Feel For Me a Brimming Bowl

Recently I attended a friend’s wedding held at Hermanus outside Cape Town. He’s the closest thing I have to a best friend. The following week he was leaving for the US to further his studies in one of the Ivy League education institutions. We were together at varsity in Johannesburg during the dying years of the eighties and early nineties, probably the most seminal years in the beginnings of our country’s democracy.

We sat together at the resort’s veranda watching whales in the moribund hours after the reception. It was a poignantly beautiful site that brought to mind something Keats said about a line in Spenser’s poem; “what an image that is—‘sea-shouldering whales!’ It sounds like something out of Homer, doesn’t it? Remarked my friend. The felicity of language and image has been both our passion. We sat back with our drinks, like whales in shallow waters, feeling the political weight of parting billows on our shoulders—the president of the republic had just been recalled by the ruling party under unsatisfactory conditions.

I think I understand now why you allowed your party membership to lapse after the likes of Mandelas were released; said he after a while (Though I had not been an official member of the African National Congress I still felt it to be my political home). Up till then he had been working in the national legislator. The recall of president Mbeki convinced him it was time to move on. We recalled how only more than a decade ago we brimmed with hope because we had worked ourselves into national pride. We wanted to be part of the brick and mortar of the new, brighter, future for our country. Now we were no longer feeling the spark that fired that pride. What had gone wrong?

We talked long about radical incongruities that cripple our national pride. It’s just politics, said I in the end, knowing very well that it was exactly what it was not. You see, to us at least, it was never about politics, but dreams of what the ancient Greeks called nomoi; the training of citizen for common good. To learn state laws—law here does not only concern regulating relations between people and their affairs, but formative creative agent aimed at instilling virtue of excellence in citizen-body. We thought we would be part of building blocks to instill culture of intelligence and modesty; paths of thoughts and practices inspired by democratic, human dignity and moral good.

We thought we could use politics to recover the African wellspring which was vandalised by the invidious experience of colonialism and apartheid. We meant to reverse the self-imposed loss of road markers, blood memory and subconscious mental habits of our people, so as to recover by excavation our indigenous ways. In short, we thought we would reinvest the notion of humanities with ubuntu. We believed the time had come for Africa to rediscover the expression of her soul, conceptualised by what Greeks termed paideia. [Paideia is a general education dating from the mid–fifth century BC, designed to prepare young men for active citizenship. It was further developed in the Roman notion of humanitas, set forth in Cicero’s De Oratore (55 BC). The Early Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine, developed it into a program of Christian education, built around the study of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.] We saw ourselves as agents of that in our country.

I mention all this to highlight the fact that, for us, it was never about politics, but about the refinement of our sentiments and moral sensibilities. When you disregard that, you kill the spark of national pride. We bought, lock, stock and barrel, into the idea of African Renaissance, the assimilation of creative energies from different cultural backgrounds and recovery of classical traditions, infused with penetrating light of what is best in all times. The eccentricities of the present ANC administration pour water into that spark. We found ourselves caught between our beliefs and their erratic behaviour, which we felt no longer correlates with our values and beliefs.

We needed a new home, a consistent political party that must stand outside the lure of false politicking. We need leaders that’ll take seriously the practice of our democracy, moral imperatives, social and economic justice. Who share our social view and moral principles. Who’ll not just give symbolic self-expression to them, readily disregard in promotion of group interest, or sacrifice to party interests. That is why we now see Cope (Congress for the People) as the new promise for our aspirations.
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The bride came fetching her groom for their first married night. Our eyes filled with tears; voices faltered. It might be a long time before we see each other again. “I always make an awkward bow.” The poet assisted. “Fill for me a brimming bowl.” Said I as they left. My thoughts mounted on stilts and cleaved on the mystical air of mournful whale cries. In the stillness of my heart I wished all of them joy in their mating season. What’s that Zakes Mda starts his book of similar title with: ‘The sea is bleeding from the scars of HarSaul . . .’ Ah, ja! The ancient sea is accusing the precocity of things.

Ripeness is all

The van of political circumstances culminated to most South Africans, who were concerned by the wrong turn the politics of the country under the tutelage of the Tripartite Alliance had taken, answering the call of Terror Lekota to attend the National Convention at Sandton. Most of us who started this year as members of the ANC, albeit uncomfortably so since the purging that followed the present leadership of the ANC at Polokwane, never in our lives thought we could leave the ANC. But the unilateral decision by the NEC of the ANC to recall the former president of the republic, and the comedy of errors that followed that decision, was the last proverbial straw. We found ourselves caught between our beliefs and erratic behaviour of the leadership of our political home we’ve given our lives into, which we felt no longer correlate with our values and beliefs.


After making numerous means to engage our leadership our voice was ignored, nee, marginalised because we happened not to be of certain persuasion, or rallied behind certain individuals during the Polokwane presidential race. Surveying all this we felt we needed to find other means to reinstate the ideas of Freedom Charter we cherish. We felt we needed a consistent political party that must stand outside the lure of false politicking where we’ll be able to identify leaders that’ll take seriously the practise of our democracy, moral imperatives, social and economic justice. Leaders who share our social view and moral principles. Who’ll not just give symbolic self-expression to these values while readily disregarding them in promotion of group interest, or sacrifice them to party interests.


Coming from the National Convention it was clear that the majority of South Africans share our values. It put paid to those who regard us just as disgruntled members of the ANC, bitter because we lost or didn’t get power at Polokwane. The formation of the Congress of the People is not the winter of elite few’s distress but an answer to deeper aspirations of all South Africans. It is birth pangs of something beautiful and sublime for democratic freedom of our country that has long been pining to be born since it became clear that the dream of full non-racialism has not been fully realised even in the governance of the ANC.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, is quoted to have, when asked why he disagreed with Plato, whose protégé he was, answered: Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is the truth. Those of us who emerge from the struggle heritage of the Liberation Movement still hold the ANC dear, but dearer still is the truth. Therefore, sober and free from prejudice of ANC bashing, we’ve decided to forge a new way to consolidate and advance the democratic gains for our freedom. This demanded extensive soul searching and maturity on our part, even emotional and material sacrifices. Like an older child who has decided to leave his parent’s house, following the eternal law of growth, we took on this step that must never be taken for granted, or whose significance must not be underestimated. Ripeness is all, as Edgar remarked in Shakespeare’s remarkable drama, King Lear.

We all know the story; the dementia of the old king, put suspicion and hating against his own children, making impossible for them to remain home. It is with that feeling we left our political home to forge ahead to more freedom and diversity. We repeat. We should be better than our grumpy old men, and try never to use barbed tongues against our parents.

As we leave our home, fate strangles our hearts to free our heads. We take the responsibility of an older child to find our own way. We are aware that we must be vigilant, guard against blowing our inheritance with whores of foreign customs. Instead, like Joseph, we go before our brethren to plough the fields of Egypt, where we must gather granaries to bolster us when the drought comes. There’ll come a time when our fathers will send our brothers to seek food from our granaries. Like Joseph, we should be kind and not vindictive even then. We must share with them what we’ve learned as we all resume our much to a better life for all. For now, Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither: / Ripeness is all.

The shape of every historical present is structured by anticipation of a possible better future. We believe the Congress of the People is our best available means for the country to move forward against exhausted politics and ideologies. We need vigorous means to promote conditions for our freedom and democracy that are not determined by factional powers of the day, but based on strong ground of constitutional values. We need effective means to combat corruption, to move away from the endless schisms, empty barrelling and petrified vanity.

If anything our recent political experience has demonstrated that we should never again allow ourselves to be mystified by the lure of nostalgia into giving political power that serves power-interests and dead sloganeering. Even at the price of being called reactionary, anti-revolutionary, or labelled counter-revolutionary dissenters; we must never allow it again. Ranting of counter-revolutionary and all have become outmoded to the language and realities of our times. Our conditions have shifted. We need new politics to fit our era and social aspirations. We need ways and means to interpret even to those who do not yet see what the spirit of freedom fluttering within our hearts is doing. For too long we’ve been going in circles around the walls of Jericho, it is time we go to a higher place, to bring down the shackles of our mental slavery.

