People of colour all over the world exist and have to rebuild their humanity deep within the ruins of colonial imperialism and white supremacist heteropatriarchal neoliberal capitalism. For many of us, our sense of orientation is lost between essentialist longing for “pre-colonial Africa” and the violent colonial interpretation of our histories. Can you imagine? Trying to build your humanity amongst the ruins of an all-encompassing, unrelenting, and continuously re-inventing system? It is a big task. This is what any requests to engage with the oppressor must be measured against. Do we have time to engage the oppressor? When we take into consideration the energy and resilience required for us to survive the system (which seeks to kill us at every turn) and reimagine a decolonial anti-system humanity, the answer is clear. It is unequivocally no

Xaba, Wanelisa

English

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Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal
Volume 20 | Issue 1 Article 9
The Dangers of Liberalism: A Short Reflection on
the African National Congress in South Africa
Wanelisa Xaba
PhD student (Women’s and Gender Studies) at the University of Cape Town and a black feminist writer
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55 
Essay 
The Dangers of Liberalism: A Short 
Reflection on the African National Congress 
in South Africa 
Wanelisa Xaba† 
 
People of colour all over the world exist and have to rebuild their 
humanity deep within the ruins of colonial imperialism and white 
supremacist heteropatriarchal neoliberal capitalism. For many of us, our 
sense of orientation is lost between essentialist longing for “pre-colonial 
Africa” and the violent colonial interpretation of our histories. Can you 
imagine? Trying to build your humanity amongst the ruins of an all-
encompassing, unrelenting, and continuously re-inventing system? It is a big 
task. This is what any requests to engage with the oppressor must be 
measured against. Do we have time to engage the oppressor? When we take 
into consideration the energy and resilience required for us to survive the 
system (which seeks to kill us at every turn) and reimagine a decolonial anti-
system humanity, the answer is clear. It is unequivocally no. 
Moreover, asking freedom defenders to engage the oppressors, 
especially within the context of human rights, makes dangerous assumptions 
about our oppressors. It assumes that our oppressors have a conscience. It 
assumes that our oppressors are capable of or want reform. It assumes that 
our oppression is an accident of nature. No! Our oppression is a carefully 
engineered system of denigration, disease, and psycho-social death. Every 
waking moment it dreams up new ways of drowning Black lives. It salivates 
over Black death. It celebrates our demise and destruction. How can I speak 
to such a system? What string of sentences and woolen paragraphs can I offer 
at the altar of death? 
As Assata Shakur asserts, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has 
ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who 
                                                          
†  Wanelisa Xaba is a PhD student (Women’s and Gender Studies) at the University of 
Cape Town and a black feminist writer. 
1
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Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository,
 
 
 
