Buying Flowers in Cape Town

January 2007: I’m holidaying in Cape Town. I’ve just eaten lunch at Nando’s restaurant. I’m standing at a shaded corridor called Trafalgar Place. Costermongers are selling flowers. I stand dazed, spellbound, as if struck by lighting.


What’s the matter?



I’m not the one who usually cares much for pressure points of guide books, but I had read in one of them that the shaded area was once where they sold human slaves in the eighteenth century. It just sort of came to me all of a sudden. I stand there imagining how they must have sat there in rows, bruised and harried, damp and fever fogged, waiting to be auctioned while the buccaneering hardiness of their blackbirding sellers auctioned and documented their misery.



I buy two bunches from a coloured lady whose eyes dance with joviality. She looks at me strangely as I lay them down not far from where she is seating. On second thoughts I bruise them. “Arnica and eyebright; to treat bruises and for pained eyes.” I say as I move away. The panhandling car park guide, used to tourists and never shy of audience, poses for me to take a picture; but I decline, not wanting to be part of the pasquinade. He smuggles his way into my affection anyway.




I had been wondering how best to explore the Mother City; through buying flowers the motif came to me. I immediately took to quick research on the internet. In the end I discovered that it’d take a lifetime to explore everything associated with slavery in the Cape—since seemingly the region was built on slave labour—so I decide (for sanity) to limit myself to the city centre, the Company Gardens in particular.


Knowledge is burden.


With the acquired knowledge the city changes in my eyes, utterly. Everywhere I go I see tragic undertones of human slavery; old buildings, and gardens. The studied ebullience of statues, especially, look more like a kowtowing exercises to the narratory of Western colonialism and imperialism.


Cape Town, of course, as a city was established when Dutch East India Company (DOC) formed a half-way station, a toehold on the African continent, at the Cape in 1652. The idea was not to colonise, but to maximise profits of spice trades to India. Jan van Riebeeck became the first commander at the Cape and the founder of the city; mandated to plant fresh vegetables for the Company, which is how the Company’s Gardens were established at the top of Heerengracht, now Adderly, Street.


The problem is that there was not enough labour, so in 1654 the ship Roode Vos went on a slaving expedition to Mauritius and Antongil Bay in Madagascar but returned empty. The first slaves in the Cape arrived on 28 March 1658 brought by the ship Amersfoot after being captured from a Portuguese slaver that was on its way from Angola to Brazil.


About 63 000 slaves were imported into the Cape between 1658 and 1808, the year slave trade was abolished throughout the British Empire. Most of them were brought from India {Bengal, Malabar and Coromandel (36.4%)}, East Indies (31.47%), Ceylon (now Sir Lanka, 3.1%), Mozambique, Madagascar and East African coast (26.65%), and the rest came from Malaya and Mauritius.


I seat on a public bench to read the edifying correspondence between Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson during the foundations of the American Republic: ‘I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the manuscript-assumed authority of the dead.’ Says Jefferson.


The voorlopers (drum majors) are drumming Dutch liedjies (songs) to keep the dead on their wake. It’s 2nd January, the time of Minstrel Festival in the Mother City. At this time denizens of the city get a modicum of care-free camaraderie between each other, especially those of different races. I am obstructed by a frozen disgust at the violence that lies at the foundations of the city. The caravan moves on, sowing bustle. I go up Wale Street, take some few photographs of the Slave Lodge before entering the Company Gardens.


‘The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead,’ Thomas Jefferson insists in another letter exchange with James Madison in the fall of 1789. Madison wrote back intimating that; ‘the social world, unlike the natural, genuinely has been inherited. It is the manufactured.’ The gist of his argument is that the social order was built, maintained, and left to us not just by a vague and nameless antiquity, but by particular people, within living memory and link to the past.


The Company Gardens is now a botanical. It gives a relaxed ambience for lovers, families, and all those who want to escape the metropolis compelling distresses for a while. It hedges Parliament buildings and the South African presidential palace called Tynhys [Summer House]. Tynhys was built on slave labour by Simon van Da Stel, the first governor of the Cape and brother-in-law of Riebeek.


Madison, of course, was of the opinion that we receive the buildings from those who came before us. We speak the languages they spoke, read the books they wrote, and are basically the avatars of their biological and moral choices; just as others will receive ours. Just as others will receive ours. That thought strikes a chord. What will others receive from us? Crimes of complicity, of evasion, of silence, of going with the comfortable flow because we don’t want to disturb the status quo; or prejudice a superficial reconciliation?



The American fathers, and those who use these kind of arguments, wanted the new Republic to find stability by accepting public debt and the consequent role of prior generations. Fine! Why then there’s a minimum of two statues of Smuts in the Company Gardens while you don’t find a single one dedicated to slaves? Didn’t their blood and toil erect those gardens? Is the silent hidden Bell enough?

There are heated debates about changes of street names and all in our country all most in every municipality building you go to. Up to this present day the U.S.A still vacillates between two points of view; wanting to acknowledge or forget the past. South Africa has just set in on that course. One says; ‘Let us forget the past.’ The other answers; ‘Because you want to rob me of its strength.’ Then another says; ‘Let’s live in the past.’ Another answers; ‘Because you have not prepared yourself for the future.’

I seek not apologies, nor reparations; just awareness of what has been with a promise to be better than we are. Just to take a moment from living in the dizzy heights of the moment without descending to presentism. History is enough Gorgon’s head as it is. Human manufacture settles nothing. We may buy flowers to ward off the stench where human beings were auctioned like animals, but pray we don’t trample on their graves.

Ernest Renan insisted that the nation is constituted in large measure by the shared memories of sufferings and sacrifices of the past that make the present generation willing to endure sufferings and sacrifices of its own. To keep faith with those who have come before the role of memory is crucial. Is it any wonder that Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address invoked the “mystic chords of memory”. People are usually ready to sacrifice for a greater future when they see that the sacrifices of those who came before them have been honoured.

I seat at another park bench watching the birds career the air in matinal excitement. The pulchritudinous tranquillity feels insulting to my mood. Table Mountain, bandaged in mist, is scowling at my neck. Grief is the beginning of the healing process. I had come to Cape Town intending to be merry, instead I found a home. Home is often where the heartache is, especially for those of us caught up on TS Eliot’s communication of the dead with their tongues of fire.

It was another American, Edmund Bruke, who said; ‘If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feeling will be drawn that way . . .’ I can’t wait change to come and my country be normal. Though the scars run too deep, there’s a clamp of hope on the aching mist (Philip Lark).

The Dye is cast

Lately, since he received overwhelming majority nomination on regional ANC (African National Congress) branches, JZ (Jacob Zuma) has been gallivanting on the globe acting like a an incumbent president, selling the skin of bear he has not even shot—the actual elections are only happening at the ANC conference from 15-20 December 2007 in Polokwane.
There’s no doubt that JZ sees his presidential mission as fait accompli. But what is the word from the ANC delegates who’d be voting in Polokwane? From the few I’ve talked with the general attitude is that ‘I’ve nothing personal against JZ, but my take is that, with all the baggage he’s been burden with it’d reflect badly on us as the country if he were to be our next president. You must not worry; the ANC in the end will come to its senses.’ I’ll doff my hat off if they manage to pull that one off, that is, preventing JZ from being the next president of the ANC.
Personally I prefer what I see as the lesser evil of Mbeki’s click (President: Thabo Mbeki; Vice president: Nkosazana Dlamani-Zuma; and so on) to continue for another five years. My concern is that; the voice of the majority on the ground is clearly for Zuma. What message would be the delegates passing if they ignore that voice? The ANC motto is that ‘The People Shall Govern.’
Having said that; the dye is now cast. The two elephants are about to clash in Polokwane next weekend. As those who grew on the struggle the only thing to say about this kind of confrontation is: Ayihlab’ ihlome!
I’ve in the past weeks, in agony of diplomacy, been trying to join the debate about the election of the next ANC president. Now that the direction of things is clear I think I shall close to this topic with a very frank talk. I imagine listening to a fresh leader—something the ANC is clearly adverse to—speaking in the opening ceremony of the ANC 52nd Conference (Polokwane). This is what he would say:
My pity collects and is roused when I look at you. I think of the glorious manner by which you conducted yourself in fighting the scourge of apartheid over years. It is up to you now to continue on that path, or to divert from it for strange sayings and principles. You have in the past elected leaders that were blameless as flowers, others not so blameless, but you’ve always managed to wade through because you allowed the principles of democracy and human rights to guide you.
Now you’ve come to your 52nd National Conference to elect your next president. Leading to this conference has been disappointing signs of your neglect, even shunning, the founding principles of your organisation. Others among you want to be in power in perpetuity, against your traditions and principles. Others behave immorally against the principles of human rights you purport to support, yet they still want to be elected leaders of your party.
There is nothing wrong with ambition but one wishes its objectives were more edifying. I see now that your fantasies have generated realities. Is there been a dearth of leadership material in your party that you should allow yourselves to be manoeuvred to this unattainable self-defeating position. You stupid, stupid people! Wake up! This is your last chance or soon you shall be fondling your dust and weep over your own ruins.
I face your idiocy with stunned astonishment. Go ahead and elect your paranoid kings and false prophets. Build tyrants who’ll enslave you through your greediness. You’ve shown that in this matter you’ll not accept the command of reason, you shall then be degraded by your bellies. You stupid, stupid people walking plagues of foolishness. Looks like now you’ve decided to ‘cast shadows that are contrary to the sun.’ All good and well then; ‘we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told, . . . Now, gods, stand up for bastards!,’

Ngxola Boys At The Gates

When I was growing up in the township of Mlungisi in Queenstown we were terrorised by a gang of organised criminals called Ngxola (Noise) Boys. Just going to the shops was a scary thing and sometimes meant your death. People abhorred the Ngxola Boys but were helpless because they were unorganised. The apartheid government, naturally, did care anything happening in the townships so long it was not politically motivated. It came to an extent that people organised vigilante groups—I remember one called Inyosi (Bees) that finally broke the back of Ngxola Boys. But not before the township was thrown into tremendous turmoil, more like a civil war.