We must move to the next step of our liberation. Political emancipation, to be final, must also involve the liberation of self also from self. Slavery comes in different forms and is, more than anything, an internal mental disposition. We should not allow ourselves to be blinded by outmoded politics. Times are a changing. Nothing must obscure the complex diffuse of our naturalising social reality towards human dignity for all. Failing which the glories of our past, fast fading into empty sloganeering, would be nothing but just that, past. With the establishment of the Congress of the People the stage is set yet for the new trial of our invention.

All We Have Left Unsaid (Book Review)

I usually avoid books that win literature accolades for simple reason that I, almost always, end up confused about why. I’m happy to say Maxine Case’s book, All we have left unsaid, proved to be slightly different, a wonderful surprise despite the fact that it was a winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Africa.

In a nutshell, the book is about two sisterly-motherly loves and growing up in South Africa during the late eighties. It is a personal painful story of discovery, and panting means of trying to stay at ease with the world. Danny (Danika), whose older sister is called Lili (Lilian-Rose), is a protagonist. She begins her narrative over her dying mother’s hospital bed. Naturally, the poignancy of the situation takes her back to their growing up years. The usual kitsch and tat follows, which in this case lacks complexity and depth. The hard truth, as written by Jessa Crispin concerning these kind of memoirs is that; Either your book must be exceptionally written (a trait hard to find in memoirs these days) or you must have done something exceptional. You must have travelled to the underground or the heavens and come back with fire or golden apples or at least a little wisdom. It can’t just be, “Daddy hit me, mommy got cancer” — everyone has a sad story, and it is possible to go through a trauma or experience something significant without gaining any insight.

On other matters; it is strange that in South Africa I should complain of an over edited book (we are known to be sloppy in this department). But Maxine Case’s book is over edited. The style of writing is taught and taut, as is fashion in our times. Such style of writing suites well a short story genre, where the reader is challenged to stay at his / her alert best to the end. In a long work things get to a point where it feels like you’re being pulled by a tight rope, or listening to jarring notes from a tightly pulled guitar strings. That’s where the machinery starts creaking.

All we left unsaid is an easy read; an easy read with habitual use of active voice that, at some stage, makes for forcible writing. It maintains a certain level of, not invention, but performance that makes a reader feels like he’s being dragged by the ear by a headmistress. Our era believes that sentences of description or exposition must always be lively and emphatic; like, for example, in Case’s book, the penultimate passage of page 42:

My father comes home all the time now that my mother is pregnant. He still brings us biltong and still lifts me in the air, but he doesn’t play with me as much as he used to. He also does not fetch me from school.

I know that conjunctions are passé in our era, but we tend to forget that it helps to insert them now and then, just to lift the strain on the reader if nothing else. The paragraph would have been fine even if written as:

Father comes home all the time now that mother is pregnant, bringing us biltong and lifting me in the air though he no longer play with me as much as he used to. He no longer fetches me from school either.

It may be that this style of writing breaks all modern rules of tautness by substituting transitives in created actives, but this creates space for continuous flow in the reader’s mind, rather than all the abrupt ends and immediate beginnings. The point is made better by William Strunk, Jr. in his educative book Elements of Style. “[A] writer may err by making his sentences too uniformly compact and periodic, and an occasional loose sentence prevents the style from becoming too formal and gives the reader a certain relief.”

The tendency of shortening sentences, simplifying diction, and throwing confetti of platitudes (some thing Case’s book suffers from I am afraid) shows patterns of increased pandering to the lowest common intellectual denominator. It is worse when it is combined with mockery of complexity and analysis that is sometimes regarded as wit in out times.

The book All we left unsaid reads like a chic-flick version Shirley Goodness and Mercy. Only it lacks true narrative transport because it has very little natural psychological insightfulness. It is not a work of art but a good read for those who want less introspection (strange thing considering the subject), and more intrigues of contemporary sensationist novelists. It is not in the calibre of Marian Keys (my obsession on the genre), but then again it is Case’s debut book and I for one am looking forward to her second attempt.

South African National Convention

The shape of every historical present is structured by anticipation of a possible better future. That is the answer I give to those who question my support for Mosiuoa Lekota’s call for a NC (National Convention), where he promise will be the discussion of the political state of our country before we go to next year’s national elections. Lekota’s call is the best means available now for our country to move forward against exhausted politics of the left and liberal paternalism. I don’t suppose it to be an anodyne panacea but it sure bits seating around waiting for Julius Malema to take us down vulgar ‘revolutionary’ path.

We need to promote conditions of freedom and democracy in our country that are not determined by factional power of the day, but based on strong ground of constitutional values. And we need to move away from the endless schisms within the ANC between empty barrels and petrified vanity. Nothing shows their impotence as the criticism against the former Premier of Gauteng, Mbazima Shilowa. Resigning as Premier, Shilowa, summed his reasons as follows; “I am resigning due to my convictions that while the ANC has the right to recall any of its deployed cadres, the decision needs to be based on solid facts, be fair and just . . . I also did not feel that I will be able to, with conviction, publicly explain or defend the NEC’s decision on comrade Thabo Mbeki. You stand by your own if you think they've been wrongly dealt with. I'm doing no more than that . . ." Fair enough. It is his individual prerogative.

What puzzled me was the reaction of the YCL Gauteng secretary Alex Mashilo who felt Shilowa’s condemnation of Mbeki’s recall and resignation is a gross misconduct against the ANC. Why? Except that the ANC has become dupe to its own self-generated propaganda. It no longer recognises the discrepancies between official and practical consciousness as explained so aptly by Antonio Gramsci. Shilowa here is a typical individual who feels the party imperatives are unable to be transmuted into forms of routine social behaviour he has grown into; so, instead of living a life of contradiction, gives in to one pull. Such a move is unthinkable to an individual, like Mashilo, who leaves by exhortatory forms of official consciousness. Factual content and moral imperatives means nothing to him so long as he fulfils action-guiding power of formal ideology. And there lies the dividing rub that, presently, is turning comrade against comrade within the TA (Tripartite Alliance).

Terry Eagleton in his seminal book, Ideology, wrote; “It is astonishing how subtle, resourceful and quick-witted mean and women can be in proving themselves to be uncivilised and thickheaded. In one sense, of course, this ‘performative contradiction’ is cause for political despondency; but in the appropriate circumstances it is a contradiction on which a ruling order may come to grief.” Listen to the ever chaotic, ever contradictory opinions of different individuals within the TA and you’ll understand. Things have changed in the South political sphere. Or, rather, judging by their mounting anger and rising porcupine quills, are realising which direction the wind is blowing.

No amount of political mystification or wishful thinking will ever again afford the TA opportunity to lure the polity into giving it political power that serves power-interests and effects of false-consciousness. They may howl all they want about the ‘national revolution’, and label dissenters as counter-revolutionary. The revolutionary ranting has become outmoded to the language of the realities of our times. Conditions have shifted. For one, we’ve all become haute bourgeoisie, including the so called revolutionaries. Whoever is not is doing their damn best to be, or living with pretentious internal contradictions. The desire for consumer commodities permeates every aspect of our lives. Anyone who wants to arrest this flow will have to do so by framing their language around social interests of the society.

It really does not matter how men, like Shilowa, manage to escape the ideological conditioning of their former parties, into progressive consciousness of our times. What’s important is we all move to the next step of our liberation. Political emancipation to be final must also involve the liberation of self also from self. Slavery comes in different forms and is, more than anything, an internal mental disposition. We should not allow ourselves to be blinded by nostalgia of outmoded politics. Times are a changing! Bob Dylan would say. Nothing must obscure the complex diffuse of our naturalising social reality towards our human dignity, not even the glories of the past that are fast fading into empty sloganeering. Let’s go to the National Convention and discuss progressive ways to take our politics to the new generation!

Leaving the infested house

On Sunday (19 Oct. 08)afternoon, the breakaway group from the ANC held what it termed a Mass Resignation from the ANC to join the movement for the NC (National Convention) called by the former Defence Minister, Mosiuoa Lekota. The meeting was held at Noluxolo Primary School, Samora Machell (Philippi), one of the poorest townships of Cape Town. A little more than thousand (by estimation) people gathered, among whom, hundreds to hand back their ANC and SACP membership cards, including 11 Councillors.

