The last sense I made of Dr Xolani Mangcu’s piece, Mbeki an aberration in history of black morality, in The Sunday Times [August 26 2007] was at the start when he said: “Thabo Mbeki has come to represent a completely new phenomenon in black politics: he represents the end of black political morality.” He seemed to think that the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, has lost ubuntu in his political engagements if I got him right; the whole thing was disjointed and incoherent to follow clearly.
The going gets philosophically rough for Dr. Mangcu when he tries to connect what he calls president Mbeki’s political morality to ethics despite the allusions to black philosophers. If he was tying to say Ethics is behaviour in accordance with virtuous character that’s fine. What came out sound and clear though, as usual, is Dr. Mangcu’s dislike for the president’s character. Nothing new about that. He’s in inclement and invariant company of the likes of Mondli Makhanya, The Sunday Times editor, Justice Malala, the aping firebrand broken record at The Times; and a whole lot of other rhapsodical columnists in Johnnic Media especially with drawn out sword-pens against the president. Their project, we’re starting to see, is character assassination through moral suasion of those who do not agree with their menial persuasions.
In general I’m not a fan of president’s Mbeki’s style of leadership. But the more I read these media hounds yelping for his blood the more I’m made to take a second look on the president’s media misgivings. They couch political dissent with panhandling deprecating formulaic pieties of tired occidental topes and motifs. I’ll not be surprised if soon they sing the merits of one millionaire politician or two; you know what they say, cui bono; or the Americans would put it more crudely, follow the money.
The funny thing is that both the president and the media bloodhounds have become birds of the same feather. Their respective styles of writing draw on the ghosts of our fears; peppering them with grotesque errors and generalizations bordering on the absurd. Hence they’re notorious among those who always see imperialist prejudice in every criticism. And popular among those who see the barbarians at the gates, and autocracy on the offing on every call to curb the self-defeating abuse of our democratic freedom.
Going back to Dr. Mangcu’s argument. Anyone who reads Cicero’s commentaries on and translations of Aristotle will learn that morality is more concerned with which actions are right or wrong rather than with the character of a person who performs these actions. Present day philosophers, including the Ghanaian philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appian Dr Mangcu quotes, turn to confuse the two terms of ethics and morality, interchanging them in attempts to emphasise one point or the other.
Perhaps Dr. Mangcu would have laboured his point better had he not ventured on irrelevant philosophical points. Sometimes the assumptions of knowledge obfuscate more than they expound. In philosophically parlance president Thabo Mbeki is an Ethical teleologist; meaning he judges actions as good or bad by reference to the ends by which they are aimed at. Whereas liberal minded apologists are mainly Ethical deontologist who judge the rightness or wrongness of actions by something within the actions themselves.
The issue of the president’s recent sacking of the deputy minister of health might labour this point further. The deputy health minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, was basically sacked for not being a team player. That is for doing right things for wrong reasons. In the teleological style of leadership of the present president that’s a cardinal sin where one may be tolerated for doing wrong things for right reasons so long as the president is pleased with their bona fides.
The government has since shameless went on a witch-hunt against the former deputy health minister in disgusting attempt to humiliate and sink her into destitution, just because it has law on its side; the law it applies very leniently on other delinquent members of the government who tow the line.
President Mbeki’s teleological tendencies make life very difficult for those who do not share his vision, and make for dour business which compels individuals in his government to unquestiongly follow his imperatives. It is small wonder that many inside the government lack the art of phronesis—the ability to judge for themselves. For them Freedom is necessity in the Leninist sense of consenting to do what you have to do for the good of the Party (Movement). Unfortunately this makes for a wonderful society of anthills or beehives, but not human society.
Humans need freedom as means by which their individuals reach the full potential of liberty. But responsible freedom is not superficial, careless and too self-regarding. True freedom is not found by being slave to the idea of freedom at all cost. Human freedom occurs under conditions. Faith in freedom has to account for man’s tendencies to abuse freedom. We are free men in the sea of communal necessity; there’s nothing absolute or god-like about freedom. A freeman is still a created creature who must abide by the village rules of decency. People who think freedom is absolute are dangerous too, because they’ve an exaggerated sense of the malleability of things.
The ideal then is a well ordered commonwealth of free responsible persons working to bring out deepest human potential into fruition. And in our country it may be found somewhere between president Mbeki and his media tormentors, that is assuming that an elephant is tormented by gnats bites on its hide.
Despite the disapproval of the chattering class, there are kennels of truth once you manage to peel the husks through president Mbeki’s letters at ANC Today (www.anc.org.za). He often attempts to clear the press ranting rubbish, thick-skull pomposities and the rest of clink and gleam idolatries committed in the name of freedom of the press. Someone has stand out against the moral abattoir sometimes created in the name of press freedom. Every freedom has its accompanying responsibilities. One just wishes he placed more thought and refinement on it. Editors of the publication also would be well advised to take a more hands approach in excising what reads more like dissertations on phlogiston by reducing them to what’s immediate and relevant.
If there’s any crisis in our country at present it is that of tone from the president, and perception, or rather lack of, from the chattering class. Big money is thrown to buy the best legal garb of legality, with little regard for consequences and deeper implications of justice, temperance and wisdom. They believe what is most persuasive, right or wrong, is what counts.
In this rostrum, as long as you have sophistry means to defeat your opponent then, to all intents and purpose, you secure justice. Expedience, dishonesty, moral cynicism wins the palm of superior intelligence. It is, of course the American script, regurgitated from the worse in past Western Empire. It was similar negation of all that was wonderful about the first democracy of Athens that made its fall faster than its rise.
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