The role of Political Education is to open and change how the minds of the masses, think. It is the awakening of the potential of a dormant political consciousness. This is a tool to further allow the birth of the political intelligence and the release of the people’s experiences and wisdom to enrich the faculties of the minds. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to educate the masses that everything depends on them.
In order to put all this into practice, in order to really incarnate the people, there must be decentralization in extreme. The rank-and-file know well that without their daily struggle, hard and heroic as it is, the top would collapse; and in the same way those at the bottom know that without a head and without leadership the base would split apart in incoherence and anarchy.
The fact that almost every member of the ANC sees oneself as a potential leader is encouraging. It means the movement from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top should be fixed. It is more encouraging because this cannot be said to be a rush to positions in government. That space, particularly in Tshwane, has been lost to other political parties.
The principle that guides who must lead remains that it must be a deserving person. This is a people conscious of the dignity that goes with leadership. Leadership is a free gift to people and always given in dignity. A true leader is one that never forgets these facts.
No one can lead if not ready for responsibility and prepared to follow a chain of reasoning and realize the true nature of sacrifice. Nobody, can hold back the truth, but ought to avoid riding rough shod over the people, for the success of the decision which is adopted depends upon the coordinated, conscious effort of the whole of the people.
The collective struggle presupposes collective responsibility at the base and collegiate or various structural responsibilities at the top.
An onlooker is either a coward or a traitor. We must not voodoo the people, nor dissolve them in emotion and confusion.
To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens. For example, if the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then that bridge ought not to be built and the citizens can go on swimming across the river or going by boat. The bridge should not be ‘parachuted down’ from above; it should come from the muscles and the brains of the citizens. No, we do not want to catch up with anyone.
What we want to do is to go forward all the time. People who no longer recognize each other meet less and less, and talk to each other less and less.
“We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole human, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth. So, comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her. Not for Europe, but for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man”.- The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon.
[…] within these lines – we must not be ambitious or leave any gray lines in giving them a proper political education. That in itself we will be reinforce our mission and further put emphasis on what a Cde must do on […]