I've been reading—trying to read is more to the point—Ngûgû wa Thiong'o novel called The Wizard of the Crow. Since I’ve not managed to go beyond half-way through the book, perhaps I should desist from talking too directly about it—but I’m sure someone would tell me if something changed to refute what I’m about to write towards the second end.
After Ngûgû’s book I went straight to Zakes Mda’s Cion; a similar thing happened to me. Of course I’m not that much of an egoist that I didn’t suspect that something might wrong with my taste in literature or something.
My dilemma is this: Here are well respected African writers who have written numerous novels—some of which I’ve greatly enjoyed. But these recent books of theirs I find boring. Why? Is it the topics? No. Ngûgû’s topic (ridiculing dictators) was what first attracted me most to the book. In retrospect I feel the late Ivorian author,Ahmadou Kourouma, in his book, Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote handled the topic much better.
Secondly; Mda’s character, Toloki, in Ways of Dying, is one of my old time favourites. Cion is overtly the shoot from it, so naturally I should have enjoyed it. And as usual Zakes Mda’s research skills are meticulous, but something about the book didn’t gel for me.
I was forced to shift the blame to the authors in explaining my lack of enthusiasm, and eventually stamina, in reading the two books. When I read a book, the first question I usually look for is good writing skill. I intensely care for fine, clear writing, which I credit Ngûgû and Mda with. But unfortunately the artful structure of their recent books failed; the books’ aesthetics are flawed. In fact Ngûgû and Mda gave me an impression that they regard aesthetics as mere impressionism.
When I attempted discussing the books with friends, most of whom say they enjoyed the books—they kept lauding them for their narrative simplicity. There’s simplicity, and there’s shallowness. Simplicity is cultivated suppleness, lucidity, precision, brevity and certain uncommon force in the use of language. Novels written in beautiful simplicity tend to depend more on the atmosphere they create, and subtlety of suggestion, than long descriptions, often impotent and turgid.
Supplicating eloquence (which is what I found in both books) alone cannot redeem the narrative that feels slack, and is without novelistic tension. Dan Brown—despite the plague of weeds in his writing—gets the right use of novelistic tension. He keeps you going, hence people read him in droves to the bafflement of the fundi. It is exactly novelistic teson that Ngûgû and Mda’s recent books lack. Hence they sometimes end up being baroque hodgepodges of parochial national melodramas, albeit magisterial ones; and epistemological non convincing repositories.
Alexander Pushkin is a panacea of simplicity in writing. With that last sentence I open myself to the accusation of making my judgement with Western acquired intellectual standards. I know that Ngûgû is in the forth front call of Africans writing in their indigenous language. I think the call is commendable when practical. But I’m afraid something vital is getting lost in its volatile intellectual hysterical fixation when the motive is fear of the full spectrum dominance, and specious threat of modern lingua francas, like English, to indigenous languages.
It was Salman Rushdie who saw a reflection of other struggles in the linguistic struggles। ‘[T]o conquer [the coloniser’s language] may be the completion of our process of freedom.’ He wrote. We cannot run away from the fact that most of us live a hybrid, exile intellectual life, shifting between different cultures and therefore, by necessity, are open to cross-culture influences. The issue to me is trying not to lose one’s identity in whatever language one uses. What is language after all, if not means of communication?
Things heat the complicated when we want to make language a cultural symbol. Powerless in themselves, and latent in their psychological associations, symbols can become immensely powerful when they are objects of psychological energies. But care must be taken for literature not to yield to epistemology.
I understand that literature cannot come into event without being demanded by the culture it springs from। That literature is a response of memory and emotions to the demands of the present. But what triggers artists is not a wish to control the disorders, prejudices and injustices. Writers write to express a need, which is different for every writer; not to right political wrongs.
It is imitative fallacy that mistakenly holds that one must use a certain language, be it a mother language or not, to support and express one’s identity. What is important is finding within the language—whatever language one chooses—a distinct, unmistakable, indelible voice of one’s own unique identity.
Indeed deep in the nature of writing might be the sense of refurbishing fractured identities, which is perhaps why some people mistake writers to be socio-histro engineers। But writers are just people with an inborn instinct for capturing experience and putting it in transcendental permanence of universalism. They’ve no obligation to be authentically faithful to, say, political ambiguities. What’s required of them are acute powers of observation and habits of narration.
To demand that writers write in their indigenous languages, or they be relevant to passing trends, is to murder the artistic instinct in them for political expediency. All artist need to do is achieve the state of equilibrium in their art, which comes from the unification of their identity and state of being comfortable around universal habits. I admit that means must be found of finding a sense of pride in our own cultures; but it’s prurient to behave as if there’s a linear equation that connects language with cultural heritage.
There’s no question that artists, especially writers, are usually a catalyst of creative process for the reinvention of a nation’s sense of pride। But these things must be organic if they’ve any hope of authenticity. Literature is an artefact of expression, not culture. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.
There are no ready made stories of literature in any culture, only ghosts of stories that must be given artistic flesh, sinews and bones by artists. After they’ve been written, perhaps, those stories may excavate hidden ruptures in a culture. But that does not depend on language. It depends mostly on talent and the burden of identity.
Friday, 27 July 2007
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Dying Things
Almost all counselling advice tells us it is better to talk things over when you’ve a problem that is eating on your relationship. But there’s power and wisdom in silence, in biding your time, or walking away. If your partner is not on receptive mind there’s no use in talking. If you’ve said it a million times its time to take a permanent break. Spewing endless critiques or advice in a vain attempt to change your partner isn’t going to provide any lasting solution. Sometimes things disintegrate to death, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
In general terms talking about your problems is a good idea, but you know your relation better to understand when talk has reached a point of no return; when it paralyzes instead of freeing. No use using stewing conversation to avoid action. A moment of quiet reflection at the right time nourishes and refreshes the spirit of communication. But then again there’s a point of no return when too much has been done and said, where there’s no point of anything but to part ways.
I say all this because it has finally dawned on me that the torturously relation of my fiancée and I has finally came to a bad end, at least for me whom she cuckolded several times. I should have ended the affair long time ago, when she became unfaithful to me, but there seem to be so much guilt, anger, hoped for reconciliation, remorse between the two of us that we easily deluded each other that we were made for each other. There’s th question of our two year old son also. To cut our losses seemed inconceivable, if not tragic. Like desperate gamblers, the greater the losses the more I doubled the bets hoping to strike a hand that’ll vanquish all. The lucky break never came.
In the end my girlfriend left me for another guy somewhere in Bloem. Needless to say, my male ego is shuttered, but I believe in freedom of choice even when people choose to be free of me. She recently wrote me an email, explaining her need when she left me to find herself, blah, blah; the usual stuff, peppered by some muddleheaded-hand me down Dalai Alami’s maxims. The gist of the message was that she had discovered that we were good together, and so was considering getting back again.
I was surprised by my anger at the suggestion, and so elected not to answer her.
Three days ago, the buzzer of my flat wrung. She was at the door. We went through the usual protocol of decency, pretending to have missed and never forgotten about each other in the year and half. She talked my ear off about how she loves Cape Town life—I was staying in East London when she left me—the sunlit, airy cultured cafés, young middle-class flourishing life, etc.
“There’s of course a whiff of narcissism, inward looking, self-sufficient, cut off from the rest mentality that can be cloying about it sometimes;” said trying to participate on her enthusiasm. She said something I don’t recall, perhaps because I was more interested in her hee-hee face as she said it.
I was determined not to ask her about her reasons for leaving me. I know how it’s like sometimes to be snatched out by faked sophistication; the libertine brazenness, sublime impertinence of scavenging hyenas out there; and the demands of anarchic glorification of licence most of us mistakenly call freedom in our naivety.
“Otherwise how have you been;” she asked.
“Not too good actually; but I got over it. Writing helped as always, giving expression to the abandonment I mean.” I wanted to go beyond manufactured sentiments and worn out truisms.
They say an ability to forgive is a gift of temperament.
She made an attempt to apologise about what went on between us before, talking too much and saying very little; too many false notes. In the end she decided to drop it, to both our relief.
The lies of those familiar to us are painfully naked.
“Perhaps I’m too shallow and less sophisticated, but you were enough for me,” I said, betraying my resolve. I figured my still wounded heart had more claim on the matter than my calculating mind.
She gave me a wide artless smile that bent into a crafty grin and laugh; her face exuberant with a moronic permanent expression of startled but hidden confusion. And then her face collapsed, gave me a collusive glance, eyes glowing with glaucous film. She then turned to leave. Only the turgid vein on her temple, like river Nile, conveyed any sense of vulnerability.
It pained me to see her so? Unresolved and desperate.I went to the balcony to catch a last look.
The elements of autumn flooded my heart as the wind scrapped the dead autumn leaves of my past on the pavement. There was a fiery tint behind the mountain scars where the sun was sinking like a ship, to use Bob Dylan’s words. Actually the sun was expiring with streaks of blood on fiery clouds.
Goodbye my love. Perhaps in another life. Said my heavy heart as she disappeared around the corner. Tears tip-towed on my cheeks.
Soft things die slowly in my heart, but when they do they are dead. As Elizabeth Barret Browning put it:
We walked too straight for fortune’s end,
We loved too true to keep a friend;
At last we’re tired, my heart and I
At last we are tired and hurt, my heart and I.
Perhaps she came back too soon, when the scars still itched.
I went to seat where her heat and scent still whiffed in the air, and discovered, to my amazement, that I had grown comfortable on the empty room. Her photo was still on the wall, starring at me with unfocused dissatisfaction. I stood between the ocean and the open wound for a while, and then I took it down.
In general terms talking about your problems is a good idea, but you know your relation better to understand when talk has reached a point of no return; when it paralyzes instead of freeing. No use using stewing conversation to avoid action. A moment of quiet reflection at the right time nourishes and refreshes the spirit of communication. But then again there’s a point of no return when too much has been done and said, where there’s no point of anything but to part ways.
I say all this because it has finally dawned on me that the torturously relation of my fiancée and I has finally came to a bad end, at least for me whom she cuckolded several times. I should have ended the affair long time ago, when she became unfaithful to me, but there seem to be so much guilt, anger, hoped for reconciliation, remorse between the two of us that we easily deluded each other that we were made for each other. There’s th question of our two year old son also. To cut our losses seemed inconceivable, if not tragic. Like desperate gamblers, the greater the losses the more I doubled the bets hoping to strike a hand that’ll vanquish all. The lucky break never came.
In the end my girlfriend left me for another guy somewhere in Bloem. Needless to say, my male ego is shuttered, but I believe in freedom of choice even when people choose to be free of me. She recently wrote me an email, explaining her need when she left me to find herself, blah, blah; the usual stuff, peppered by some muddleheaded-hand me down Dalai Alami’s maxims. The gist of the message was that she had discovered that we were good together, and so was considering getting back again.
I was surprised by my anger at the suggestion, and so elected not to answer her.
Three days ago, the buzzer of my flat wrung. She was at the door. We went through the usual protocol of decency, pretending to have missed and never forgotten about each other in the year and half. She talked my ear off about how she loves Cape Town life—I was staying in East London when she left me—the sunlit, airy cultured cafés, young middle-class flourishing life, etc.
“There’s of course a whiff of narcissism, inward looking, self-sufficient, cut off from the rest mentality that can be cloying about it sometimes;” said trying to participate on her enthusiasm. She said something I don’t recall, perhaps because I was more interested in her hee-hee face as she said it.
I was determined not to ask her about her reasons for leaving me. I know how it’s like sometimes to be snatched out by faked sophistication; the libertine brazenness, sublime impertinence of scavenging hyenas out there; and the demands of anarchic glorification of licence most of us mistakenly call freedom in our naivety.
“Otherwise how have you been;” she asked.
“Not too good actually; but I got over it. Writing helped as always, giving expression to the abandonment I mean.” I wanted to go beyond manufactured sentiments and worn out truisms.
They say an ability to forgive is a gift of temperament.
She made an attempt to apologise about what went on between us before, talking too much and saying very little; too many false notes. In the end she decided to drop it, to both our relief.
The lies of those familiar to us are painfully naked.
“Perhaps I’m too shallow and less sophisticated, but you were enough for me,” I said, betraying my resolve. I figured my still wounded heart had more claim on the matter than my calculating mind.
She gave me a wide artless smile that bent into a crafty grin and laugh; her face exuberant with a moronic permanent expression of startled but hidden confusion. And then her face collapsed, gave me a collusive glance, eyes glowing with glaucous film. She then turned to leave. Only the turgid vein on her temple, like river Nile, conveyed any sense of vulnerability.
It pained me to see her so? Unresolved and desperate.I went to the balcony to catch a last look.
The elements of autumn flooded my heart as the wind scrapped the dead autumn leaves of my past on the pavement. There was a fiery tint behind the mountain scars where the sun was sinking like a ship, to use Bob Dylan’s words. Actually the sun was expiring with streaks of blood on fiery clouds.
Goodbye my love. Perhaps in another life. Said my heavy heart as she disappeared around the corner. Tears tip-towed on my cheeks.
Soft things die slowly in my heart, but when they do they are dead. As Elizabeth Barret Browning put it:
We walked too straight for fortune’s end,
We loved too true to keep a friend;
At last we’re tired, my heart and I
At last we are tired and hurt, my heart and I.