The thought of JZ (Jacob Zuma) becoming president, bringing his Ngxola Boys—Vavi, Mbalula and the rest—brought back that feeling and I shuddered to my soul. I’ve never hid from the fact that I’m adverse to Zuma’s presidency; I just think it’d be bad pro job for the country, but more to the point I don’t think his has sufficient suave to understand contemporary politics, especially intercontinental and international.

The popular currency of JZ is the weariness with Thabo Mbeki’s regime. Mbeki in most people’s minds has come to symbolise everything wrong with our country. Black people blame him for delayed economic freedom; that is for economic policies that favour big business (read white business). White people fear his independence of mind and blame him for abandoning the so called Mandela legacy (read maintaining the status quo of white affluence served by black servile class).

In my book Thabo Mbeki is the best president this country—hell this continent—has ever had, and yes I mean even better than Mandela who was mostly just a ceremonial snow haired daddy figure. I’m all for reconciliation, the so called Mandela’s legacy, but fuck it if it must be maintained but the servitude and sacrifices of only one race. The so called Mbeki intransigency and style of government has been his downfall, especially among the vox populi who see him as a distant enigma whose vision does not seem to take them into immediate consideration.

Of course the cynic echo of the gutter that fast racked Mbeki’s demise is the South African chattering class, from which he radically dissents. Mbeki is not intellectually or politically clubbable, something that’s very frustrating to the lazy lot of our chattering class. He does not fit any labels they echo. For instance, most of what is directed against Mbeki as the blight to his leadership is the South African government dithering at a point of Aids crisis. No one cares to point out that this failure started even during Mandela’s era; in actual sense Mandela was in a better position to show some real leadership concerning the issue but deferred it to the background. If anybody should take the brunt of this failure, without excusing Mbeki’s failures, is Mandela. It is unfortunate that our chattering class cloaks its frustrations and hate for Mbeki in this moralistic righteousness manner.

It has become fashionable in the chattering class circles to call Mbeki a tyrant, equating him to a budding Robert Mugabe. None are able to provide you with clear evidence of course of his tyranny except that he happens to have different opinions to their prevailing consensus which is not necessary that of the people on the ground. And lately, making strange birdfellows, they have been in collaboration with those whove been left out of the career wheel with the Tripartite Alliance.

Methinks if we need protection against the tyranny of the president we also need one against the tyranny of prevailing opinion of the chattering class and the empty howlings of careerists. We need a break from the chattering class’ tendency of imposing, by overt scribbling means, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct. Our chattering class, especially the clowns at Johnnic Media, give off too much heat with paeans to sensationalism and thoughtless commentary. They want to fit our minds into their own agendas because they happen to have the weapons of publicity at their disposal. Most of their criticism of Mbeki is more of an empty teapot telling a kettle it’s out of steam.

If Mbeki is perceived as being not in touch with the general gestalt JZ, our Priapus, has fulfilled the role of a messiah with feet of clay, or should that be schlong (penis) of clay. JZ has come with the popular wave against Mbeki, not because of any discernable qualities, but because he happens to be seen as the victim of Mbeki’s vindictiveness since he was fired as a deputy president of the country. The irony is that with all its hate of Mbeki the chattering class has prepared a way for a candidate they fear more—not for originality and independence of mind, but for exactly opposite qualities; clumsiness, gullibility, and too much association with the left. They had been canvassing, to no avail, for the magnate Tokyo Sexwale, who would have been perfect as a teddy bear leader to be pampered with media flattering compliments into submitting to their vision of things. JZ instead comes with the burden of expectations on the ground, and will probably sing from the trade unionist tune to pay his dews.

The crux of the matter is that the people seem to have made their preference in a clear voice during the regional nominations of ANC. JZ is their preferred next president. Whether that will be endorsed at the coming ANC conference where the actual elections will be held between 15-20 December is now an ANC internal matter. As the fifteenth-century philosopher and Roman Catholic cardinal Nicholas of Cusa: “There is in the people a divine seed by virtue of their common birth and equal natural right of all men so that all authority — which comes from God as does man himself — is recognized as divine when it arises from the common consent of the subjects.”

The people’s voice is that of God, if that makes you shudder, perhaps it is time you re-examine your values. Personally I would have preferred Cyril Ramaphosa to be our next president, and Nkosazana Dlamani-Zuma as his deputy; but the people are speaking and I’m listening.

Pruim is Polokwane This Year

Watching the giddy excitement around the country on ANC (African National Congress) branch meetings preparing for the coming conference in Polokwane (5-20 December 2007) one is much reminded of the Jewish celebrations of Purim.

Pruim celebrates the bravery of a Jewish woman, Esther, who married King Xerxes, one of the great warrior kings of Persia the Bible named as Ahasuerus. King Xerxes’ Grand Vizier, Haman, plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia—a large flourishing community who were descendents of Jews seized and deported from Judea by king Nebuchadnezzar.

Haman was willing to pay cash to anyone who would come up with a way of killing Jews efficiently; and even casting lots to determine how to destroy all the Jews throughout Xerxes whole kingdom. Letters and stern decrees were sent throughout the provinces on Haman’s orders. The Jews were to be killed and their belongings taken as booty.

Haman’s last straw against the Jews came by the hand of a certain Mordecai, who happen to be Esther’s cousin also. Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman with reverence necessitating Haman to prepare special gallows where he would hang him. Mordecai obtained a copy of the decree against the Jews and sent it to Esther begging her to save her people and herself. To cut the story short, Esther prevailed in convincing the king to reverse the decree, and Haman was hung instead of Mordecai on the special gallows.

Since then the Jews have celebrated the day with much joviality and cussing of Haman’s name. For instance, whenever the name of Haman is read on the Scroll of Esther in Jewish congregation the children make loud noises with rattles and banging so that his name will not be heard above the din and be blotted out memory. Anyone who has been attending the ANC regional conferences lately would have noticed the same tendency when either the name of Mbeki or Zuma was mentioned; childish din to blot out and cuss the name out. The non-partisan, like Buridan’s starving ass, stand perfectly equidistant between two piles of hay, undecided, even sometimes disgusted, which way to turn.

Jewish friends during Pruim send themselves Hamantaschen (Haman’s ears)—delicious sweet-filled pastry with poppy seeds. The custom these days during the celebrations is much drinking, ‘joy and gladness’ to an extent that one no longer knows weather he is blessing Mordecai or cursing Haman (Naturally the rabbis do not approve of this excess). It is the same feeling you get on ANC meetings these days. People are so excited, so elated, you find it difficult whether they are blessing Zuma or cussing Mbeki. Of course things are much more serious than that, since it is—let’s cease these pretensions—no longer just about politics but careerism. If Thabo goes down he goes with a trail of his hanger-ons. That might spell a lot bank repossession of X5 (BMW).

Our kvetch media (political) commentary, not to be outdone, has joined the fray. They are glad to have some excitement to the usual dull straightforward ANC politics engineered backstage. They are having a field day striking and trying to chip the ANC rock, but the harder they struck the more it just emits sparks in no particular consistent direction. Hence with the help of survey after survey—those wonderful invention to answer ancient’s custom of studying bird’s entrails—they sleep with this and wake with that.

Personally I’ve come to the conclusion that it’d take years to understand what is happening within the ANC now. Hence I’m not surprised when conveyed commentary on the presidential race tends to be skewed, confused, and even contradictory. We are on uncharted grounds here with no authority of precedents. These elections are doubling up as another means to explore the concept of our nationhood that operates through the complex tensions of our past, like ethnic, regional, even racial identities.

