Wednesday, 29 August 2007

The Crisis of Tone & Perception

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.

Saturday, 25 August 2007

Scandalmongers

In his semantic book, The Republic, Plato makes Socrates relates a story he heard about Leontius, son of Aġlaion:

On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground, with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to turn away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes wide, he ran up to the bodies and cried, “There you are, curse you, feast yourselves on this lovely sight.”

Why am I relating this story? Because I’m sick and tired of our media’s kerfuffle about the health minister but cannot help following it closely. My reason is overwhelmed by my unworthy desire. Our media does not only cater for our voyeuristic appetites it lives on them by perpetuating and constantly provoking it. It is become the symbiotic parasite of our bad habits. There you are, curse you, feast yourselves on these disgusting symbol of our decadence.

So what if the minister was convicted of a minor crime close to three decades ago? And so what if she’s a drunkard? Do these things impede her from doing her job properly? If not just leave her the fuck alone!

I suppose it is too much to expect decent limits from the growing tabloid mentality of our media. I’m starting to suspect a baboon’s foot in the Sunday Time’s tactics of bombardment and character assassination. It’s starting to appear as some kind of smokescreen at the least, or worse, propaganda staged as rally for freedom. What does revealing these facts to the public have to do with the good of the public? Why are we being used as pawns in battles of hegemony and power? You want to embarrass the president for his so called mastery of intricate cocooning and the Gesamtkunstwerk of his cabinet. What gives you the right to abuse our ignorance?

We’ve been suffering scandalmongering of our independent media for quite sometime now; the superficial bunch of self-indulgent syndicated columnists who writes strings of dull pieces in awkward and unconvincing similes they confuse with depth. The Sunday Times especially has fallen under the throes of rococo fabulist with cross-stitched logic that convinces themselves that they are guardians of our liberty.

What they are doing to our minister of health has hightailed into gross violation of individual human rights. It is little beyond bad taste in the name of freedom of speech. Nobody expects journalism to be pure science of fairness, or the core of ethnicity; but there has to be self-limiting considerations for the sake of national pride if nothing else. Why should journalists be absolved from the values of civility that the rest of us are compelled to abide with in dealing with each other. Are they not taught in their training that communication is what makes us human, and hence can never be entirely distinguished from ethics?

It is time our courts of law break the false autonomy of freedom of speech fundamentalism that seems to think it is above all other civil values. The media must be reminded that there are certain bounds that cannot be crossed against individual rights. The Sunday Times must be held criminally accountable for the possession of the health minister’s personal stolen medical records. The court must remember that the newspapers caters for libels, and sometimes pursue scandalous cases with a calculated risks of return from the sales. So it try to devise punitive measure that take that into consideration.

The challenge here is to recover the loss philosophical foundation, which has left modern journalism unfit to account for proper values of decency. It now up to the High Court to remind them and all other who harbour such degenerate practices that we are still a civil society. We didn’t struggle for freedom of speech from autocratic institutions of afore to see our gains being trivialised and turned on their head for private gains of corporative investments.

I began with a philosopher and so I’ll close with another. Arthur Schopenhauer once sarcastically wrote that if you really want to know how you feel about a person, take note of the impression an unexpected letter from him makes on you when you see it on your doormat. Change that into a newspaper and you’ll get an idea of the disgust I felt when the copy of The Sunday Times with a second headlines in a row of more revelations about the minister’s personal life. My only comfort is that when our subscription expires in two and half months to go I shall not be renewing it. To hell with them and their glorified tabloid mentality.

Veils Coming Down

Something happening here. / What it is aint exactly clear. Leading newspapers opting for cheap glory of tabloid exposé on the tippling health minister after her alopecian recalcitrant deputy ministers was fired by a cantankerous president. Then the deputy president hits back with the backing of hordes on the minister’s multitasking management of indifference and questions the president’s bona fides.

Subsequently piques and cheviots fly from president cum columnists in his usually convoluted and vague as the oracle of Delphi on his on-line Letter; vituperating against the health deputy minister and syndicated newspaper columnists. In his typical philosophizing with a hammer and punchy journalistic prose he goes far, killing flies with a sledgehammer. And finds a companion of his bleak last days in the Trinidatan Indian guru and competent scholar turned biographer and expounder of the president intellectual history.

