Saturday, 26 May 2007

Tropical Fish (Book Review)

The book Tropical Fish, written by Doreen Baingana, is a collection of linked stories about the coming of age of three Ugandian sisters, Christine, Patti and Rosa. More than that though it is about a range of things that face the modern African women who grows up in our era with an idea of developing herself through education. It touches religious influence in Africa, boarding school life in missionary schools, first love, superstition, inevitably AIDS, love across the colour with a sugar daddy syndrome, the sense of alienation that comes with migrating to another country (USA) and that of displacement after coming back home.

Tropical Fish has a strong biographical element about it, in a sense that it uses, dare I say, Doreen Baingana’s experiences as a starting place before spiralling away to explore its themes. The act of creation is never an entirely isolated thing of imagination alone. The three girls learn in different ways that our lives teach us who we are, and that our characters are usually the vehicles our destinations.

Christine, the youngest, is about the assertion of pride and identity and the use of narration as a process of arrival. The quiet Patti is a soul in crisis, choosing to burry herself in the lap of God with iron serenity when things don’t go her way. She sings herself into significance in her diaries, wearing a dress of desperation. The feisty Rosa is about sexual liberation and dare devil attitude of not wishing to be part of the righteous who die of boredom in heaven. Despite her excesses, that sometimes can be cloyingly vapid, she’s the most fun to be in company of. Things in her world go bump in the night. She’s also about turning insults to strengths. What the girls have in common is the stultification they feel about their lives in Entebbe, Uganda.

The strength of the book Tropical Fish is the manner by which it manages to make the experiences of the three girls a metaphor for an African contemporary experience. The problems of women liberation, hybridisation, ghettoization, and reconciling the old with the new are masterfully tackled through the experiences of the se three women. I’m still trying to figure out how she did it, but Doreen Baingana in the book manages to make fresh the language of contemporary clichés. She’s elegiac in her tone, and things happen to her character with an inevitability of dreams. Most of the things you read about you know you’ve heard them before but you become mesmerised by the quality of her descriptive language all the same.

The language of Tropical Fish aspires to the condition of literature, which is a fresh thing in our age of journalistic writing. There’s an energetic brilliance about the book you feel would have gone even further had the author taken sometime to develop her ideas in a slower pace and depth. One can see that most of the stories were written for American leading literary journals, hence lacking percolation, the development of depth. The problem with those journals is the manner by which they don’t tolerate divergence from the consensus. They’ve fixed ideas about form, structure and language. As the results events are sometimes left hanging and unexplained because, I assume, the author had run out of space for the specified word count of the journals.
The stories in the book criss-connect as moving vignettes and autobiography of at least the mind. It was pertinent that they chose to name the book after one of the strongest story, Tropical Fish, which is also the most rounded off and enjoyable. The story has virtues of high literature, weight and lightness. The entire book, for that matter, is a magnificent raconteur of modern Scheherazadean inexhaustibility and inventiveness of a mind fully alive to its surroundings.1

1 Tropical Fish is published by Oshun Books.

Delusions of Unbelief

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him. That’s what I say when the question is put.” So wrote the renowned English novelist, Julian Barnes, in the The New Yorker last year, which sums the general post-modern sentiment. Then there are tricks of social engineering disguised as attacks on religion from the likes of Cristopher Hitchens (the American writer and columnist of Vanity Fair and Slate); and Richard Dawkins (biologist and author of book like, The God's Delusion). These are leading commentators of our era who are convinced that unless we abandon faith, religious hatred will lead us to the destruction of [Western] civilisation.

There's no denying that contemporary climate in generally is growing hostile to faith, fomenting legions of emergent ersatz of professional atheists. Frank Furedi, author of Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, and the slayer of lazy received wisdom, says: “For many commentators atheism is the new radicalism. However, a closer examination suggests that, other than a hatred of religion, much contemporary atheism has little to say. Dawkins’ The God Delusion exemplifies the attempt to turn atheism into an ideology. Yet a careful reading of this book leads us only to the conclusion that the author detests religion. Unfortunately hatred of religion does not necessarily lead to an enlightened perspective on the world.” Ditto for Hitchens.

There are many people in our time who believe that organized religion rather than enhance God's grandeur, diminish it. Who believe religion is just an evolutionary reaction, organised into systems of beliefs, co-opted symbols, rituals and festivals from preceding human means for survival. That religious language is means of placing order on the course of collective human experience, and ways to prescribe behaviour that end up creating both exceptionalism and division. They say it, better to, that while religion claims to move towards a benign and compassionate inter-human rapport it sows at the same time opposite seeds of hate and distrust among people.