We all know that both the Mbeki and Zuma camps have no different political identities. Their identities are predicated on the personalities and vested of their leaders, give or take fluid edges there and there. Even the tacit assumptions upon which both these leaders differ tend to be inchoate and vague. I sometimes suspect they themselves do not know. Theirs has now become just another Darwinian struggle. No body has who understand the feeling on the ground has ever doubted the popularity of Priapus, the minor Hellenistic deity with the major schlong who inspired laughter but was himself “not a happy god”. But if it ANC history tells us anything it is that the popularity of a leader is no guarantee of his being elected a president. Otherwise we would have had president Winnie Mandela at some stage of our political life.

The growing consensus within the higher echelons of the ANC is that both Zuma and Mbeki have failed the organization by standing on the coming presidential race. But it seems the voice that is adverse to a Zuma presidency than that against Mbeki’s third term is in the majority; so the game is not over yet. The ANC NEC (National Executive) has tremendous powers and influence. Be that as it may the organisation finds itself without an inclusive collective voice except the usual appeals to the historical structure of the organisation that favours Zuma.

Single-party systems reach their heights when, like in SA, their vision has been universally received. To maintain their popularity they must renew from the centre, or employ totalitarian softer tactics, like state-backed propaganda and, at worst, use coercive force. When a regime moves towards strict authoritarian models it is often a sign that it is loosing grip on society. Which stage the ANC is at seems to depend on one’s political persuasions, but I personally don’t think things are forlorn.

The truth of the matter is that no one can really predict what will happen in Polokwane. The only thing certain is that Zuma’s supporters are louder, and even vulgar sometimes, but that does not mean Zuma has secured the majority vote yet. Another thing is certain, the frumpy, eclectic, broadbandness of the ANC has reached another watershed point this year. Things will never be the same again within the party regardless of who holds the reigns. It’s settled assumptions have been tested and found wanting. It might be possible for the ANC to go back to the unifying effects of its structure, but it has certainly lost the collaborative strength between its members.

All democratic governments are in a learning curve, a perpetual state of maturity, by the virtue that they derive their mandate from the people. In democratic dispensations the voice of the people is the monarch. The ANC’s homogenising effect, better known as comrade effect, abuses the monarchy and encourages anachronism. It is what needs to go to make way for authentic political and economic policy parity or antipathy of its members. That is the only way the ANC will find a way of renew itself for the twenty first century without relying on past conditions all the time. There is no running away from the fact that our identity is conditioned by, and mediated through the past. But there comes a time when the past too must adapt or die.

Then again, as the Yiddish saying cautions: ‘A high temperature is not an illness and Pruim is not a festival!’ Unfortunately some people are not privy to that saying. As we speak people are involved in various forms of fitrah (the cleansing rituals, on top of all the manicurist obsession of cutting nails and armpit hair, trimming moustaches and clean shaving hair that have befallen comrades lately), and numerous visits to amaGqirha (witch-doctors) to cast or ward the spells. Bobby Zimmerman, alias, Bob Dylan, would probably describe this sheer giddiness of things with his song Desolation Row: They’re selling the postcards of the hanging / they’re painting passports brown / the beauty pallor is filled with sailors / the circus is in town . . .

As the din rises I’m reminded of another senile old man, Shakespeare’s Richard III. In Act 4, Scene 4, Richard has drums beaten to drown his mother’s curses: ‘A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarum, drums! Let not the hearers hear these tell-tale women Rail on the Lord’s anointed: Strike I say!’ I wonder if president Mbeki has re-read Richard III lately since the days he made the farewell speech, in high spirits, for Mandela?

The Bobobo Life

My friend and were seating chatting in of those Sunday afternoons when nothing seem interesting seem to happen. You kind of feel caught in between things, wanting to rest and finishing off the weekend. So instead of having a couple of beers you decide on watching, more like surfing, TV. And so that’s why you end up watching a National Geographic documentary on bobobos.

“I think I wanna be a bobobo in my next life.” Says my friend with an usual assumed determination. You watch the program t into the end. You talk and laugh it over. And then you decide to learn more about bobobos. With the help of some quick research on the internet you get more information.


Apparently, along with chimpanzees, bobobos are humans’ closest animal relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Yet they are completely different to their warlike cousins because bobobos live in matriarchal tribes.

“That not entirely good.” Says my slightly parochial friend.

“Listen to this,” I say interrupting him. “In bonobo society conflicts are settled by sex, and since the quarrel a lot they have lots and lots of sex. Surely if that does not make you wish for a woman next president that alone should persuade you.”

“Yes I saw that part on the program; they even have sex to greet one another, which I think is way, way cool.”

“They use sex to socialise, resolve conflicts . . .”

“Imagine all that make­up sex, and more of it sex as the current of negotiation. What I found most impressive is the variety of positions they have it on.”

“And they are not finicky about gender either. Partners can be male or female, of literally any age, and are often taken from within an individual’s immediate family as well as outside of it.”

“Okay, I’ll admit that’s creepy.”

“Within each tribe,” the information goes on, “even the lowest-status female is considered superior to the highest-status male. Older bobobo females keep younger females in check by snubbing them: walking away from a grooming attempt or refusing to share food.”

“Grown male bobobos cling to their mothers in order to attain status and protection.” “Listen to this, I think it is the kicker: Male bonobos live longer and are generally healthier than male chimps, since they aren’t required to fight for status and don’t live with the stress that chimps do.”

“That’s a clincher. I’m choosing to be a bobobo in my next life. The bastards have it made.”

South African Presidential Race

It is goes to the natural arrogance of every age to feel its era is the most important in history, but the 52nd ANC (African National Congress) from 15 to 20 December 2007 will probably go down in the history books of South Africa as a much anticipated political conference of all time. The next ANC (African National Congress) president, ipso facto, of the republic, will be elected there by the structures of the party.

By the time Nelson Mandela stepped down as the president of the republic Thabo Mbeki and his supporters had manoeuvred the internal structures of the ANC into making him the only candidate at the national conference that elected him. Constitutionally Mbeki now cannot stand for a third term as a South African president though he has recently been giving Caesar like indications that should ‘the party’ structures elect him to stand as the next president of the ANC he would accept the nominations as his duty. Most people fear the untenable situation of two seats of power should the president of the ANC be different to that of the republic. Or wourse a situation where Mbeki, as the president of the ANC, would become a puppet master of the next president of the republic.

I was glad when the ANC branch of Gaby Shapiro in Rondebosch, Cape Town (where I stay) elected Cyril Ramaphosa as its preferred candidate to be the next president of the ANC. The election was by an overwhelming vote against the likes of Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Tokyo Sexwale. It’s a pity that our province, Western Cape—termed the Cape of political storms—seems not privy to the advantages of endorsing Ramaphosa’s nomination (the candidacy of Mbeki is ahead overall in the province).

It seems to me Cyril Rhamaphosa is the only non compromised candidate among the choices we presently have. He competently represented the ANC in the CODESA negotiations in Kempton Park that saw the establishment of a government of national unity, a precursor to a fully fledged South African non racial democratic government. He had the blessing of Nelson Mandela to be his successor until the ANC party stalwarts convinced Mandela otherwise. Ramaphosa has a long history with the trade union organizations, and just might be the one candidate to restore COSATU’s (Congress of South African Trade Unions) confidence on the Tripartite Alliance without alienating the so called Mbeki and Zuma factions. The majority of those, sometimes termed ‘inxiles’, who made for the general movement that fought apartheid from within the country known then as the UDF (United Democratic Front), would have their ayes behind Ramaphosa who also has deep roots in that movement.

With the credentials of a trade unionist, businessman and lawyer Ramaphosa would enjoy the confidence of business, the erudite class, and the lumpenproletariat (underclass). He just might be the only leader who can achieve the mammoth task of repulsing the reciprocity of suspicion between South Africans concerning the remerging beast of race and worrying class divide. He’s such an obvious candidate that only those with other vested interests object to his candidacy as the next president.

What’s the alternative?

The later-day overnight magnate, Tokyo Sexwale, is too much spin, pose, samizdat fanzines and feigning of cultivated taste with false humility. He has a worrying tendency of manufacturing and manipulating facts for show, plugging inculpating twigs as goes walk along; involving himself in this and all that as only characterless individuals would do. He’s too much of a drama queen; and of course the white liberal press love him. He’s married to a white woman, and his millionaire status assuages the upper middle-class fears and flatters their aspirations.


Sexwale shot to fame with his Mark Anthony grace after the then most popular politician after Nelson Mandela, Chris Hani, was murdered by Right wing hired guns for his communist beliefs. Sexwale was the first politicians to be caught on camera on the scene his track-suit dripping the blood of his comrade and all. He was then appointed to be the premier of South Africa richest and economic engine province, Gauteng. He refused to take the second term, opting to shedding his communists pelt by going to full time to business where he acquired enormous wealth at a lightning speed through some Black Economic Empowerment mining deals. Sexwale’s major error was trying to mint his own coins by independently declaring his availability for candidacy, through foreign press (BBC) nogal. The usual ANC practise is allowing the organic process of the ANC’s structures to nominate one starting at branch level. He has since been tangling and hanging himself by his own words and ambitions.

Jacob Zuma, the current ANC deputy president, blends balderdash with shoddiness; unites vacuousness to suspicious morality, and tends to accommodate his passions to historical prejudices. His recent loosing a High Court case against the National Prosecuting means he’s liable to be charged for corruption soon, which might make a terrible PR job for the country. But he is without a doubt the most popular candidate among the vox populi. His stalwarts, amongst whom is the ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League) and COSATU are unfazed in their support for his candidacy. The majority of Zuma’s supporters are the disgruntled lot who feel South African economic growth and fiscal has been largely at their expense for the benefit of the business class alone.

The ANC electoral process has a history of shunning popular candidates; but the dark cloud of the corruption case might make Jacob Zuma desperate enough to adopt Caesar Borgia’s motto: Aut Caesar aut nihil [Caesar or nothing] at which state all hell might break loose. He has the support of the people behind him even if scoffed by the general middle-class aspired and usually conservative with subtle right wing tendencies.

Jacob Zuma has laid hold of the popular disquiet and discontent of ordinary South Africans who, are now starting to show serious signs of being tired of making sacrifices to perpetual illusions of economic panacea, have very little to lose. People on the ground have started to disdain submission in the name of unfulfilled promises. What the next presidential elections will clearly reveal is reconciliation and ruin faces of the same coin; and how the failure of the other inspire the success of the other where the dream has been deferred.


President Mbeki, no matter how competent, has been on the helm for too long. It’s time he made way fro some new blood, new ideas and all. Besides there’s been too much meed of clucking and cackling involving his name, like the so called Aids denialism and Arms Deal scandal. The green flies [rumour] has it his office is proposing the alternative idea of making Joe Netshitenzhe, the current government strategist, the next president of the republic. Netshitenzhe is on the high circles of Mbeki advisers and thus will probably present a seamless transition from his government.

Be that as it may, I personally feel it is time for new blood and fresh ideas. Ramaphosa has consular dignity needed for the first citizen of a country. Coming from the meretricious argumentation and paradox-mongering of our outgoing president, Ramaphosa’s lawyerly chaste brevity might be the breath of fresh air we need. But it looks like the only chance he has now is a highly unlikely 25% backing in the next ANC conference at Plokwane in December; or if the Mbeki and Zuma faction should reach a stalemate.

I’m of the opinion that the master chess player, Thabo Mbeki, has done it again. It’ll be a miracle if anyone except himself comes out victorious from the Polokwane ANC Conference. The only real question now is who’ll be his deputy who surely will be the next president of the republic and most likely a pawn in the hands of our master player. Looks like whichever way you look at it, South African politics shall be defined according to Mbeki for a foreseeable future.

What South Africa needs from its next leader is someone who would be able to build a conducive and enabling atmosphere for business to thrive, while giving support to the general populace to gain economic participation, and regain its civic conscience and cultural patrimony that was destroyed by decades of racial and colonial oppression.

There is, especially in the township—a social ticking bomb—instances of unrest rising exponentially. This obviously suggests a rising tide of discontent. If this anger is not well managed it will degenerate to the clumsy pyrotechnics of Zimbabwe-like situation. The next leader would be well advised to take seriously this fire of restlessness. Thomas Paine was of the opinion that; “Whatever the apparent cause of any riots maybe, the real one is always want of happiness. It shews that something is wrong in the system of government, that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.” It is easy to lament or condemn the clumsy aggression of a populist regime, like that of Robert Mugabe, but much harder to accept that it usually emerge as result of political and economic decomposition that left millions to survive without support. Neglected and polarised people tend to give their alliance to promises of instant remedies of populist movements.

What South Africa needs is what Thomas Paine called a revolution in the state of civilization. “A revolution in the state of civilization, is the necessary companion of revolution in the system of government. If a revolution in any country be from bad to good, or from good to bad, the state of what is called civilization in that country, must be made conformable thereto, to give that revolution effects.”

Rant The Beloved Country

Remember that ditty circulating in the internet round about the time the U.S.A. attacked Iraq: If you cannot find Osama, / Bomb Iraq. / If the market's hurt your Momma, / Bomb Iraq. / If the terrorists are Saudi, / And they’ve repossessed your Audi, / And you're feeling kinda rowdy, / Bomb Iraq!

Wide spread loss of trust in public authority is chic in our era. In South Africa we go further by making the government a repository of all our dissatisfactions. Lucky for us we’ve the tyranny of opinion polls—the modern day answer to ancient practise of reading the animals entrails for guidance—leaping about in response to every latest headline or cock-up to back our illusions. And so it goes:

The news is yo-yoing your opinions as the corollary to the loss of anchorage you feel deep within making you feel kind of fanciful and abstract. You are not in the mood of confronting your illusions? Why not undermine the government in cross-stitched logic and vague quatrains of Nastradamus. Call it the crime thing.

You feel a little exhaustion from your imperialist hangover and nostalgia, and are walking around tired of being a nonentity why not manufacture your popularity from the flattering delusions your barmates give you when you are ‘out to lunch’. Better still; you’ve been having bad dreams lately of apocalypse and deeper misgiving of Cassandra fantasies that we’re tilting to wards Zimbabwe like situation. Rant! Rant, my epicurean fad; there are government’s inefficiencies all over, only the business class is perfect (and of course they promote you). Rant! The barbarians are at the gates.

You support political leaders not on principles but on shallow fancy of whether Hugo Boss shirts are in, or Armani? Base your support not on any deeply held belief or commitment, but on the fact that you wanna get on the Gravy Train. Bring on the rip-roaring umshini wam Zulu boy to fan factionalism and scar liberals out of their wits.

You are irritated by party politics and desperate for life style politics that judge your leaders by personality rather than political factors? The leader does not have a Cheshire cat smile, and is an unapologetic dweeb who walks like he’s wearing sock garters. All this flames you but can’t really nail his fault except he looks down and expose your sophisticated ignorance? Scandalise and ostracise him. Everyone is distancing themselves from their past to be pc while dwelling on its weeds in their hearts of hearts; why can’t he just go with the flow and let sleeping dogs lie?

If your moral campus is spinning out of control and you are not sure why; blame it on the government. If your partner is living you, and your first born is doing drugs. The government is surely to blame.

If you kind of feel like some publicity-generating eccentric with a tinpot flare. Pluck a crisis from thin air, and like a Pharaoh getting his authority from Ra, suck your thumb and implicate the government on your delusions. If they deny it proof enough they’ve done it. Besides, who cares, you got publicity spin-offs. You need to demonstrate to occidental masters that Africa has an independent free non subordinate press.

If you are feeling a little relative morally; feel like crapping on some pities because you are annoyed that the fundamentalist do not respect or give a f#*% about your Switzerland position—but are shit scared to offend them lest they are hiding Osima or an Inquisitor on their backyard—transfer it to the government. Those ignorant former terrorists are safer target for your blunt fictions.

You kind of feel dissatisfied with economic growth, and feel, as Clive Hamilton writes in his book, The Growth Fetish, “restless dissatisfaction, chronic stress and private despair, feelings that give rise to a rash of psychological disorders” of anxiety, depression, substance abuse that makes you “engage in a range of behaviours aimed at compensating for or covering up these feelings.” It’s definitely the government’s fault. Shout out! Get some attention. ‘Me! Me! Me!’

Who’s your Tata now? Madiba! Help, we’re sinking!

Feeling déclassé; can’t afford brands that define the fetishism of your imagined trendy self style. You discover pen marks on the surface of your expensive handbag, or too much accumulated lint at its bottom? The government is polluting your world. The made is late? This government of fishes and loaves is giving her ideas that are making her too big for her boots. You diss and dish without creative drive; it’s not that you’ve confined your ambition to the consumerist’s mentality; no it’s the government that’s clipping your wings.

In the end what is all this noise but “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing” feeling intoxicated by freedom and the yo-yoing of moods, grateful to the times, and the government, for allowing freedom to run amok. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” Wisdom here is not the purchase of the day.

Well Done To The Springboks!!!

We did it! Thanks to the concerted support of the nation and the Springbok's hard work, South Africa is the 2007 Webb Ellis Trophy winner. In Gugs, we celebrated the win with tom-toms and vuvuzelas blasting on the streets. Braai fires were lit in every corner. Other sheebens went as far as to give everyone a free round at the strike of the eighth minute as the Boks proudly lifted a very proud president Mbeki on their shoulders. We decided to honour the Boks with the metronymic name of our township, Gugulethu (Our Pride).



Of course, there were spoilsports who thought us mad for celebrated a still leaves too much to be desired when it comes to transformation South African Rugby team. To me they were the missing the point, which is to put it pithily: My country, right or wrong.



Understandably England was not just going to hand us the victory. In fact the game was too much on the technical for charlatans like me, which was a good thing I decided to watch through the expert's eyes next to me. With my limited knowledge it seemed the English were more committed, almost desperate, than the calm and collected Bokke. The Bokke played as if they were the defending champions and not the other way around. The Proteas can learn a lot from the Bokke with that calm under pressure, and sticking into your game. And Bafana would do well to learn precision of skill in executing and punishing the opponent's mistakes.