Perhaps she came back too soon, when the scars still itched.
I went to seat where her heat and scent still whiffed in the air, and discovered, to my amazement, that I had grown comfortable on the empty room. Her photo was still on the wall, starring at me with unfocused dissatisfaction. I stood between the ocean and the open wound for a while, and then I took it down.
Back To Roots
I believe the SACP (South African Communist Party) shall in the coming years look at its recent 12th National Conference as a missed opportunity to bring the party forward to principled direction that match the political aspirations of the 21st century. I didn’t think it’d have the nerve to break off from the TA (Tripartite Alliance), but I expected it to clearly table it’s principles down so as to attract, or repel, a typical 21st century voter. Instead it chose to shrink to pragmatism of its own impotence, when it clearly had a moral high ground boosted by the recent public strike.
The first error of the SACP is in its leadership that has chosen to moor the party’s aspirations too close to the fortunes of the present ANC deputy president, JZ (Jacob Zuma). Granted, JZ, is a fissure within TA rock whose deeper springs have long been penned underground the organisation. But to see a saviour in JZ rip-roaring sabre-rattling baguette and foutté is, in my opinion, ill-advised. What’s more, JZ has not given any indication that he has fresh ideas to take our country forward.
I suppose the SACP’s argument is that one has to build the house with the bricks one has at hand, especially coming so recently from the damping effect at the ANC policy conference. When president Thabo Mbeki threw the gauntlet against the SACP in his opening statement, I thought the SACP would chose the standard of honour, give up its Sisyphean task of thinking it can influence the ANC leadership into adopting socialist principles. The resolution coming out of the SACP conference has disabused that idea in my mind.
What I thought the SACP would do was, at the least, come up with ideas of revolutionizing the moral landscape of our capitalist beyond reinforcing the progressive critique of laissez-faire economic policies. I’m assuming that we are all agreed that capitalism, as mode of economic production, is still ideal. The problem is in distribution of resources. I thought the SACP would seek to promote economic restructuring, through civil legislation, to the natural welfare of the community; by means not necessary pleasing to the Washington Consensus if necessary. Unlike the present leadership of the ANC that has reduced us back to being lackeys of the Occidental means of development through our own resources. Because they fear the so called repercussions of globalisation.
We thought the SACP was going to make the nation aware the system embarked on by the present government at present encourages selfishness, cynicism, and undercuts efforts to confront the hard facts of poverty and greed. That the government obsession with fiscal books and fostering of rapid economic growth raises expectations that it is unable to fulfil by fair distribution.
We thought the SACP was going to point out that giving lip service to democratic aspirations without following it with just economic means is what has given birth to growing economic contradictions, which are expanding the population of the disenchanted and the frustrated, often making them vulnerable to populist politicians with short term radical solutions. The SACP conference was in an opportune position of coming with a clear strategy of coming with ways of restoring political leadership of our country back to its communal roots.
The SACP is in an opportune position to find a middle road to take between radical policies and the Washington Consensus. To come with strategies that’ll move us away from the present failing Development Politburo ideology, where expects from outside are brought in to design solutions for our markets according to comprehensive technical plans that suites their vested interests.
People are tired of leaders who condescend to them; who don’t trust them enough to be masters of their own our fates by allowing space to seek domestically raised solutions. They are tired of experts who see their poverty only as a purely technological problem, to be solved by social engineering, while ignoring their unique political and social situation.
They are seek and tired of hearing abstract terms like “market-friendly policies” and “globalisation” used as if they were sacred Holly Grails that cannot be interfered with but must be looked up to for specious deliverance that never comes. What our present government does not seem to understand is the revolutionary deceptions of the “creative chaos” of capitalism for the greater care of those with capital in the expense of alienating the rest.
The tide has turned. The march of history has reached a stage where the masses see through superficially appraised sophisticated shams and deceptions. If Karl Marx, in his much neglected Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, teaches us anything is that, men are producers of their own conceptions and ideas. That changing circumstances requires that the educators be educated. And that historical change is due to productive forces, with objectively given conditions, and social organisation.
In my book, the recent SACP National Conference failed Marx; perhaps even more grievously, failed its own objectives. I doubt if there’ll ever be an opportune moment like the one they’ve just missed.
The first error of the SACP is in its leadership that has chosen to moor the party’s aspirations too close to the fortunes of the present ANC deputy president, JZ (Jacob Zuma). Granted, JZ, is a fissure within TA rock whose deeper springs have long been penned underground the organisation. But to see a saviour in JZ rip-roaring sabre-rattling baguette and foutté is, in my opinion, ill-advised. What’s more, JZ has not given any indication that he has fresh ideas to take our country forward.
I suppose the SACP’s argument is that one has to build the house with the bricks one has at hand, especially coming so recently from the damping effect at the ANC policy conference. When president Thabo Mbeki threw the gauntlet against the SACP in his opening statement, I thought the SACP would chose the standard of honour, give up its Sisyphean task of thinking it can influence the ANC leadership into adopting socialist principles. The resolution coming out of the SACP conference has disabused that idea in my mind.
What I thought the SACP would do was, at the least, come up with ideas of revolutionizing the moral landscape of our capitalist beyond reinforcing the progressive critique of laissez-faire economic policies. I’m assuming that we are all agreed that capitalism, as mode of economic production, is still ideal. The problem is in distribution of resources. I thought the SACP would seek to promote economic restructuring, through civil legislation, to the natural welfare of the community; by means not necessary pleasing to the Washington Consensus if necessary. Unlike the present leadership of the ANC that has reduced us back to being lackeys of the Occidental means of development through our own resources. Because they fear the so called repercussions of globalisation.
We thought the SACP was going to make the nation aware the system embarked on by the present government at present encourages selfishness, cynicism, and undercuts efforts to confront the hard facts of poverty and greed. That the government obsession with fiscal books and fostering of rapid economic growth raises expectations that it is unable to fulfil by fair distribution.
We thought the SACP was going to point out that giving lip service to democratic aspirations without following it with just economic means is what has given birth to growing economic contradictions, which are expanding the population of the disenchanted and the frustrated, often making them vulnerable to populist politicians with short term radical solutions. The SACP conference was in an opportune position of coming with a clear strategy of coming with ways of restoring political leadership of our country back to its communal roots.
The SACP is in an opportune position to find a middle road to take between radical policies and the Washington Consensus. To come with strategies that’ll move us away from the present failing Development Politburo ideology, where expects from outside are brought in to design solutions for our markets according to comprehensive technical plans that suites their vested interests.
People are tired of leaders who condescend to them; who don’t trust them enough to be masters of their own our fates by allowing space to seek domestically raised solutions. They are tired of experts who see their poverty only as a purely technological problem, to be solved by social engineering, while ignoring their unique political and social situation.
They are seek and tired of hearing abstract terms like “market-friendly policies” and “globalisation” used as if they were sacred Holly Grails that cannot be interfered with but must be looked up to for specious deliverance that never comes. What our present government does not seem to understand is the revolutionary deceptions of the “creative chaos” of capitalism for the greater care of those with capital in the expense of alienating the rest.
The tide has turned. The march of history has reached a stage where the masses see through superficially appraised sophisticated shams and deceptions. If Karl Marx, in his much neglected Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, teaches us anything is that, men are producers of their own conceptions and ideas. That changing circumstances requires that the educators be educated. And that historical change is due to productive forces, with objectively given conditions, and social organisation.
In my book, the recent SACP National Conference failed Marx; perhaps even more grievously, failed its own objectives. I doubt if there’ll ever be an opportune moment like the one they’ve just missed.
Our Era is Ripe for Ubuntu
It has been a trend for sometime now, especially among the Thomist philosophers, to associate the philosophical roots of Western thinking decline, ipso facto of moral values also, to the ideas of Descartes. In his book, Memory and Identity, the late Pope John Paul II argued with the way Descartes constructed his philosophy, basing it on the foundation of individual self-awareness, instead of starting (as Aquinas had) with Self-subsistent Being.
In his famous Cogito argument, Descartes gave primacy to individual consciousness, something that found ready following in Occidental ears. Western philosophy thereafter became concerned with what is contained within the ambit of subjectivity, rather than with the Reality that is independent of it. The primacy of the Cogito is an epistemic priority, what Descartes called the “order of discovery”—If I try to doubt everything, the first thing I find I cannot doubt is my own existence.
Descartes was nonetheless clear that such self-awareness leads directly to awareness of God. According to Descartes Cogito, sum ergo Deus est (I am, therefore God exists) is knowing myself immediately, while recognising “my complete dependence on a power infinitely greater than myself. Epistemically I may come first, but ontologically, in the order of reality”, God retains absolute primacy.
But I here want to talk more about how African Völkerwanderung compares to all of this.
The African concept of Ubuntu (one’s being depending on others) is in direct contradiction to the Cogiti. It operates closer to the meaning of life according to Thomists gestalt in recognising objective absolutes. But where the Thomists put more emphasis on Naturalism, Ubuntu is more Positivist, which might have influenced St Augustine’s (who was an Africa in his perspective despite his Roman training) theology.
The concept of Ubuntu believes that human fulfilment can never be achieved in isolation. That there’s no such thing as a strictly private act, because we are closely linked to the bond of our common humanity. Ubuntu understands the meaning of life as an ethical construct that involves treating others as you want them to treat you, caring for those close to you, helping strangers, and generally thinking in long terms. This does not mean Ubuntu does away with self-awareness, as others like to accuse it. Ubuntu propugates ways of subjugating self-awareness into the general good of the community.
To the theists the place of God in Descartes’ philosophy is given short shrift, hence they like to briskly dismiss Cartesian arguments for the primacy of existence of the Deity. Perhaps it could be said that no matter how sincere Descartes’ theistic commitments, his Cartesian argument made it in the end spurious. This then begs the question of correctness of belief and truth of knowing as argued by John Paul II against Cartesian arguments.
To the Thomists the truth of knowing depends on the accurate correspondence of judgement to the way things, are independent of thought. To them Philosophy is there just to clarify and justify the spontaneous certitude of common sense (by common sense I mean our native capacity to know certain fundamentals, immediate, and self-evident aspects of reality that lie open to our senses and intellect), and enlighten conscience (reason making moral judgement, according to St Thomas).
Our age, due to Western influence, is that of logical truth that likes to place the basis of truth in the clarity of ideas or perceptions. It does not refer to the knowability of things outside the intellect, but rather to the clearness of ideas which are already in the mind, and therefore known as states of consciousness. This kind of thinking was, arguably, according to Thomists, brought about by Descartes.
What the Thomists and Ubuntu distrust most about the Cartesian theory is its arbitrary refusal to accept evidence in the only place where it can be found, viz, things (whether we call them monads, or points of force, or energies, is besides the point here) in themselves. The Cartesian subjectivist argument precludes beforehand the possibility of any reasonable answer in the question of meaning of life. The example that’s given wide currency in debasing it is that of likening Cartesian argument to a classical example of a man who asks what numbers make up twelve, while prohibiting you from using 2 times 6, 3 times 4, or 12 times 1.
On the other hand the concept of Ubuntu is clear in such things. Ubuntu, and most African cultures in general, takes for granted the capacity things have of delivering themselves up to the intellect in the act of knowing—their clarity and understandability. It assumes as irrefutably common sense the evidence of things as both their own reason for truth of judgement, and test or criterion. That it believes the nature of things as they present themselves as their evidence of being, and nothing else more is needed.
In his latest book, The Meaning of Life, Terry Eagleton firmly rejects liberal individualism (the mere assertion that the meaning of life is me)—one of the bastard sprout of Cartesian theory—as nihilistic. “At the point of its supreme triumph, [individualism] is struck empty”, maintains Eagleton using the similar Thomist argument.
The idea of liberalism came as liberation of the individual from the priesthood of religion, and such black holes in which individual meaning was sucked and destroyed. But the wheel has turned full circle in our epoch. The liberator has become the stiff and airless.
The fact has become apparent that defending the meaning of life with an “asphyxiating dormice” of subjective liberalism is not sustainable, judging by the moral decline of our times. “The idea that I can determine the meaning of my own life is an illusion.” (Terry Eagleton) We are all creatures of the species Homo sapiens that we cannot escape, as argued by the concept of Ubuntu.
Recently Pope Benedict XI added fuel to fire by delivering a hard-hitting speech to the European Union for calling into question the existence of “universal and absolute values” based on natural law. The Thomists and the concept of Ubuntu believe that civil rights too must flow from the given order of nature. St Thomas called this order of nature, which is the same for all men at all times, Natural Law: “the sharing of the rational creature in the eternal law.”
Aristotle, and Greeks in general, on whom the original Egyptian (thus African) influence on their thought was still fresh, espoused the Ubuntu concept that an individual was primarily a member of a group, be it family, household, a village, or a city state. Hence in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote:
For even if good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of the community; for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of the individual, to do so in the case of a people or state is something finer and more sublime (p.164)
This might be one of the reasons St Thomas chose to follow Aristotle as compared to Plato’s elitism (To be fare to Plato we’ll have to admit that the idea behind the Republic started as argument for communitarian thinking where the good of the city-state was placed above any single individual. Arguably the pedigree of Occidental thought followed this path to achieve a full-blown individualist philosophy with Thomas Hobbes).
