dynamics of internal governance of the nation states. It must therefore be admitted that
where imperialism is constructed as externally motivated, it can only be effective in its
expropriation and violence if it finds a ready collusion in the agency of the internal
structure of the state.
With respect to the unfurling argument, there is a sense in which the violence and
exclusion of apartheid can be summed in the poverty that it bred for the subordinated
group of the blacks. It was largely owing to this that exile was prevalent during the
notorious dispensation. However, where the condition of the previously subordinated
group fails to improve under a new socio-political order as heralded by the institution of
democracy, it then stands to reason that the current perpetration of violence and
exclusion, which is congruent with apartheid in the new dispensation, will necessarily
yield the same result of dispersal. To that extent, the acceleration of the dispersal that
may be levelled against globalization must also be read as obtaining significantly from
the internal dynamics of the nation state where the leadership can as well be regarded as
representative of the intellectual class that is charged with improving the lot of the
formerly subordinated groups. But this class has already begun to show signs of failure
with respect to improving the condition of the people. Where the basic amenities are
lacking, the confrontation that ensues is best captured in the succeeding rhetorical
questions:
tell me, when the people are illiterate
when the weight of the oppression breaks their sight
when poverty smells like their sweat
and when it blinds and deforms them
and renders them deaf
when it breaks their heads
where
African intellectual
where are you (41)Obviously with the deployment of the historic present tense in the above section of the
poem, it is already clear that the envisaged gains of freedom are as elusive as they had
been in the days of apartheid. It then stands to reason that the elusiveness of the dividends
of the liberation struggle, much as it can be blamed on the impact of neo-liberal economic