The atmosphere was charged with emotion, sometimes poignant as long serving members, like Dan Nokhatywa, speaking on behalf of the resignees, recounted his experiences in the ANC of the past 39 nine years. He concluded by echoing the former secretary general of the Dullar Ohma region, Mbulelo Ncedani, earlier accusation that ‘the ANC has been hijacked by people who violate its values, principles and traditions.’ They said they had no choice but to seek new homes who respect values of freedom, and said ‘being a member of the ANC is not about the flag and logo, but the spirit and traditions freedom and democracy.’

The former Premier of Guateng, Mbazima Shilowa, addressed the meeting as the main speaker. He started with an anecdote of a infested house. Speaking in strangling Xhosa he said; ‘When your house is infested by vermin; first you fumigate it. But if that does not work, you are forced to seek another home.’ Shilowa went on to echo the religious song used by the religious minister who opened the meeting; Lizalise idinga lakho, Thixo Nkosi yenyaniso (Fulfil your promise, God King of truth). The mood became sombre at this point as Shilowa went on to counteract those who accused them of being power hungry, elite group, blue lights politicians, and so forth. He invited them to come and see who’s answering their call; ‘poor people who have no water, electricity, formal housing . . .’

At pains to emphasize need for respect and discipline, Shilowa admonished those going to the NC never to intimidate others or use cohesive means to promote their cause. Paraphrasing Ghandi he said; ‘We must be the change we want to see being ruled by.’ He invited the Tripartite Alliance leadership to be democratic enough to allow those of their membership who want to attend the NC. ‘If you say we’re just a few, what are you so afraid of? Those who’re sure of themselves do not go around looking over their shoulders. They walk proudly straight, believing in themselves and their cause.’

‘We, the people of Mzantsi, black and white, rich and poor; need to seat down and say: What is our take on democracy, and discuss it openly, all of us. We need to develop shared values for South Africa, of respect and democracy we can all believe in, even if we have different ideas how to implement them . . . We need to say, for instance, we supported proportional representation, because we believe in its redeeming qualities, but now we’re wiser.’ Shilowa said. He went to narrate how former President of the Republic, T. Mbeki, was dragged through mud by few people who elected themselves by the grievances they had against him. ‘Make no mistake; the president did not resign of his free will, he was pushed. When you ask a person, you do so before the decision to oust him is made.’ Shilowa concluded that perhaps the time has come for us to elect our presidents, members of parliament, councillors, and so forth from the ground. ‘Let’s discuss such things on the coming Convention.’

He admonished those who had decided to resign from the ANC to take another moment and think things through. ‘No one should resign if they’re not ready. I was ready when I did, and am not going back to Egypt again, even if the road ahead gets tough.’ He told those who are ready to go out and spread the news of the NC. He said the present leadership of the ANC has made it impossible for them to remain in the house they so loved, and now they were homeless, gathering bricks and mortar to build another home on principles of freedom, respect for others, democracy, discipline, morally and otherwise.

The meeting started and ended in lively new political songs that had seminal meaning to the situation:
Sasimxelele uSkwasha sathi lo ngunyaka wethu! (We told Skwasha this is our year!)
Viva! Viva! Terror wethu! (Viva! Viva! Our Terror!)

Another song was more to the point after Ncedani told people they must remember that they were not anti-ANC but pro-freedom and democracy:

Samshiya uMantashe, salandela uShilowa! (We left Mantashe, to follow Shilowa!)
Soyika ukutshabalala! Siyoyika! Siyoyika! (We’re afraid of perishing! Are afraid! Afraid!

When in African society songs are used in this manner, you know something significant is in the air. The architects are drawing blue prints and workers gathering building materials.

What Direction Will I Vote?

The recent call by the Archbishop emeritus of the Anglican Church, Desmond Tutu, that if the current situation within the ruling party persists he won’t vote, might understandable but it is ill advised. An intelligent calculation would tell you boycotting the voting polls to register your dissatisfaction with the ANC will achieve very little except hand it victory still, albeit at a lower margin of voter turnout.

It is imperative that all of us who are eligible to vote do so, not only as a duty to our young democracy, but to categorically demonstrate that South African political life is not solely dependent on the ANC. Even when we decide to be sceptical about politics our basis should not be psychological but philosophical, i.e. based on our search for a better political concept. For those who fill let down by the ANC the search, even if its starts on the ideal, must come to reality and find out what approximate that ideal. Hence I’ve been doing a mental check, rather elimination to see about my alternatives. If I start from the basis that I’ll vote next year, the next question becomes for what.

The DA has its attraction to me, like liberal values (albiet not always practised to best ability) and principled organisational skills. But I’m wary of its history and past tendencies of grovelling politics coupled with distasteful opportunism. There are personal issues also. The DA for me is still too much of a white world (I say white world, not too white. I do not mind skin colour, just attitudes). My experience in studying in a liberal campus taught me that in a white world you are in the juggernaut path of subtle prejudice, perennial suspicion, soft exclusion and latent racism. I understand this might be unfair to the DA since I’ve never belonged to the party and so do not know its internal attitudes, but I can’t help my historical baggage, which I realise now I need to work on it too.

There’s been a lot of hype about the UDM (United Democratic Movement) in black areas lately. Everyone is talking about Injengele (General), referring to Bantu Holimisa’s past history as a General in the Transkian army where he staged a coup d’etat to get read of a corrupt regime. He became the beloved of denizens Transkie since then, but I’ve never been able to fully share the general love. Granted he conducted himself reasonably well as a ruler. I suppose we don’t have to judge him by that, but I find scarce material to judge his party policy and so forth. Also I’m not in a habit of following personality cults.

I think the Christian Democrats are fundamentalist howlers who are bent on capitalising on South African’s highly religious sentiment. As much as we need religion to base and develop our value system, with the fact that the virtue of religion is justice towards God and other people; it must keep out of active politics. I strongly support the separation of powers between State and Church, for the good of religion more than anything.

I think the Pan Africanist movements, like PAC (Pan Africanist Congress), have lost direction, or at least their élan by failing to keep up with social realities of the present age. To add insult to injury they are embroiled in serious internal turmoil that has just assailed the ANC. Fatalism is the best way I can define their wretched condition. It is not serviceable to our social needs. It is unfortunate that Black Consciousness has become so successful that it has become more of a cultural movement than a political entity. I find it offers me next to nothing in my search for a political concept. This leaves me with the ID (Independent Democrats).

I’ll probably vote for the new party being promoted by Lekota and Shilowa provided it avoids personality cults and its policies are not inchoate. The duo gives me hope of direction for what the politics of our country should be moving towards. They need to quickly find ideology. By ideology I don’t mean systematically distorting modes of communication, but functional suasive strategies directed towards achieving expressive effects of our lived experience and aspirations. Lekota has been able in the past, through the UDF (United Democratic Front) to service us with an idea that politics as a power process must be accountable to the polity. If he can sustain that and develop it into the realm of ideology, that is, the means by which power interests service social significance then they might have a winning ticket.

Naturally, Lekota, will garner a lot of support, especially from people like me who broke their political teeth on organizations of civil strife in the 80s, like UDF. The signs are there. Having spent most of the past decade in the wilderness, feeling a little jaded from the diet of honey and locust (Qhilika, ferment honey drink, sometimes having a bacchanal raving party while waiting for the country to come into its senses); we feel things have gone far enough. South Africa has now fully entered the arena of discursive struggle where it needs to dispel the power of common illusion, even illusions that express real needs. What the country needs is a consistent political party that must stand outside the lure of false consciousness in communicating a social reality that is recognizable to the polity without being cavalier. It needs leadership that takes seriously the message and practise of moral imperatives, social and economic justice.

South Africans are ripe for a party that shares their Weltanschauung (worldview), that’ll exhibit a certain style of perception which is not parochial or elitist. Who would promote a kind of symbolic self-expression without promoting certain group interest at the expense of the others, or readiness to sacrifice truth to less reputable goals of party interests. Lekota’s party seem to me to look more and more like what we’ve been looking for.

Message in the song

The Liberation Movement in South Africa has always garnered its support mostly through the song. Hence it was not surprising for me to see that the two conferences of the ANC this past weekend at Langa (dissident) and Gugulethu (official) did most of their combat through songs more than anything. I attended the breakaway party meeting at Langa where the atmosphere was charged. The predominant song was:

Oliva! Oliva molo soja! Oliver! Oliver greetings soldier!
Thina sigxothiwe ekhaya! We have expelled from our home!

