Africa: How we killed our dreams of freedom

The Statesman ^ | April 3, 2007 | William Gumede

[SunkenCiv]

Across the continent, liberation movements that fought against colonial rule proved unable to sustain democratic governance. We cannot keep blaming the past... In the inner sanctum of South Africa's ruling African National Congress they have coined a word for it: Z"anufication"... A senior national executive member of the ANC, Blade Nzim ande, warned recently: "We must study closely what is happening in Zimbabwe, because if we don't, we may find features in our situation pointing to a similar development." ...The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has complained to the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the public broadcaster, over its failure to cover the Zimbabwean meltdown. Although the ANC in South Africa and Zanu-PF are light years apart, the spectre of "Zanufication" haunts South Africa, raising the question: "Is there something inherent in the political culture of liberation movements that makes it difficult for them to sustain democratic platforms?"

[SunkenCiv]

perhaps a dead link:

Eric Hoffer Revisited
by Stephen Miller

"The intellectual craves above all . . . to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history... [the intellectual] craves a social order in which uncommon people perform uncommon tasks every day. He wants a society throbbing with dedication, reverence, and worship.... The elimination of the profit motive in Communist countries has not made people less greedy and selfish... From all that I read it seems that the attitude of every man for himself is more pronounced in a Communist than in a capitalist society."

from Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" [emphasis added]:

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass... Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil... Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements. To share a common hatred, with an enemy even, is to infect him with a feeling of kinship, and thus sap his powers of resistance... We have it from Hitler... that the genius of a great leader consists of concentrating all hatred on a single foe. [pp 85-87]