Dawkins and Hitchens are a typical example of secular fundamentalist who go beyond legitimate criticism of delusions in religion into illusion of secular grandeur, the kind that gives non-believers a bad name. Authentic atheists, agnostics, humanists are not necessary against religion but 'maximalsm', i.e. the tendencies by some believers to want to conform every aspect of society to religious belief, with intentions of creating things like theocratic states. Fundamentalism, whether religious or secular, is the 21st century problem of all men of goodwill.

What perhaps we need most to learn in our century is that the human condition is the same for all of us despite our beliefs or non beliefs. Oscar Wilde put it thus: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” The major star—some will say the sun—for Christians is Jesus of Nazareth; as Muhammad is for Muslims. Cheap, stale arguments against religion does not advance the cause of humanism. We all know of the damage done around the world in the name of religion. Instead of throwing the baby with dirty water the constructive thing to do would be to revaluate religious messages, and leave behind what does not jibe with our humanist cause.

For instance, millions throughout the ages have venerated the name of Jesus, the Christ, of Nazareth. But few have really understood, fewer still have tried to put it into practice, his message. His words have been twisted and turned to mean everything, anything and nothing. His name has been used and abused to justify crimes, to frighten heathens, to inspire men and women into heroic deeds and foolishness. The supreme irony is that things he opposed in his lifetime were resurrected, preached, and spread more widely throughout the world in his name.
Hence I say, the most constructive way of dealing with religion would be to go beyond reported ad nauseam institutional violence, injustices, oppressions and exploitation to real engagement with their original messages. If you say, for instance, religion misrepresents the “origins of man and the cosmos”, you say so based on what? Or are you saying evolution is incompatibly with biblical anecdotes of creation; if so join in the real argument, not just strut shallow garish intellectual aestheticism of high-minded vulgarity. Comic sniggers might impress the impressionable hordes of glossy magazine but they do not further the humanist argument.

I'll tell you what furthers the humanist cause, and that is looking at Jesus of Nazareth with non jaundiced eyes. Here was a man with complete unreserved acceptance and openness to others; constantly found in the company of publicans and prostitutes. People despised as outsiders by the pious lot profound empathy with in him; felt so accepted they soon learned that God’s love is not confined to the holy, the self-righteous or the wealthy. Jesus saw in everyone the spirit of God struggling for self-assertion. He didn’t feel sorry for people from a distance, not daring to tarnish his reputation, but met them in their condition. He always approached people with humility that refused to be bound by world’s myopic conventions.

He was at home with fishermen, tax-collectors, tarts, learned men, religious leaders, Jews, Goyim, Narelim, Gentiles, and Romans. He gave everyone the same dignity without regard for worldly position; didn't care about labels like homosexuality as seen when he allowed 'the disciple he loved' to rest on his breast in the last supper. Yet with all that love he could be sufficiently detached to leave home without compunction, and sometimes called friends he loved (Peter arguably the first pope) devils when they stood before his mission.

Jesus never put on an act, adopt false poses, or tried to live up to worldly expectations. He didn't play the messianic role, his more wordly disciples expected of him. He could be at home in diverse situations because he was ever immediately himself everywhere, having made truth his only way. Christ was neither solemn nor superficial. He cared nothing for class distinction. Worldly power didn’t impress him; hence he could be ironical and very outspoken, even contemptuous, to the powerful: “Tell that fox (Herod) . . .”

Tell me now if that is not the spirit of humanism taken to transcedental realms; you don't have to agree with his beleifs to see that. Geisteswissenschat (human studies) has to lead to what Heidegger saw as eternity within time, which is a moment in which your past, present, and future gather into the unity of a resolute self. Otherwise you risk the tranquillity of the absurd, as best represented in that wonderfully madman, Frederich Nietzsche. Perhaps even that is better than the haughty insularity of some present day atheists.

Wednesday, 16 May 2007

Gordimer At The Docks

Here in Cape Town we talk of nothing else but the much awaited Cape Town Book Fair in June. I'm trying to wade through book suggestions from literary magazine and award bodies without much enthusiasm, since I find most of the books out of tune with my literary prefences. It has made me think about the books I've read and enjoyed in the past year. I'll talk us through them as I stock firewood for my fire place going to the Book Fair.

Some of us are wary of reading writers’ biographies, afraid of tedious hermeneutics. Usually these biographies are nothing more than fawning hagiography, or vitriolic criticism of the said writer’s work. Ronald Suresh Roberts scholastic biography of Nadine Gordimer, No Cold Kitchen, successfully avoids these trappings. It does not only delineate the life and times of the laureate but elegantly examines the body of her works without a trace of intellectual snobbery.