The Oliver who was being invoked is Oliver Tambo, the late ANC president before Nelson Mandela whose spirits the attends felt was being raped by the present ANC leadership. It was a little amusing to see the former president of the republic, T. Mbeki, raised to a saintly stature with the likes of arch bishop Desmond Tutu, Mosiuoa Lekota and Smuts Ngonyama:

Awu Zizi(Mbeki)! Ndibambe ngesendla! Hey Zizi (Mbeki)! Hold me by the hand!
Ndigaw’ embuthweni! Lest I fall away from the Organisation!
Intliziyo kaThabo ingcwalisekile! Thabo’s heart is pure!
Sizo ngcatsha kuyo! It’ll be our refuge!

Thabo Mbeki’s name was alternatively replaced with that of Tutu, Lekota and Smuts. Malema, president of ANCYL, was warned that the Freedom songs are a cultural and heritage of South African folk spirit. He was told he knows nothing of sacrifice and spilling of blood for freedom principles so he had better shut his mouth because such thing were done long before he was born.

Then Imbongi, by the name of Phumlani Msutu came to the stage. He admonished people to keep their spirits down because rage can invent many ways for the destruction of the nation. He said husband men are more useful in time of poverty than men of war. He said things in Polokwane begun in foolishness, and proceeded in legitimised crime, and that, if not reigned will end in misery for all. He said feral madness prompts a perverted mind. He was amazed at the blindness the devil sows to invent mischief. He said those in power do not care what mischief they sow to procure their ambition. They blow coals of contention to follow their lust without caring for the misery they brought t the poor. They desire domineering, vainglory, revenge and malice to satisfy their spleens and the madness of avarice. They’ve no remorse, and no bounds of shame to satisfy their parasitic fawners. They pretend zeal for desired reformation when all along they just want to avert the guilt of one person and attain vain titles. They have fine speeches to please the mob, while promoting the filthy transgression against civil laws. They do not know how to govern their action with discretion and providence. Conquered by vanities and fopperies of the time, with no end to empty words, like filching wasps, they prey on ignorance of the masses. Their lives are an opposite of what they preach. They square circles, convince others to fast where they themselves feast. How much is enough?

I was shaken to the core. I guess that’s what the prophets of Israel did for the nation. The greatness of the nation of Israel lay in the fact that no matter how far they strayed from the ways of YHW they always, somehow, found their way back to their true calling. How will the South Africa fair?

Mosiuoa Lekota, the driving force behind the call for a South African National Convention admonished his followers in the meeting not to follow the calls for violence, but instead to work for peace, even when prepared to lay their lives for principles of democracy and freedom, like they did under apartheid regime. He said he’ll exhaust his energies working for a constitutional democracy in the country, and called to every South African of goodwill, within and out of ANC, to join him in the quest, and ways to achieve it that’ll be democratically discussed on the democratic National Convention yet to be announced. He emphasised that it was time for South African politics to move on with mean and women ‘who are trust worthy and honest’ on the helm.

What came out clear from the meeting was that things on the South African political sphere have changed, changed utterly. As one of the songs went:

Lekota imbi lendawo Lekota this place is ugly
Khuw’ thethe qabane! Speak comrade!
With the next generation, iANC ivile. The ANC has heard.
Yizani nibone indaba Come and see
Yonakel’ eWestern Cape! Things are ruined in Western Cape!

Lekota told those gathered that similar gathering are being planned for Eastern Cape and all other provinces. Having been in my home province, Eastern Cape, and saw how most the branches were not just disgruntled, but ready to secede last December, I believe what we’ve seen in the Western Cape is just a spark that’ll inflame fire in like provinces. Perhaps, that is what South African politics need at this juncture, purification by fire.

Clearing the air

The cognitive inflexibility of South African (black) voters has been a long lamented fact, more so now with cloying creative chaos within the ANC (African National Congress). Opposition parties are trying to think of best ways to feed on the carrion of ruling party infightings. Is it still a certain thing that the ANC will win the next election with a big, albeit diminishing, margin? Many are hoping for the break up of the ANC to give voters alternative and spell what is called ‘the normalisation of our politics’, meaning full multiparty, or at least two party, democracy. Helen Zille, the leader of DA (democratic Alliance) said as much: “We have to bring party formations in line with the new reality, the real political divisions of our time. The biggest barrier to this process is the democrats in the ANC who believe their party is redeemable. It is not."

Forgetting a while about know it all liberal attitude, and mistaken assumptions that people do not know what’s good for them; let’s look closer at the psychological reasons (I believe they are the major stumbling block) why black people in South Africa don’t seem too eager to join in the so called political realities of our times. Certainly the element of nostalgia, of regarding the ANC as the author of democracy in this country, is present. But alone, I believe, this is not enough reason holding people back. Economic policies too play a part, after all, to paraphrase Charles Péguy's dictum, everything does end up in politics, or, as the case may be, economics. More than that, South Africa seems to be among countries that make nonsense out of Fukuyama thesis that “There are no serious ideological competitors left to liberal democracy.” The rise of China’s state capitalism in communist creed, the revanchist Russia, and native Venezuelan democracy, being few other examples.

The DA, for instance, is a liberal party, which means that its gestalt is largely Millian. In a nutshell, John Stuart Mill’s promoted a society which at best would be peaceful, open, and creative place, where diverse individuals respect each other's rights and law, while banding together voluntarily to help those in need. He believed in laws for the common good and freedom of association according to vested interests. That, in essence, is a liberal view and what has, quintessentially, come to be known as a social contract. What it does not offer, even at its best, is a deep sense of belonging. This is why the liberal view does not appeal to a black man’s collective mind. Also the liberal view tends to neglect the issue of class struggle, something ingrained in the collective struggle of Africa, hugely influenced by Marxism.

The African view does not regard the individual as the basic social unit, but family structure as a model for all institutions. It respects hierarchal authority, which is why you mostly hear that the ANC is not just an organisation but a home. Individuals in African societies are born into strong and constraining relationships. This sometimes profoundly limit their autonomy—something adverse to the liberal mind—but gives a sense of belonging. “Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free himself from all social pressure is to abandon himself and demoralize him." Africans share this view with Emile Durkheim.

African societies strive to be stable networks composed of many nested and overlapping groups that socialize, reshape, and care for individuals who, if left to their own devices, would fall into abjectness. Their shortcoming, for instance, is this collective support can easily fall into suborn cronyism and patronage on those with public authority or social power. The liberal view too has its own short-coming; when left to its own devices, without regulation, for instance, it tends to become a pursuit of shallow, carnal, and selfish pleasures (something the liberal view tend to confuse with freedom of expression).

I chose the psychological underpinnings to avoid Max Weber’s cultural determinism (the wrong belief that culture is the cornerstone of economic development. Weber thought Confucianism was incompatible with economic growth, yet South Korea and Taiwan has put paid to that theory. His followers today say Islam impedes development but do not know how to explain Turkey and Indonesia). If everything sooner or later ends in economics then the majority of South Africans do not believe market forces can deliver optimum result for social interests of the majority. They want the state to legitimately intervene and endorse some form of wealth redistribution in ensuring a minimum standard of living for all. Perhaps opposition parties will do well in harping on these points, until, at least, the psychological ambience and historical baggage is cleared.

Breaking Bulk

Listening to varied, even contradictory statements, by ANC officials about why they felt it necessary to recall the president of the republic, Thabo Mbeki, before his term expired next year, one is reminded of the imperative of moral psychology: Feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. In simple terms, this means when one wants to reach a certain conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so.

The Secretary General of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, admitted in the Morning Live program on Monday that in order to unify the party they had to make the decision, so that all ANC members may start rallying after the current president of the party. It is unfortunate that the president of the ANC himself continues to insult the intelligence of the general public by denying that factionalism exists inside the ANC. The reasoning behind these varied voices within the ANC leadership betrays the fact that the decision to recall Mbeki was an emotional one, done to satisfy vindictive revenge by those whom he crossed lines with during his reign. In truth, from a distance at least, the whole thing appears more like a tragic comedy of errors akin to Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe, and the folly of revenge. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Former President Mbeki got a stark reminder of that at Polokwane. And now Jacob Zuma, clearly not in control of the party he leads, is starting to realize he might burn by the same fire that ushered him in Polokwane. The mobile vulgus are indisputable in control, and he has no means to turn the tide. There’s a sense of political anarchy, dislocation, disorientation, compulsion, pre-emptive grovelling and manipulative scare mongering he does not know how to deal within the Tripartite Alliance.

