Ace and the gang are precisely the people Fanon warned us about

Frantz Fanon, who was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, studied in France and then joined the struggle for the liberation of Algeria from French colonialism. Today he is widely considered to be the most significant thinker to have arisen from the decolonisation movement in Africa. The greatest living African intellectuals, usually considered to be the Ugandan Mahmood Mamdani, and the Johannesburg-based Cameroonian Achille Mbembe, still base much of their work on Fanon's original insights.

Fanon's work is so rich that every time one returns to it there are new insights. On a recent trip to Zambia I used the time in transit to re-read Fanon's greatest book, The Wretched of the Earth. When I first read it in the early 1990s, I was struck by his powerful critique of colonialism. Re-reading the book last week, I was struck by just how uncompromising and powerful his critique of post-independence elites is.

Fanon does not hold back. His description of the new elites that came to dominate after independence is absolutely scathing. He is equally scathing of their nationalist ideology and could not be clearer that the battle for a decent society cannot be limited to nationalism. For Fanon, if nationalism is not supplemented with a social consciousness, it will quickly collapse into gross forms of corruption and authoritarianism.

Fanon paints a bleak picture of a national elite that agitates for nationalisation because "to them, nationalisation simply means the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are a legacy of the colonial period". In other words, this new elite, which has emerged from among the formerly oppressed, has no real social vision. It aims to replace the coloniser for its own private benefit rather than to build a just society. Instead of being an instrument of social advancement, "civil servants very soon began to sabotage the national economy". Reading this today immediately takes one's mind to the disaster unfolding at Eskom, SAA, the SABC and Transnet.

As a new elite enriches itself at the expense of the majority, it will adopt an ever more extreme form of nationalist rhetoric to try to keep the majority on its side. The elites use a language that moves from anti-colonial nationalism to "ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism". Any South African reading these lines today will immediately think of the Bell Pottinger narrative driven by the Zuma faction of the ANC, and Black First Land First, as well as more recent forms of ultra-nationalism espoused by the likes of Ace Magashule and the EFF.

Fanon writes that once the politics of the national elites have collapsed into outright chauvinism, the masses will follow. However, the masses do not turn against their former oppressors. Instead, they turn against migrants from other African countries, against other poor people. Again, our society follows Fanon's script almost exactly. Xenophobic violence, often tacitly encouraged by elite figures, has become an omnipresent reality.

Because the national elite "is preoccupied with filling its pockets as rapidly as possible . the country sinks all the more deeply into stagnation". But, as "the people stagnate deplorably in unbearable poverty, slowly they awaken to the unutterable treason of their leaders".

Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth

—  Frantz Fanon

At this point popular protest starts to eat away at the legitimacy of the ruling party, and the elites it represents. The elites respond by turning to dictatorship, and justifying it by constantly presenting themselves as involved in an entirely fictitious battle against colonialism.

"Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs, while morality declines. Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth. The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilised. The party helps the government to hold the people down. It becomes more and more clearly anti-democratic, an implement of coercion," Fanon writes.

Reading this, one immediately thinks of Marikana and the assassination of grassroots political activists in Durban.

Reading Fanon in 2019 is an eerie experience. He gives an almost perfect account of the collapse of the ANC into outright looting in the Zuma period, and then its turn to extremist nationalist rhetoric to try to mask its treason and sustain popular support. His account of an elite shamelessly stealing from the poor, while the poor turn on each other, reads as if it were written yesterday. The Zuma faction of the ANC, the EFF and Black First Land First are precisely the people Fanon warned us against.

But reading Fanon is not all doom and gloom. He also lays out a clear sense of an alternative politics. The first step is that national consciousness needs to be replaced with social consciousness. What Fanon means is that while nationalism can inspire anti-colonial resistance, it is not capable of building a just and democratic society after independence. For this project, a genuine social vision, a vision of a just society in which human dignity is recognised, is required.

Secondly, Fanon is very clear that the masses need to remain organised and mobilised after independence in order to be able to ensure that democracy expands beyond elections. For Fanon, it is popular democratic action by the masses that offers the best protection against a predatory elite.

Fanon gives us an extraordinarily powerful warning about the dangers of a predatory elite masking its avarice with increasingly extreme forms of nationalism. He gives us the analytical clarity to be able to accurately understand and describe the Zuma faction of the ANC and the EFF. No-one who has read Fanon could ever entertain the idea that these social forces are in any way "left" or "progressive". On the contrary, it becomes clear that they are deeply reactionary and very, very dangerous.

But Fanon also gives us some hope for a way out. That hope is premised on a credible social vision, and the forms of democratic mass organisation that can advocate for it. In the 1970s and '80s, millions of people were organised and mobilised behind a progressive vision for the future. We need to recover that sense of hope, and a sense of democratic engagement that extends beyond elections.

If there is one book that you read this year, make it Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth.

Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI, a research fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation