As a consequence of daily humiliation by a Neo-colonial society obsessed with perversion, Africans are being deracinated. Racial barriers are lowered for the political elite to settle on the other side, collaborating with capital owners and criminal cartels through tactics that are immoral and shameful. It is evident that criminal cartels have influence over our governmental institutions, which are the result of the Republic of South Africa's 1996 Constitution. Let me echo the wisdom of Nigerian Professor Anthony Akinwale: we must start by resolving a conceptual dilemma involving the nation, state, and country.

A country is a territory from the Latin Contra Terra – the land that lies ahead of you;

A nation is an association of “peoples” - implying “diversity” - who are identified by their shared core values. Although they ostensibly agree on a constitution that establishes the institutions comprising the state, they do so based on their core common values. South Africa has a confusing situation where the Nation is reduced to the State, we have the Country, we live within a territory, even if that territory is not secure.

We don’t have a Nation; we have institutions that make up the State. We collapsing the Nation into a State. The sovereignty is ascribed to the State but not to the People. This is a recipe for impunity. What are our core values? When we identify our core values, we will build our nation.

What we have right now is the State held together by deceit or trick. When the State begins to repress the citizens there will be cries of marginalisation, secessionists, and separatists agitations with complete insecurity.

We have setup SA to be a place where the State is more powerful than the people, and the State is repressive. In South Africa, the political elite has long subjugated the institutions to criminal cartels and, covertly, to the rentiers, who hold the capital for the economy.

The process is no longer a myth. The HEGEMONY of government is transferred to unelected authorities, state security and the judiciary are in the hands of criminal cartels.

With this regard, allow me to cite Kwame Nkrumah the first President of Ghana ……… “Citizenship within a society which will be rooted in cooperation and not acquisitive competition. To this end, Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest, and informed man. A man who submerges himself in service to the nation and mankind. A man who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man whose humility is his strength and whose integrity is his greatness."

African society has long been shaped by moral behaviour and a science-based thought process. Injustice has developed and outpaced Western democracy. The dominated group's dehumanisation made them more resilient to the gluttonous material comforts of the ruling class. This is a situation where revolutionaries are suicidal and self-erasing. As a result, the revolutionary path entails pseudo-rhetoric content and is currently being exploited as a stage for bloody power struggles meant to satisfy raging greed.

Only honesty, tolerance, and a refusal to compromise on moral values seem necessary for a man's survival. That being said, it is very difficult to think noble when one's main focus is earning a living. A life solely concerned with the material will result in a very narrow perspective. Africa's recent history demonstrates that its leaders failed to create sophisticated, self-sufficient civilisations, which is why the current unrest is so successful.

South Africa was modelled by CODESA as a Western dolly nation in Africa with a constitution but no sense of national identity. As a result, the tyranny of the majority-which has gained hegemony in many nations—threatens to undermine the idea of "plurality" and views migrants, intellectuals, minorities, and democrats as adversaries.

In scholarly and political debates, the aura of the contemporary era has generated an illusion, leading to its designation as "the age of populism" with crisis predictions. Financialisation, or economic capture, gave way to party corruption, which led to state capture in South Africa. Currently, the state is controlled overtly by criminal cartels that exploit the ineffective institutions established by our renowned constitution to perpetuate widespread inequality.

Antonio Gramsci argued that "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

Currently, humanity is in a crisis because capitalism is dying and a new order is unable to emerge. The cartels controlling government institutions exhibit the pathological symptoms South Africans experience. Among these morbid symptoms is the loss of moral behaviour, which according to the uBuntu philosophy was once the cornerstone of African life.

Some Western intellectuals concur that the greatest influence in life was made by Christ and the Buddha, Pythagoras, and Galileo. None of the four achieved much success during their own lives. None of these four had the backing of the government until his ideas and propaganda had gained considerable traction. None of the four would have affected human existence as much as he has if power had been his main objective. None of the four aspired to the kind of power that enslaves others, but rather the kind that frees them - in the case of the first two, by demonstrating how to control the desires that cause conflict and, thus, to end slavery and subordination; and in the case of the second two, by demonstrating how to control natural forces. The wisdom of those who appeal to humanity's shared desires - happiness, inner and outer peace, and a knowledge of the reality we must live in without our choice - is what ultimately governs men, not violence and war. Bertrand Russell asserted.

Africans are less adept at manipulating narratives, or the art of propaganda - they seldom demythologise their intellectual corpus of knowledge or are ignorant about it.

Imhotep was a high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis, a putative architect of Djoser's step pyramid, and the Egyptian chancellor of Pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep lived in an innovative era, especially in the field of stone architecture. He gained notoriety mostly for his ingenious step pyramid design. Additionally, he was a doctor at Djoser's court, where he treated the king. He contributed to the advancement of medicine with his medical theories.

Cheikh Anta Diop's achievements in science and his literary masterpiece have earned him the titles of both the imhotepian scholar and the prototypical scientist.

African societies were established through the tenets of uBuntu. When African societies were established in post-colonial states, the same uBuntu was disregarded as a fundamental philosophy. There was a fetishisation of Eastern and Western ideas in political discourse, as if they were being hailed as representatives of a newly discovered civilisation. The economics of uBuntu were dismissed in the construction of New South Africa, strangely positioning it as a religion to suppress its social role. Violence, criminality, and corruption were uncharacteristic of Africans.

The morality of African people is enshrined through UBuntu and Morena Mohlomi serves as the historical epitome of that tradition. “It is better to thrash the corn than to shape the spear" was one of his famous sayings.

One of the lessons by Mohlomi is that "Morena ke Morena ka Sechaba, a chief is a chief only by his people's grace." He goes on to say that "a man's conscience is his true guide." It always demonstrates his responsibility: if he does well, it smiles on him, and if he performs poorly, it chastises him. This shows how brilliant he was as a leader of his era and how morally and ethically sound he was.

Mohlomi's view of Botho as the core of Setho—his philosophy of life—made him famous. Botho is a phrase used to characterise someone who is well-rounded, courteous, disciplined, and well-mannered. They also reach their full potential as members of their community and as individuals. From a conceptual standpoint, "humaneness, solidarity, sharing, universal brotherhood, communalism, interdependence, and hospitality" are the fundamental principles that define Botho.

To say that Mohlomi was to Moshoshoe what Mao was to Tse-Tung or what Jesus Christ was to Paul is not enough. Mohlomi, Tse-Tung, and Jesus all promoted shared ideals for transforming human society. Each of the three men—Paul, Lenin, and Moshoeshoe—established religious organisations and moral civilisations that contributed to the survival of humanity on Earth.

The more recent generation of Bantubonke Biko, Rolihlahla Mandela, Julius Nyerere, and Kwame Nkrumah maintained continuity with the Mothlomis. African societies should be structured by science and with pristine moral conduct underpinned by the uBuntu philosophy.

The captivity of politicians by criminal cartels must be the morbid signalling the need for a new society.

Written by Bongani Mankewu is the Director of the Infrastructure Finance Advisory Institute