Roberts begins the book with a slightly hesitant tone—dancing on eggs and carefully skirting the muddy waters. The method of argument he adopts is the Socratic Phalanstery, i.e. the art of disguising derisive dismissals as innocent interrogations. This elenctic trick makes Roberts to cloak his own voice with myriads of quotations from NG (Nardine Gordimer) and her friends, of the calibre of Susan Sontag, Edward Said, Amos Oz, and numerous literary critics. It is only in the last section, Part 6, that Roberts’ voice comes out belching critical fire. In the end the method allows him to write what he calls a ‘worthwhile biography’ that ‘seeks intimacy without loyalty, proximity laced with dissent.’ The layers of dissent, perhaps, are what led to the fallout between the biographer and his subject that was given much currency in public discussion around the publication of the boo; but that is not our concern here.

We learn that NG and her sister are daughters of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, born in a small mining town outside Johannesburg called Springs. NG showed signs of artistic sensitivity from an early age and acumen of an autodidact. Her voracious appetite for books led her to the Vanguard, a Johannesburg bookshop then with European and North American contacts that had a decent supply of global periodics and literature. ‘Pioneering (South African) writers like Bloke Modisane and Todd Matshikiza worked at the Vanguard, as did an intense dabbler called Phillip Stein.’ Thus began NG’s time of flexing of critical faculties, ‘awakening sexuality, the conflation of emotional and aesthetic formation’.

In 1945 NG registered at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) for a degree in English. She soon found within months that her autodidactic temperament was ill-suited to tedious tottering of official education, and subsequently dropped out; not before meeting someone who became her life long black friend though, Esk’ia Mphahlele. From then her politics took on a more pronounced anti-imperialist & anti-racist tincture, albiet with cautious diplomacy that is visible in her fictional characters.

From all this emerges NG the author of fourteen novels—some of which won major world prizes for literature including the Nobel Peace prize in 1991—ten collection of short stories; and seven collection of essays. Her formative encounters touched the who is who of South African life in the 50’s, the so called “Golden Age” of the countries creative spirit. She met around then her lifelong friend also, Anthony Simpson, the then editor of Drum magazine to whom NG introduced Mphahlele. Drum started as a apolitical magazine, catering for black readers, with buxom modellers, tsotsi style narratives of every social thing that affected black people at the time, from prison stories to shebeen adventures. The glamour boys of Drum magazine were the likes of Can Themba, Lewis Nkosi, Nat Nkasa, Carrey Motsitsi, Arthur Maimane and of course, the indominatable Jim Bailey, the Drum publisher, all of which NG met and befriended.

In 1953, through a mutual friend Charles Engleton, NG met Reinhold Cassier, a Jew of Germanic background. They immediately hit it off and were married by beginning of 1954 to become not just husband and wife, but lifelong close companions, give or take few infidelities. No Cold Kitchen does not satisfy the susurrus voyeuristic curiosity aroused by some of Godimer’s fictional work like My Son’s Story. It just hints at a correlation to these and NG’s real life experiences. Reading NG’s latest work of fiction, nominated in the list of this 2006 Booker Prize, Get A Life, one hears the voice of an unfaithful woman confessing her infidelities with emotional depth palpating in catch your breath and rub your eyes lapidary phrases we’ve come to regard as the trademark of what's best in NG’s fiction:

The laughter together, the shared ironies of the proceedings, the delighted discovery, each for each, of how the other’s intelligent intention worked, the sense of something new, in man – woman, waiting to be acknowledged, life beckoning, crooking a finger, led to a room of a hotel . . .Anger bottled with disbelief in the days, weeks that followed. And pain. Pain has to be managed . . . He bore his pain and she bore his pain and anger. . . Facts are what constitute evidence, they do not go further than that. I have to tell you something. The affair is over.
I thought you were going to tell me you were leaving.

NG dedicated Get A Life to Reinhold. Roberts uses like his vast knowledge of NG’s fictional work to examine, sometimes illuminate, incidences in NG’s life.

No Cold Kitchen is a worthy read even only for the in-depth intelligent discussion of South African politics of the time. Literature discussions on the book are saturate, sometimes water logged, with invidious comparisons with JM Coetzee whom Roberts regards as housing a ‘greater imaginative stamina’ than NG. Roberts is of the opinion that we should celebrate ‘Gordimer as the lyrical analyst of apartheid, and Coetzee as the great allegorist of anti-imperialism.’ We might add that if Coetzee is sluiced with Beckettean sarcasm, bleakness and psychological subtleties; NG has a better sense of differentiation and vocabulary insight that makes her adapt (at least does a better job compared to Coetzee) to the street and market place, which is why she’s better at reflecting other people’s culture.

