Tomorrow Is The Question!

Tomorrow Is The Question is the title to one of the super-radical Ornette Coleman’s 1959 albums. Ornette Coleman’s music has from the very onset been the epitome of a deep refusal, on a principled and fundamental basis, to be held back by already established strictures that offer no prospects for an advance. Perhaps the radical thing for the marginalised in South Africa is to refuse to be dictated to. To refuse to be told when to be angry, sad, courageous or impatient. In short, when to matter. The big difference will happen when they decide for themselves and become the ones that set a new tone for the rest(they are a majority anyway). This is not in any way a sign of naiveté on their part. Naiveté on their part would be to sit on their hands and to hope that they will achieve the kind of society they aspire to have without putting up a fight.

The fact that we live in extraordinary times cannot be ignored. Times when only a radicalism of one form or another can rescue us from the mess we are in. The truth is we have become like an old musical idiom. Like the old idiom which can only give a few clichés that offer no avenue for creative expression save for what is prescribed, we have come to that part of the road where something simply has to give. The new notes need to be blown. They can be avoided for a while but that window of avoidance is closing fast. South Africa is in a social crisis. A very deep one. 

There are two areas where the decadence is, where renewal needs to happen. The one is at an organisational level – how people organise themselves to pursue their struggles effectively. The second being at an institutional level – what  they create as the solution to their historical and contemporary problems.

There are apparent limitations to the responsiveness of traditional political organisations to the magnitude of both historic and contemporary problems in the country. That they have all been caught with their pants down in the latest wave of unrest is no coincidence. Hard as they have tried, they simply can’t improvise. They are too inward-looking. Even their old programmes, whose neglect they lament when they introspect, are simply not suited for the new situation. None of what they try has yielded any fruitful results save for being potentially costly non-events. So far we have seen two instances of what can be termed as “marches for relevance”. When combined they can be called the Red Bloomers Brigade(the EFF and ANC Women’s League marches). Both marches, a few days apart, gave their respective organisations an opportunity to avoid grappling with real issues head on. 

 The point that they miss is not a very complicated one. It is the fact that the nature of mass action has changed. They rely on an old conception of mass action. In their minds mass action is like a tap that can be opened and closed at will. This premise has always been errorneous anyway. Political organisations have stuck with it because of what it promises them, the power to control uncritical masses(in other cases a surprisingly conscious group who simply delegate their faculties of reflection to their leaders and organisations) which can be used to achieve organisational aims. Here the leaders are content with having called out the people to fill the streets. As soon as the numbers are not embarassing and give them an air of respectability among their peers for having a solid constituency they are happy to tell the people to go back home, congratulating them for having achieved something. 

In our contemporary situation the poor are more likely to take to the streets to show disgust than to make a political point. When they do take to the streets, in their minds they have an unwavering belief in the legitimacy of their grievances. History has also taught them that their struggle is likely to be one that is protracted rather than a quick, easy march to victory. Each of them is engaged in a deeply personal struggle with the system. They see themselves as a collective rather than belonging to this organisation or the other.  

One also has to be aware of those pockets within the restive sections of our population where there are attempts at grappling with issues at a theoretical or ideological level. Much of it is happenning among those who are very close to the academy. Among the youth there seems to be signs that the first internal problem to be resolved is how far can its Pan-Afrikanist character be stretched. The second being how to elevate this engagement with Pan-Afrikanism to avoid it being an uncritical attraction to old ideas which can be associated with old formations and perhaps be affected by the fate that befell the said formations. Thus far it seems that any movement will have a Pan-Afrikanist character by default. 

The fact of the matter is that no organisation has a monopoly on Pan-Afrikanism, not even the PAC. In any case it is not allowed to.  At this stage Pan-Afrikanism is the appropriate outlook in response to many problems. Decolonisaton, whether of knowledge production, society or its institutions, is without a sound basis if the focus is not Afrika. Otherwise we will be stuck with the degenerate South African exceptionalism and Rainbowism of the past two and a half decades. It is impossible to arrive at a frame of mind which points one to the quintessential South African problem, the land question which doubles up as the national question without Pan-Afrikanism.

 The best scenario would be one where it is Biko’s ghost(and his unfinished business) that should haunt the present and give it impetus. My hope, again, is that these kinds of things be pursued at a grassroots level rather than at the level of big powerful organisations who prioritise their existence over their essence.

At the institutional level things are much more complicated. How can successes at the organisational level be translated into meaningful undertakings? What do we do with a critical mass if we achieve one? Here it easier to ask questions than to provide answers. One does not simply arrive at the answers, they should be a product of a drawn out process of reflection, one that preferrably preceeds the current situation. The first important institution therefore is institutional memory. Walter Rodney says that “one of the most important of our responsibilities is to define our own situation”. The definition should be arrived at after a comprehensive analysis of both the local and the international scene, an all things considered type of assessment. 

The second thing that should happen at an institutional level is appropriateness in relation to the historical moment. This is made important by the emergence of gaps overtime within movements. Lucius Outlaw touches on this briefly when he discusses historical discontinuity in activism. It could very well be that we are also emerging from such a hiatus in terms of the scale at which social crises have led to the kind of nationwide response we have seen with the youth. So far we have not seen the mergence of institutional means that are available at the service of the emerging movement. There are attempts, however at an issue-based level. The efforts of groups like Black Cognitivity and the Afrocentric Study Group in East London should not go unnoticed. They are examples of initiative being shown in response to some of the issues that are being grappled with, transforming the education system and the shift away from perceiving ethnocentric European thought as universal. 

All in all a movement that should carry forward the aspirations of the marginalised should have two essential things – Mind and Time. The mind to handle the complexity of our history and to attempt to arrive at possible solutions. Time means the capacity and willingness to act in ways that suggest a consciousness of where we are in relation to our history and the new chapter being written. Mind and Time, by the way, is a title to another one of the songs in the Tomorrow Is The Question album by Ornette Coleman.

Here is the complete tracklist:

1. "Tomorrow Is the Question!"                – 3:09
2. "Tears Inside"                                       – 5:00
3. "Mind and Time"                                   – 3:08
4. "Compassion"                                       – 4:37
5. "Giggin'"                                               – 3:19
6. "Rejoicing"                                            – 4:01
7. "Lorraine"                                             – 5:55
8. "Turnaround"                                        – 7:58
9. "Endless"                                              – 5:18

TEBOGO GANTSA                                  NOVEMBER 2015 ©