It might be, for the ANC membership, that all this is done to (speciously) recover the unity of the party, but from where we’re standing on the ground, it looks like the present administration of the ANC and its echelons are ‘breaking bulk’ (Remember that term from the English revolution of the seventeen century describing when the majority in a ship decide to loot the captured ship, and distribute among themselves the wealth without waiting for proper authority).

Talk about English revolution, ever notice how akin our situation is to them? Remember how the return of the new king, Charles II, spelt that ‘all good men and good things,’—as Samuel Pepys pithily put it—were discouraged. Doesn’t it feel like that in our country now? To top the similarities, Charles II was fond of French dances, which grated the gentlemanly class the wrong way. During the revolution, everything was subject to the caprices of the elite. Heads rolled, rich rewards were reaped; opponents of the previous government were got ridden of; key positions filled with supporters of the king as reward to their good behaviour. The astute changed with times and circumstances; drank and danced to the king’s health on their knees, negotiating their tricky change of coats with finesse. Everyone had to identify for themselves what compromises or betrayals they were prepared to take; policies were no longer pointers for anything. Terminal confusion settled in all things, and the only alliance politicians respected were to their wallets. Meanness and deviousness acquired the Machiavellian streak.

It was no time for those attached to elegance and gentlemanly pursuits. Things acquired a ghoulish streak. Heroes of yesteryear were beheaded, and for six pence you could watch their headless body at Westminster Hall. Political violence returned to the streets, and shops pulled down their shutters. Cynicism and opportunism became the order of the day. The people, simmering in resentment, bewildered and exhausted by never ending political conflict turned their backs to politics, and were the worst losers for it. Of course things didn’t go that far for us, and there signs they are getting better.

In his first national address to the nation President Montlanthe thanked the nation for its resilience and patience, saying it is in times like this our true character shines through. Me thinks the true character of the nation would be revealed during the coming elections next year. For far too long the ANC has taken the support of the South African public for granted. I’ve a feeling things will change, change utterly in the coming elections.
Meanwhile all we can do is to keep silent, watching these powerful and organised lobbies, compete in complete disregard for public sentiments. We continue in the path of justice, peace, human dignity and development in these uncertain times; but time hath my lord, a wallet at his back; our time will be on the ballot box where will opportunity of giving our alliance to the founding and developing truths of our Constitution. That is the only thing that must prevail over political fads; and, perchance, tame the murdering cry and the comedy of errors.

Absolutely Gutted

My Umfriend (friend with benefits) told me Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, has lot of sex, which is what got me interested and dispelled my suspicion against icky self-enhancement book I suspected it to be, after it was featured in the Oprah Show. Well, sex, there is, but a topsy-turvy kind of sex; the kind that’s supposed to teach you about yourself towards your spiritual and . . . you get my drift.

If you thought it was only guys who go gallivanting, meeting strange people, some of whom they have free sex with—for spiritual and culinary purposes—you are in for a surprise? Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love will help you collide with your prudishness, and give you the creeps, or even crabs, in the process. If, like me, you’re of an idea that feminism liberated women from undesirable trappings of male chauvinism, think again. Or if you thought women can only have sex where there are pretentious emotional connection, I repeat, think again; you are in for a surprise.

The best-selling American trans-global travel narrative, Eat, Pray, Love feels like something written by rutty Ernest Hemingway on spiritual repentance. It is full of adventure and sex, peppered with confetti of spiritual clichés. We guys like to pretend we believe in free, no commitment sex, but actually what we mean about that is we’re okay with Sartrean communal sex, or JZ (Jacob Zuma) seraglio for ourselves, but wince when we read of Simone Beauvoir's polygamous sexual love—I wonder how JZ would feel if one of his wives was to take on an extra husband, provided they can support him that is as the Zulu custom requires.

Eat, Pray, Love is a catalogue of blissful promiscuity, fluent in the argot of "Sex and the City". I don't know how other guys feel, but Sex and the City made me restless whenever I watched it with a woman, which was very telling. Those damned chicks were just too free and independent about everything for my macho liking. When I was with the guys though it was different; we castigated their loose morals with one eye hoping they'd be free with us. I suspect the unvarnished truth is that we prefer that mama dishes her something-something for daddy alone.

I read most of Eat, Pray, Love on commute train between Khayelisha and Cape Town, with a background of cacophony of voices that’s not very conducive to reading and contemplation. If it’s not someone trying to sell you something, its hedge-preachers—comfortable in their contradictions, and insinuative.

Four stops down from where abode the train, at Mandalay, usually comes a lady I flatter myself into thinking she fences me. She’s okay as far as the ID—looks—is concerned, but boy, can she talk? If it’s not some haute couture topic it is something about her good-for-nothing brother ‘whose gonna send my mother into an early grave.’ The worse part she’s started repetiting her, which means she’s run out things to say, but she won’t shuddup.

I can no longer recall what our spurious intimacy is based on. If it were not for the fact that I get on the train first I would do my level best to avoid a coach she’s on like a contagious disease. But for some reason I always see her at the last minute as she’s homing in straight to me. The sight of her face always kicks in razor blade panic and ventral turmoil within me. The funny thing is that she’s a dainty beautiful thing. I’d go for her at no notice had I not had the misfortune of being gutted by her conversations.

I’ve ran out of ideas to avoid here. With petrol still hovering around R10 a litre, looks like I’m going to be stuck with her for a very long time; driving is no longer an option but a luxury. But it has become intolerably exhausting maintaining my permanent smiles as my mind chases after the oblivion over fields of shanty rotting iron and polythene bags of Cape Flats, trying very hard not listening to her. One day she was going on as usual, pattering about this and that. Meantime I wanted to finish the last chapter of Eat, Pray, Love when it hit me. There’s something very similar to both these women. They make for lousy travelling companion. For one they talk too much; are glib and covertly sensationalist. Their personalities turn me off.

Methinks discretion, especially in a lady, is a virtue, which is why, perhaps, I didn’t like Eat, Pray, Love that much. I can see why it would appeal to Oprah fans; it’s one of those two-dimensional books with lots of air and not very much depth. I think T.S. Eliot called such things an art of the surface. It has passionate, hardboiled style of Sex and the city filtered, rather funneled, as clinical aüβerliche kitsch. The book is not really original but has defiant freshness in how it collapses patriarch hypocrisy. Gilbert is an artist of poor discrimination and rude vitality, which, I suppose, explains why her book is successful in our era.

If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir

I spent last Saturday, like most South Africans, watching the political occurrences of ANC’s recall of the president of the republic with growing forebodings. Whomever asked me for my opinion I pointed to the article I wrote in April here on my blog.
Under normal circumstances I’m averse to quoting my own writings, but these are not normal times:

The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe [and the folly of revenge]. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Our present [outgoing] president might be a stark reminder of that .
Lady Macbeth, while still convincing her husband to murder the irreprehensible King Duncan, accuses him of wanting to win without dirtying his hands. She says he’s not without ambition, but lacks the “illness should attend it ... that he would not play false, and yet would wrongly win.” Macbeth’s conscience is still healthy then as he replies in a monologue:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. . .

Let’s look at this in the light of our country and times, especially since ruling’s party’s last conference. The greenflies have it that a certain gentleman, who is now the vice president of the ANC has been responsible for the bad karma between their out going president and the present. It is also rumoured that at the first meeting of the ruling party’s newly elected NEC the blood was so heated their president had to be assuaged for more than twenty minutes after walking out of the meeting accusing the delegates of planning to get rid of him through his coming trial.

It turns out also that there are people in the higher echelons of the ruling party who want to win without playing false in the public eye. It’s rumoured that Lady Macbeth occupies the Parliamentary Speaker seat, and that she eggs and fire the passion of the present [ANC] deputy president to overcome his repugnance for the end to justify the means: Thou'dst have, great Glamis, / That which cries "Thus thou must do if thou have it; / And that which rather thou dost fear to do / Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round / Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem / To have thee crowned withal.