No Cold Kitchen has social, intellectual and historical relevance, which is what most of us look for in a biography. It immerses you in NG’s life who chose to witness the dishonour of apartheid from within, somehow ‘suckling in the nipple of white privilege,’ the biographer insinuates. Her strength rests in the fact that she is her harshest critic. “We’re a useless lot among desperate people,” is how she described her lot during the heat season of apartheid years, which is harsh considering the contribution she made in fighting the system by living as a human being.
One constantly gets the feeling that Roberts puts NG on the docks concerning the apartheid issue. To most of us practising integrity to the free transformation of reality, in whatever forms and modes of expression is all that is required of a writer beyonding writting. I'll suggest anyone who has forgetten her contribution to start by reading her essay 1959: What Is Apartheid?1




1 No Cold Kitchen is published by STE Publishers.

Monday, 14 May 2007

Liberal Equivocations

Liberal politics in South Africa, on top of their bankrupt political vision, have an uncanny habit of working themselves into tight a corner. First it was the DP (Democratic Party) ‘Fight Back’campaign during the 1994 South African democratic election whose cynical tone rubbed most black South Africans the wrong way. Then in 1999, the DP merged with NNP (New National Party) to become DA (Democratic Alliance), and could only come up with a bland ‘South Africa Deserves Better’ slogan to fight elections with much success.

In the recent weeks the DA has been embroiled in leadership crisis. Tony Leon, its former leader of paradigmatic liberal confusion and dodgy enthusiasms, decided after close to two decades to call it quits. He left three real contesters for the leadership position, Hellen Zille (also the current mayor of Cape Town), Anthol Trollip (the leader of DA in the Eastern Cape Province), and Joe Seremane (a senior black leader who is now the chairman of the party). I'm of the opinion that if the DA was serious about attracting black votes, which it desperately needs, it would have, at the least, voted Anthol Trollip—who has better empathic concern for black issues—as its leader. But they voted Hellen Zille.

It seems to me whatever the DA does betrays its non adept spirit in keeping the finger to the wind and the ear on the ground about what is happening in South Africa generally. I'll be honest enough to conceed that the black candidate, Joe Seremane, brought nothing to the DA leadersip table except the colour of his skin, and telltale politeness? He thought he could strategically put himself to attrack black votes and showcase how serious the DA is with transformation. What did he get in return? A humiliation of being put in a decorative position where he must wait for tasks from his master, or madam in this case. Since this is not the noble era where heroes fall on their swords instead of enduring the humiliation of being leakeys for the whims of their masters, I guess Seremane will, henceforth, be his madam's negligeé, never showing in public except during windy days.

Most black people, like myself, who respect liberal values without necessary extending the same feeling for liberals in general, watched the DA leadership race with a sinking feeling. Hellen Zille's article, at the Mail and Guardian (May 4 to 10 2007), compounded the feeling. I had hoped madame Zille's style of leadership would move away from Tony Leon's cloying contrariety politics of attachment to the ANC (African National Congress), into clear independent vision for the DA party this time. The article dashed those hopes. Madame Zille seem to have inherited Mr. Leon's gestalt. Perhaps she is too inured in politics of counter ANC excessive autonomism with her street-tough talk, a snappy wit, and inbuilt bullshit detector. Beyond that she brings nothing much in the table if the article at the Mail and Guardian is anything to go about. Her raising of dust and exhibitionist persona, irreverent honest raucousness—too often mistaken for vividness—will not work very well in the national arena. All she'll do is alienate further much needed black votes. Madame Zille's article was as fragmented as the political vision of the DA. She begins it by quoting Groucho Marx's saying, whose context I failed to understand: “I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

In the national arena the DA needs someone who can speak vigorously and frankly about racial issues, be it in liberal cultural allusions. At the same time someone who understands the curdled aggression of black majority against the past. Someone who could calm the country's murderous odour, so to speak. But Madame Zille, in the DA tradition, seem to refuse to recognise, or at least downplay, the “axial lines” of a South African politics: that racism is endemic in the political attitudes and structures of the country, whether unwittingly or deliberate. That most South Africans stand in polarised poles, either getting their reality like a man trying to drink at a hydrant—to sharpen Frost's trope—or avoid the evaluation of our situation in favour of haughty squeamishness.

