Newly launched think tank and advocacy group Vuka Azania, founded by Dr Muzi Sikhakhane SC, former spy boss Arthur Fraser, Reverend Dr Allan Boesak and Advocate Dr Isaac Shai, says it will focus on issues including land, jobs, education and improving the lives of Black South Africans.
Vuka Azania was officially launched in Sandton on Friday as a decolonial advocacy think tank and civil society organisation.
Unlike groups such as Solidarity and AfriForum, which primarily advocate for the cultural, economic and community interests of Afrikaners and minority groups, Vuka Azania says its mission is to advance the decolonisation and empowerment of Black South Africans.
The organisation says it is not a political party, but a platform for advocacy and mobilisation focused on land reform, economic opportunities, improved education and greater equality.
Sikhakhane, a prominent South African Senior Counsel and practising advocate, said the organisation was not a political party.
“This is not a political party, but this is something that belongs to South Africans, that will reach the schools, that will reach churches, that will reach spiritual leaders to heal our people, to heal our people. They need healing…”
“Even the ones who don’t like what we are doing, who are black, need healing. We need healing from hating ourselves, from opposing everything that’s six feet in our direction.”
He said the group’s decision not to become a political party was not because that space was inadequate, but because it believed South Africans needed education and healing.
“Our strategic posture is informed by the fact that fundamental change in the country will only come when black people begin to appreciate that they have agency, and that only they can determine their destiny.”
According to Sikhakhane, change was not only possible through political parties.
“Yes, we are political, very political, in our characterization of the problems engulfing this country. However, we are of the view that there are multiple and varied paths to agitating for change.”
“It is not only political parties that are capable of pursuing the interests of black people. It is us working with them to do what they do.”
He said the organisation believed it could unite Black South Africans across political and religious divides.
“This is precisely why one of the first strategic interventions we’re going to do, that Azania wants to do, is to call for and organise a black people’s convention to discuss us, ourselves, our condition, to discuss what we are about, to discuss why we hate each other, to discuss why we want to be slaves, why we do not want anything that seeks to liberate us.”
The Senior Counsel said the aim of the convention was to create a space for Black South Africans to have a conversation among themselves without interruption from those who, in his view, created the problems facing the country.
“To give an example, we have gotten used in this country to a situation where we invite racists to help us define what racism is.”
“This attitude has unfortunately led to the downgrading of our historical credences, and the convention will therefore be a space for black people to determine their own destiny and to debate the black condition across Carbides (communities), because it is the black condition we are talking about, not the invitee to the convention.”
“We have our own definition of blackness,” he added.
simon.majadibodu@iol.co.za
IOL Politics
