Few days ago I watched a very short video at the courtesy of the Nexus Institute. iGrootman ka Slavoj Zizek is interviewed by Fiona Schouten. Minutes into the talk as short as it was, Fiona asks the French philosopher a question of humongous importance that cuts across the fields of politics and philosophy and art and theology and economics and science – “what is wrong with the world/ what is the crisis in the world?”

In response, Philosopher Alain Badiou answers that there are two levels of crisis in place in the world today.

Firstly, we have the objective level – which he explains as the crisis of capitalism = the financial crisis

Secondly, we have the subjective level – among others he speaks into this level about obscure vision of the future. As a reaction to this, he says that if the objective cannot be modified immediately but the least that can be done is to modify the subjective level of the crisis. By proposing new ideas. New visions. New forms of life. New forms of thinking and this also speaks to the definition of new forms of freedom.

Okay, now – back home: South Africa. White post-colonial colonial South Africa. Sometime ago, months if not mistaken in a long friendly call I spoke with a friend (Ncedisa Mpemnyama) about how Prof. Adam Habib (former Wits VC) missed a very important thing in what he calls Mcebo Dlamini’s brilliance at coining phrases. Phrases to insult to be precise but his was not an insult or a compliment as the good Prof. thought but rather one thing, a wake up call, that should have given him a rude realization as to how he’s far and actually against what he stood for back when he was an activist. Kodwake this is not limited to Habib alone or his fellow gatekeepers at the long walls of the academy abo Prof. Jonathan Jansen nabanye ontaba kayikhonjwa.

It extends to all those who yesterday stood for a good cause and today have turned against it – if not turned to retired revolutionaries or sleepy queens and kings of the 6th so-called democratic parliament with honourable but unhonourable members – in a country with such a history of colonialism (as a system to evoke Sartre) what does it really mean to be honourable while being landless? cde Andile Mngxitama says it better than me of course. 

It happens that Mcebo had said that he has an “uncircumcised heart” (best read in Acts 7 verse 51). and to this, the Prof. writes in his managerial report style book “Rebels and Rages: Reporting on #FeesMustFall: “He also had an interesting ability to coin a phrase; he once suggested on television that I had ‘an uncircumcised heart’. Until today, I am

Still unsure whether this was meant as a compliment or an insult”. Ohhhhhh poor VC Adam Habib. It may be possible that comrade Mcebo might have meant something else but I want to believe that his was a theological critique of the actions of the “lost” Prof. Adam Habib. That’s how I take it, how I want to take it. a question into what the man, the VC, deep down in his …heart stood for.

Shouldn’t we extend this phrase to many blacks in South Africa today? from the academy to the pulpit and the theatre, my dear black brothers and sisters at the stage performing amapiano, the trendy Kilimanjaro hit – to the sports arena and the imaginary young black brother and sister locked in their computer screens writing that novel or what what? a poetry book as they say – maybe it’s time that black people, us the oppressed, look deep into our souls as we move about in our quest for freedom. for true humanity. Perhaps it is time we move beyond or let go of our “uncircumcised hearts” and we start again listening more than we speak. so we can start speaking better more than we sing good.

If Prof. Habib had listened more closely before his burning urge to speak back to what comrade Dlamini had said – maybe we would be talking about something else today – maybe he and the likes abo Prof. Jonathan Jansen might have seen how they, as black South Africans, moved in the position of keeping the status quo intact against the students who put their lives in the line so to fulfil their quest for freedom – a kind of freedom they defined in the form of “free quality decolonized education”.

Isn’t this missing of the crucial point the driving force of our society today? in politics, in the church, in the academy, in anti-black public commentaries often thrown in our faces as being progressive and radical, inter alia. perhaps it is time we start looking somewhere else. or time to consider “beginning from the beginning” (taken from intwana ka Badiou u Slavoj Zizek reading/critique of Lenin/s and thoughts as presented in his text I mention below) as one would learn from an analogy that the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin make use of in his text – Notes of a Publicist. of course as he notes, “It would hardly be natural to suppose that a man who had climbed to such an unprecedented height but found himself in such a position did not have his moments of despondency.” the same hold true for the black South African. those who have tried. those have put their bodies on the line against the roaring lion of white supremacy and anti-blackness forever ready to smash against the violence inviting body of the black colonized.

In those moments of despondency, we should not move as those with “uncircumcised hearts” we should not act and speak like those whom the term love, freedom, equality shakes. but in following Badiou’s philosophical conditions – love, art, science and politics – we should always put these conditions in force in our quest for true freedom – true humanity. what do we mean by freedom? for who? for what? to get it – who does what? that’s the spirit we must elect to employ in trying to define what kind of freedom/s or better, idea of freedom/s we need and can get in the immediate time so to move at the second level of the subjective crisis and we wrestle non-stop to do away with the capitalist crisis at the first level.

 It is here where i find it suffice to invoke the late James H. Cone where he avers that if we are going to get any freedom as black people, we must do that ourselves. i hope and pray that we find it like a burning fire in our souls the need and importance to always advocate, fight, “serve, suffer and sacrifice” for freedom. to not betray our genetic yearn for freedom and equality – true freedom and equality outside the scope of libertarian and liberal modes of freedom and equality.  

Let us “figure it out collectively” as Fred Moten holds while “pushing each other against the wall in a loving way” to follow ntate Cornel West. 

And i stop here.