Something that spoilt my celebrations in my eyes was the surly attitude of English players after the game. Perhaps I was spoilt the graciousness of Fiji players after loosing to SA, those long lap of humility and all. As the result they become my second favourite team. I counted about three English players who snubbed president Mbeki's extended handshake during medal presentation. I was thinking what's that all about. My friend, when I asked, just shrugged his shoulders and sighed; "There goes our colonial masters again."



It takes just a quick perusal in the sober stile of history to see how bad losers the English are, not just in sport. Remember the battle at Ntab' Enzima, which history books as Waterkloof. In that Frontier War, amaXhosa, in the leadership of Maqoma, a chief of amaNgqika and son of Ngqika, routed amaJoni, otherwise know then as the 'Red Devils' then. Today you'll hardly find a single English historian admitting to that. The Zulu Impis did the same at the battle of Isandlwana; the same happened in many of the skirmishes that made for what used to be called Anglo-Boer War, now the South African War.



As I write the English press, ever easily led away by ancient prejudice, are spouting rants of sophisticated ignorance about this or that concerning the game, our players, and our country. Well, you know how the saying used to go: "Nothing doth make havock of mankind as the sons of Albion." Always when involved in anything they want to flourish even to rankness by uniting prejudice and fraud to force, trying to out master the Roman imperialistic mischief. In their outrage I see their weaknesses, polished and published as wounded pride.



In 1994 we made a contract, called a Constitution, which, in the words of Mandela was 'to lead our country out of the valley of darkness." The following year it was cemented by the euphoria of winning the Rugby World cup. The euphoria is back again to assist us with the renewal of our vows. Luckily the majority of us still agree to stand by our contract, the general kind of commitment; a commitment not merely of the will but that must be of deeds also.



We all each have to compromise there and there to further this collective deal. We must divest ourselves from prejudice, paternalism, and worship into the deal the ideal of 'nationhood' as defined by Ortega y Gasset called 'nationhood'. Gasset was of the opinion that we must first get the statehood right. "State begins when man strives to escape from the natural society of which he has been made a member of by blood or any other natural principle like language, race, or ethnicity."



I truly believe this country of ours is destined for glory. Of course there will be prices to pay, like proper differentiation of the burden of our history and overcoming the baggage of attitudes that need to be changed. "A State is," said Gasset, "a superation and cross-breeding of these natural origins." As the young poet (Philip Larkin) saw it; If one can accept the dream / The rest is best forgot.

Swabbing the Deck

There was a time when 'freedom of the press' laid largely on the fact that it was not an industry, but those times are now long gone. The press, as a forth estate, is not only an industry, but foremost a business and striving to be a political force. Perish the idea then that the press is an independent non biased messenger and let's look at issues straightly.

In modern times the press has forged its stance as a counter-medium of dissemination, mostly hostile to government propaganda. In our country this as can be noticed in present Pikoli saga. Regrettably it is prone to exaggeration in reporting, especially when it comes to government short-comings. For instance, the press should have correctly reported the suspension of Vusi Pikoli, the national director of persecution as a suspension, not a dismissal, since the law does not permit the president to suspend the national director of persecution without due Parliamentary process. It is no wonder that Frank Chikane, the director general of the Presidency and Secretary of the Cabinet, accused it of manufacturing a crisis.

Be that as it may, it does not mean all the issues the press raises lend credence to centaurs and satyrs. Personally I agree with the leader of the opposition party, Helen Zille, that Frene Ginwala is not an ideal person to lead the inquiry of the suspension of the national director of persecution. We don't doubt her competence, just her bona fides, considering the fact that she is the member of the National Executive Council, thus too associated with the higher echelons of the ruling party. In the ideal world this would have no bearing on her objectivity, but we don't live in an ideal world.

I also think that, for maintaining the dignity of the office the National Commission of the SA Police Service, Jackie Selebi should at least step down until all the shenanigans that surrounds him are sorted out. For the press to say the whole thing is what Rabelais evoked as inevitable sites of murmur and plot might be spreading it too thickly, but that it is what the press does when not supplied with clear information. Rev Chikane might despise the rattle, or try to disown the gibberish, but providing clear information is the only thing that'll relieve the fatigue of the situation.
On the other hand if the reported allegations against the Sunday Times editor and his deputy of illegally being in possession of the health minister's hospital records are true then the law must take its course. None of us are above the law, and freedom of expression does not excuse anyone from obeying journalistic ethics and the laws of the country. It beats me how that would spell degrading towards the Zimbabwean situation, as some of our media commentators (especially at Johnnic Media—I’m not sure what those guys are smoking), howling on the strength of delusions of their pen, have taken to vacuously saying.
The ideal would be for our journalistic commentary to broaden the perceptions of our collective consciousness into nationhood, instead of invoking people to retreating Lagers that are defined by their respective prejudices. As it is now we're trapped in cloying political leader trashing than proper analysis. Whatever maybe wrong with our president's style of leadership it sometimes seems more is growing wrong with our avuncular self-assured rehearsed imitative arguments. The problem is not that we are underlings, but are iconoclasts bent only on bringing the prominent to dust.

Perhaps what we need now, more than in 1995, is to win the Rugby World Cup to re-inject our sense of national pride. Something that'll embody the conception of social and cultural transformation while giving voice to the true nature of our generation. We need something that will attribute our characteristics and values across racial, social, cultural, and historic timelines on the basis of our common geographical and experiential roots.

It does not mean we need to stop being frank and honest on with each other; whitewashing things is not going to help us. But a change of tone and depth in analyses as opposed to superficial pettiness is desirable. Somehow we've to find ways of rising above our purée of disgust and inherited mistrust for we're starting to sound ludicrous and foolish.

Ghandi once said that "the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality". And Steve Biko was wont to quote Aimé Césaire that no one "possesses the monopoly on truth, intelligence, force and there is room for all of us at the rendezvous of victory." If only.

Saffron Revolution

The only thing that has been keeping us informed about what has been termed the Safron Revolution in the Burma, the Bloggers, is now been silenced. How disgusting and self-defeating. The Burma Junta has seen the capabilities and freedom that comes with people on the ground who have in the past weeks been keeping us informed of what was happening in that country as monks and ordinary people marched on the streets to demand more freedom and democracy in their country. Pity that the country has no coveted natural resources otherwise the elected junta in Washington would have long made a fuss about liberating the Burmese people. Like Mandela, Aung Suu Kyi, shall be free soon, and with her the Burmese. There’s no resisting the will of the people when they stand united. The struggle goes on!

Mbeki vs The Press

South Africa got its political freedom at the time when the era of ideologies came to an end, ushering the politics of personalities and fear. The ANC profited well from the charisma and statue of Nelson Mandela but his departure from the political scene drove it into politics of fear.

Politics of fear are something almost all political parties of significance in South Africa rely on. The DA was built on the foundations of ‘fighting back’ strategies and fear of turning South Africa into another corrupt African State. The fear ANC relies on is that of things going back to the realities of apartheid era. Its current talk of ‘The enemy manoeuvres but it remains the enemy’ trying to offset the gains of ‘National Democratic Revolution’ make the point clear.

To complicate issues in our nascent democracy, there’s has been a rise in careless prattle and untrained clump of words that are the usual consequent of dynamics of free press, which is lifting the lids off the immature ANC government. Instead of taking this trumpeting manifesto as occupational necessity of a free democratic country the ruling party wants to compete with it.

Mallarmé once ironically explained his poem, La nuit approbatrice, to his friend Henri Cazalis by saying; ‘If you murmur it yourself a couple of times, you get a fairly cabbalistic sensation.’ Mostly what the press murmurs gives it cabbalistic sensation they believe to be the splendour of truth.

Unfortunately the cabbalistic sensation has rubbed off into the ruling party, as demonstrated by statements like; ‘Our historical opponents have the task to convince the nation that under our leadership, the democratic revolution has failed. The revolutionary duty of the ANC is not only further to accelerate the process of social transformation, but also to conduct the political and ideological struggle to ensure the cohesion of the masses of our people as a united force engaged in the long march towards the creation of a truly non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous democracy.’ [ANC Today; Volume 7, No. 34 • 31 August—6 September 2007; A silent mood of trepidation?] Talk about wearing the mantle of your purported enemy.

R.S. Roberts’ competent book, ‘Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki’ is a clear example of what happens when one allows the need to address the platitudinous tendencies of the media distract you. The book reads more as if its purpose was to prove the impotent shallowness of our media commentators. Even when you achieve this goal, as Roberts has, the victory is pyrrhic. Taking the media too seriously when it violates modesty by heaping spleen and cultivating hysteria against is like squaring circles. It is self-defeating and dancing to their drums.