There's a great diversity of morbid symptoms in DA and ANC politics, but I'll here limit myself to DA's politics. Madame Zille admits that the ANC's discussion documents towards its 52nd National Conference are toned down from previous years, with what she ironically calls “a hint of ambiguity” without ideas. What new ideas does she or the DA bring then? She proceeds to tabulate her party's alternative vision against the ANC's “national democratic revolution.” She in turn calls her party's vision, “Open, Opportunity Society” (the use of capital and non capital letters is hers). The apercu of the “Open, Opportunity Society” is personal freedom, informed choices, relaxed labour laws and laissez-faire, federalism, meritocracy in public appointments, hard stance on crime and corruption, social transformation through education, and all and all. Most of us have heard it ad nauseam before.

What's new is madame Zille's emphasis on glaring contradictions of her party. For instance, she says; “The state can and should intervene to prevent extreme poverty, to protect everyone from crime and abuse . . .” On the same breath she quotes the liberal economist Friedrich Hayek; “governments that try to use their power to correct inequalities will invariably create new and worse inequalities while undermining the rule of law.” Well, which is it really gonna be madame, laissez-faire or state intervention? Or the government must do the dirty work so long as it does not touch the sacred economic mechanics of the country?

South Africa, for a real opposition, needs a party that'll create a platform for civil humanity without strengthening cynical political discourse. A party that'll be able to organize those who shy away from the domination of one cultural and political hegemony for commitment to democratic universalism—universalism that does not necessary mean uniformity. A party of human rights universalism without any trace of double standards. Of universalist appeasement and liberal cosmopolitanism that puts party sovereignty in submission to individual freedom. DA, as a liberal party, purports to be of such persuasions. Where is the problem then?
On the other page of the same Mail and Guardian issue Tony Leon, on an interview, prefers to blame the DA's inability to attract black votes on what he terms “the prominence of identity politics over issue politics in South Africa”. It would take too long to unravel the overt racist superiority attitude behind such reasoning. Leon treats black South Africans as if unable to identify what is in their interest. I wonder if he knows the spiritual resillence needed not to hate those whoose foot is on your neck; the greater miracle of perception and sacrifice black people continue making to allow South Africa to grow into its own despite the intransigence and ignorance transferred by the likes of the DA.

There are many forms of liberalism. Common to them all is the belief that liberal values are the hem of human achievement, of the universal process of civil improvement, and the only condition that leads to proper human rights. Liberals measure human rights by increased civil amenities that ameliorate the harsher aspects of life, like diminution of ignorance and the flowering of arts and sciences, etc, etc. Bless their souls. Why they think all of this is an exclusive achievement of liberal politics is a misintepretation of history by most liberal scholars, and a topic for another time.

Why then is most of us, especially black South Africans, not liberals seeing that liberal values are so noble? First of all, there's a yawning gap between the values liberals profess and what they practise. There is, for instance, nothing civil about muckraking inflationary parasailing politics of madame Zille. Secondly history is against white political parties in South Africa. So long as the DA remains predominantly white it'll be a suspect to most black people. In a way, the DA is in a conundrum. It is more of a cultural than racial thing. I strongly doubt if politics can change culture, it has to be the other way round. All societies thrive through their mainstream culture, which happens to be African in South Africa for anyone who cares to know. It is often said that the DA's hope in SA are in the present bombardment of mass consumerist culture, the so called bourgeois emerging black middle class. That the DA's major score scard is in polite tensions of middle class concerns, with occassional moral clucking about the bottom end citizens, I suppose. Why they are not cashing maximum returns from it then must be the measure of their lack of vision and their claps under the chains of conundrum.

This is how the conundrum goes further: The DA's chance is in unapologetically embracing bourgeois pieties and cultural pretenses of consumerism. This means it must, by necessity, leave behind the poor South African majority for the devil to take. And that opens it to accusations of being elitist and blimpish (which by the way there are in a subtle way for now). But if the ANC can be bolshie why can't the DA be blimpish? O, I remeber, they'll lose the poor majority they mean to attract. That's the DA's Catch-22 situation.

Another course to take for the DA would be to openly blame the coarse and crowd-pleasing Philistinism, with all its bracing rebellion against upper-class pretension, as based more on envy masquerading as dressed up concern for the poor. Yark! Stupid me. They are already saying that in hushed tones. Why not open up the debate then; let Sonne bringt es an den Tag (the sun reveals all) by calling a spade a spade. Let the DA take a new slogan like; The Consumer Revolution, or something catchy like that, instead of lame and pretentious “Open, Opportunity Society”; as if there is anything open and opportunistic in unskilled people sitting against the wall in township shacks wondering where their next meal is going to come from. Perhaps that way the DA may pull the coup of convincing the South African majority that neo-liberalism, despite the glaring failures of American capitalism, is compatible with humaneness and bias to upliftment of the poor.