Lady Macbeth is here saying Macbeth fears to do what must be done, even though he would not wish it undone, if it were done. I hope our Macbeth has enough sense to quote and stick to the words of sober Macbeth: "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir."

It might just seemed like speculation and conjecture then, but now, with what is happening recently in the ANC political circles, that the signs are getting clearer everyday? The deputy president of the ANC, Kgalema Montlanthe, is soon to be the acting president until next year elections. The sublimity of Shakespeare is perennial. The ANC leaders say they’re doing this to recover the unity of the party but you and I know they are ‘breaking bulk’. Remember that term from the English revolution of the seventeen century when the majority in a ship decide to loot and distribute among themselves captured wealth.

Overcoming the grasping self

When our usually jocular Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, puts aside entertaining panache and attention-grabbing hype you know all is not well and rosy. He intimidated as much when delivering the 9th Steve Biko Memorial lecture at University of Cape Town. “This lecture takes place at a time when, as a country, we are going through some trying growth pains; together we are searching for inspiration, seeking guidance and yearning for leadership. Our country is undergoing a complex and sometimes painful examination of its foundations, its values and its institutions. It is at times such as this that a nation has to dig deep within itself, take careful observations and focus on repairing its soul.”

Inspiration, aplenty, he found on the writings and works of Steve Biko. The gist of his lecture was the need to give the poor material support to develop their lives. The minister touched the core of our present predicament when he mentioned need to look at people’s responsiveness to democratic empowerment and freedom. He seemed to have rightly come into conclusion that the most important challenges for our government and public institutions are now internal; involving ethics and “values [that] must have at their core, the principles of people-centred development, of freedom, of conscientisation of mobilisation and of high energy democracy.”

There’s duty to foster intelligence as a moral obligation needed to counteract the leadership dearth in the global politics of our era. We need the infusion of public and personal morality in our democratic and aspirations of freedom. Public morality is interlocking value system, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness, and make social life possible. I trust we all know what is meant by personal morality, which can be summed in one word; virtue. We need also to re-learn principles that bind us together, not only as groups of certain vested interest, but as humans concerned with human dignity. Supporting essential institutions of democracy is well and good, but we have an added responsibility of being our brother’s keeper, especially the familiar faces of indigence and strife in our own backyards (rural and township areas) we’ve grown numb against.

The problem of development cannot readily be remedied alone by finance and educators, judges, soldiers, policemen, and other professionals that necessarily make for the modern idea of successful society. There are other problems that make for inertia against our development, like inherent attitudes and values, which sometimes often even define communities’ very identity. Hence Biko was more concerned with the ‘psychology and consciousness of the oppressed.’

Commitment to self-reliance in what minister Manuel calls ‘social compact’ must be reemphasized. Not only the ‘oppressed’ need a psychological re-consciousness, but the oppressor too. And this was always Nelson Mandela’s concern, which lately has been relegated aside for another important message of his, that of reconciliation. We need to learn that a majority of people in this country were not simply segregated; they were methodically disenfranchised, stripped of their dignity and identity. Until that has been restored nothing will ever be normal in this country.

Minister Manuel concluded; ‘let me repeat the lesson that Biko taught us. Democracy is something to fight for, constantly. Development is not something handed out at the welfare office. It is a conscious process of building capabilities, giving communities power to change their lives, empowering young women and men to make a contribution to our beautiful country. At the root of Biko’s teachings and the thread that runs through the references from Marx and Unger is the concept of consciousness, the deep understanding of the self worth of people and the power of communities. The poor must be given the power to change their lives . . . An energised democracy is one where each element, business, labour, government and communities balance their rights with their responsibilities. This moment could define our collective future. Let us utilise it for a national catharsis. Let us work together as advised by Unger who writes, “Social solidarity must rest (instead) on the sole secure basis it can have: direct responsibility of people for one another. Such responsibility can be realized through the principle that every able-bodied adult holds a position within a caring economy – the part of the economy in which people care for one another – as well as within the production system.”’

As Allen Tate put it, "the full language of the human situation can be the vehicle of truth." Our recent situation has brought the truth of who we are glaringly before our eyes without screeds of false nostalgia. Who we become yet is still in our power to choose, but not for long. We have not attained the hallmark of Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, when he hoped a day would come when men and women were judged not by the colour of their skin, but instead by their individual deeds and actions, and the content of their character? There’s still too much baggage in our historical backs to get rid of, but we must take the initiative and reclaim the momentum of the Mandela years, with less superficial notions this time.

We need to face our history square on, albeit in a manner more conversant with the language of human values and respect for the dignity and expressive capacity of the human ¬spirit. We need to understand more fully what it means to be human, and to permit that knowledge to shape and nourish the way we ¬live. To respect each other’s rights; be concerned and work for each other’s welfare. We need to make our democracy and freedom a little more than triumph of commerce and the victory of materialism, which would make us nothing more than what is usually referred to as ‘a nation of shoppers’. In the end what is important as foundation to social institutions are internal values that overcome the lower, grasping, carnal self; i.e. self-control over greed, duty over rights, and loyalty to values of humanity over concerns for outgroups. That’s the message I took from Minister Manuel’s lecture.

The Jacob Zuma Debacle

The JZ (Jacob Zuma) debacle has caused a lot of hurly-burly about fears of the ruling party riding rough-shod over the constitution of the country to save the ANC president from prosecution for corruption charges. It has fostered different views from different people for various reasons. For instance, Hellen Zille—the leader of DA and mayor of Cape Town—in a talk she gave at Wits School of Law in July, was of the opinion that the ANC is divided amongst 'verligtes' (the enlightened, who wants reform) and the 'verkramptes' (who wants to continue the modus operand of Liberation Movement) 'Broedertwis' she said, divides the ranks of the ANC like the old National Party towards the end of its rule.



Madam Zille further conjectured that there were constitutionalists within the ANC who've more in common with the DA than they do with the anti-constitutionalists (read Zuma supporters) in their own party who are power hungry and prepared to do anything to achieve their goals. One understands the bases of the fears for eccentric repeal of the constitution, but to project these concerns as if they were reality is paranoia. The constitution bent twig snaps back in the face of those who use to foster scare mongering tactics. It is rather fresh to hear people who are prepared to change the constitution when it suites their purposes and inclinations, like the case of death penalty, suddenly take the sacrosanct stance towards the constitution. We need to learn, in the words of Barack Obama, not "to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality."



Madam Zille says the ANC, through the revolutionary movement ethos, is failing to achieve the next step of development, which she calls the limitation to its power to promote constitutionalism. This deliberate misuse of facts is worrying. Has the ANC, despite gaining the majority that legally allowed it to change the constitution, elected to exercise that right? I'm not promulgating that majority rule must mean the creation of a one party government with unlimited powers that overrides general laws for a specific purpose of party politics. But a majority rule does mean the ruling party is allowed to design 'outcome-based' laws with specific purposes or remedy in mind when the occasion arises. France and Italy have recently done it to protect their leaders, and we didn't here any large outcry about it.



There's a tendency in this country of projecting the constitution as a sacrosanct tablet revealed to the enlightened few at Mt Sinai, and not the product of reflection by the people for guidance towards the protection of people's freedom. Alexander Hamilton, in his book, the Federalist, set out to explain what the Constitution of 1787 in his country was all about: "To decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." Reflection and choice are the operative words here. The constitution, for it serve meaningful purpose, must serve the needs that promote the stability of the republic.



Indeed, had JZ been a man of sterling integrity and responsibility he who would not have qualms taking the nation into confidence by doing one or two things, rather than this waste of taxpayer's money in protracted legal evasiveness. He could say; 'Yes, I've been involved in some very bad judgements through the influence of my financial advisers. For that I beg your pardon, and ask that the country give me second chance to pay back the debt I owe it.' Then those in government would have to devise means to pardon him in honouring the clear wishes of the majority. Or, if he's convinced of his innocence, he must not make himself available for the presidency of the republic until he clears his name. And now that he has won yet another historic battle in court, are we ready to let him govern?