It was Tocqueville, the French philosopher of history, who said; “To keep silent is the most useful service that a mediocre talker can render to the public.” But has the howling quadragenarian youth league president, in search of events ever heard of Tocqueville? Having swallowed hook, line and sinker the rap of the kanga flipping guerrilla king, and learnt the chutzpah of not feeling guilty about greed, of replacing virtue with ambition; he’s been preaching the gospel of consumption as moral good.

Later-day millionaires, who long heeded the call before the quadragenarian opened his eyes, have themselves been sniffing for gold in the party political dung, attending any and every political cause of visibility, less they find ways to exploit the mayhem. Some have even gone ahead and sold their bearskin to foreign media markets in their life style politics before they even shot the bear. Having learnt the occidental art of making meaninglessness sound meaningful to they are busy garnering the voice of the chattering class, even greasing the hands of some syndicated journalists. You know what they say, money makes people impatient and the world go round.

Our public broadcaster meantime has been caught with its pants down between being his master’s voice and the demands of freedom. It is besotted by strong winds of reductionists nuances that makes it spit in its own dish. To be or not to be, whether it is correct to treat South African as adults or give them milk diet since its sophistication is not matured enough to sieve hokum from pocus.

Meantime, for their sins (or whatever materialists believe stead of), floundering communist provost after organising sporadic subversions pierce the shield of their defence with own spears by pilfering strained coffers of the Communist Party that is still collecting stranded bricks to rebuild the broken Berlin Wall. Their leading bloodhound, with his teeth sour in tongue, has just passed through the modern rite of passage (divorce), and opted fro marrying in the same breath and speed he divorced by. Talk about pouring new wine on old vets.

On the other side, sincere by half doddering former minister of law and disorder with the coterie of his generals and police commissioners overcame the past by hypocritical jarrings that nullified justice, and constructed themselves a convenient truth in the tragic expense of victims. They’ve managed to become the latest beneficiaries by passing themselves as victims of the system.

Leading opposition parties, disillusioned with their own sneaking pessimism and fears of republic of vandalism and anarchy in the offing, spend sleepless night trying to figure out ways of cashing in on the chaos. Confused whether to kill the white whale or wreck the ship they scamper helter-skelter; now announcing the coming doom; now putting their trust in the creative chaos of the times.

Rusty nails were finally driven through the walls of dinosaur pan africanist party by the court while battling to stay alive by firing and hiring their mealy mouthed president. The scheme thoroughly compacted the dizzying circle of their impotence like a donkey tied to a bucket pump that has become bored with its own fantasies. Their candle has burnt from both ends.

Wisely, the deputy president is spending this time picking mushrooms in the forest, a traditional Russian form of meditation. All this bolshie and blimpish is unsuitable for a lady. And any diligence in these bacchanalian times is misspent. All discerning wisdom to her and the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa; patience is always a virtue. Suffer the fools to hang themselves for the meek to inherit the earth.

Was it the former American president, Lyndon Johnson, who said; That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down.... But freedom is not enough…. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result….

And so freedom is not enough, especially in a culture that wishes to suppress individual conscience, and leaders who take too seriously these ironic words of Giancarlo Pajetta; “I have finally understood what pluralism is; it’s when lots of people share my point of view.”

Without being too paranoid we should always learn from history. And if the Russian history—hell we don’t even need to go that far when we have a clear example just across the Limpopo—teaches us anything it is that the start of a totalitarian regime begins with the steady elimination of critical media; obstruction of fair elections; murders of prominent critics of the regime; creation of a propaganda-fed groups with economic vested interests; imposition consent and criminalization of dissent. And usually the root of all this is the concentration of power in the hands of one tough guy at the top who sees himself as dauphin of the revolutionary cause.

Thou shall see me at Philippines; I mean Polokwane. Book me the first ticket to Polokwane; the circus is in that town this year, and the veils are coming off this time.

The family Man

My varsity ex-girlfriend, after ‘sort of coming across your blog,’ which means she googled me; decided to drop me an email recently. Last week she ‘happened to be in your city (Cape Town)’ and thought ‘I’d give you a call to see if you were free for lunch or something.’ This is the part where I’m supposed to pretend I’m a gentleman and say agreed because I thought it’d be nice to catch up on our respective lives for old times sake.