Impression is a survival skill to the media, more valuable than reflection. It is in the nature of the media to leech in order to inject vitality on its content. Press freedom has, world over, been raised into a political creed. That’s what is meant by the Fourth Estate. The sooner the ANC government realises this the more it’d be better structured to exploit, rather than fight it.

Although political parties are still electoral machines—mostly out of inertia—the times have changed. Political parties have ceased to be issuers of alternative ideas as can be seen by writers and thinkers throwing their lot with broadcasting networks that have acquired industrial and commercial life. In short, money has become the only sinew in the war of airwaves. Hence instead of ideas has come the struggle of images and personalities, the battles of the scoop and the soundbites.

The only way political parties will survive here is by aligning themselves, for tactical reasons, with media communication. That’s what the aesthetically assertive leader of DA, Helen Zille, with her look-at-me style of politics, has learnt very well to do. Instead of huffing and puffing about she milks it, beating the tom-toms of publicity to her advantage.

The press is not only an industry, but now an industry first and foremost. Political journals, like ANC Today, might serve as internal organs for intellectual power struggles, but to capture the attention of the vox populli you need media. Media form bridge between the theory of the vanguard and the spontaneous movement of the class, in Lenin’s idiom.

The ANC needs to stop retreating to bellicose politics and placidly put out into the world why millions keep voting it into government election after election. Despite what the self-appointed fundi of our political scene say about the nostalgia and ignorance of masses who keep voting for the ANC, people know exactly which side their bread is buttered. It is the failure of the ANC technique that it has not translated its democratic legitimacy into sound publicity strategies.

The lesson we all need to relearn, as the bickering starts to show some serious personal misfiring, is that that politics is essentially about maintaining social stability. Transformation is a necessary step for furthering our freedom but none of us have anything to gain from the state of anarchy. It might be that every anarchic situation is the herald of a renaissance, but there are no guarantees, and the price to higher to pay. The gods of apartheid who fled through the front door of our democracy are starting to come back through the backdoor and the windows. It is time to take caution.

Drawing their authority from the sun, like Egyptian Pharoahs, some in the media have lately been at pains trying to convince us that things in our country are falling apart. Most of us do not believe the bagarre in the Tripartite Alliance (ANC, COSATU & SACP) leading to Polokwane means anything more than proper differentiation within the alliance. They’re encouraging signs of democratic change happening, and the necessary beginnings for severance of artificial coalitions that have outlived their usefulness.

We all need to be done with our irrational anger, dishonest evasiveness and greedy opportunism, and admit some few truths to ourselves with the humility they deserve. Like the fact that we are a country emerging from a wounding past, bankrupt of ideas to take us into a non-racial and multicultural future we want to be; instead of trying to be poor ersatz of other systems and countries.

Our media needs to learn sensitivity to complex issues, whose value is to be found in its receptiveness and proper understanding of our past experience. The government, especially our president, needs to open up more, learn not to be emotional against the criticism of their policies and failures; because this is how the country will establish its own reflective consciousness. Only then will we be done of these cabbalistic sensations.No one is saying the battle for hegemony should also sieze.

म्बेकी

The publication of Ronald Suresh Robert’s book Fit To Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki [FTNI], in South Africa, has been equivalent to the hauling of a boulder into the murky pond of political chattering class. Roberts is no stranger to controversy in South African since his publication of Nadine Gordimer’s biography whose authorisation he was refused at the last hour. Roberts also has recently lost a defamation case against South Africa’s biggest Sunday paper, The Sunday Times.

There were invidious speculations also that the book, FTNI was commissioned by the South African presidency’s office, with ABSA bank made to pay the author a six digit sum for the work. A démenti was issued from the presidential office but the press was not convinced. So the ripples of the book were felt well before the effect of actual publication, all for the wrong reasons.

Roberts has a skill of clear writing, and a gift of insight, required by the strict demands of non fictional work. Regrettably he suffers also from the lawyer’s argumentative personality that makes his writing sometimes digressive. In FTNI he lines up an assemblage of South African self-servers, frauds, political double-dippers, gasbags, charlatans, spoiled reporters and unprincipled academics that make up the vague organism I conveniently call the chattering class. He target practise on them with his accumulated academic counter arguments to reveal their lack of analytic intelligence, and accuse them with what Edward Said would have called their ‘imperial attitude’.

Roberts ruffled a lot of feathers by exposing the stereotypical pretensions of South African political/journalistic commentary ‘who inhabits the imperial attitude’. The kerfuffle of wagging tongues have since been humming and hawing about this or that, as people who live in glass houses are wont to do when stones are thrown back on them. It is not worth the effort of dealing with these personality scoring and intellectual pillow fights. Suffice to say Roberts gives a full measure of ad hominem dose of it in FTIN. These syndicated columnists have since been paying him in kind, revelling and ostracising his name in every newspaper. What they don’t reveal to the public is that FTIN actually is a very good book to read, fraught with argumentation, quotations and on-line footnotes fit to be a thesis, but still a good read.

Quoting the playwright David Hamet’s citing of the book of Ecclesiastes castigates the chattering class’s tendency of denialism of not willing to confront South Africans problems head on. He says the country has fallen on ‘evil times . . . a time in which we do not wish to examine ourselves and our unhappiness’. Roberts blames this denialism in what I’ve, somewhere called the lack and fear of native intelligence. The dearth of commentary in the media, for instance, about president Mbeki’s well constructed recent Steve Biko’s lecture in Cape Town supports this argument.

What is more interesting to me is Robert’s head on confrontation with the most annoying habits of condescension in most South African liberals; their tendency to trim others to fit liberal prejudices, and the failure to recognize their own bigotry. The historian (or should I say pseudo-historian) RW Johnson, gets the brunt of Roberts’ punches in this case. Hellen Suzman and Tony Leon do not escape either. The majority of South African liberals, of cause, need to disabuse themselves of notions like ‘relaxed acceptance of things that are crazy, macabre, or wildly alarming is very African’ as written by Johnson in 1996.

It would have been more interesting and ideal had Roberts felt obliged to tackle the hierarchal mentality inside the ANC [African National Congress] also, which is clearly antithetical to democracy for lack of vitality if nothing else. ‘Instead of a soul-searching enigma-breaking biography, this book is a displacement of certain fictions—an engagement with many of the myths and invidious discourses that have pilled themselves high around Mbeki, as around the numerous native leaders of the anti-colonial past. Rather than producing a nice life story of the cradle-to-grave sort, I want to highlight and contest existing accretions of false impression—both about the ANC and about Thabo Mbeki.’ And that to the parlance of South African media makes Roberts a praise singer and FTIN an unworthy hagiography. Fuck them! I’ve seen only one review of the book, in the Mail and Guardian by Vicki Robinson, that approaches anything near to positive.

Tis’ true that more openness and uninhibited debate about national issues is needed within the ANC echelons where receptiveness and towing the line is valued more highly than individual perception. Robert in his book had an opportunity of expanding the platform of dissenting freedom within the party. Also of touching on the issue of class politics within the ANC that are now spawning a gleaming nest of worms on the road to the ANC’s 52nd National Conference in December where a leader of the ANC would be elected.

Robert’s book also has very little to say about the majority of poor South Africans who have been left behind by present economic growth who has now become restive as seen recently burning and looting in basic service political demonstrations against township municipalities. Of course every book is by necessity limited in its scope by its thesis, but one would have expected a discourse about Mbeki’s fitness to govern to go into depth into the situation of the majority of those he governs, especially seeing that they are presently disgruntled.

The real problem, perhaps, with the book FTIN is that it is told ex parte of the governing party, or rather of Thabo Mbeki, who some feel is bent to be the only one playing dauphin in the hegemony of the ANC. It must also be a limiting factor for Robert, as an expat from Trinidad, to have to rely solely on written word and media reporting to gauge the mood and Weltanschauung of South African vox populi. Which perhaps is why he decided not to venture too much in that direction.

To be fair, Roberts does compare the South African situation well with other emerging similar markets, like Brazil, and comes out convinced that the South African government does more in its GDP spending on the poor than the rest. But, in my book, it could do more and quicker if it were not too obsessed with fiscal health as defined by the Washington Consensus. In an era when those who are at the loosing hand of globalization are resorting to aggressive militant tactics against the prevailing capitalist status quo not to talk about it seems like a regrettable missed opportunity to me.

The major South African press has been trying their best to discourage people from reading the book on pretext that Roberts is nothing more than an intellectual manqué who recycles old squabbles and plagiarizes witticisms. Some go as far as to call the book a waste of intellectual energy. That, in my opinion, is a gross misrepresentation. In fact I feel a book like this has long been coming in South African debating scene. Most of those who are hurt by it have reasons to be because Roberts does pull some heavy punches in attacking the mediated kitsch of rococo coffee-shop intellectualists who’ve appointed themselves avant-gardes of South African Zeitgeist.