The major folly of DA politics is characterised by Mr. Leon's statement like: “I'm not sacared of being on the right side of an argument with the wrong people.” Wrong people here meaning the trade unions. I do not see how a proper leader would be so foolish as to congratulate himself on his own insularity. Typical of DA drawing room flatulence. Mr. Leon refuses material support of great numbers who happen to share similar views with him on the country's pressing issues like Aids, Zimbabwe, Crime and so forth, just because they are a wrong crowd? What did he have in common with the NNP, except virulent hatred for the ANC and subtle racism? Blimpish! The DA's arrogant obtuseness is what is making most black folks to shy away from their coffers.
Another, as I've already indicated, is the DA obsession with opposing ANC politics. Nothing wrong with having different opinion to your opposition, but the DA's blatant bias to the ANC is cloying. Most black people who, like myself, are not members of the ANC are not bias against it; they just have different opinions, and maintain openness to new ideas and different point of views. The DA has a pathological structural fault that makes it unattractive to black voters, especially the denial of its own flaws while being extremely well attuned to the failures of others. This rubs most black people the wrong way.

South African politics were founded on colour and race. Colour is not a human or personal reality but a political one. DA refuses to acknowledge racism as endemic in the political attitudes and structures of South African society as the result fails to clear its own rubbish of subtle racial prejudice and superiority. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Blacks might have their collective servile pride but they are not stupid. They see that the freedom the DA calls for is that of a fox in the chicken coop.

Transforming Illusions

As much as doff my hat to the comprehensiveness by which the ANC compiled its document, Economic Transformation For The National Democratic Society, I have my doubts about some of its statements like: “In overall terms the ANC's economic policy stances are both comprehensive and correct, and these perspectives have remained consistent throughout the era of liberation.” The argument of changing with the facts does not count when the facts have been the same from the beginning. The ANC made some crucial errors in its past economic vision that left the poor behind the country's economic success. It is the nature of its pragmatic strength that allows it to tone them down now as miscalculations.

The truth of the matter is that in our second decade of freedom, because of the short-comings of RDP, GEAR, and now ASGISA, “We are still some way from our vision of the economic base of a national democratic society. The ownership and control of wealth and income, the poverty trap, access to opportunity and so on are, are all in the main defined, as under apartheid, on the basis of race and gender. The basic economic tasks of the NDR [National Democratic Revolution] must remain the same a the eradication of the socio-economic legacy of apartheid, the creation of employment, the defeat of poverty and the drastic reduction of inequality” as the ANC admits in the document.

I hope in making the above statement the ANC is in actual fact admitting its short-comings and moving away from its parochial, censorious approach to open discussion of real issues. That it has finally realised the government is chasing a bouncing ball if it thinks the “'invisible hand' of the market” without government regulation will meet the demands of our social justice. As Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate in economics, summed it; “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” not social conscience.

“In the twentieth century,” the ANC document states, “the developing countries that succeeded in promoting industrialisation, sustained growth and development have all had in common developmental states that played a leading role in infrastructure development programmes and which had an active industrial strategy.” The real question then is; will the ANC government have enough nerve when it comes to the real crunch of intervening on the market economy for the “economic bias towards the poor”. If so, how does the government plan to interven for a more equitable distribution of wealth?

The document says “the ability of the state to lead economic development must come to the fore,” but shies away in coming with concrete terms of doing this besides suggestions of vague programmes as conduits of social mobility and empowerment of the poor. No one is calling for an idolised state as a redeeming force for the poor; or for the state to be a vehicle of political regimentation that will end up creating social dependence on the government. Neither are we demanding abandonment of liberty in favour of ideas of state control. All we are asking for are concrete tangibles, something that goes beyond the stagnation of stifling bureaucracy of the likes of Batho Pele, Youth Commission and Umsobomvu Youth Fund, for instance.

It is all agreed that things like “BEE should be linked directly to the expansion and diversification of our economic base. As well as ensuring that the ownership and control of capital is de-racialised, we must also seek to broaden the base of such ownership.” The question is how, seeing that parastatals, for instance, have become conduits for political patronage and sometimes corruption. Seeing that personal acquaintance have become transitive patronages for government jobs and deals.

Also does it not seem a strange vacuousness of our times that even the political rhetoric of “bias towards the poor” serves only to feed the coffers of market economic reality in maintaining the status quo in every government economic program. These programs, as tabulated in the document, seem to get their lifeline by a symbiotic relation to a market economy. Is it not the market economy which calls the shorts then? If so, why all these equivocations and maintainance of illusion as if the government is in control of the country's economy?