The truth is, I’m soon gonna hit the big 4, and though living with my seven year old daughter has it’s rewards it isn’t everything, if you catch my drift. There was a certain trembling curiosity, even chaste flirtatiousness, in my agreeing to meet my ex. I had hoped we might rekindle the fire and so on and so on. I was also genuinely hoping for a reforming and convivial afternoon. We decided to meet at Long Street for lunch.

We greeted with a restrained ambiguous hug before caressing each other with non-committal smiles. I had chosen the coffee-house as one of the last distinct locations that have not yet been deracinated and homogenized by the modern consumerist Mall culture. Imagine my slight irritation when after we exchanged greeting the first thing she asked was; “Is there a Starbucks around here? They do not sell any caffè latte here.”
“Why not ask them to make an espresso with lots of milk?”
“It’s no the same thing.” What’s the difference? I wanted to say but thought better of it.

She took out her magazine and got absorbed on it. Her imitative desires have always made her a sucker for the wheel of fashion, I thought to myself.
“Because I could not get my latte I decided to go for my early afternoon drink.” She was pointing to her glass of pastis. “I find its cool liquorice taste very palatable; trust French epicurism if anything. For lack of interesting things to do I’ve become a bon vivant.” She said, returning her eyes to the magazine. It might be a good time to reveal that in the past few years she has been to France and the US on some extended magazine and economic training.
“I see in your choice of the place that you still prefer the romance to style. I would have preferred something a little classy.” She said that in tone of bright affection that was meant to be sarcastic.
“I’ll take a little anodyne luxury anytime to . . .”
“Soigné?”
“Fake-posh is the word I was looking for.” We were hardly ten minutes in seeing each other after eight years yet were already on each other’s throats; back to our old ways. “Don’t we have anything better to talk about?” I asked trying to break the sense of quiet tension left by my last sentence.
“I see you’re still pretending to be the alienated writer, looking down on poor intellectual deprived like us.”
“I have my difficulties but they are better than bourgeois philistinism.” The truth of the matter is, I realised then, that if we ever had any other way of relating to each other we forgot it long time ago. “Otherwise how’re things with you?” I asked, training my eye on her magazine to peak at what had engrossed her so much.
“I here you’ve become quite a family man, uxorial I guess, with a kid and all.” She made it sound as if I had regressed.
“I’m not married. Yes I live with my daughter since she was nine months.”
“That must be quite a responsibility.” She put the magazine down and turned to the menu; “Let’s see what’s to eat here in the bohemian coffee-bar.”
“Must you be cynical about everything?”
“I suppose will have to settle for sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches would be fine by me.” I raised my arm to the waiter, eager to be done with our meeting. I ordered a glass of wine also, which was met with a look of bewilderment by my companion.
“Do you trust their wine selection here? I perused through and found it, like, so blasé.” She threw her head back as she said that.
“I’m okay with it,” said I, trying to recover my self-esteem.
“Phew! Actually I’ll just have vichyssoise and a green salad.” And then she turned back to her magazine again. “Listen to this.” She went on to read the piece on the magazine in confected excitement. I tried to follow the intoxicating lyricism of clichés and chewed-up self-help agitprop of what she was reading but eventually had to give up when I noticed I wasn’t getting anywhere.
“This stuff is like, amazing;” said she in conclusion. The waiter arrived with our orders.
“How is Jo’burg?”
“Definitely not the fin de siècle city we left in 99. It’s rediscovering it’s soul. And Cape Town?”
“Urbane, cosmopolitan, aesthetic and airy; it’s a wonderful mélange really.”
“And a little delinquent, which I imagine suites you well.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“This Vichyssoise taste like boiled rags. I guess the salad will have to be the piéce résistance of my meal then.” She continued after a while. “Elitist is what I meant to say about Cape Town.”
“O! Come on; if you must criticize the city at least respect her enough to come up with something more original than that.”
“Okay; she has her back on the continent and eye on the sea.”
“That’s a dead metaphor for the Cape Town of the twenty first century. Have you looked around this city lately? It is quickly cultivating an African identity.”
“And consciously dedicating everything to the pursuit of pleasure.”
“The city has character.”
“And Joz doesn’t?”
“They are different.”
“You damn right they are, the other has too much social exclusion and European pretensions.”
“Says Ms I want my latte.” She turned her eyes back to her magazine. My thoughts drifted to her obsessive need to appear sophisticated in my eyes. The magazine was her personality magnifier. She wanted me to see that this is where she is now; the world of pampered people in provocative poses, sports cars and exotic perfumes. But now and then I caught a stranded dislocation in her face; and happily the girl I once fell in love with.
She kept pointing to things she still needed that were advertised on the magazine. I guess the magazine was fulfilling its commercial task of enticing her into wanting more. We said our good byes after our lunch without really having talked about anything of real value in both our lives. As I watched her press the remote controlled alarm of her German sedan something broke alive in me.
It is always sad and embarrassing to catch the pretences of those we can see through, especially if they are close to us. She had come not to see me per se but to gloat; to intimidate me with nouvelle vague. To make me see in regret what I had supposedly missed. Her behaviour assured me that I had made a right decision in deciding, almost a decade ago, that our personalities were not compatible.
There were days I wondered about my decision. I thank her for the reassurance and the freshness she unwittingly reintroduced in my chosen life. She made me realised for sure that I’m an irretrievably family man. Her visit gave me clarity that’s usually absent on my daily life of homeworks, school meetings, ballet classes, Cool Cats, Shriek beddings, headless Barbie dolls that turn up everywhere in the house, story book readings, toothaches, asthmatic attacks in the middle of the night and the anxiety of waiting for doctors at hospitals in those hours, and so forth and so forth.
When we parted I went to pick my daughter up from school. She told me that one her classmates was making fun of her because on the last parent meeting when they were told they should bring their moms she brought her dad.
“And what did you say to her.” I asked her.
“I told her my dad is also my mom tshi!” That my girl. And that is what I’m talking about, little blessings like those that give real meaning to my life.

