The TNA-Rajapaksa Confrontation
Prof Kumar David
It is time to call the regime’s bluff: The TNA-Rajapakse confrontation
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living” - Marx: Eighteenth Brumaire
This has been Mandela-week and nothing can be truer of the compromise he made than this remark by Marx. Madiba’s choice was forced on him by the simple fact the alternative was civil war. Hence he took political transformation and full democratic rights for the blacks, Coloureds and Indians of South Africa, in exchange for which he gave up economic transformation of the country, at least for the first stage. He agreed not to expropriate white lands – the fertile and productive vastness of the country – and he held back from taking over mining and mineral enterprises from white monopoly ownership. That obviously was the deal he made with the Afrikaner regime; abolishing apartheid in exchange for a compromise on economic privilege. Madiba did not liberate South Africa “under circumstances chosen by himself, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past”. It was said and implied on the sidelines of Madiba’s funeral that the long road to freedom is only half trodden; economic liberation, the abolition of poverty, malnutrition and unemployment, and the provision of dwelling places and adequate education, are tasks still stretching far into the future. The past “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living”.
On a less grand scale the TNA faced a somewhat similar dilemma. Should it have entered the Septemberpolls for a Northern Provincial Council (NPC), notwithstanding that it would have to do so under circumstances not chosen by it? Should it have refused to participate in anything given and transmitted from the past? Should it have bided its time till an ideal world dawned? Should it have entered the electoral and constitutional process under the historically given Thirteenth Amendment (13A), or languished till the International Community (IC) in its wisdom, or the Sinhalese people in an act of enlightenment, forced the legislature to enact a just and utilisable 13A+? The TNA, like Madiba, made the right choice; it decided to participate in, and to confront, the real world. As with Madiba, the first stage no more than sets the scene for the next. The ANC will now have to confront the social and economic misery of the people, or it will wither and die; it will be pushed out and it will perish if it fails to check unbridled corruption all the way to the top, that is, to Jacob Zuma himself. However, this is a lesson for our government, not the TNA. As for the TNA, it now needs to either confront the illegal, unconstitutional and totalitarian misconduct of the Rajapakse state and regime, or to shrivel and lose relevance in its own constituency.