Ubuntu believes that our individuality is already partly decided for us by the group we are born into, hence it maintains umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu (a person is a person through others). It believes that society is more than a sum of individuals, and that being an individual can only be made possibly by a society that recognizes the concept of individuality in the first place. We all have a responsibility of making sure that a good life is lived by all members of the society, not just the few, says Ubuntu, hence it detest elitism.
Ancient cultures, up and above all this, were mostly blatantly sexist, repressively elitists, disgustingly ageist, and overtly racist—Greek lives, for instance, were maintained by the help of slaves, and an underclass of women; to some extent, so was the African societies, with all its talk of Ubuntu. Hence I say it was a good thing when liberalism came, banishing personal prohibitions, political repressions, religious censorship, sexual and racial discrimination. The problem is, once it achieved all that, it felt free to become exhibitionist and narcissist, thus imbibing the poison it was suppose to cure.
Even St Thomas had his short-comings—for one he thought the feudal order of society was a natural one, something that blinded him to its oppressive cruelties. The shadow of Rousseau fell upon him, and everything related to Thomism, including the Roman Catholic Church. Popular thought, under the continued gruff pen of Voltaire, favoured liberal values. Now it is liberaslism that is buckling at its structural faults—the skeletons of Descartes. The boomer liberal intellectuals, of course, still fancy they speak truth to power; while most people feel the liberals have become one of the chief obstacles to the reconstruction of social and political life in the twenty-first century.
Ubuntu is our only hope, because it does not only encapsulate principles of justice and benevolence; it demands that the individual seek to identify with and be an active participant of a society as a whole. The challenge is that those who have been enlightened, largely by liberal values, should make it a point that Ubuntu does not only end on social expectations, as the final determining factor of behaviour. Ubuntu too must give space for individual freedom to challenge any moral and social status quo.
Like Humanism, Ubuntu upholds the importance of human experience—what the Roman church calls “the living tradition”—as foundation for knowledgeable insights. And goes further into acknowledging the importance of convictions. It looks to existing traditional answers for complex moral issues, while allowing enough flexibility for different circumstances and times. To me our epoch is ripe for Ubuntu.
We’ve entered an age that demands serious introspection and self-examination. In the end whether we call it natural law, ubuntu, or human rights, it is time we were serious in making it a primary corner stone for our human civilisation. Protecting human dignity is not only about protecting oneself, or defending the other; it is also about realising our compliance and complacency in the suffering of the other, even at the expense of our cherished comforts and beliefs. It is about emerging out of our comfort zones.
In his famous Cogito argument, Descartes gave primacy to individual consciousness, something that found ready following in Occidental ears. Western philosophy thereafter became concerned with what is contained within the ambit of subjectivity, rather than with the Reality that is independent of it. The primacy of the Cogito is an epistemic priority, what Descartes called the “order of discovery”—If I try to doubt everything, the first thing I find I cannot doubt is my own existence.
Descartes was nonetheless clear that such self-awareness leads directly to awareness of God. According to Descartes Cogito, sum ergo Deus est (I am, therefore God exists) is knowing myself immediately, while recognising “my complete dependence on a power infinitely greater than myself. Epistemically I may come first, but ontologically, in the order of reality”, God retains absolute primacy.
But I here want to talk more about how African Völkerwanderung compares to all of this.
The African concept of Ubuntu (one’s being depending on others) is in direct contradiction to the Cogiti. It operates closer to the meaning of life according to Thomists gestalt in recognising objective absolutes. But where the Thomists put more emphasis on Naturalism, Ubuntu is more Positivist, which might have influenced St Augustine’s (who was an Africa in his perspective despite his Roman training) theology.
The concept of Ubuntu believes that human fulfilment can never be achieved in isolation. That there’s no such thing as a strictly private act, because we are closely linked to the bond of our common humanity. Ubuntu understands the meaning of life as an ethical construct that involves treating others as you want them to treat you, caring for those close to you, helping strangers, and generally thinking in long terms. This does not mean Ubuntu does away with self-awareness, as others like to accuse it. Ubuntu propugates ways of subjugating self-awareness into the general good of the community.
To the theists the place of God in Descartes’ philosophy is given short shrift, hence they like to briskly dismiss Cartesian arguments for the primacy of existence of the Deity. Perhaps it could be said that no matter how sincere Descartes’ theistic commitments, his Cartesian argument made it in the end spurious. This then begs the question of correctness of belief and truth of knowing as argued by John Paul II against Cartesian arguments.
To the Thomists the truth of knowing depends on the accurate correspondence of judgement to the way things, are independent of thought. To them Philosophy is there just to clarify and justify the spontaneous certitude of common sense (by common sense I mean our native capacity to know certain fundamentals, immediate, and self-evident aspects of reality that lie open to our senses and intellect), and enlighten conscience (reason making moral judgement, according to St Thomas).
Our age, due to Western influence, is that of logical truth that likes to place the basis of truth in the clarity of ideas or perceptions. It does not refer to the knowability of things outside the intellect, but rather to the clearness of ideas which are already in the mind, and therefore known as states of consciousness. This kind of thinking was, arguably, according to Thomists, brought about by Descartes.
What the Thomists and Ubuntu distrust most about the Cartesian theory is its arbitrary refusal to accept evidence in the only place where it can be found, viz, things (whether we call them monads, or points of force, or energies, is besides the point here) in themselves. The Cartesian subjectivist argument precludes beforehand the possibility of any reasonable answer in the question of meaning of life. The example that’s given wide currency in debasing it is that of likening Cartesian argument to a classical example of a man who asks what numbers make up twelve, while prohibiting you from using 2 times 6, 3 times 4, or 12 times 1.
On the other hand the concept of Ubuntu is clear in such things. Ubuntu, and most African cultures in general, takes for granted the capacity things have of delivering themselves up to the intellect in the act of knowing—their clarity and understandability. It assumes as irrefutably common sense the evidence of things as both their own reason for truth of judgement, and test or criterion. That it believes the nature of things as they present themselves as their evidence of being, and nothing else more is needed.
In his latest book, The Meaning of Life, Terry Eagleton firmly rejects liberal individualism (the mere assertion that the meaning of life is me)—one of the bastard sprout of Cartesian theory—as nihilistic. “At the point of its supreme triumph, [individualism] is struck empty”, maintains Eagleton using the similar Thomist argument.
The idea of liberalism came as liberation of the individual from the priesthood of religion, and such black holes in which individual meaning was sucked and destroyed. But the wheel has turned full circle in our epoch. The liberator has become the stiff and airless.
The fact has become apparent that defending the meaning of life with an “asphyxiating dormice” of subjective liberalism is not sustainable, judging by the moral decline of our times. “The idea that I can determine the meaning of my own life is an illusion.” (Terry Eagleton) We are all creatures of the species Homo sapiens that we cannot escape, as argued by the concept of Ubuntu.
Recently Pope Benedict XI added fuel to fire by delivering a hard-hitting speech to the European Union for calling into question the existence of “universal and absolute values” based on natural law. The Thomists and the concept of Ubuntu believe that civil rights too must flow from the given order of nature. St Thomas called this order of nature, which is the same for all men at all times, Natural Law: “the sharing of the rational creature in the eternal law.”
Aristotle, and Greeks in general, on whom the original Egyptian (thus African) influence on their thought was still fresh, espoused the Ubuntu concept that an individual was primarily a member of a group, be it family, household, a village, or a city state. Hence in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote:
For even if good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of the community; for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of the individual, to do so in the case of a people or state is something finer and more sublime (p.164)
This might be one of the reasons St Thomas chose to follow Aristotle as compared to Plato’s elitism (To be fare to Plato we’ll have to admit that the idea behind the Republic started as argument for communitarian thinking where the good of the city-state was placed above any single individual. Arguably the pedigree of Occidental thought followed this path to achieve a full-blown individualist philosophy with Thomas Hobbes).
Ubuntu believes that our individuality is already partly decided for us by the group we are born into, hence it maintains umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu (a person is a person through others). It believes that society is more than a sum of individuals, and that being an individual can only be made possibly by a society that recognizes the concept of individuality in the first place. We all have a responsibility of making sure that a good life is lived by all members of the society, not just the few, says Ubuntu, hence it detest elitism.
Ancient cultures, up and above all this, were mostly blatantly sexist, repressively elitists, disgustingly ageist, and overtly racist—Greek lives, for instance, were maintained by the help of slaves, and an underclass of women; to some extent, so was the African societies, with all its talk of Ubuntu. Hence I say it was a good thing when liberalism came, banishing personal prohibitions, political repressions, religious censorship, sexual and racial discrimination. The problem is, once it achieved all that, it felt free to become exhibitionist and narcissist, thus imbibing the poison it was suppose to cure.
Even St Thomas had his short-comings—for one he thought the feudal order of society was a natural one, something that blinded him to its oppressive cruelties. The shadow of Rousseau fell upon him, and everything related to Thomism, including the Roman Catholic Church. Popular thought, under the continued gruff pen of Voltaire, favoured liberal values. Now it is liberaslism that is buckling at its structural faults—the skeletons of Descartes. The boomer liberal intellectuals, of course, still fancy they speak truth to power; while most people feel the liberals have become one of the chief obstacles to the reconstruction of social and political life in the twenty-first century.
Ubuntu is our only hope, because it does not only encapsulate principles of justice and benevolence; it demands that the individual seek to identify with and be an active participant of a society as a whole. The challenge is that those who have been enlightened, largely by liberal values, should make it a point that Ubuntu does not only end on social expectations, as the final determining factor of behaviour. Ubuntu too must give space for individual freedom to challenge any moral and social status quo.
Like Humanism, Ubuntu upholds the importance of human experience—what the Roman church calls “the living tradition”—as foundation for knowledgeable insights. And goes further into acknowledging the importance of convictions. It looks to existing traditional answers for complex moral issues, while allowing enough flexibility for different circumstances and times. To me our epoch is ripe for Ubuntu.
We’ve entered an age that demands serious introspection and self-examination. In the end whether we call it natural law, ubuntu, or human rights, it is time we were serious in making it a primary corner stone for our human civilisation. Protecting human dignity is not only about protecting oneself, or defending the other; it is also about realising our compliance and complacency in the suffering of the other, even at the expense of our cherished comforts and beliefs. It is about emerging out of our comfort zones.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Something Stinking In the State of Zimbabwe
If the insult be great enough, the people will rise. So said Montesquieu. Has not the insult by their present government been enough to Zimbabwean people? If so why are they not rising? Perhaps uprisings were easier in the age of revolutions than our own era where regimes, like Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe, demonstrate ingenious ways of oppressing its people. It has become easy for regimes to quickly nip civil discontent in the bud.
Incarceration and beating of opposition party leaders and such sado-masochist tactics are passé. The modus operandi are now invidious fascist tendencies . . .
The Arch Bishop of Bulawayo has recently in South African National radio broadcast recently, called for intervention from the international world against Mugabe’s regime. . . Lately he has moderated the call by advocating for the inclusion of the AU (African Union) and countries of southern Africa.
If we say organisation like the AU, or the UN (United Nations), should send peace keeping forces to Zimbabwe; what happens when the Mugabe regime does not allow them to enter the country? Do they enter by force, declaring war on Zimbabwe; or do they cower, with their tails between the legs, instructing the rest of the world to isolate the state of Zimbabwe? What gains will come out of that isolation besides escalating the already dire state of Zimbabwean people?
The idea of political revolution as the founding principle of Western democracies is obvious from French to Russian revolution—even if it’s support or indignation against, depends on who is using it against who. It was perhaps small wonder that the combined forces of the US and Britain tried to use the so called creative power of force for social transformation in Iran. Even Karl Marx admitted to the necessity of force as “ the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” Iran is the best argument that even totalitarian oppression is far better than the unleashed chaos of forced political transformation.
Hence I would have assumed that by now most liberal minded people would regard the unabashed imperialist nonsense about “democracy” being a sovereign right of people that must be exported by force if need be as bullshit। And the fact that sanctions hurt ordinary citizens more than the thugs that rule over them. The only option left then in my mind is some kind of democratic revolution by Zimbabweans, ideally without either violence or coercion, but we’re not in an ideal world.
In my book mass political movements are the only likely route Zimbabweans can liberate themselves through, with the support of international community in the form of NGO. I’m wary of the of the revolutions’ tendencies to liberate with chaos, even degenerate to similar oppression that strengthen totalitarian tendencies in the liberators.
Another complication is that Zimbabweans are not a homogeneous lot. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that the division between people is founded not on class distinctions, religion or party ideology, but goes through their hearts. The old sense of nationalistic purpose is still fully fledged in rustic Zimbabweans who support Mugabe. Government propaganda has whipped them up with nationalistic feelings that create an atmosphere of deep suspicion of outsiders, especially Western outsiders. What’s more, the rural people are the majority in the Zimbabwe. It might be that the liberation of urban Zimbabweans means the oppression of majority rural Zimbabweans. Not all that panders to ideals of Western democracies is freedom for all.
The Zimbabwean urbanites on the other hand are a fragmented and divided lot। Most of them seek little more from politics than the protection of their own interests. Either as businesses men, union workers, and so on; they use politics for personal reasons, and are not greatly bordered with anything that does not hit their pockets directly. With Zimbabwe now teetering to economic collapse perhaps they’ve now finally awoken to their plight.
Countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan are classic examples of impotence of world organisations against sovereign states. These countries are a muckraking morality tale with many villains and few heroes. Must Zimbabweans endure the weight of oppression if they don’t believe enough on themselves to rise against it, or feel powerlessness in shaping their own future? If so how do we live with ourselves, especially as South Africans, knowing gross human rights violations are being visited on innocent people just across the Limpopo?
Human rights are a primary core value of human civilization, the cornerstones of our daily struggle for human dignity। Protecting human dignity is not only about protecting oneself from violence, but also defending the other. It’s solidarity with individuals who are fighting for their own dignity. Solidarity is not about supporting those who share our precise view of politics. It’s about supporting those who struggle against injustice and violence. Which brings us to the original question.
Does that mean that we are compelled into the position of American neo-cons who push human rights even through military force? Can force be avoided? If yes, let us be done with all these verbal intricacies and talks of poseurs. We must admit defeat into impotence by our own principles.
Blessed are we if the admittance calms the murderous ardour in the name of freedom within us, as seen in Iraqi today. Nietzsche said: Man is something that must be overcome: and for that reason you must love your virtues – for you will perish by them. Let us perish by our virtues rather than be drawn into careless with other people’s blood. There’s something stinking in the state of Zimbabwe, no question about that; but it is in the hands of Zimbabweans to sort it. All we can do is to offer our support. It is time Zimbabweans faced up to the realities of their own country.
Incarceration and beating of opposition party leaders and such sado-masochist tactics are passé. The modus operandi are now invidious fascist tendencies . . .
The Arch Bishop of Bulawayo has recently in South African National radio broadcast recently, called for intervention from the international world against Mugabe’s regime. . . Lately he has moderated the call by advocating for the inclusion of the AU (African Union) and countries of southern Africa.
If we say organisation like the AU, or the UN (United Nations), should send peace keeping forces to Zimbabwe; what happens when the Mugabe regime does not allow them to enter the country? Do they enter by force, declaring war on Zimbabwe; or do they cower, with their tails between the legs, instructing the rest of the world to isolate the state of Zimbabwe? What gains will come out of that isolation besides escalating the already dire state of Zimbabwean people?
The idea of political revolution as the founding principle of Western democracies is obvious from French to Russian revolution—even if it’s support or indignation against, depends on who is using it against who. It was perhaps small wonder that the combined forces of the US and Britain tried to use the so called creative power of force for social transformation in Iran. Even Karl Marx admitted to the necessity of force as “ the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” Iran is the best argument that even totalitarian oppression is far better than the unleashed chaos of forced political transformation.
Hence I would have assumed that by now most liberal minded people would regard the unabashed imperialist nonsense about “democracy” being a sovereign right of people that must be exported by force if need be as bullshit। And the fact that sanctions hurt ordinary citizens more than the thugs that rule over them. The only option left then in my mind is some kind of democratic revolution by Zimbabweans, ideally without either violence or coercion, but we’re not in an ideal world.
In my book mass political movements are the only likely route Zimbabweans can liberate themselves through, with the support of international community in the form of NGO. I’m wary of the of the revolutions’ tendencies to liberate with chaos, even degenerate to similar oppression that strengthen totalitarian tendencies in the liberators.
Another complication is that Zimbabweans are not a homogeneous lot. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that the division between people is founded not on class distinctions, religion or party ideology, but goes through their hearts. The old sense of nationalistic purpose is still fully fledged in rustic Zimbabweans who support Mugabe. Government propaganda has whipped them up with nationalistic feelings that create an atmosphere of deep suspicion of outsiders, especially Western outsiders. What’s more, the rural people are the majority in the Zimbabwe. It might be that the liberation of urban Zimbabweans means the oppression of majority rural Zimbabweans. Not all that panders to ideals of Western democracies is freedom for all.
The Zimbabwean urbanites on the other hand are a fragmented and divided lot। Most of them seek little more from politics than the protection of their own interests. Either as businesses men, union workers, and so on; they use politics for personal reasons, and are not greatly bordered with anything that does not hit their pockets directly. With Zimbabwe now teetering to economic collapse perhaps they’ve now finally awoken to their plight.
Countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan are classic examples of impotence of world organisations against sovereign states. These countries are a muckraking morality tale with many villains and few heroes. Must Zimbabweans endure the weight of oppression if they don’t believe enough on themselves to rise against it, or feel powerlessness in shaping their own future? If so how do we live with ourselves, especially as South Africans, knowing gross human rights violations are being visited on innocent people just across the Limpopo?
Human rights are a primary core value of human civilization, the cornerstones of our daily struggle for human dignity। Protecting human dignity is not only about protecting oneself from violence, but also defending the other. It’s solidarity with individuals who are fighting for their own dignity. Solidarity is not about supporting those who share our precise view of politics. It’s about supporting those who struggle against injustice and violence. Which brings us to the original question.
Does that mean that we are compelled into the position of American neo-cons who push human rights even through military force? Can force be avoided? If yes, let us be done with all these verbal intricacies and talks of poseurs. We must admit defeat into impotence by our own principles.
Blessed are we if the admittance calms the murderous ardour in the name of freedom within us, as seen in Iraqi today. Nietzsche said: Man is something that must be overcome: and for that reason you must love your virtues – for you will perish by them. Let us perish by our virtues rather than be drawn into careless with other people’s blood. There’s something stinking in the state of Zimbabwe, no question about that; but it is in the hands of Zimbabweans to sort it. All we can do is to offer our support. It is time Zimbabweans faced up to the realities of their own country.
Humanist Socialism
As the euphoria of the Rainbow Nation wanes South African politics are evidently showing signs of not being at ease with themselves, especially inside the Tripartite Alliance [African National Congress (ANC), Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) & South African Communist Party (SACP)]. There major divisions are over the economic direction the country has taken since 1994, after its first non-racial elections.
In the eyes of the hoi polli the present South African government has fully embraced the neo-liberal, free-market ideology that has generated economic opportunities for the few while leaving the majority of the population poor and disillusioned. President Thabo Mbeki is seen to be the driver behind this course, something that is starting to make him very unpopular among the hoi polli.
At first the neo-liberal model appeared to be vindicated as South African economic achievements—that includes strong currency, low inflation rate, and a substantial rise in exports—became evident. The South African government fiscal books are in reasonably healthy order. But the very economic success has hurt labour, especially unskilled labour which is the majority in SA. It is not creating jobs fast enough, while at the same time loosing them to modern machinery at an unacceptable rate.
The South African economic growth of around 4.4 per cent, and forecast growth of 6 per cent, is much lower than other major developing countries, which in turn hurts its competitive advantage. The consequent of this are scarce foreign investment in the country. Even domestic companies, though with above average fiscal health and liquid cash prefer to take a wait and see approach, seating on huge amounts of reserve, or consolidating themselves globally by taking over foreign companies. What’s more, foreign investment and GDP per head in SA are also much more below than countries like Brazil and India it wants to compete with. It is this combination that hurts labour most and gives pro left economic theorists ammunition against the Mbeki neo-liberals economic stance.
The glaring signs of discontent within the hoi polli were already blatantly obvious when president Mbeki fired his deputy president Jacob Zuma (JZ) for bringing the government into disrepute since he was found by the court of law to have had ‘a generally corrupt relationship’ with a convicted South African businessman. A lot of people on the ground, and within the ANC, especially the other two members of the Tripartite Alliance, were not happy about the decision.
Signs of voluble frustration were heard from the youth league of the ANC also, who unequivocally supports JZ. They say they see in him a champion of the poor and workers. JZ took advantage of this discontent and portrayed himself as a victim of conspiracy by the neo-liberals, because he happened to hold pro-worker values. There’s no doubt that JZ is more closer to the working class as opposed to the business bias of Mbeki. Consequently the business class distrust him, and fear what they see as his socialist tendencies. Academic analysts and media commentators, with their permanent distrust of the hoi polli, prevalently took the side of business entrepreneurship, defending neo-liberal, free market against left leaning organised labour.
What tightened the screws and upped the ante was the rape trial last year against JZ early this year—the court consequently acquitted JZ from these charges. The acquittal of JZ to his supporters was a vindication of his cause—he had early said the rape trial was part of the neo-liberal conspiracy against him. It gave him more confidence to face up to his critics and resurrect his presidential candidacy hopes. Now JZ can be seen, with thin veil, canvassing for the next presidency, something unheard of in the ANC whose president is appointed by its National Executive Committee. Of course the nomination for election is done by the various structures within the body of the ANC and it’s alliance partners, the COSATU and the SACP. All this has fostered a lot of heated debate among the chattering class of SA.
In the eyes of the hoi polli, the government though professing an option for the poor has done remarkably little more than social grants to address their plight. While social grants have eased the symptoms of poverty, they have done nothing to tackle their causes. And people are rather tired of the same old story of condemning the past apartheid regime for the present assaults of poverty on their human dignity. They see the new-look laissez-faire South Africa equally reprehensible for their plight. Hence the expedient opportunism of JZ has fallen on fallowed ground.
The best thing that came out of the so-called JZ (Jacob Zuma) saga in SA is a clearer, even if less convincing, political debate for the economic direction the country has taken. The JZ saga has roused the youth and the marginalized of the country to storm the barricades they feel are stumbling blocks between them and their hard won freedom. The poor hordes of country are angry and disgruntled. They have used the opportunity afforded by the JZ saga to stick their fingers up the arses of what they see as the political elitist nerve within their party, the ANC.
JZ’s expedient opportunism channelled the disgruntled enthusiasm of the hoi polli that was already creeping into the nooks and crannies of our politics. He became the long for Messiah, seemingly crucified for the disgruntlement of the poor. What’s more, he had an expanding influence within the political network of the ANC. All he needed to do was to embody the issues already raised by the ANC affiliates, like the unions and the re-emerging communists influence. And that he did expediently. All in all, JZ is the embodiment of the rebellious energy within the Tripartite Alliance.
I’ve already said that president Mbeki, in the eyes of the hoi polli, is seen as a technocratic leader, more aligned with Zeitgeist of liberal economic imperatives the hoi polli sees as the major source of their disentrancement. He has become the embodiment of the modern spirit that is disenfranchising the disgruntled hoi polli of less material and sophisticated means.
The JZ saga, of cause, is just a tinpot flare that rallies more on media publicity than real substance. It is destined to go out in smoke with the demise of all personality cults. What will remain striking the nerve within the ANC and its alliance partners is the sense of disconnection from the political elite the masses feel. If this sense of disconnection does not find satisfactory attention and proper channelling it’ll organize itself, first, into a cultural support group of the dissatisfied, ignored, abandoned, exploited, and forgotten, and unrepresented. And when it finds its Marx that’ll organise and codify its grievances into a sound intellectual political economy; it’ll then mature into a fully-fledged political party that will haunt the very roots of political economy in our country.
The challenge for this group is that it is not yet equipped with representative language of expression for its aspirations and ideas, hence it still relies on pop culture emotionalism and forcefulness, indeed even anarchism, in making its point with resultant polemical hyperbole intended to shut down debate or overthrow reason. More than ridiculing this movement though with verbose sarcasm, clumsy paradoxes and crude chiasmus, as our media has penchant for, it might be wise to fledge and engage it constructively.
The disconnected, or rather alienated, hoi polli is what Karl Marx’s philosophy protests against. It is against the dehumanisation and automatization of man inherent in the development of Western industrialisation. In the world today where capitalist hegemony is the order of the day, and the recent tragic failures of the Soviet bloc, the word “Socialism” belongs to the devil. It is one of the peculiarities of history how many people are ready to criticize Marxism without ever reading a single word Marx wrote.
I’m one of those people who are convinced that the only way to understand and deal with our present realities is by understanding the real meaning of Marxist thought. To differentiate it especially from the failed Soviet totalitarianism and Chinese state capitalism that Marx, in his much neglected Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts warned against as what he termed “crude communism”. Crude communism “appears in a double form; the domination of material property looms so large that it aims to destroy everything which is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property. It wishes to eliminate talent, etc., by force . . . The role of worker is not abolished but extended to all men. The relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the world of things . . . This communism, which negates the personality of man in every sphere is . . . Universal envy setting itself up as a power, is only camouflaged form of cupidity which re-establishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way. The thoughts of every individual private property are at least directed against any wealthier private property, in the form of envy and the desire to reduce everything to a common level; so that this envy and levelling in fact constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of such envy and levelling-down on the basis of a preconceived minimum. How little this abolishing of private property represents a genuine appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the whole world of culture and civilisation, and the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and wantless individual who has not only not surpassed private property but has not even attained to it. The community is only a community of work and of equality of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalists. The two sides of the relation are raised to a supposed universality; labour as a condition in which everyone is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community.”
Hence I say the American crude capitalist mode of economy and totalitarian communism are extreme ends of the same stick. In the crude capitalist mode, “capital is independent, and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. Immediate physical possession seems to it the unique goal of life and existence.”
The appeal of Marxism in my life is what I call “humanists socialism”; the protest against the alienation of man from his human essence, and the elements of social justice, equality and universality inherent on it. I believe Marx’s philosophy is still a relevant source of insight and hope for man’s realisation of his true potential. The aim of Marx was to liberate man from the pressure of economic needs, so that man can be fully human; to overcome alienation and restore his capacity to relate to self and nature fully.