Friday, 10 August 2007

The BEE Menace

I seem to be in a letter writing mood these days so I decided to write another one to our notorious Sunday Times syndicated columnist lately turned blogamist. (http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/columnists/davidbullard/Default.aspx?id=118994)

Dearest David “Bulldog1” Bullard

I was seating at a popular shebeen in Gugs, seeping from a glass of cheap Irish Whisky while waiting for my Chateaubriand—yes we call our braai steaks that now to show our newly acquired sophistication and distinguish ourselves from the hoi polloi—trying to come up with ways of upping my status when I was made privy to some disturbing news. Two BEE guys, driving CLK and Audi TT came to take the house by storm. Chicks started flocking on them like flies to offal. It was as if the rest of us were not even there. It was a massacre I tell you. Most of us struggling black folks are gatvol with these guys; it’s not only a white problem, we’re feeling the pain too in the township.

As I was saying. I eavesdropped on their talk as they were discussing the possibility that the shooting in your house was not random but a calculated stance to scare you. That’s why it was made to look like a robbery. Broer, looks like you’ve enemies in high places. You’ve angered a lot of powerful people in the BEE scale with your foot in the mouth column.

Believe you me I know how it’s like to have cold metal in your flesh, to lie derelict and bereft with blood sipping off your body like a ruptured bag of maize. In my case I was rescued by a taxi-man—bless his soul—who saw the incident and promptly took me to the hospital. You see even the menacing taxi man can be of some use. At least the thugs that attacked you didn’t cut your face. They cut off my nose man, which compounded my problems; because with the ugly scar on my face now the chicks think I’m a thug.

I also know how irritating it is to loose your investment on designer clothes. They took my Addidas takkies. I’m sure you’ve gone back to wearing your designer jeans again, having washed the blood off with cold water once your wife sewed them back. You don’t strike me as the like that’ll have psychological misgivings in wearing the pants again. Leave that jargon to the learned bubbles of Freudians; you are better than that. Believe me I’ve been in your shoes, inyawo zinodaka, as uRingo would say in his song. Do you listen to anything besides the hoarse rumblings of Bob Dylan?