Despite all its rhetoric of “bias towards the poor” the document makes it clear that anything that goes beyond the recieved wisdom of market economy faddish thinking is still not kosher. Why maintain the illussion of economic emancipation of the poor then, since we all know by now that nea-liberal market economy is not about that?

The state's role, like in all developing economies structured on market economy, will remain a tool to help the country complete its historic transition into market economy, with windfalls of Social Grants for the poor there and there. Perhaps its time we admit that the poor in our country will remain the fodder for the perpetual ostensibly growth of our market. The fundamental truth is that, at this rate, “our most effective weapon in the campaign against poverty and unemployment is education”; that is if we are fortunate enough not to be overtaken by the uprising of the poor before this generation passes.

J'adouble

Most of us feel the typical example of our media's short-comings, especially print, is the manner by which they report on president. President Thabo Mbeki has been something of an enigma to the South African media for so long that now it has grown tired of trying to understand him, opting for a new strategy of vilifying him. A quick peruse of especially South African leading black columnists will convince doubters. No one is asking for holy cows but a more balanced approach would be in order.

As an African nationalist there's a lot that fills the media, which is predominantly liberal, with trepidation about Mbeki. To compound the issue, Mbeki has a complex and aloof personality. Where Mandela expressed himself in gestures, Mbeki gives more space to words, baffling words sometimes that require skills of dissecting a gossamer to get to their real meaning. Perhaps no man with Mandela's big shoes to fill could have fit.

The major accusation against Mbeki's presidency is his denialist stance against the causes of Aids; the velleity of his 'quiet diplomacy' when it comes to Zimbabwe; and, recently, his perceived lack of taking crime serious enough. There are also other vestigial accusations like arrogance, delivery impotence of his government. Such things one naturally expects the media to cuss; what leaves me cold and bored is the media's self-aggrandised role as the real opposition party in the country. I feel our media takes too seriously its own self-publicity.

The ANC has published a policy discussion document, Transformation of the Media, which, I suppose, seeks to hoist the media with it's own petard. The ANC says the document will be discussed in depth at its national conference to be held in June. The topic has the potential of belling the cat, but I suspect that very little of it will see the light of day beyond the corridors where it would be discussed. Our popular media, which operates through confirmation bias (seeking and finding confirmatory evidence in support of their already existing beliefs, while ignoring or reinterpreting disconfirmatory evidence to fit their coffers) will just ignore it for more sensational and controversial stuff.

Most consumers love dynamic and vitriolic journalism for the sensationalism it provides and the life it brings to issues that need to be debated. Our news would be dour and enervated without grime. As annoying as that may be to public figures this serves democracy. Maybe not necessary in what it says as in the fact that every voice is allowed, no matter how shallow, scandalous and controversial it may be. It's a sign that tolerance reigns, which in turn brings confidence on the vox populi about their democratic government ten times more than a constitution written on stone.

Politicians as public figures should be under the scrutiny of public eye, and the media is correct in doing that with some modicum of sense—sense being the operative word here. Our media does a splendid job as a public watch dog but is guilty of living in its own narcissist world where it imagines itself to be an innocent messenger, when in actual sense it too carries the burden of history and realities of financial imperatives that prone it for selective self-censorship. Commercial motives compels the media to be Janus-faced (two-timed).

The ANC document put it thus: Not only does there need to be a diverse and generally representative range of views and interests represented within the media, but all South Africans need to have avenues to express their views and ideas in the media. The struggle for media freedom therefore also involves the extension of access to the media to as many people as possible . . . The freedom of the South African media is today undermined not by the state, but by various tendencies that arise from the commercial imperatives that drive the media.

It is no secret that the bias of argument in South African media is drawn along lines that channels the gestalt of liberal perspective. I personally see nothing wrong with this since one of the strength of liberal values is tolerance, something very crucial for freedom of speech. What gets my goat is pretending otherwise, and the active censoring of those with different point of views, such as African nationalist. So what if they wag the dog, most people can see through such things, including media bias.

This is how the ANC document contest with the issue: Yet there persists a pretence in many quarters that those in the media are somehow a breed apart from other human beings, that they are not impacted by the dynamics within society and therefore do not hold personal views on social or political developments. Others pretend that even if journalists and editors do have personal views, they do not allow these views to encroach upon the hallowed ground of objective reporting.

As someone who is involved in the media I know that media non partisan is bunkum: The reality is that the media - in South Africa as in every other society - is a major arena in the battle of ideas. All social forces are therefore engaged, to varying degrees and with differing success, in efforts to ensure that the media advances their ideological, political, social, economic and cultural objectives.