In the eyes of the hoi polli the present South African government has fully embraced the neo-liberal, free-market ideology that has generated economic opportunities for the few while leaving the majority of the population poor and disillusioned. President Thabo Mbeki is seen to be the driver behind this course, something that is starting to make him very unpopular among the hoi polli.
At first the neo-liberal model appeared to be vindicated as South African economic achievements—that includes strong currency, low inflation rate, and a substantial rise in exports—became evident. The South African government fiscal books are in reasonably healthy order. But the very economic success has hurt labour, especially unskilled labour which is the majority in SA. It is not creating jobs fast enough, while at the same time loosing them to modern machinery at an unacceptable rate.
The South African economic growth of around 4.4 per cent, and forecast growth of 6 per cent, is much lower than other major developing countries, which in turn hurts its competitive advantage. The consequent of this are scarce foreign investment in the country. Even domestic companies, though with above average fiscal health and liquid cash prefer to take a wait and see approach, seating on huge amounts of reserve, or consolidating themselves globally by taking over foreign companies. What’s more, foreign investment and GDP per head in SA are also much more below than countries like Brazil and India it wants to compete with. It is this combination that hurts labour most and gives pro left economic theorists ammunition against the Mbeki neo-liberals economic stance.
The glaring signs of discontent within the hoi polli were already blatantly obvious when president Mbeki fired his deputy president Jacob Zuma (JZ) for bringing the government into disrepute since he was found by the court of law to have had ‘a generally corrupt relationship’ with a convicted South African businessman. A lot of people on the ground, and within the ANC, especially the other two members of the Tripartite Alliance, were not happy about the decision.
Signs of voluble frustration were heard from the youth league of the ANC also, who unequivocally supports JZ. They say they see in him a champion of the poor and workers. JZ took advantage of this discontent and portrayed himself as a victim of conspiracy by the neo-liberals, because he happened to hold pro-worker values. There’s no doubt that JZ is more closer to the working class as opposed to the business bias of Mbeki. Consequently the business class distrust him, and fear what they see as his socialist tendencies. Academic analysts and media commentators, with their permanent distrust of the hoi polli, prevalently took the side of business entrepreneurship, defending neo-liberal, free market against left leaning organised labour.
What tightened the screws and upped the ante was the rape trial last year against JZ early this year—the court consequently acquitted JZ from these charges. The acquittal of JZ to his supporters was a vindication of his cause—he had early said the rape trial was part of the neo-liberal conspiracy against him. It gave him more confidence to face up to his critics and resurrect his presidential candidacy hopes. Now JZ can be seen, with thin veil, canvassing for the next presidency, something unheard of in the ANC whose president is appointed by its National Executive Committee. Of course the nomination for election is done by the various structures within the body of the ANC and it’s alliance partners, the COSATU and the SACP. All this has fostered a lot of heated debate among the chattering class of SA.
In the eyes of the hoi polli, the government though professing an option for the poor has done remarkably little more than social grants to address their plight. While social grants have eased the symptoms of poverty, they have done nothing to tackle their causes. And people are rather tired of the same old story of condemning the past apartheid regime for the present assaults of poverty on their human dignity. They see the new-look laissez-faire South Africa equally reprehensible for their plight. Hence the expedient opportunism of JZ has fallen on fallowed ground.
The best thing that came out of the so-called JZ (Jacob Zuma) saga in SA is a clearer, even if less convincing, political debate for the economic direction the country has taken. The JZ saga has roused the youth and the marginalized of the country to storm the barricades they feel are stumbling blocks between them and their hard won freedom. The poor hordes of country are angry and disgruntled. They have used the opportunity afforded by the JZ saga to stick their fingers up the arses of what they see as the political elitist nerve within their party, the ANC.
JZ’s expedient opportunism channelled the disgruntled enthusiasm of the hoi polli that was already creeping into the nooks and crannies of our politics. He became the long for Messiah, seemingly crucified for the disgruntlement of the poor. What’s more, he had an expanding influence within the political network of the ANC. All he needed to do was to embody the issues already raised by the ANC affiliates, like the unions and the re-emerging communists influence. And that he did expediently. All in all, JZ is the embodiment of the rebellious energy within the Tripartite Alliance.
I’ve already said that president Mbeki, in the eyes of the hoi polli, is seen as a technocratic leader, more aligned with Zeitgeist of liberal economic imperatives the hoi polli sees as the major source of their disentrancement. He has become the embodiment of the modern spirit that is disenfranchising the disgruntled hoi polli of less material and sophisticated means.
The JZ saga, of cause, is just a tinpot flare that rallies more on media publicity than real substance. It is destined to go out in smoke with the demise of all personality cults. What will remain striking the nerve within the ANC and its alliance partners is the sense of disconnection from the political elite the masses feel. If this sense of disconnection does not find satisfactory attention and proper channelling it’ll organize itself, first, into a cultural support group of the dissatisfied, ignored, abandoned, exploited, and forgotten, and unrepresented. And when it finds its Marx that’ll organise and codify its grievances into a sound intellectual political economy; it’ll then mature into a fully-fledged political party that will haunt the very roots of political economy in our country.
The challenge for this group is that it is not yet equipped with representative language of expression for its aspirations and ideas, hence it still relies on pop culture emotionalism and forcefulness, indeed even anarchism, in making its point with resultant polemical hyperbole intended to shut down debate or overthrow reason. More than ridiculing this movement though with verbose sarcasm, clumsy paradoxes and crude chiasmus, as our media has penchant for, it might be wise to fledge and engage it constructively.
The disconnected, or rather alienated, hoi polli is what Karl Marx’s philosophy protests against. It is against the dehumanisation and automatization of man inherent in the development of Western industrialisation. In the world today where capitalist hegemony is the order of the day, and the recent tragic failures of the Soviet bloc, the word “Socialism” belongs to the devil. It is one of the peculiarities of history how many people are ready to criticize Marxism without ever reading a single word Marx wrote.
I’m one of those people who are convinced that the only way to understand and deal with our present realities is by understanding the real meaning of Marxist thought. To differentiate it especially from the failed Soviet totalitarianism and Chinese state capitalism that Marx, in his much neglected Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts warned against as what he termed “crude communism”. Crude communism “appears in a double form; the domination of material property looms so large that it aims to destroy everything which is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property. It wishes to eliminate talent, etc., by force . . . The role of worker is not abolished but extended to all men. The relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the world of things . . . This communism, which negates the personality of man in every sphere is . . . Universal envy setting itself up as a power, is only camouflaged form of cupidity which re-establishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way. The thoughts of every individual private property are at least directed against any wealthier private property, in the form of envy and the desire to reduce everything to a common level; so that this envy and levelling in fact constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of such envy and levelling-down on the basis of a preconceived minimum. How little this abolishing of private property represents a genuine appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the whole world of culture and civilisation, and the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and wantless individual who has not only not surpassed private property but has not even attained to it. The community is only a community of work and of equality of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalists. The two sides of the relation are raised to a supposed universality; labour as a condition in which everyone is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community.”
Hence I say the American crude capitalist mode of economy and totalitarian communism are extreme ends of the same stick. In the crude capitalist mode, “capital is independent, and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. Immediate physical possession seems to it the unique goal of life and existence.”
The appeal of Marxism in my life is what I call “humanists socialism”; the protest against the alienation of man from his human essence, and the elements of social justice, equality and universality inherent on it. I believe Marx’s philosophy is still a relevant source of insight and hope for man’s realisation of his true potential. The aim of Marx was to liberate man from the pressure of economic needs, so that man can be fully human; to overcome alienation and restore his capacity to relate to self and nature fully.
Wednesday, 04 July 2007
Keening Against Icy Winds
On the last lonesome rocky hill that overlooks craggy mountains in the village of Zingquthu, less than forty kilometres outside of my hometown of Queenstown, you’ll find sparse and austere cluster of rondavel huts. That’s my father’s home. Standing there in owl’s light, two days before his funeral, I was visited by a vague sense of loss.
Nkonkobe River sent dingy melancholic sighs down below.
The river's tent is broken, Came rushing to my head the words from The Fire Sermon, of TS Elliot’s The Waste Land. A feeling of hollowness embraced me. A gleeman’s song came from the riverside. Someone was drawing water; urging spanned cattle to climb the hill towards the house as my father had done thousand times before my eyes.
My people are hewers of wood and drawers of water.
My father, their son, preferred to die with the harness of manual labour on his back. To die as he lived, with a hovering spirit of poverty around; no more by circumstances as character. He was a toiler by nature. Perpetual toil was the only cage he trusted. The ancient pastoral poet, Theocritus, speaks of things my father understood better:
No wide domain, nor golden treasure Nor speed like the wind across the lea I pray for: here I find my pleasure, In this cliff-shade embracing thee, My grazing sheep to watch at pleasure And sing to you Sicilian Sea...
Those of us who live the drill of stabbing mortality we call ‘urban life’ measure success by ledger books, and so are suspicious of such exquisite simplicity and frugal neatness.
I grew up being told that rural society is brutal and savage, that its customs dictates manners. If you ask me, I see more elements of amoral Darwinism in our urban way of life than the rural one.
My father was disillusioned by the hype of modern living that imprisons by achievements. He followed the spirit of his dissatisfaction, which brought him back to the point where, according to Elliot, he saw anew, with different eyes, the life of his youth. He trusted the rural life more, so went back home. This action lowered his esteem in the eyes of the worldly, including my mother who subsequently divorced him for that and other neglects.
In truth, my father’s life pricks my heart.
It was extremely cold the day we buried my father. The wind blew snowflakes that refused to melt on our shoulders and heads. Mountaintops looked like something off a postcards from Switzerland.
A certain song by James Taylor hummed in my head over and over again:
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around. . .
It is the coldness that came with my father’s death that turned me around.
Eulogies are the worst part of African funerals; lengthy, irrelevant, and monotonous—noisy gongs and clanging cymbals that signify nothing. My father’s rural neighbour rescued us from that drag. He was of old tribal wisdom and blunt dignity. His Accipitridaean face looked frail and full of tingling sincerity. His speech, a remarkable achievement of economy and deliberate emphasis of frugal neatness. He cut through cant with eminent rapidness of a praise singer; limpid purity and measure of chaste eloquence of words informed by life. I adored him for trivialising the false sacramental gravity of other speakers; for being blithely indifferent and irreverent towards death—a sign of a healthy personality or a lunatic.
I’ll utilise my poor Thucydidean skills to translate him, even though I’m sure his speech will loose its bluff humour and pristine intensity. Only his character can put that across. Only those who still live with a carry-over of realistic detail from oral culture can manage things like those. This how his speech went:
“Today my soul is filled with heartbroken revolt against my own life. I do not know why we should be spared when our children are felled. To bury your child, as Mzoli (my father) was to me, is a harsh fate. Mzoli, you ‘feign-hell’”. A thunder of laughter slashed through the crowd. ‘Feign-hell’ was my father’s leitmotif whenever something went wrong. Hitherforth it became the harlequinade of the day of his interment.
The old man stammered on with a slight lisp in his speech. After an hour of turgid rhetoric and sanitized hagiographic speeches he was breath of fresh air.
“I don't know,” he continued, “who do you think will turn my fields, sow my seeds, and pluck my tares when you decide to join those fainéant you call your ancestors. But alright then Ndlovu [our clan name], have it your way, the faggots will be at you tonight. We’re coming too; so don’t get too comfortable, occupy spaces of your elders. It makes no difference that you go first we’re still your parents.
“Your departure shook our hearts, Ndlovu. Nobody osisimaphakade [lives forever] in this world. It did not happen to you what does not happen to others. You suffered the fate of all mortal men. There’s no resisting death. It levels all, and calls all bluffs. I’m old as the hills; my hair is like ewes on the field, but yesterday I dug your grave with a spade in my own hands against the protest of my family and friends who feared for my health. What do I need my health for if the likes of you are dead? Nothing made me more happy and proud as digging your grave. We’re even then Ndlovu. Don't you be asking for any favours when I get there where you sleep with those striplings you call ancestors.
“Your wordy and obsequious friends from town here say you were going to be a preacher. That’s bunkum. Iyilo elinje ngawe. Still, you were a mast in our village. We’re the people who’ll feel the loss of your departure most.” As he said all this his eyes were trained on the coffin. Then turning to face people he continued. “Allow me, people of my hearth to leak my wounds in quiet. Nobody should drink this common crock more than a mouthful. It’s on its dregs already; let’s bury uMzoli and be done. We’re getting fewer by the day. Damn it! This land shall not see the likes of us again. May God give us the light of His wand in this death journey.” Then he sat in deliberate silence.
The bard accuses us of living deaf to the land beneath us.
During the interment I stood very close to my paternal grandfather, so close I could see myself in his eighty-nine year old rheumy pupils. The bonding warmth and affection between us at that moment no wreaths could define. We were both aware of standing on the ground of our dead.
On the journey back to town soft showers fell like the memory of the departed one. Cars were sliding on mud and sparse snow that lay dingy on the road. It was quiet in our car except for the fan that hovering hot air; blowing comforting familiar odours of my siblings.
Outside I could see progress and consumerism of the capitalist system had caught on with the rural life of our people since the change of government from the apartheid regime. Bridges were built over rivers, electricity installed for those who could afford; purified water coming out of recently installed communal taps free of charge. Things are changing for the better, I thought to myself and wondered what Dr Samuel Johnson would say about that, since he was of the opinion that change of government makes no difference to the happiness of ordinary people.