Bulldog, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, or think I’m trying to blackmail you with the information I have—let’s just call it an intercourse based on reciprocal self-interest. But you need to promise to throw some car reviewing bones my direction if you want me to reveal the name of who ordered your hit. I need to be seen driving an executive car to up my status. You know how it is in this new laissez-faire state of South Africa; we are all now slaves to our concupiscible appetites now; greed and ambition are the new virtue. The only freedom we have is that of a fox in the coop broer. You know how Thucydides’ maxim go: the strong do as they can, and the weak suffer as they must. The rich are the strong in our times.

I’m sure you understand the pressures people like me are under in the township with this emergency of BEE cronies. The chicks don’t even take a second look on us anymore, with our battered Sentras. What must we do, speak about the virtues of moderation? I admit I once tried that; giving a drunken lecture about how the unexamined life was not worth living, and the paradoxes of Zeno, to a chick I was infatuated by. When I got to the part about the fleet-footed Achilles never catching the tortoise she wanted to have some of what I had been smoking. Needless to say, I slept alone that night. So now I’ve decided what monkey sees monkey do.

You see our situation is hopeless here. These BEE chaps are like torpedo fishes that benumb with stupid catch-phrases and assumptions of knowledge that are designed to hide their ignorance to anyone who comes near them. Monetary success has won them the palm of ostensibly superior intelligence. Watching them is like being on stage on some opéra comique. Everyone listens to their nonsense as if it were holy writ. At shebeens they don’t even pay for their single malts anymore. Mothers consider it an honour when they go out with their daughters. See what I mean?

I’m sure by now Bull you agree with me that something needs to be done. I’ve a plan that might redeem my personal situation with your help. As I told you, I need to be seen in a SLK or something, even if for a weekend. I need to strut my walk and stalk my bird broer. Hee! I’m sure you can arrange that. Make it look like meritocracy, big white companies are now wary of this affirmative action thing. On second thoughts, I don’t care how you do it, just get me the damn car; or I’m soon going to loose my mind. You’re the one who’s au courant with these big fishes in the motor industry.

If Desmond Dube can do it so can I. I’m sure your word carries a lot of weight with the motor magnates. Get me a German isilahle [coupé]. I don’t want no Korean or Japanese wannabe. And since I know fakol about engines, you’ll have to do the honours of righting the report. Though seeing the likes of Dube and the honky bo-peepers in The Times, I doubt if much technicality is needed. I’ve this motto always ringing in my mind: Never! Ever fake the moves, in the words of The Tribe Called Quest. I don’t expect you to know much about that since, I’m sure—South African sure that actually means suspect—you think rap is degenerate noise of frustrated urbane kids.

By the way I think The Sunday Times sucks these days; it has become nothing but a glorified tabloid of blurbing narcissists with glib analytic pretensions. But we are not talking about that now; I just thought I’ll let you know that I’ve voted with my feet to the Sunday Independent.

So that we’re clear about things between us also. Cicero defined friendship “as nothing other than agreement over all things divine and human along with good will and affection.” It seems undeniable to me that you and I are in general agreement about somethings, but—the proverbial but—I’ve a reputation to maintain. I’m a comrade. You are—judging by the fetish sophistication of a poseur in your column—a secular fundamentalist. Calling oneself Liberal is blasé broer; you must get on with the groove. After all, if the ‘unlikable’ or should that be ‘unsinkable’ Mr. Roberts is to be believed, most of you guys are very illiberal in your liberalism—watch this space for a review of his recent book; ‘Fit To Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki.’

In any case, there’s an uncrossable line of demarcation between you and me, as an illiberal liberal, and I a budding BEE comrade, I doubt even my rise in the greasy pole might bridge. I’ve heard through the greenflies that Big Brother has eyed me to fill the soon to be vacant position of presidency presently filled by an octogenarian in the ANCYL. So soon I shall be looking down on you as an Epicurean predatory scum of letters. Try not to take my utterance too much to heart, I have to keep up appearances and show that I’ve a sting otherwise I’ll never get anywhere in my political circles.

Fraternising with the you might spoil my BEE chances. I won’t have that. It is verboten in our circles to agree with the enemy no matter how right he might be. I also do not want to see myself dodging bullets and hired daggers. People are watching. So I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t accept any braai invitations to your house. You’re constantly under surveillance from Big Brother. So we’ll have to arrange to meet clandestinely on some exotic restaurant where you’ll be paying—come on Bull, I’m a comrade whose BEE star has not shinned—when you hand me the car.