The problem with most South African commentators is that they think wearing a badge of dissent is a sign of substance and enlightenment. They do not even research things they want to discuss, only relying on instant occidental skulduggery for their commentary. Most have little to show beyond afflictions of self-aggrandizements and gross careerism that are called freedom of conscience in these ‘evil times’. Roberts does a commendable job puncturing and putting out a little wind out of their sails.

To say, for instance, that Roberts’ effort on the book was a waste of intellectual effort is to deny facts he’s stating without engaging them. To deny facts without material counter argument is banality; and that is wide spread in the petting circles of South African chattering class who are fast making themselves into a waste of public space and amplification of foolishness that has become vulgar through its gain of cheap confidence.

The adolescent intellectual pillow fighting of our press Roberts engages would be a shame if it was not for the fact that media is highly regarded by the vox populi who regards its opinion as the first base for popular sentiment. By blunting the cloying imputations of the narcissist culture in our chattering class Roberts compels the reader to ask what drives popular press. Cui bono? Who stands to benefit?

Roberts has his flaws also, in the book, like too much slapstick leeriness; spluttering bile and occasional tendentious rants when disgusted by the subject he discusses. Indeed one gets the feeling that Roberts takes too seriously the paladins of newspaper syndicated pet tics whose goal, some of us have learned, is to survive their publicity budgets.

The book does get sketchy in narrative flow, betraying its eclectic assembly of journalistic topics. What are wonderful are facts of interpretations Roberts brings to these and the background of president Mbeki’s speeches. That will surprise even a reader who has been an avid reader of what’s been happening in South Africa in the past few years. Roberts in FTIN intellectualises our history since the coming of Mbeki to presidential seat with peppering from traditional historical similarities, especially from Xhosas Frontier epoch.

I can imagine those without much intellectual foundation of political philosophy getting easily discouraged in trying to follow Robert’s arguments that are fraught with learned references to David Hume, Frantz Fanon, and so forth. But political philosophy is central in considerations of good or just society, so they just will have to tear their hair, gnash their teeth and wring their hands, because in the end it would be worth their effort.

Whatever shortcomings Roberts have, a vapid writer he is not, which is quite refreshing from the recycled fodder of intellectual pretensions we tend to be fed on in South African political analysis. The South African debating platform will be indebted to him for opening up space partitioned by superficial commentary. For debunking intellectual bankruptcy and raiding intellectual black holes that have long been promoted by the hue of our journalistic cliques. That he did not extend this space to the haunts of the ANC is regrettably, and betrays his intellectual objectivity.

Even if Roberts’ book does little more than shake up the establishment of gate-keepers (as it is already doing) in our press and political echelons of liberal circles it would have achieved a lot. Nothing will convince one about the merits or demerits of To Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki short of actually reading it for one self. The significance of Roberts’ arguments depends on which side of the fence you stand. The book is aesthetically appealing, intellectual fulfilling, politically expounding, but limited as a window to South African economic realities.

Coffee-House Guilt

Cape Tow last weekend was having a coffee festival thing (actually I’m not sure what that entails but, as coffee lover—more like coffee addict—I kind of liked the idea). I also heard it reported on South Africa’s Catholic national paper, The Southern Cross, that in Pusan, South Korea, some nuns have opened a coffee-book shop where people have an opportunity to discuss their faith in a relaxed atmosphere. If only we were so lucky here in Cape Town too.

The first thing that attracts you about Cape Town intercity, despite narrow streets and blasting underground clubs, is the airy cafe of round tables on pavements of people chattering in tell-tale vivacity, consciously dedicated to relaxed pleasure. They give a cultivated image of French characteristic enlightenment. I’m personally partial, too partial actually, to a good cup of coffee.

My favourite living philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, has lot to say about coffee and what it has done for Western civilisation. Coffee is one of those commodities, unlike sugar, not too associated with guilt ridden (slavery) foundations of Western civilisation. The history of coffee in recent years is wonderfully written by Markman Ellis in his competent book The Coffee-House: A Cultural History.

Most people wrongly attribute the discovery of coffee to the natural philosopher, Leonhard Rauwolf, when he first certifiably noticed it Aleppo in 1573. Yet, Ellis tells us, coffee was known for a very long time in the highland regions of Ethiopia before it was even discovered by the Turks who in turn introduced it to the Europeans. So coffee, like Cola, is an African thing even if the Europeans popularised and refined its usage.

Ellis tells us that the coffee-house throughout history has been a socialising idea, especially for gossip and debate. More than any commodity in the world it rewrote the experience of metropolitan life. The earliest users of coffee discovered that it induces mental alertness that delays sleep. It was even charged with qualities of comforting the head and heart, and good for digestion.

The shy and retiring librarian of Christ Church college Oxford, Robert Burton in his seminal treatise, The Anatomy of Melancholy of 1632, recommended coffee as a cordial for ‘mending the Temperament . . . to expell feare [sic] and sorrow, and to exhilarate the mind.’ He thought coffee had a potential for curing melancholy.

To early merchants coffee-houses were a nuisance that encouraged idleness. The businessmen associated them with ‘skiving and absenteeism’. To the puritan coffee-houses encouraged ‘licentiousness and superstition’. Men then in general did not think highly of the morals of women who frequented coffee-houses. To men of science the coffee-house was place for universal circulation of intelligence where latest developments and quack remedies were discussed.

To autocrats the coffee-house encouraged political dissent, rebellious attitudes and seditious intent. To the republicans coffee-houses were a home of spirit of faction, popular dissatisfactions and debate where to stoke fires of controversy. To the man of law they ‘harboured rogues and criminals’. To spies coffee-houses were a place to collect intelligence, suppress revolutionary notions and gauge public opinion.

For the man on the make, like Pepys, the coffee-house was a network of potential patrons and possibility of aggrandizing oneself to a better government position. And for the ordinary man a relaxing opportunity for speaking freely in an atmosphere where the fiction of hierarchy was cancelled; where one could put oneself on route to enlightenment, and live for a moment life under the rule of reason. To professional newsmongers, hack writers, sycophantic back-slappers, streetwise fops, and purveyors of gossip, rumour, innuendo, and scandal, coffee-houses were a heaven.
The coffee-house was where you could sway government or business personnel by flattery, insinuation or bribery. Where even the political emasculated could go to listen to the latest scandals. Where the stream of opinion, often undifferentiated, could easily be caught, and moral emptiness of the city closely observed.

The reporters of the first London daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, frequented the coffee-shop. So as you can see the coffee-shop has actually been active in breaking the bonds of feudal society; and for encouraging the culture of human improvement, even if it tended to be more of a mixed home of high culture and vulgar entertainment.

The murmur of coffee-houses, with the background of sipping and smell of ground coffee is something a free spirit can never fail to appreciate. From what I’ve read, it looks like the initial atmosphere of coffee-houses was more like our present alcohol bars today; with squabbles often degenerating into fist fighting. There were no polite limits as can be appreciated in most coffee-houses of our present day.

The coffee-house habituates to the customs and manners of its times, but its main popularity come in the rote of free communication and camaraderie. I guess you could say the coffee-house was the internet of those times. Is it any wonder in the present day you can go on-line in most coffee-houses. Artists, writers, aesthetes, decadents and the rest of fainéant purposeless men that beautify the experiences of our lives throughout history have been closely associated with coffee-house.

Cape Town is fast becoming Africa’s fairyland, with its nascent notions of egalitarianism and liberty to be filthy rich (Joburg has become too vulgar, flashy and fake with its roll calling imitative innovation and competition that’s corrupted by too much American pretensions). Still in Cape Town there’s still much that is foreign to the native eye, especially the opposing signs of magnificence and poverty.

Something still tugs at my mooring as I see too many people not having enough to buy basic needs while I sit seeping lattés I don’t really need. I know I cannot make the world right over night, but I just can’t stop thinking about story the young girl and the star fishes at the beach. Throwing one star fish back into the ocean sure makes a lot of difference. But there’s just so many of them. Perhaps if we each at least pick one star fish and throw back to the ocean before we seat and laugh, talking about the colour of Paris Hilton’s dress, we would get somewhere.

Well, the sea is sucking at the pebble beach, whiskers of mist rise in the clean shaven air. I order an extra shot of espresso to ease my itch and pull my hat about my ears. Twilight is deepening as the sun bleeds away in fiery strips of clouds.

It is Mercy I Seek

I recalled looking in vain during the kerkuffle of president Mbeki’s alleged AIDS denialsm, and because I could not find supporting evidence for it I decided to stay out of the noise. Then first came judge Edward Cameroon’s autobiography, the first among Mbeki accusers to admit that the president never actually denied HIV was the cause of AIDS, though he regretted the president’s attitude towards the topic; and so on and so on. Ronald Suresh Roberts in his competent book Fit To Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki dedicate two chapters into refuting such allegations, and he is very convincing.