I was wondered what was going on in my mother’s head who has propensity of gratifying spite where our father is concerned. Perhaps she finally realised that the failure of a marriage is seldom an achievement of one party, I thought. It’s sad that growing up must also mean our parents loose their cynosure quality in our eyes. Still I saw a dead man win a fight that day with his invincible humility.
Nkonkobe River sent dingy melancholic sighs down below.
The river's tent is broken, Came rushing to my head the words from The Fire Sermon, of TS Elliot’s The Waste Land. A feeling of hollowness embraced me. A gleeman’s song came from the riverside. Someone was drawing water; urging spanned cattle to climb the hill towards the house as my father had done thousand times before my eyes.
My people are hewers of wood and drawers of water.
My father, their son, preferred to die with the harness of manual labour on his back. To die as he lived, with a hovering spirit of poverty around; no more by circumstances as character. He was a toiler by nature. Perpetual toil was the only cage he trusted. The ancient pastoral poet, Theocritus, speaks of things my father understood better:
No wide domain, nor golden treasure Nor speed like the wind across the lea I pray for: here I find my pleasure, In this cliff-shade embracing thee, My grazing sheep to watch at pleasure And sing to you Sicilian Sea...
Those of us who live the drill of stabbing mortality we call ‘urban life’ measure success by ledger books, and so are suspicious of such exquisite simplicity and frugal neatness.
I grew up being told that rural society is brutal and savage, that its customs dictates manners. If you ask me, I see more elements of amoral Darwinism in our urban way of life than the rural one.
My father was disillusioned by the hype of modern living that imprisons by achievements. He followed the spirit of his dissatisfaction, which brought him back to the point where, according to Elliot, he saw anew, with different eyes, the life of his youth. He trusted the rural life more, so went back home. This action lowered his esteem in the eyes of the worldly, including my mother who subsequently divorced him for that and other neglects.
In truth, my father’s life pricks my heart.
It was extremely cold the day we buried my father. The wind blew snowflakes that refused to melt on our shoulders and heads. Mountaintops looked like something off a postcards from Switzerland.
A certain song by James Taylor hummed in my head over and over again:
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around. . .
It is the coldness that came with my father’s death that turned me around.
Eulogies are the worst part of African funerals; lengthy, irrelevant, and monotonous—noisy gongs and clanging cymbals that signify nothing. My father’s rural neighbour rescued us from that drag. He was of old tribal wisdom and blunt dignity. His Accipitridaean face looked frail and full of tingling sincerity. His speech, a remarkable achievement of economy and deliberate emphasis of frugal neatness. He cut through cant with eminent rapidness of a praise singer; limpid purity and measure of chaste eloquence of words informed by life. I adored him for trivialising the false sacramental gravity of other speakers; for being blithely indifferent and irreverent towards death—a sign of a healthy personality or a lunatic.
I’ll utilise my poor Thucydidean skills to translate him, even though I’m sure his speech will loose its bluff humour and pristine intensity. Only his character can put that across. Only those who still live with a carry-over of realistic detail from oral culture can manage things like those. This how his speech went:
“Today my soul is filled with heartbroken revolt against my own life. I do not know why we should be spared when our children are felled. To bury your child, as Mzoli (my father) was to me, is a harsh fate. Mzoli, you ‘feign-hell’”. A thunder of laughter slashed through the crowd. ‘Feign-hell’ was my father’s leitmotif whenever something went wrong. Hitherforth it became the harlequinade of the day of his interment.
The old man stammered on with a slight lisp in his speech. After an hour of turgid rhetoric and sanitized hagiographic speeches he was breath of fresh air.
“I don't know,” he continued, “who do you think will turn my fields, sow my seeds, and pluck my tares when you decide to join those fainéant you call your ancestors. But alright then Ndlovu [our clan name], have it your way, the faggots will be at you tonight. We’re coming too; so don’t get too comfortable, occupy spaces of your elders. It makes no difference that you go first we’re still your parents.
“Your departure shook our hearts, Ndlovu. Nobody osisimaphakade [lives forever] in this world. It did not happen to you what does not happen to others. You suffered the fate of all mortal men. There’s no resisting death. It levels all, and calls all bluffs. I’m old as the hills; my hair is like ewes on the field, but yesterday I dug your grave with a spade in my own hands against the protest of my family and friends who feared for my health. What do I need my health for if the likes of you are dead? Nothing made me more happy and proud as digging your grave. We’re even then Ndlovu. Don't you be asking for any favours when I get there where you sleep with those striplings you call ancestors.
“Your wordy and obsequious friends from town here say you were going to be a preacher. That’s bunkum. Iyilo elinje ngawe. Still, you were a mast in our village. We’re the people who’ll feel the loss of your departure most.” As he said all this his eyes were trained on the coffin. Then turning to face people he continued. “Allow me, people of my hearth to leak my wounds in quiet. Nobody should drink this common crock more than a mouthful. It’s on its dregs already; let’s bury uMzoli and be done. We’re getting fewer by the day. Damn it! This land shall not see the likes of us again. May God give us the light of His wand in this death journey.” Then he sat in deliberate silence.
The bard accuses us of living deaf to the land beneath us.
During the interment I stood very close to my paternal grandfather, so close I could see myself in his eighty-nine year old rheumy pupils. The bonding warmth and affection between us at that moment no wreaths could define. We were both aware of standing on the ground of our dead.
On the journey back to town soft showers fell like the memory of the departed one. Cars were sliding on mud and sparse snow that lay dingy on the road. It was quiet in our car except for the fan that hovering hot air; blowing comforting familiar odours of my siblings.
Outside I could see progress and consumerism of the capitalist system had caught on with the rural life of our people since the change of government from the apartheid regime. Bridges were built over rivers, electricity installed for those who could afford; purified water coming out of recently installed communal taps free of charge. Things are changing for the better, I thought to myself and wondered what Dr Samuel Johnson would say about that, since he was of the opinion that change of government makes no difference to the happiness of ordinary people.
I was wondered what was going on in my mother’s head who has propensity of gratifying spite where our father is concerned. Perhaps she finally realised that the failure of a marriage is seldom an achievement of one party, I thought. It’s sad that growing up must also mean our parents loose their cynosure quality in our eyes. Still I saw a dead man win a fight that day with his invincible humility.
South Africa Is Living At the Edge
There has been a fear of one man one vote since the establishment of a first recorded democratic system of government in the city state of Athens. The spokesperson of the fearful was none other than Plato, who argued that democracy only gave power to the greatest number of people that may not necessarily be right. Plato used an example of Socrates who found, to the cost of his life, that political rhetoric easily swayed the Athenian population to condemn his philosophical thinking as mischievous and misguiding the young.
Given the ease even today by which large groups of people are easily swayed by populist leaders, mostly without much substance, perhaps Plato's suspicions of democracy should be given more weight than being merely dismissed as elitist, as the philosophy of history has tended to do over the years. The American system of democracy for sale is another factor not to dismiss Plato entirely; but I want here to look at Africa, especially South Africa.
Let me first categorically state that, in my view, the dangers of those who think they know best what their countries needs are a greater evil than the dangers of democracy.
The real danger in African democracies today is ruling party manipulations and rigging of the democratic process, as recently seen (unsuccessfully) in Nigeria, and (successfully) in Zimbabwe. The concern has managed to bring closer to South Africa the nagging fear of ANC (African National Congress) dominance of national politics. In South Africa the ramifications of the fear takes several forms, like the recent rambunctious debate over street name changing, which others feel rides roughshod over minority rights.
I'm one of those who believe, rather than punishing the popularity of a party, rigorous means should be found of consolidating civic conscience of the people towards strengthening democratic institutions of the country. Very little, in my mind, suggests, so far, that South Africa is headed for the much feared erosion of our democracy, except perhaps rampart crime which can be solved by an upped determination in the South African Safety and Security ministry.
When South Africa celebrated its 14th year as a fully fledged democratic state there were overriding concerns about crime in every speaker. The general feeling was that the political freedom people gained in 1994 changed the meaning of human rights aspirations. That the major gross violations of human rights in the country now involve gruesome criminal acts, especially against women and children.
The recent crime statistics argue that there’s a general trend of decline of crime in SA, though what it terms ‘social crime’ are still on the increase. The highest increase is things like bank robbery. It has triggered the opposition parties to, in my opinion, hypocritically and opportunistically to shout at the rooftops, even calling for the resignation of the minister Safety and Security, because they feel he’s incompetent in his job.
Naturally black people, especially in the township, who lived in far worse criminal conditions, in fact under the dominion of criminal state of affairs during the apartheid years are appalled by these out cries. Indeed experience of living in the township now tells me that the criminal element has decreased to what I grew up with, not because criminals have had a change of heart. No, because, since 1994, the criminals have gained greater confidence in their criminal freedom. They no longer fear white people, hence crime has moved to urban areas and suburbs too.
I caution to say that crime in black areas is still more preponderant than urban and suburban areas where there’s still better policing than in black townships. And black people, even in the CBDs and suburbs are still greater victims of criminal acts than white people, due to population numbers, I presume. The sad reality is that there’s more hullabaloo when it comes to white victims than otherwise, while black people have learnt to live with criminal element as an occupational hazard.
The problem with the cynical impostures of SA opposition parties is in trying to politicize crime. We are all living under intolerable siege of the criminal element, but it does not mean the country is going to the dogs because of this, and the right reading of the recent statistics proves this. Without taking anything out of the problem of crime, I feel the opposition parties tend to simplify it by concentrating too much on symptoms than root causes. I feel equitable distribution of economic resources is a much more serious issue facing this country, and the major cause of the so called ‘social crime’.
South Africans do not need studied statistics to realise they are among the worst criminal offenders, and violent society in the world. This is one of the greatest indictments against our democracy. And yes, to blame it on the legacy of apartheid is no longer enough—it plumps the cushion for the proof to lie on. Even the political vandalism and spirit of belligerent mischief inspired by the call of making the “country ungovernable” in the eighties did not give rise to as much criminality as seen in the country today. There’s now intolerable constant and omnipresent reprehensible violence in the centre of our lives. “Things were bad during the apartheid years,” my grandma said as we watched TV news of yet another child-rape-murder the other day, “but what we are seeing now is total moral breakdown, rampant venality.”
Surely poverty and joblessness contribute to the worsening of the crime situation, but does it excuse it? My answer is no. A curtain has fallen over whimsical excuses like that in South Africa’s second decade of freedom. South Africans now need to subject their actions to rational criticism that discards the perpetual flurry of past wrongs if they have any hope of moving forward as a shinning example of democracy in Africa.
“Economics go to the fundamentals of human relationships,” my friend who is a university lecture says. “The brutalising effect on our society is the result of our economic stand, of the exclusion of the majority of our citizens from meaningful and economic/financial activity.” Indeed when one takes a look, especially at South African townships, one sees the atmosphere of haplessness that is gradually impregnating the youth with bibulous sentiments of social revolution. For now the sentiments vent themselves in economic, social iconoclasm, and frustrated criminal activity. The inexcusable brutal murder, for instance, of an ANC councillor in the Free State by criminals, masquerading as dissatisfied political hordes, gives us a glimpse of where the whole thing is leading to if not dealt with properly.
My friend insists that “unless the development of our country’s economic system become an organic process that reflects the character and traditions of our people we are in for a dire future.” Alas, the ever widening gap between the haves and the haves not suggests that we’re not in the right course. South African economic policies have chosen “to follow opaque ambiguities revolving around the halo of globalisation whose objective is mostly to compel necessity and reasonableness of recognising the specious wisdom of the status quo for the benefit of largely global corporations.” This makes South Africa a sitting duck to careless radicalism, as seen also in the loutish behaviour of ANC’s deputy president (Jacb Zuma) supporters outside the court of law when he was charged with corruption charges that were eventually dismissed by the court.
My friend believes “There’s a coming wave of social revolution—its fire has already caught on in Latin America—with slight diplomatic caution. The vox populi of emerging markets are gatvol [sick and tired] with settling for wasp-eaten windfalls from rich economic orchards of their own countries.” If so, don’t we need to manage this anger better before it degenerates to clumsy pyrotechnics of Zimbabwe-like situation, I ask him. “The only thing that can mange it is better distribution of resources; but the funny thing is that the people with most to loose from this blood-curdling threat are blindly bubbling in selfish greed.”
It is true that extreme polarisation of the majority is almost always followed by a climate of violent action by the mob. It is easy to lament or condemn the clumsy aggression of a populist regime, but much harder to accept that it too, most of the time, emerges as result of political and economic decomposition that left millions to survive without support, as Zimbabwe is learning the hard way. Neglected and polarised people tend to give their alliance to promises of instant remedies of populist movements, or criminal activity, in one guise or the other. How then can South Africa make sure it avoids the worse of this?
Let’s start with the structural problems South Africa is faced with.
There’s always a spectre of racism haunting every public relation n our country, even the reading of crime statistics. As a nation we’ve not yet matured to a stage where we can talk openly about implicit attitudes, and our past scars? South Africans are contrariwise conterminous people who do not discuss explicitly their implicit assumptions and fears. The public use of reason is the true condition of democratic life of a country. The aim of civil society is to create a line of critical reasoning in the public sphere.
