It is possible that these governments are now beginning to hear the underlying messages given to their citizens by grassroots organisations in South Africa:

“We are correcting things in this territory, now go and do the same in your own home countries.”

This message from South African grassroots movements is surely saying something to the rest of the leaders of the African countries who must ask themselves the following:

“What have we done for our people for over sixty years of independence?”

And the obvious answer here will be “nothing at all but more oppression and humiliation.”

Now can you imagine a president staying in Europe but running an African country?

What kind of madness is that?

And the rest of Africa doesn’t say a thing about this state of affairs.

The March-and-March proponents don’t want to see this country going to the dogs the same way many African countries have, and don’t the marching brigade deserve credit for saying that after thirty-two years of destruction in South Africa enough is enough?

They are actually urging their fellow Africans who came into South Africa to actually go back to their countries and stop the continuation of the nonsense that has been happening in their countries, and this is not about hate; it’s about working together to make African leaders take care of the people they claim to be leading.

March-and-March leaders recently called Nigeria’s bluff when it threatened to send telecommunications company MTN packing out of that country.

After all, the threat of MTN’s expulsion from Nigeria speaks to South African elites who have stakes in MTN, and not to March-and-March at all as the marchers have their own programme to pursue.

If indeed Nigeria eventually chucks out MTN, they will leave a whole in their own economy; creating unemployment because as capitalists the world over do, MTN will simply move to another country.

Anyway, it still remains to be seen whether the expulsion threat is genuine or just a knee-jerk reaction to buy time.

Sometimes it helps that the masses stop being obedient so as to break the grips of control, keep the elite on an edge and leave them rattled forever.

The rising masses who grow beyond the mobilisation stage do not only threaten the power of the elite, but usually take it!

And nothing unsettles the elite more than the threat to their power; nothing scares them more than losing power.

The elite have gotten used to the idea that they can keep citizens controlled and in check through synchronised lies but are unsettled that citizens have gotten tired now.

And they know that all this commotion prevalent in the country is not about the issue of immigrants only, but also about other real issues which Philosopher Robert Gurr has coined “relative deprivation.”

It is the elite and the media who sensationalise the migrancy issue; looking for an escape.