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When death comes twice
Stan Itshegetseng is an ANC member and writes in his personal capacity.
OPINION
Stan Itshegetseng shares his thoughts on the current political landscape in South Africa
Emerson once said, “Death is the kindest way to lose someone.” That thing made me stop, mara. I don’t know if I agree. Maybe because, as we approach the LGE date of 4 November, I am watching people who once shared political trenches slowly finding themselves on different sides. And it is sad, not newspaper sad or conference resolution sad, but that quiet sadness you feel when something that was once part of you starts becoming unfamiliar.
The SACP is taking an independent electoral road. MKP contains people with whom many ANC comrades once shared a political home. The EFF itself emerged from a painful rupture involving people whose political formation ran through the ANC and its Youth League. These are different histories and different circum-stances, and I don’t pretend they are the same. But underneath them sits one uncomfortable human question: how do people who once called each other Comrade eventually struggle even to recognise each other?
There was a time many of us sang ‘Wenzeni uZuma?’ together. Today some of those same voices answer each other from opposite political trenches. From ‘Wenzeni uZuma?’ to perhaps ‘Wenzeni kimi, Comrade?’ Yoh. Politics is some-thing else.
The EFF itself emerged from a painful rupture involving people whose political formation ran through the ANC and its Youth League.
Maybe politics, like love, is ultimately a matter of the heart. Not everybody we lose actu-ally dies. Sometimes a lover becomes a stranger, a brother becomes an adversary, a father fights his son, a lifelong friend becomes somebody whose WhatsApp picture you occa-sionally see but no longer know how to greet, and a comrade becomes an opponent. The person is alive, somewhere in this world, but what existed between you is gone.
Even royal blood cannot escape this madness. We have watched painful succession disputes within South African royal houses, including among AmaZulu and AbaThembu. Families carrying the same blood, ancestors, and history can find themselves divided by suc-cession, legitimacy, inheritance, and power. It makes me ask: what is kingship without kinship? What is the throne worth if the family around it has been destroyed?
It reminds me of a movie series I watched on Netflix, The Last Kingdom and Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Uhtred, son of Uhtred. After his father’s death, his uncle Ælfric takes Bebban-burg while Uhtred grows up away from his birthright. What should have represented home becomes a battlefield. Blood becomes rivalry, inheritance becomes hatred, and family becomes enemy. I know it is a television drama, not a textbook, but that human lesson stayed with me: what is the point of winning Bebban-burg if everybody you loved had to become your enemy along the way?
It reminds me of a movie series I watched on Netflix, The Last Kingdom and Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Uhtred, son of Uhtred.
Maybe all of us have our own Bebbanburg. For some it is a throne, for others an inherit-ance, political office, a branch, a region, a municipality, a place on a candidate list, money or simply pride. Sometimes it is the heart of somebody we love. We fight and fight until eventually we cannot remember what existed before the fighting. The brother disappears and only the rival remains. The lover disappears and only the hurt remains. The comrade disappears and only the political opponent remains.
And perhaps that is when death comes twice.
The first death happens while both people are still breathing. Nobody is buried, there is no coffin, no funeral, and nobody sends condol-ences, but something has died: the friendship, marriage, family bond or comradeship. Then biological death eventually arrives, and sud-denly the phone call you kept postponing cannot be made. You cannot say, my brother, this thing went too far; my child, come home; I was wrong; forgive me; I still love you; Comrade, sit down, let’s talk.
That is the second death. The first kills the relationship. The second kills the possibility of reconciliation. Yoh, that one frightens me.
There is an East Asian philosophical idea of im-permanence that increasingly makes sense to me: nothing remains exactly as we found it. Seasons change, rivers move, children grow, relationships change, and political power changes hands. Kings become ancestors, pres-idents become former presidents, councillors eventually leave council, and even the loudest election song eventually goes quiet. So why do human beings destroy relationships that may have taken decades to build while fighting over positions that may last only five years?
In focus
Kings become ancestors, pres-idents become former presidents, councillors eventually leave council, and even the loudest election song eventually goes quiet.
I remain ANC. That is my political home. But loving my home does not require me to pretend that everybody who left it was never family. Some were. We know what we shared. We marched together, buried comrades together, fought political battles together, and sometimes survived difficult moments together. A different coloured T-shirt today cannot rewrite yesterday.
ANC, EFF, MKP, SACP: we will disagree, contest, and campaign. That is democracy. But after the posters come down and the votes are counted, we will still meet at funerals, wed-dings, community meetings, churches, and shops ekasi. We will still confront the same unemployment, the same grandmother waiting for water, the same graduate sitting at home without work, and the same communities demanding dignity. Same country, same wounds, sometimes even the same dreams, but different political shirts.
That is why, as this LGE approaches, I find myself thinking less about who shouts the loudest and more about something deeply human: can we disagree without destroying each other? Because there are victories we should be afraid to win. You can win the throne and lose your brother, win an inheritance and lose your child, win a branch and lose your comrades, or win an argument and lose some-body you genuinely loved. Sometimes you can even be right and end up completely alone. Then what exactly did you win?
Maybe Emerson was right that death is final, but I am no longer convinced that death is always the first time we lose somebody. Some-times the funeral happened in our hearts years before the coffin arrived. And when that coffin finally comes, pride discovers something ter-rible: it cannot resurrect possibility.
Maybe Emerson was right that death is final, but I am no longer convinced that death is always the first time we lose somebody.
Maybe that is the lesson for politics, royalty, friendship, family, and matters of the heart. The hardest struggle is not always defeating the person standing opposite you. Sometimes the hardest struggle is disagreeing with somebody you once loved without teaching your heart to hate them.
As we approach this LGE, that thought makes me terribly sad. Elections will pass, positions will change, and somebody else will eventually inherit Bebbanburg. But some relationships, once buried twice, never come home.
OPINION