The problem facing South Africa is what the Roman statesman, Cicero (always alert towards the corrosive effects against democracy) was wont to remind his country men about, that the Greek city-state, as the embodiment of the beginning of Western civilization, did not start out so much as to guarantee personal freedom for all residents, but to ensure the protection of property for a new meritocratic middling class of landowners. Very little has changed in the democracies of the world since then. Hence the South African debate, to my approval, is fast turning into a class issue. However, the peculiarities of South African situation (since the majority of the poor are black) is that class debate naturally overflows into racial issues.
The majority of black South Africans feel, urgently by the day, that political freedom has not extend to their personal and social lives since they are still manacled by economic conditions. The opposite is almost true for most whites, who feel their economic affluence threatened by the political freedom of black hordes. To put it crudely; whites feel threatened by the coming Barbarians, while blacks feel spite from the laughing Vandals. Whites fear blacks, like King Ahab, will soon do away with them (Naboth) if they refuse to sell their vineyard. They fear the government bureaucratic attitude towards economic change will soon turn into Stalinist ruthlessness that will force, by government diktat, and impose targets of change, like in Zimbabwe. On the other hand black people demand change for social and economic justice. Most white people see in that demand personal threats, and unconsciously hope to limit South African democracy to legal and constitutional formalism that unwittingly empowers the educated and affluent minority more than the underprivileged majority.
To that mix comes the complicated personality of the present South African president, Thabo Mbeki. In his weekly Letter in ANC Today (www.anc.org.za), where he often speaks with his mouth on his foot; he insinuated that out cries against crime in the country is “a massive propaganda campaign... in many instances without any regard and respect for truth. ” Mbeki referred to a deep entrenched racist attitude amongst white South Africans that always see the coming barbarians and sons of biblical Cain in black restlessness. He regretted the BBC coverage of crime in South Africa for its unbalanced reportage that does not portray redeeming qualities of South Africa. Needles to say most white people found this letter titled, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, rather disturbing, with harsh racial overtones.
The chattering class of South Africa, who usually rant from their bellies, subjected the document to gimlet-eyed scrutiny without engaging much in any of the concerns it raised. A white friend of mine quoted George Orwell as he sat down to write a distrait piece against the document: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give solidity to pure wind.” What my colleague was ignorant about is the fact that what Mbeki was saying was something commonly held by most black South Africans. When I tried to point this out to him he accused me of being soft against the government, and of being caught up in the mental constraints of cognitive dissonance (the discomfort from holding two conflicting thoughts).
I'm all for trashing leaders that are without substance, but the South African media tends to get trapped in the gossamers of political bias and a predilection to trade in demolishing stocks of icon bashing. It can be very cloying sometimes.
My friend’s use of George Orwell, who was concerned about the degradation of language through political manipulation, avoided Orwell’s real concerns, which is that language should act, in Heinrich Böll’s memorable words, as “the bulwark of freedom.” Indeed, Mbeki’s blunt and static document was itself not an achievement of brilliant analysis, but had enough jolts of reality to snap intellectual callousness of our media back to brain activity. The swooning obstructiveness of Mbeki’s writing style does not negate the veracity of his argument. We must learn to understand that there is something more important than talent and erudition, which is the value of veracity, despite a person’s political beliefs.
The essence of the matter is that South Africans are drifting apart along ill mended racial lines. I remember listening to Mbeki's most popular speech, I am an African, given at the occasion of adoption of the Constitutional Assembly of the new South African Constitution, about a decade ago. The first thing that came to mind then in excitement was; “We'll all be Africans after this.” My reaction were confirmed by the chattering class when, in dissecting, praised the speech to the mountains. But now, a few years down the line, the South African rainbow dream seem to be buckling on its structural faults. Why? Is it a failure of multiculturalism or resurrection of deep strains of racial divide?
What got me wary later on when I thought about Mbeki’s speech even then, was the way he tried to minimise South African racial complexities by mythologizing his identity, and thus of all Africans. The myth in the speech overwhelmed reality. As the result it became fashionable henceforth to identify oneself with previously ignored people. Everyone suddenly became aware of the Khoi-San blood running in their veins, even those in the past who identified themselves more with Europe or black tribal imperialism. For instance the Afrikaner veteran journalist, Max Du Preez, in his book Pale Native described himself thus:
I am a native of this land, but unlike most other natives, I am pale. The tongue of
my heart and my soul is a tongue born in Africa and called after Africa, but after
many decades of abuse it is now resented by many as the tongue of alien invaders.
Du Preez, towards the end of his book, asks in disappointment, after telling us how impressed he was in meeting Mbeki in Senegal: “There’s just one big unanswered question: What on earth happened to the charming, smiling, generous, warm, straightforward Thabo Mbeki we got to know in Dakar?”
Mbeki and Du Preez, in different ways, wanted us to acknowledge the fundamental truth of our mixed blood. Scientific studies, especially genetics, tell us that “The idea that we constitute 'races' is now unquestionably a myth. . . (Prof Wilmot James; Cape Times, Thursday, March 22, 2007). But if recent reports of rising Right Wing sects, and radical left tendencies among blacks in South Africa are anything to go by, things are not as cosy as all that. Mbeki now is being accused of having made a volte-face because he raises the uncomfortable need for frank discussion of “whether we have the courage to engage in a truth and reconciliation process even with regard to the challenge of openly confronting the cancer of deeply dehumanising racist stereotypes that developed over many centuries.”
On the other hand this novel Mbeki, who no longer pander to fashions of specious mixed identities, captures the Völkerwanderung of the black majority. His Letter was followed by similar articles from black intellectuals like, Achille Mbembe, a senior researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research who threw down the gauntlet in his very competent article titled “Culture of Mutual Resentment Precludes Nonracial Future” [Sunday Times (01 April 2007)]. But the challenge, to my knowledge, was not picked up by the white community. What you get is sneaking white liberal tendencies of downplaying the South African project at every opportunity they get overseas, like the recent article of RW Johnson in Wall Street Journal.
I’m one of those who believe that Mbeki’s perceived harsh tone is not the results of a volte- face but of wanting to fix our sight on the vision of a South African future, not only on reinvented ostensible collective identity, but by facing up to the truth of our past. I believe Mbeki wants to deepen our national identity beyond our ancestral commonality into addressing our psychological fears also. Hence he asks in his Letter; “why are the Whites so determined to frighten themselves! The answer of course is that they have taken no such decision. Rather, the problem is that entrenched racism dictates that justification must be found for the persisting white fears of 'die swart gevaar'”.
It is no secret that under the spell of relativist postmodernist theory of the twentieth century erstwhile progressive people tend to seek intellectual refuge in identity politics. Indeed Mbeki and Du Pleez make strange bedfellows in that they fall in this category. Both say are struggling against embedded prejudices, and that their perpetual struggle has always been against the negative role played by the media in sidelining and covering, if not altogether eliminating, undesirable news. Yet they find themselves shouting at each other from opposite banks. Why?
The first answer lies with failure and fear of Multiculturalism. Multiculralism—and this is not unique to SA—seems to act only to divide populations into factions of competing ethnicities. The chaos of the twenty first century is largely based on this division. As nice sounding the South African motto ‘unity in diversity’ might be, it requires the kind of tolerance most of us just seem not to posses.
Multiculturalism presupposes diversity, and diversity demands solidarity of values. Let’s even be done with equivocations and get to the crux of the matter. In Occidental gesalt democracy is great only when it serves liberal values. Nothing wrong with that as far as I am concerned if only liberals were not so illiberal when it comes to other people’s values.
The question, then for South Africa, is not whether we’ll all be Africans, but that as diverse Africans we can learn to live in respect of each other? Sharing a geographical sphere and political inheritance does not make people a nation. Neither does sharing some ancestors, because few Boers and Xhosas had Khoisan wives or chattels. I’m sure Mbeki's intentions of wanting to inject common energy in South African collective identity was based on noble motives, but it was conscious myth making.
Myth is not an entirely bad base for nation building. But conscious myths are a different thing altogether from the myths that emerge from the unconscious history (fears and longings) of a people. Unconscious myths convey truth because they are a residue of life and the after-image of people’s suffering. Conscious myths, however, are instruments of human purpose, that is spin-doctoring.
Plato believed that truth is the business of philosophy, but knew also that it is rhetoric, not philosophy, that moves the crowds. One of the advantages of Platonic school of philosophy is that it encourages us to prefer simple theory to messy reality. But it’s limiting factors is that it inclines us to select only the data that fit our theories. Mbeki’s I am an African speech was chiefly poetic rhetoric. Hence it is incumbent upon us to distinguish lies, even noble lies, among the rhetorical devices of politicians. Mbeki’s speech, with all its intents, was a noble lie whose real sentiments are betrayed by the brass angst of Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right letter.
Perhaps Mbeki’s letter, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, should have preceded the I am an African speech, not the other way around. In the Letter Mbeki is irritated by the manner of those who, though ostensible inheritors of progressive rational Enlightenment tradition, still smuggle racism under the banner of preserving cultural values and standards. This is the common thing in South Africa that he should have pointed out before the I am an African speech.
South Africans are in urgent need of true integration. Steve Biko, in his book, I Write What I Like, said, “If by integration you understand breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and codes of behaviour by whites, then yes I am against it.” Integration and multiculturalism has to mean much more than blacks acting white if it has to have true meaning. It is time for South African white community to understand and learn to accept black culture if the country has any hope of forging any pretensions of being a real nation.
It was said—back to the Greeks again—of the laws of Solon, that, though not the best in themselves, were the best “which the interests, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit”. Perhaps that can be said also of South African Constitution with an added aperçu from Gramsci that: “[T]he old is dying, and yet the new cannot be born … In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms …”
Whatever will happen in South Africa in the future its vital force will rise from the now buried lives in the appendixes of its townships. My overriding fear is that not those who govern nor those who fear them, have any real understanding of what makes them tick. There’ll come a time, in fact it has already arrived, when, as the hordes on the receiving end of the bad South African stick, they’ll run out of patience before the new is fully born. Indeed our country is living its collective life at the edge, unfortunately it is not the edge of reason.
Given the ease even today by which large groups of people are easily swayed by populist leaders, mostly without much substance, perhaps Plato's suspicions of democracy should be given more weight than being merely dismissed as elitist, as the philosophy of history has tended to do over the years. The American system of democracy for sale is another factor not to dismiss Plato entirely; but I want here to look at Africa, especially South Africa.
Let me first categorically state that, in my view, the dangers of those who think they know best what their countries needs are a greater evil than the dangers of democracy.
The real danger in African democracies today is ruling party manipulations and rigging of the democratic process, as recently seen (unsuccessfully) in Nigeria, and (successfully) in Zimbabwe. The concern has managed to bring closer to South Africa the nagging fear of ANC (African National Congress) dominance of national politics. In South Africa the ramifications of the fear takes several forms, like the recent rambunctious debate over street name changing, which others feel rides roughshod over minority rights.
I'm one of those who believe, rather than punishing the popularity of a party, rigorous means should be found of consolidating civic conscience of the people towards strengthening democratic institutions of the country. Very little, in my mind, suggests, so far, that South Africa is headed for the much feared erosion of our democracy, except perhaps rampart crime which can be solved by an upped determination in the South African Safety and Security ministry.
When South Africa celebrated its 14th year as a fully fledged democratic state there were overriding concerns about crime in every speaker. The general feeling was that the political freedom people gained in 1994 changed the meaning of human rights aspirations. That the major gross violations of human rights in the country now involve gruesome criminal acts, especially against women and children.
The recent crime statistics argue that there’s a general trend of decline of crime in SA, though what it terms ‘social crime’ are still on the increase. The highest increase is things like bank robbery. It has triggered the opposition parties to, in my opinion, hypocritically and opportunistically to shout at the rooftops, even calling for the resignation of the minister Safety and Security, because they feel he’s incompetent in his job.
Naturally black people, especially in the township, who lived in far worse criminal conditions, in fact under the dominion of criminal state of affairs during the apartheid years are appalled by these out cries. Indeed experience of living in the township now tells me that the criminal element has decreased to what I grew up with, not because criminals have had a change of heart. No, because, since 1994, the criminals have gained greater confidence in their criminal freedom. They no longer fear white people, hence crime has moved to urban areas and suburbs too.
I caution to say that crime in black areas is still more preponderant than urban and suburban areas where there’s still better policing than in black townships. And black people, even in the CBDs and suburbs are still greater victims of criminal acts than white people, due to population numbers, I presume. The sad reality is that there’s more hullabaloo when it comes to white victims than otherwise, while black people have learnt to live with criminal element as an occupational hazard.
The problem with the cynical impostures of SA opposition parties is in trying to politicize crime. We are all living under intolerable siege of the criminal element, but it does not mean the country is going to the dogs because of this, and the right reading of the recent statistics proves this. Without taking anything out of the problem of crime, I feel the opposition parties tend to simplify it by concentrating too much on symptoms than root causes. I feel equitable distribution of economic resources is a much more serious issue facing this country, and the major cause of the so called ‘social crime’.
South Africans do not need studied statistics to realise they are among the worst criminal offenders, and violent society in the world. This is one of the greatest indictments against our democracy. And yes, to blame it on the legacy of apartheid is no longer enough—it plumps the cushion for the proof to lie on. Even the political vandalism and spirit of belligerent mischief inspired by the call of making the “country ungovernable” in the eighties did not give rise to as much criminality as seen in the country today. There’s now intolerable constant and omnipresent reprehensible violence in the centre of our lives. “Things were bad during the apartheid years,” my grandma said as we watched TV news of yet another child-rape-murder the other day, “but what we are seeing now is total moral breakdown, rampant venality.”