With the risk of sounding sententious, JZ is a man of serious faults; weakened by moral short-comings and corruption shenanigans due to his indiscriminate associate with shady characters. But the majority within the Tripartite Alliance seem to want him as their president. The rest of us, if we respect majority rule, have no choice but to accept that. Naturally, there'd be those who'd say that would be giving in to political blackmail by JZ cabals. So what? What else is new in politics? We've been blackmailed by the National Party's army generals into establishing means of pardon for the nefarious deeds of the apartheid security forces and we caved in, for the stability of the country. We're blackmailed by different groups for different reasons all the time; if not threatening to take their skills and money outside it's another thing. And we give in, for the sake of the country.



As for what madam Zille wishes that "We have to bring party formations in line with the new reality, the real political divisions of our time. The biggest barrier to this process is the democrats in the ANC who believe their party is redeemable. It is not." No! The biggest barrier is the politics of grovelling within opposition parties, and the attitude of cynical self-involved pessimism of a South African liberal mind. The political realities of this country rest deeply on socio-economic factors. For one, the majority of the constitutionalists within the ANC are social democrats who do not believe in radical liberation of economics without meaningful state regulation. What madam Zille and her cabals do not see is what is about to happen in this country. French historians call it, le passage à l'acte; the moment when a recently free society passes into revolutionary violence. The confluence of negative forces, like post-oppression trauma, poverty and Frantz Fanon's 'motherless rage' are already precipitating it.



Still, no matter how gloomy the situation maybe, it is nothing compared to the mostly torturous, even murderous, complex course other countries, especially in Western history, had to undergo to achieve transformation to proper democratic states. Yes, now is a difficult time of introspection, even disenchantment in our country. Yes, the vulgar element breeds political weariness and disappointment. But I've a feeling this country will gain instead by going through this experience. The ruling party, with all it faults, is facing things head on, which is more than can be said about other parties who think dwelling on ivory towers, waiting for the 'barbarians' to gain insight into the 'enlightened' liberal point of view is the way to go.

The sooner we let Zuma govern the better it be for all of us.

Smoke and Mirrors

I was seated on the couch, trying unique ways and fresh angles to write about Women’s Day we celebrated on the 9th August. I thought of writing about the usual stuff; empowerment of women and all, but decided against it. Something that kept nagging my mind is how we live in real contradiction to our ideals. I mean everybody seem to agree that uxorial husbands are an ideal; equal representation for women is ideal; and responsible, if not doting, parents are ideal. Yet we live the opposite of these things, more like doppelgängers of what’s best in us.

Then I came a picture of a beautiful near-naked female body on a foreign magazine. She wore nothing but a bra, and hid her pelvic area, which I took to imply vagina, with a designer hand bag that she was advertising. Her eyes were cut from the picture. I thought they think of everything, because, surely, to use as a commodity a thing like sex (its not sensuality), you’ve to hide your eyes, from your soul. It was titled; Lesson 84: lead him to temptation. Is that what women’s liberation has amounted to, I found myself asking?

I was lost in such thoughts when my daughter, who’s nine, surprised me with a demand for a long mirror for her room—I must reveal, for proper understanding, that the advert was posed as though it was a mirror image. I was not sure what brought that about but could sense trouble in the offing. What’s wrong with the ones you have, I asked, trying to sound casual. I can’t see whole of myself on them, was her answer as she disappeared to her room again. She left me in confused contemplation. I stood to spy what she was up to and found her sitting in bed, combing Ami (her favourite doll). I turned back with my confusion intensified.

I’ve lived with my daughter since she was nine months old. My sisters, whom we visit frequently, make up for the female influence she needs in her life. I suppose, to be fair, not having long mirrors must be a serious drag for growing girls. On the other side I wondered why didn’t I have long mirrors, dressing table mirrors, and such things one finds on modern homes these days. Do I not like looking at myself? I recalled how uncomfortable I feel when I see my reflection on shop windows when walking city pavements—they make me seem humped. The scientific explanation of refractions and all does not help my archaic sense of self, which, I suppose, is still operating on cave man instinct embodied deep in my genetic code.

The only time I really look at myself on the mirror, since you asked, is when I go to the bathroom at parties or nightclubs, to measure how soused am I. That’s just about it, if shaving does not count. I don’t look at myself when I comb, not that I’m less narcissist than your average, less say GQ guy. It’s a practice forced in me by Catholic boarding school indigent upbringing. I suppose there’s also a bit of delusion of grandeur in supposing physical reflection is not as important as inner self-reflection. I much prefer the ‘know thy self’ and the rest of now unfashionable philhellene heebie-jeebies.

Before the mirror incident, I was sure my daughter was growing along my trends—choosing soccer at school, sleeping with miniature Ferraris next to her dolls—you know, things that make daddy-mom proud. Now it looks like I might have overestimated my influence on her. Now I notice her stopping over cosmetic section and feel, in my guts, trouble approaching. Of course there’s a possibility I’m just blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Somebody please say I’m blowing it out of proportion! Meantime I’m looking for a mirror, preferable with a pink frame; long enough to cover the height of a nine year old until she’s at least eighteen.

For those of you wondering why I’m not married at the good side of forty. Here’s the thing. When I was in Std 6, now Grade 8; we read a book where a guy chopped his wife and two children (who were actually his father’s but was suppose to acknowledge as his according to the Xhosa custom of those times) with an axe. When asked why, he kept saying: Buzani kuBawo! [Ask my father!]. I’ve never really recovered from that tragic story. I feel abused. You can tell Oprah that. I’m prepared to produce on-demand-screen saccharine tears to puff my pillow. I’ll even write a memoir of aggrievement if she promises to feature it on her show.

Charity Begins at Home

One of the criticism that was directed against president T. Mbeki was that he concentrated power in the office of the presidency and orientated everything to his personality. We were told there was urgent need to strengthen local-government if our democracy had any hope of success. The ANC (African National Congress) conference in December 2007 at Polokwane took the initiative by voting T.Mbeki out as ANC president through the concerted efforts of party branch structures. Most of us were hopeful coming from that conference that things were turning for the best. Perhaps we should have been more circumspect where we saw the manner of the so called democratic process in Polokwane, which was more manipulations by organised factions within branch level of the ANC than anything else. Collectivism is not always democracy.

After Polokwane the ANC Members of Parliament seemed to breathe fresh air, voicing their views vigorously, pushing the margins of their party towards a more consultative and democratic process to guard against the erosion of our constitutional values. After the hearing process for the dissolution of the Scorpios it seems as though Parliament has gone back to its past habits of being a karaoke club for Luthili House (ANC headquarters). What the South African Parliament lacks, it seems glaringly clear now, is what Kerry Kennedy called, in a recent lecture at University of Cape Town recently, ‘moral courage’ to dissent towards the maintenance of constitutional law even against party caucus when necessary.

Caucusing in Parliament is nothing unique to the ANC, even if those in the minority do it, and tend to cry foul whenever they loose. If anything, the past few years of our democracy should have convinced us by now that “party-parliamentarism” does not really give power to mobile vulgus, but to vested interest of party leadership. This, indeed, is a false substitute for people's representatives. For check and balances we should, at the least, consider changing the system to include individual candidates for local-governance and Members of Parliament. Isn’t a ground vote the whole point behind popular representation? Our democratic system has to be organic, live up to our local challenges as they arise. This might also give us reprise from the nascent nauseating group politics within and out of the ruling party.


I do understand, nor respect, the formation of groups on economical, cooperative, territorial, educational, professional, industrial principles, or even political values for that matter. I respect formation based on moral values, which is why Kerry Kennedy’s lecture touched me so much. After Polokwane, there was lot of talk about strengthening Local Government, which was taken as the nadir of good governance. Of course there are no guarantees that a strong Local Government means good governance, if the Republic of China is anything to go by. In China the central government is almost hapless against local government that is often very corrupt and unruly in following the passed laws of the republic, especially Environmental laws that are flaunted at will by local governments when bribed by businessman. On the same breath, good local governance is possible, as exemplified in countries like Switzerland and other federal working states.

Of course, the cause for moral courage is a double edged sword. For instance, it cannot be that it is needed only in Africa, despite Ms Kennedy’s emphasis, even if Africa is the continent most fraught with problems associated with limited civil justice. As long as, for instance, trading tendencies tend to be bias against the developing world, moral courage will be needed also by those in Western countries to “Speak Truth To Power.” When people are imprisoned on secluded islands indefinitely just for suspicion of being terrorists, moral courage is also needed to speak out. There’s also a clear danger, beyond the obvious, in narrowing the borders of moral courage to include only instance one agrees with. In thinking civil justice is only concomitant with only liberal democracy, for instance.