‘Mbeki’s sin was to reject a drug-based intellectual protectionism in favour of a free exchange of ideas on the proper solution to AIDS pandemic, including but not limited to drugs alone.’ So says Roberts in the book, and I’m inclined to believing him. Roberts quotes numerous people, institutions, and organisation, like WHO (World Health Organisation) who have come to understand that ‘you cannot separate prevention from treatment.’ Somebody corrects me if I’m wrong but isn’t that the consistent step taken by the Roman Catholic Church from the beginning, which most people are now starting to realise is the best of all possible ways to fight the pandemic. Yet I don’t see Roberts stating that on his book.

It was sad how the practical solution towards fighting the AIDS pandemic was hijacked by racial, political, religious or cultural agendas whose used and abused the forefront of TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) in this country. There was even a time of folly when condoms were preached as a pinnacle solution; but graciously sanity seem to be return among most activist.

I’m not sure why the message of behavioural change seemed to fuel mistrust and prejudices among most AIDS activists initial. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they thought AIDS was the result of promiscuous behaviour. Whatever the case sanity is returning to all of us now; we’ve realised that among the best way to combat the pandemic is behavioural change.

A person who is looking for real solutions about AIDS must look at what is happening at ground level and make up her/his own mind. It is daily becoming clear that an effective and meaningful approach will come from experiences gained in ground level. It was the measure of our petty shallowness that we allowed petty issues to stand on the way of combating this pandemic together. We reached a stage where, due to assumptions about simplistic solutions or idealized notion, we talked at, not to, each other.

AIDS activists, most from Western NGOs, tend to come with naive assumptions that all individuals are free to make empowered choices about their worlds. And their African counterparts, for the sake of salvaging superficial pride, like to deny the obvious and fiddle while the continent is burning. Meantime, the graveyards are filling very quickly. We shall not even come close to denting the epidemic until we find an approach that seeks to take into account the complex social, cultural and economic factors that influence behaviours and the real conditions of choice in our respective societies.

Too often behavioural change is taken as individual prerogative. Most people assume we are autonomous individuals who can make informed choices based on in-depth understanding of the facts on the ground. But too often people don’t kow, or sometimes don’t even care about facts. AIDS education is not enough to turn the pandemic around. Facts on the ground, for instance, show that most people who’re HIV positive in our country (South Africa) already knew the rudimentary of AIDS education but ignored it.

In my hometown there’re about eighteen black medical doctors; six of them—I’ve been confidentially told by my cousin who works with an organisation that spreads AIDS education in the schools of the region—are HIV positive; and two have a full-blown AIDS. Even if I were to take what she says with some salt and assume half of that number it is still too much. Why, if AIDS education is so effective? The crux of the matter is that the rate of transmission of the HIV virus is highly determined by behavioural habits. There’s no running away from that fact.

Another erroneous assumption is that everyone in African communities wants to be, or is already, sexually active from early ages. This stereotyped attitude on the part of, especially Western AIDS workers, prompts negative responses from black Africans who feel affronted by the generalisation. In fact, there’s a growing number of South African youth, especially girls, who—through mostly the influence of mostly “born-again” congregations—prefer waiting for their wedding day for their first sexual experience.

My sisters who was twenty-four years when she married a few years ago was a virgin. My other one who is even older than her is still one because she says she is waiting for her husband. This sort of delaying sexual experience helps in the fight against AIDS. These girls, though born and bred in the township, are no longer easy victims of the promiscuous tendencies that increase a person’s exposure to the HIV virus. Admittedly these girls are still in a minority but it is growing especially mostly the educated and religious.

The immense social and cultural pressures to conform to accepted stereotypes remains one of the major general factors for the spread of HIV in the country. There’s the rate of promiscuity among the affluent, like the example of the doctors above, which spreads the virus at an alarming rate. Economic pressures are a factor working against receiving diagnosis and treatment, mostly among broken, poor families. The interchange of sexual partners among migrant workers, who spend months on end far from their spouses and family support system; and who’re plunged into unbearably harsh working and living conditions by exploitative local or multi-national employers, is another factor.

All-too-often AIDS education has failed to take this wider picture, opting instead for simplistic prevention strategies. Those efforts are doomed to failure, even in the short term. A fuller understanding of HIV prevention that identifies three “layers” (impact, risk reduction and vulnerability) in the pandemic has been promulgated by the Catholic Church from the begining. HIV prevention strategies must address all three layers if they are to be effective.

Impact emphasises the essential link between care and prevention. Keeping those affected by HIV in good physical, emotional and economic health for as long as possible. It is an essential component of prevention as it helps avert the decline of families into poverty and the stigmatisation that fans the pandemic.

Risk reduction involves providing individuals and communities with an accurate and full understanding of the risks of infection. It means helping people to acquire the skills and resources to make changes in their personal or professional lives to minimise these risks. This means enabling people to adopt measures, based on the fullest scientific evidence available, that afford them immediate protection, partial or complete. Typical risk reduction strategies include abstinence, mutual fidelity, having one sexual partner, and condom use. Because the sexual route is not the only source of infection, it means also ensuring safer blood transfusions, drug injecting and antenatal and delivery practices.

Reducing the risk of infection is not about choosing one or other option randomly to suit social or religious pressures. It is preferable to think of it in terms of a continuum running from high-risk activities to those carrying low or even no risk. Reducing risk is a process of moral education in which people come to see what risks their behaviour entails and continues until they take steps to reduce that level of risk in their circumstances. Any strategy that enables a person to move from a higher-risk activity towards the lower end of the continuum is a valid risk reduction strategy.

For a Catholic, like myself, this strategy is based on sound theological principles. For the non-religious it might be based on more traditional values, like the consideration of lobola (bride’s worth), which is higher for virgins. What is important is that we identify values which individuals subscribe to and use them effectively as weapons against the AIDS pandemic. There’s hardly any culture that does not understand the value of abstinence, chastity or faithfulness to one partner.

Sometimes people make choices that fall short of these ideals. That’s when moral compassion is called upon. It is useless, even cruel, for a Catholic, for instance, to insist on the evil of condom use for a person whose psychological understanding has not reached or refuses to acknowledge the wisdom of Catholic ideals. Or to expert a married partner not use condom when another is already affected.

Vulnerability requires HIV prevention strategies to address the fact that, too often, people’s behaviour does not change until their wider circumstances change—like gaining a higher moral conscience. Any attempt by an individual to carry out their chosen risk reduction strategy constitutes behavioural change for that person. Church-based programmes, with their prophetic role in seeking the social transformation that will enable personal growth, must help people to grow more fully in their God-given identity.

Discriminating against those who do not follow the Church’s teachings will gain us nothing. What is important is finding ways of curtailing behavioural choices of those who are vulnerable to infection. All initiatives that aim to reduce vulnerability are, and must be, recognised as essential components of a fuller HIV prevention strategy. The Church, with its rich body of doctrine and the theology of Catholic social teaching, has always demanded that its members denounce the injustices of the world and work to redress imbalances. We cannot sit around folding our hands while the pandemic sows death in our communities because we insist on our moral high ground then.

Promoting abstinence might mean upholding the value of not having sex until marriage, while also recognising that for some young adults abstinence might mean only delaying the age of first sexual encounter beyond the more physiologically vulnerable teenage years. In another sense, promoting abstinence might also mean waiting until one is in a more stable relationship. Worse still, we might not always succeed in getting our message through on others; but it does not mean we should leave them to the devil; it is mercy that I want said Christ after hearing all these things.

Faithfulness might mean the exhortation of mutual fidelity on married couples, while also acknowledging that, in another context, the component of faithfulness might mean fidelity to a single long-term partner or fidelity to a strategy of reducing the instances of casual sex. In the end sexual preference must depend on the moral conscience of the individual.

The data is clear that condoms, when used correctly and consistently, reduce but do not remove the risk of HIV infection. This fact cannot be excluded from, or misrepresented in any information on risk reduction strategies, regardless of the political or moral position of those promoting them. Condom campaigns have been particularly effective with groups at the highest risk—prostitutes, for example—who may have few if any other realistic options for reducing this risk without them. But facts show also that condom campaigns have been considerably less effective in the general population as a public health strategy. Hence I condemn the “condoms only” or even “condoms mainly” campaigns for the general population that have often been promoted with the same dogmatism as some “abstinence only” campaigns. These similarly distort information.

A complementary and collaborative approach for the dismantling of mutual prejudices deplores the obstructive positioning, judgementalism and dogmatism of opposing factions that too often feature simplistic polarised approaches. If we are to conquer the AIDS epidemic we must find a way of reconciling solid science and good community development practices with established and evolving moral teaching.

The Catholic Church is deeply rooted in local communities throughout the developing world, and is a major contributor to the struggle against AIDS in the countries worst affected by the pandemic. The Church is therefore well placed to promote a more holistic understanding of prevention and to foster reconciliation between opposing factions, drawing these towards an attitude of mutual acceptance and collaboration. The challenges of the pandemic are urgent and compelling; the challenges of the Gospel are no less so for Christians. The Church, rightly so, does not take her moral standards from the values of the world. But as Christians, we have to find a way of mercy while standing firm on our moral understanding, or the future generations will hold us to account on both.