Surely poverty and joblessness contribute to the worsening of the crime situation, but does it excuse it? My answer is no. A curtain has fallen over whimsical excuses like that in South Africa’s second decade of freedom. South Africans now need to subject their actions to rational criticism that discards the perpetual flurry of past wrongs if they have any hope of moving forward as a shinning example of democracy in Africa.
“Economics go to the fundamentals of human relationships,” my friend who is a university lecture says. “The brutalising effect on our society is the result of our economic stand, of the exclusion of the majority of our citizens from meaningful and economic/financial activity.” Indeed when one takes a look, especially at South African townships, one sees the atmosphere of haplessness that is gradually impregnating the youth with bibulous sentiments of social revolution. For now the sentiments vent themselves in economic, social iconoclasm, and frustrated criminal activity. The inexcusable brutal murder, for instance, of an ANC councillor in the Free State by criminals, masquerading as dissatisfied political hordes, gives us a glimpse of where the whole thing is leading to if not dealt with properly.
My friend insists that “unless the development of our country’s economic system become an organic process that reflects the character and traditions of our people we are in for a dire future.” Alas, the ever widening gap between the haves and the haves not suggests that we’re not in the right course. South African economic policies have chosen “to follow opaque ambiguities revolving around the halo of globalisation whose objective is mostly to compel necessity and reasonableness of recognising the specious wisdom of the status quo for the benefit of largely global corporations.” This makes South Africa a sitting duck to careless radicalism, as seen also in the loutish behaviour of ANC’s deputy president (Jacb Zuma) supporters outside the court of law when he was charged with corruption charges that were eventually dismissed by the court.
My friend believes “There’s a coming wave of social revolution—its fire has already caught on in Latin America—with slight diplomatic caution. The vox populi of emerging markets are gatvol [sick and tired] with settling for wasp-eaten windfalls from rich economic orchards of their own countries.” If so, don’t we need to manage this anger better before it degenerates to clumsy pyrotechnics of Zimbabwe-like situation, I ask him. “The only thing that can mange it is better distribution of resources; but the funny thing is that the people with most to loose from this blood-curdling threat are blindly bubbling in selfish greed.”
It is true that extreme polarisation of the majority is almost always followed by a climate of violent action by the mob. It is easy to lament or condemn the clumsy aggression of a populist regime, but much harder to accept that it too, most of the time, emerges as result of political and economic decomposition that left millions to survive without support, as Zimbabwe is learning the hard way. Neglected and polarised people tend to give their alliance to promises of instant remedies of populist movements, or criminal activity, in one guise or the other. How then can South Africa make sure it avoids the worse of this?
Let’s start with the structural problems South Africa is faced with.
There’s always a spectre of racism haunting every public relation n our country, even the reading of crime statistics. As a nation we’ve not yet matured to a stage where we can talk openly about implicit attitudes, and our past scars? South Africans are contrariwise conterminous people who do not discuss explicitly their implicit assumptions and fears. The public use of reason is the true condition of democratic life of a country. The aim of civil society is to create a line of critical reasoning in the public sphere.
The problem facing South Africa is what the Roman statesman, Cicero (always alert towards the corrosive effects against democracy) was wont to remind his country men about, that the Greek city-state, as the embodiment of the beginning of Western civilization, did not start out so much as to guarantee personal freedom for all residents, but to ensure the protection of property for a new meritocratic middling class of landowners. Very little has changed in the democracies of the world since then. Hence the South African debate, to my approval, is fast turning into a class issue. However, the peculiarities of South African situation (since the majority of the poor are black) is that class debate naturally overflows into racial issues.
The majority of black South Africans feel, urgently by the day, that political freedom has not extend to their personal and social lives since they are still manacled by economic conditions. The opposite is almost true for most whites, who feel their economic affluence threatened by the political freedom of black hordes. To put it crudely; whites feel threatened by the coming Barbarians, while blacks feel spite from the laughing Vandals. Whites fear blacks, like King Ahab, will soon do away with them (Naboth) if they refuse to sell their vineyard. They fear the government bureaucratic attitude towards economic change will soon turn into Stalinist ruthlessness that will force, by government diktat, and impose targets of change, like in Zimbabwe. On the other hand black people demand change for social and economic justice. Most white people see in that demand personal threats, and unconsciously hope to limit South African democracy to legal and constitutional formalism that unwittingly empowers the educated and affluent minority more than the underprivileged majority.
To that mix comes the complicated personality of the present South African president, Thabo Mbeki. In his weekly Letter in ANC Today (www.anc.org.za), where he often speaks with his mouth on his foot; he insinuated that out cries against crime in the country is “a massive propaganda campaign... in many instances without any regard and respect for truth. ” Mbeki referred to a deep entrenched racist attitude amongst white South Africans that always see the coming barbarians and sons of biblical Cain in black restlessness. He regretted the BBC coverage of crime in South Africa for its unbalanced reportage that does not portray redeeming qualities of South Africa. Needles to say most white people found this letter titled, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, rather disturbing, with harsh racial overtones.
The chattering class of South Africa, who usually rant from their bellies, subjected the document to gimlet-eyed scrutiny without engaging much in any of the concerns it raised. A white friend of mine quoted George Orwell as he sat down to write a distrait piece against the document: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give solidity to pure wind.” What my colleague was ignorant about is the fact that what Mbeki was saying was something commonly held by most black South Africans. When I tried to point this out to him he accused me of being soft against the government, and of being caught up in the mental constraints of cognitive dissonance (the discomfort from holding two conflicting thoughts).
I'm all for trashing leaders that are without substance, but the South African media tends to get trapped in the gossamers of political bias and a predilection to trade in demolishing stocks of icon bashing. It can be very cloying sometimes.
My friend’s use of George Orwell, who was concerned about the degradation of language through political manipulation, avoided Orwell’s real concerns, which is that language should act, in Heinrich Böll’s memorable words, as “the bulwark of freedom.” Indeed, Mbeki’s blunt and static document was itself not an achievement of brilliant analysis, but had enough jolts of reality to snap intellectual callousness of our media back to brain activity. The swooning obstructiveness of Mbeki’s writing style does not negate the veracity of his argument. We must learn to understand that there is something more important than talent and erudition, which is the value of veracity, despite a person’s political beliefs.
The essence of the matter is that South Africans are drifting apart along ill mended racial lines. I remember listening to Mbeki's most popular speech, I am an African, given at the occasion of adoption of the Constitutional Assembly of the new South African Constitution, about a decade ago. The first thing that came to mind then in excitement was; “We'll all be Africans after this.” My reaction were confirmed by the chattering class when, in dissecting, praised the speech to the mountains. But now, a few years down the line, the South African rainbow dream seem to be buckling on its structural faults. Why? Is it a failure of multiculturalism or resurrection of deep strains of racial divide?
What got me wary later on when I thought about Mbeki’s speech even then, was the way he tried to minimise South African racial complexities by mythologizing his identity, and thus of all Africans. The myth in the speech overwhelmed reality. As the result it became fashionable henceforth to identify oneself with previously ignored people. Everyone suddenly became aware of the Khoi-San blood running in their veins, even those in the past who identified themselves more with Europe or black tribal imperialism. For instance the Afrikaner veteran journalist, Max Du Preez, in his book Pale Native described himself thus:
I am a native of this land, but unlike most other natives, I am pale. The tongue of
my heart and my soul is a tongue born in Africa and called after Africa, but after
many decades of abuse it is now resented by many as the tongue of alien invaders.
Du Preez, towards the end of his book, asks in disappointment, after telling us how impressed he was in meeting Mbeki in Senegal: “There’s just one big unanswered question: What on earth happened to the charming, smiling, generous, warm, straightforward Thabo Mbeki we got to know in Dakar?”
Mbeki and Du Preez, in different ways, wanted us to acknowledge the fundamental truth of our mixed blood. Scientific studies, especially genetics, tell us that “The idea that we constitute 'races' is now unquestionably a myth. . . (Prof Wilmot James; Cape Times, Thursday, March 22, 2007). But if recent reports of rising Right Wing sects, and radical left tendencies among blacks in South Africa are anything to go by, things are not as cosy as all that. Mbeki now is being accused of having made a volte-face because he raises the uncomfortable need for frank discussion of “whether we have the courage to engage in a truth and reconciliation process even with regard to the challenge of openly confronting the cancer of deeply dehumanising racist stereotypes that developed over many centuries.”
On the other hand this novel Mbeki, who no longer pander to fashions of specious mixed identities, captures the Völkerwanderung of the black majority. His Letter was followed by similar articles from black intellectuals like, Achille Mbembe, a senior researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research who threw down the gauntlet in his very competent article titled “Culture of Mutual Resentment Precludes Nonracial Future” [Sunday Times (01 April 2007)]. But the challenge, to my knowledge, was not picked up by the white community. What you get is sneaking white liberal tendencies of downplaying the South African project at every opportunity they get overseas, like the recent article of RW Johnson in Wall Street Journal.
I’m one of those who believe that Mbeki’s perceived harsh tone is not the results of a volte- face but of wanting to fix our sight on the vision of a South African future, not only on reinvented ostensible collective identity, but by facing up to the truth of our past. I believe Mbeki wants to deepen our national identity beyond our ancestral commonality into addressing our psychological fears also. Hence he asks in his Letter; “why are the Whites so determined to frighten themselves! The answer of course is that they have taken no such decision. Rather, the problem is that entrenched racism dictates that justification must be found for the persisting white fears of 'die swart gevaar'”.
It is no secret that under the spell of relativist postmodernist theory of the twentieth century erstwhile progressive people tend to seek intellectual refuge in identity politics. Indeed Mbeki and Du Pleez make strange bedfellows in that they fall in this category. Both say are struggling against embedded prejudices, and that their perpetual struggle has always been against the negative role played by the media in sidelining and covering, if not altogether eliminating, undesirable news. Yet they find themselves shouting at each other from opposite banks. Why?
The first answer lies with failure and fear of Multiculturalism. Multiculralism—and this is not unique to SA—seems to act only to divide populations into factions of competing ethnicities. The chaos of the twenty first century is largely based on this division. As nice sounding the South African motto ‘unity in diversity’ might be, it requires the kind of tolerance most of us just seem not to posses.
Multiculturalism presupposes diversity, and diversity demands solidarity of values. Let’s even be done with equivocations and get to the crux of the matter. In Occidental gesalt democracy is great only when it serves liberal values. Nothing wrong with that as far as I am concerned if only liberals were not so illiberal when it comes to other people’s values.
The question, then for South Africa, is not whether we’ll all be Africans, but that as diverse Africans we can learn to live in respect of each other? Sharing a geographical sphere and political inheritance does not make people a nation. Neither does sharing some ancestors, because few Boers and Xhosas had Khoisan wives or chattels. I’m sure Mbeki's intentions of wanting to inject common energy in South African collective identity was based on noble motives, but it was conscious myth making.
Myth is not an entirely bad base for nation building. But conscious myths are a different thing altogether from the myths that emerge from the unconscious history (fears and longings) of a people. Unconscious myths convey truth because they are a residue of life and the after-image of people’s suffering. Conscious myths, however, are instruments of human purpose, that is spin-doctoring.
Plato believed that truth is the business of philosophy, but knew also that it is rhetoric, not philosophy, that moves the crowds. One of the advantages of Platonic school of philosophy is that it encourages us to prefer simple theory to messy reality. But it’s limiting factors is that it inclines us to select only the data that fit our theories. Mbeki’s I am an African speech was chiefly poetic rhetoric. Hence it is incumbent upon us to distinguish lies, even noble lies, among the rhetorical devices of politicians. Mbeki’s speech, with all its intents, was a noble lie whose real sentiments are betrayed by the brass angst of Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right letter.
Perhaps Mbeki’s letter, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, should have preceded the I am an African speech, not the other way around. In the Letter Mbeki is irritated by the manner of those who, though ostensible inheritors of progressive rational Enlightenment tradition, still smuggle racism under the banner of preserving cultural values and standards. This is the common thing in South Africa that he should have pointed out before the I am an African speech.
South Africans are in urgent need of true integration. Steve Biko, in his book, I Write What I Like, said, “If by integration you understand breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and codes of behaviour by whites, then yes I am against it.” Integration and multiculturalism has to mean much more than blacks acting white if it has to have true meaning. It is time for South African white community to understand and learn to accept black culture if the country has any hope of forging any pretensions of being a real nation.
It was said—back to the Greeks again—of the laws of Solon, that, though not the best in themselves, were the best “which the interests, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit”. Perhaps that can be said also of South African Constitution with an added aperçu from Gramsci that: “[T]he old is dying, and yet the new cannot be born … In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms …”
Whatever will happen in South Africa in the future its vital force will rise from the now buried lives in the appendixes of its townships. My overriding fear is that not those who govern nor those who fear them, have any real understanding of what makes them tick. There’ll come a time, in fact it has already arrived, when, as the hordes on the receiving end of the bad South African stick, they’ll run out of patience before the new is fully born. Indeed our country is living its collective life at the edge, unfortunately it is not the edge of reason.
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