 
56            YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J.        [Vol. 20 
 
 
were oppressing them.”1 She is precisely right because the people who 
oppress us have no moral compass. Our chains and our deaths are evidence 
of this. The destruction of the world and nature is evidence of this. The bones 
of our ancestors at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean are evidence of this. The 
evolution of colonialism and white supremacist heteropatriarchal neoliberal 
capitalism from its inception until now is evidence that the system has no 
peace with justice and equality. 
One of the greatest failures of the African National Congress (ANC) 
during the resistance against Apartheid was its timid posture towards the 
oppressor. The organization and its leadership greatly appealed to the 
consciousness of the oppressor. At the height of colonial terrorism and white 
supremacy, this ideologically-bankrupt organization advocated for 
multiculturalism. Amidst Pan-Africanist cries for the reclamation of the land 
from colonisers, the ANC was creating soul-ties with them. Despite the Pan-
Africanist Congress’ cries for “Africa for Africans” the ANC chanted 
alongside white communists, “South Africa belongs to all who live in it.” 
How could it be for all who live in it if a settler minority was killing Africans, 
continuing a centuries-long history of making the continent bleed? How 
could the ANC remained untroubled by the illegitimate presence of people 
who came as a result of genocide and maintained their presence through 
genocide? In fact, despite the liberalism of the Freedom Charter, the 
“imminent sell-out seeds [were] already pregnant within the ANC, long 
before ... the 1950’s.”2 At inception, the ANC was a middle-class boys club 
that was disconnected from the Black working class. 
Taking into consideration its history, it is no surprise that the ANC sold 
out the freedom of poor Black South Africans in 1994. Instead of decolonizing 
and obliterating white supremacy, the ANC chose to administer it while 
white people further consolidated power. Moreover, the ANC chose to 
rewrite history and legitimize their leadership by positioning themselves as 
the liberators of Black people, even though it was ordinary Black South 
Africans who had fought Apartheid. Revolutionary fighters like Winnie 
Mandela were sidelined from the narrative because they did not fit the 
sanitised “Rainbow Nation” political project. Winnie and others wanted 
uncompromising grassroots resistance until South Africa was decolonised. 
As Biko predicted, any political reform that isolated economic freedom and 
psycho-social reform from white barbarity would leave the poor 
dehumanised while holding meaningless ballot papers.3 It is with this sour 
taste left behind that I must insist that any engagement with the oppressor 
must be ideologically unwavering. It must be engagement that itself 
endangers the oppressor. 
Moreover, when we pander to the logic of the oppressor or when we are 
lukewarm about the urgency of its destruction, we are likely to emulate it. 
                                                          
1. Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography 139 (ed. 2001). 
2. Rithuli Orleyn, On Nomboniso Gasa’s ‘Multi-Racialism Apologia and Infidelity Of Meaning’, 
THE DAILY VOX (Mar. 4, 2016), https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/fallism-nomboniso-gasa-
wanelisa-xaba-anc/. 
3. See generally Steven Biko, I Write What I Like: Selected Writings (1969). 
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Power is seductive. White supremacists heteropatriarchal neoliberal 
capitalism is seductive. As the “unhuman,” we look up to the ones deemed 
human and salivate over privilege. When we are unclear about the 
destruction of the system in its entirety, then we begin to negotiate with the 
system. We start to locate ourselves within the crevices where we can access 
privilege and, as a result, we develop coping mechanisms to convince 
ourselves that we are “free.” It is within these crevices that we start to mirror 
and emulate the system. It is within this space of deep denial and close 
proximity to power that we inflict violence on those who dare switch off the 
main power supply to our Disneyland. 
The ANC’s violent response to the student movement Fees Must Fall is 
evidence that when we fail to decolonise and when we assimilate into the 
system, we inadvertently reproduce the system. The Fees Must Fall 
movement was a student movement in South Africa that demanded 
decolonization of the university, challenged neoliberalism in higher 
education, demanded free education, and exposed the failed “Rainbow 
Nation” project.4 Exposing coloniality, white supremacy, and illuminating 
the dispossession of Black people is a huge threat to the ruling party. This is 
because their stay in power is contingent on creating a false consciousness of 
freedom and equality among South Africans. In response to the student 
protests, the ANC unleashed violence that mirrored the brutal tactics of the 
Apartheid government. For months, images of young Black students being 
violated and bleeding on television became the norm. Young Black students 
bleeding on television because they could not afford an education which 
would have offered them a way out of abject poverty. Juxtapose this reaction 
against the many ways in which the ANC protects white power in South 
Africa today. This is what happens when a political organization is not clear 
about its position in relation to the dominant system of oppression. 
Unfortunately, this is what happens when any political resistance seeks to 
assimilate into white barbarity. Therefore, how do you engage the oppressor 
when they have outsourced your so-called liberators to kill you? And 
perhaps, the critical question to ask freedom defenders in South Africa is: 
what forms of resistance do you engage in to remove the Black 
administrators of white supremacy and coloniality, to get them out of the 
way in order to deal with the system head-on? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                          
4. Wanelisa Xaba, Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees 
Must Fall movement, 31 AGENDA 3, 10-28 (2017). 
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The Dangers of Liberalism: A Short Reflection on the African National Congress in South Africa

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The Dangers of Liberalism: A Short Reflection on the African National Congress in South Africa

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