Some argue the censoring comes from quality control than contextual bias. I do not believe that. Sure those of African nationalist trappings tend to speak in political jargon that is ill suited for genuine media communication, but if editors are not there to lick into shape pieces at variant with their style without betraying the content. The quality of expression is a desirable thing in modes of communication but it should not serve as a mask for cultural liberal elitism.

Media platform should be neutral in order to inform rather than propagate. That ours is fast becoming the beneficiary of growing resentment, especially among black people, is telling sign that something is rotten at the state of its affairs. If our media wants a brighter future perhaps it's time it takes cognisance of this. Finding ways to seriously engage with the ANC document Transformation of the Media would probably be a great way to start.

Just as we much challenge the notion that the media is necessarily ideologically neutral and non-partisan, so too must we resist the impulse to seek a media which mechanically follows a single 'progressive' political line. Rather we need to seek a media which is able to reflect the diversity of views and interests within society, and to act as a forum for a vigorous exchange of views - a contest of ideas that enriches the democratic process and contributes to the building of a national democratic society.

Amen to that; and here is to hoping that by media it is also understood to mean the state owned SABC enterprises also. I truly hope among The Issues of Discussion on its conference the ANC will touch on the case of John Perlman, the Sa Fm presenter who departed his post unceremoniously after alleged differences of view with the SABC management.

Friday, 04 May 2007

Tarantella Dancers

Ever heard of Tarantella Dancers? They seat in caves, with backs against the African culture, throwing invisible gossamers of neo-political whining. They're mostly fingernail monitors and provocateurs of the Chattering Class. According to them, everything the government does is wrong, or motivated by corruption. They have mania for seeing a deluge of corruption whenever a mouse runs out of the government wainscot.
The tarantella dancers see themselves as harbingers of enlightenment, an embankment against the coming deluge of barbarians. They've self-styled themselves as spokesmen of enlightenment who feel duty bound to carp the atavistic yearnings and arrest tribalism and perversions of nationalism in our politics. Anyone who agrees with the government to the tarantella dancers is wagging the tail. To be enlightened you must be cynical and anti-ANC government.

Their perpetual demurrable scouting for weakness on the ruling party is not consistent though. They cried grafter and rogue when it was rumoured that the ruling party, within its rights, was planning to change the constitution to accommodate president’s Mbeki’s third term. But with the same breath they were egging it on with demands to change the constitution for the reinstatement of the death penalty. That's the tarantula for you.

There’s telling hypocrisy in most things the tarantella dancers does. They pass themselves as purveyors of unassailable integrity but their conspiracy mongering often serves as an excuse for avoiding the task of real political analysis. Their writings are usually intellectual pretensions culled from Occidental nests. They are mostly tedious exculpations sustained by subtle racism of Kliping’s colonialist ‘burden of the white man.’ Theirs is not the usual rumble of good old racists but a rise of imperialistic mind disguised in humanist language.

This new racism is in a way much more brutal than the previous one, because it’s implicit legitimisation is not naturalist—the superiority of the white race—but culturalist. It wants to preserve Western cultural identity at the expense of all else. In the tarantella dancers then we are more dealing with unabashed cultural egotism and dented egoes of the colonialist mind masquerading as enlightenement. They project liberal fears, anxieties, rumours, and secret desires for intellectual prominence. Their shrill unreflective ramblings have become more like a poor slop of original tea bag in its fifth wash of hot water.

When their unreflective ramblings eludes them they target the no-loose topics like Zimbabwe to talk our ear off them. Despite all their hype about democratic values though the tarantalle dancers give their support only to government endorsed by Western enlightement, not the ones elected by an overwhelming support of the constituencies, as seen in Palestine. This is because they define progress as an adoption of neo-liberal democracy and market capitalsim.

What the tarantula abhors is most is BEEs. Unlike those who argue against it with clotted tones, the tarantula vehemently see it as reverse apartheid. They see BEE as cronysm disguised as affirmative. But the uncomfortable fact they won't admit is that affirmative action makes them imagine themselves in the same shoes previously reserved for black people, victims of discrimination with active support of the state. Affirmative action prods their silent fears.

It really is the measure of our freedom that we still keep the brass-necked sterile tarantella dancers in our mist, and even give them platform in our newspapers despite their sour attitude and reality concealing boomer humour on issues some feel should allow no room for irony. “Here, where the tarantula's cave is, there rises up the ruins of an old temple – just look at it with enlightened eyes!” Thus Spoke Zarathustra.