म्बेकी

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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