Take Bull broer. I shall be calling you soon on an untraceable unregistered cell phone. I hope I’ve not been too unctuous. I know how cloying that can be. I’m a comrade remember.

1We call you that name of endearment here in the township because your bite is as fearsome as your bark.

Wednesday, 01 August 2007

Abortion vs The Right To Life

I’m always visited by a deep sense of grateful sadness whenever my daughter’s birthday approaches. I remember the day her mom told me she was pregnant. She was a university student, and I was still under the depression shadow, not knowing what I wanted to do with, or if I wanted, my life. She thought abortion would be a better solution. I nearly agreed. We came into an agreement that if she carried the child to term, nurture and gave birth to until she was ready for weaning, I’d take care of it on my own.

I’m eternally grateful that she agreed to my terms since she too was wholly willing to terminate the pregnancy. My daughter has been living with me since she was about nine months. She spends her school holidays with her mom and half-sisters in Port Elizabeth.

I’m saying all this because I’m rather intrigued by the high statistics of abortion in our country, and irritated by its promulgators who seem to regard it as just one of the imperatives of democratic progress and enlightenment. One of my reasons for deciding to become a writer was as an attempt at defending the quality of human life.

I might use my culture or religious belief as my reasoning why I think abortion is wrong but I choose not to partly because most of the people in my immediate circles are agnostic, verging on atheism. They like using social and democratic freedom in arguing for a woman’s right to abortion. I believe in a woman’s right to do whatever they wish with their bodies so long as that right does not infringe on other’s rights.

The argument that abortion reduces the number of unfit parents, or addresses the problem of poverty is bunkum. Bad parents are not made by children they bare, neither are most abortionists poor. The idea of framing the right to abortion in social garb has a blackmailing tendency, as if you don’t support a woman’s right to abortion you are infringing on their sacrosanct Human Rights. As much as I believe in individual rights of freedom I also believe the right to life is the principal right of them all.

I believe the use of arguments about when does life actually begin—I believe at conception—are mostly disingenuous technical evasions that are not suasive and encourage moral bankruptcy. I’m Roman Catholic by faith, and try never to forget that Catholicism implies universalism—the beauty of the open mind and solidarity.

I believe that children should be planned. Planned children have a better chance in life. But I’ve come to believe that there can be no moral consensus between those who believe that the destruction of human life in the womb is wrong, and those who believe it is not. It may be possible to establish a pragmatic consensus among those who are prepared to discuss which abortions are less wrong than others. But attempts to establish foundations for a broader moral consensus always degenerate into glibness.

I’m of the opinion that each of us must be answerable to our own conscience and conviction. It is part of what makes us human. To take away our responsibility for our moral decisions is to take away our humanity. This implies that we must allow people to make their own decisions, even those we believe are wrong; because it would be more wrong for us to deny them the capacity to do that. Whether concerning politics or religion, it’s becoming clearer that our age is fraught with intolerant fundamentalists. Tolerance is the price we must pay for our democratic adventure of liberty.

I assume that even those who believe that abortion is ‘a right’ understand that women do not exercise that right in the same way they exercise their right to vote. I acknowledge that access to abortion can be a social good, while in the same breath believing that it’s in bad consciousness for woman to have an abortion. In the end, whatever the socio-political-religious meaning of abortion for an individual woman, abortion is essentially a private solution to an individual situation.

The morality of abortion cannot be resolved in the abstract. Each individual abortion takes place within its own complex set of circumstances. To understand abortion we need to understand its place in women’s lives. Those who defend the right to abortion win the argument, as far as I am concerned, only when they appeal to a sense of tolerance. To defend a life of an unborn child too, I believe that we must first win the conscience of individual women towards the sentiments and values of sanctity of every life.

There are no short-cuts to both these stands except proper instalment of rights and values. The sadder scenario is the mother who opts for one option due to ignorance, and then regrets her decision later on.

The effort of toleration involved in suffering the expression of an opinion one knows to be false is indispensable to liberty in a free society. Respecting a person’s right to be wrong is a grave requirement in a free society. It’s what the friends of Voltaire promulgated as one of his saying, i.e. that of defending another person’s right to be wrong with your life if need be. Respecting a person’s right to be wrong is a transforming imperative of free societies, especially those where religious values have lost their hold.