Another cause, blatant in our country, is how the majority of our people live with hunger and permanent refugee status in different informal places around the country. But you hardly here any moral courage coming out of private people and business against it. When the first fires blazed, in the form of xenophobic attacks, there was more moralising and condemnation than moral courage. The only moral courage we saw was in the form of philanthropic help for the displaced people, which was a good thing. But the whole thing reminded me of something René Girard once said; that “The victims most interesting to us are always those who allow us to condemn our neighbors. And our neighbors do the same.” The thing about moral courage is that it requires the ever widening of borders of empathy and dissent without neglecting what’s under your nose. As the idiom goes, charity begins at home.

The Dream Deferred: Thabo Mbeki (Book Review)

One thing certain about Mark Gevisser biography of the incumbent president of Republic of South Africa, The Dream Deferred: Thabo Mbeki, is that it was well timed. It came out just at the time when the governing party of South Africa, ANC (African National Congress), went to it 52nd National Conference to elect its next president after Mbeki.

After more than a seven year immersion in relevant archives and travels on two continents (Africa and Europe) Gevisser’s biography is thoroughly researched, referencing, amateurish psychoanalytic, and none too innovative. From the beginning Gevissers tells us ‘This book demonstrates that if Mbeki has been driven by one overarching dream, it is that of self-determination—personal, political and psychological.’ Then he let’s that slips for Lanston Hughes’ poem as thesis and, sometimes, forced reference point.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
Like a syrup sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explodes?

Mbeki first publicly mentioned the poem in introducing ‘debate on reconciliation and nation-building in 1998.’ All things considered this should have worked well had Gevisser been more of a storyteller than a journalist, all be it a well read and competent one. Indeed the strong point of Gevisser’s book is the broadness by which he tells the story of the ANC, especially in exile, than anything else. The book is also a mine for post apartheid South African politics even if one gets the feeling Gevisser didn’t invest enough attention into South African early history, especially implications of Frontier and Colonial implications. That section sounds more like parachute journalism with dull and glum recycled notions of Xhosa, especially Mfengu, character makings.

Givisser is more into his element when talking about Mbeki’s political experience; in the end, not too shabby for a political biography. But Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred lacks the ruthlessness necessary to streamline Mbeki’s life into a functional narrative. There are vast stretches of prohibitive dryness and repetitive material that could surely been excised to bring down the 801 paged book into, at the least, half that. (I think there should be a law against writing books that are more than 500 hundred pages; no subject is that interesting).

Gevisser’s tone is that of investigative journalism, with literary nuggets there and there. It lacks informal anecdotes and titbits that make for entertaining read in lives of politicians. Though there are instances that beg for the raw venting of feelings and deeper delving into greasy facts (like reports of the president’s womanizing tendencies) the biographer chooses only suggestive implications, giving us too much muscle without fat. In fact Gavisser’s analysis of incidences around Mbeki’s life is most of the time flattering to the president with the notable exception of Aids dissidence case.

Gevisser, who was educated at Yale, concedes that the beginnings of the book were in his profile writings for a Sunday newspapers, coupled with inspiration he got from ‘Hermione Lee’s exceptional life of Virginia Woolf’. After that he immersed himself on intricate turns of Thabo Mbeki’s life, especially sources material instead of just printed material, hence his deep familiarity with his subject. The idea of a biography, he wrote to Mbeki when canvassing the book idea, was ‘a thesis, really, about biography as a tool for transformation.’ Mbeki bitted. Though Gevisser’s biography is competent in other ways, one can’t help judging it by higher standards of books like, Nicholl's The Lodger: Shakespeare, which introduced a far interesting paradigm shift on telling of familiar stories. Instead of telling a cradle to grave story, recent biographies concentrate on a certain episode that almost defines the life of its subject with web-like strands pinned into it like a pin centre. I was hopeful, after reading the book’s insightful introduction about what happened between Mbeki and Zuma, this might be the case with Gevisser’s book. For a moment I thought Gevisser was going to tell the story backward from the dissection of that incidence. Instead he chose Lanston Hughes poems, which to him expresses Thabo Mbeki’s lifetime dream and fears since he came to power.

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Thabo Mvunyelwa Mbeki was born in 18 June 1942 (try finding that crucial information from the biography) at a little village called Mbewuleni. The village is in a small town of Idutywa in the former Bantustan of Transkie. His father, Govan Mbeki, was a prominent member of SACP and one of Rivonia treason trialist, with the likes of Nelson Mandela. Epainette Mbeki was left to provide for the family when Govan went to jail. Thabo had one elder sister, and two younger brothers, Moketsi and Jama (a lawyer who died under mysterious conditions connected to heat squad in Lesotho). It is obvious that Gevisser tells the story of Thabo through the eyes of Epainette, his mother most of the time, who is an obvious first and constant contact for the biographer.

Thabo was educated at Lovedale College, the first fountains of education for black people in the Southern Africa with missionary origins. He was involved in politics and was expelled from the institution. He went to Johannesburg where, through his father’s contacts he met (white) people who organised a scholarship for him to study economic at Sussex University, England. He graduated with Masters in Economics from Sussex and went for a soft military training in the Lenin Military Institution at Moscow. He married Zanele Dlamini whom he met in England through political connections with the Tambos. He worked as a de facto assistant and understudy of O.R. Tambo, the then president of ANC. Though based in Lusaka, Zambia, travelled the globe a lot doing underground ANC work.

Gevisser credits Thabo for being the voice of reason, against the popular but doomed military voice within Umkhonto Wesizwe (ANC’s military wing). At one time Thabo was suspected of being an informer (something very common among the comrades in those confused times). He was lucky to escape torture like many comrades who were suspected of being informers, thanks, most probably, to his close relation with Tambo. Thabo was also often accused of living a soft life as a de facto ANC foreign minister while the likes of Chris Hani were popular for their valour in the military frontiers. Gevisser intimates that this had a bad psychological effect in Thabo’s psyche before the years the ANC was unbanned in South Africa.

According to Gevisser, Thabo initiated talks with South African delegates, first with business people before the actual apartheid politicians. This was a very unpopular move within the ANC, and Gevisser says Tambo actually used Thabo to take the flack for it while he stood to reap the successes. The most difficult years for Mbeki, according to Gevisser, was when Thabo lost the lead of negotiating status to Cyril Ramaphosa, the upstart lawyer with no ANC pedigree within the ANC (Ramaphosa came through the United Democratic Movement that kept the fire of liberation struggle burning during the years when the ANC was in exile wilderness.) This, for Mbeki, were first sign of ‘a dream deferred’; he felt used and discarded. Gevisser suggests that his not so warm relation with Mandela began at this time. Mandela, who had serious political differences with Thabo’s father, Govan, initially was not keen in regarding Thabo as his successor, but was pressured into the position by the ANC leadership. Thus Thabo became the first deputy president of democratic South Africa, and four years later, its president, serving two terms (ten years) that end next year (2009).

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In truth thare’s nothing much new in all this to those who have followed Mbeki’s life with a modicum of interest. What Gevisser did is to collect material into one source, which is no mean task on its own; in fact I dare say this is a defining book concerning the political life of Thabo Mbeki. What is regrettable is that the traits of Mbeki the man do not come through very clearly; in fact you’re sometimes at pains to find simple biographical facts like his birthday mentioned on the book. He makes much about Mbeki’s ‘disconnection’ from the general mass and lack of integration. ‘From a very young age, his response to this condition of disconnection had been to sublimate all emotions,’ writes Gevisser, ‘all relationships, all desires, into the struggle for liberation. He had long made a political career—unusual indeed for a freedom fighter—around pragmatism, but at his core he was a revolutionary idealist.’

Gevisser tries to go into depth about the unconscious distrustfulness and fear of white people against Thabo Mbeki but left this reader dissatisfied. In any case the real question about South Africa now is whether the country can go beyond politics of cultural difference or grievance and popular cynicism. The tendency so far has been for everyone to hope for winning anyone into their own point view so as to establish the hegemony of their political values. It stands to be seen which side compromise would come or be subverted. Jacabo Zuma is less rigid with his values, rather lack of, and so has become the favourite of everyone in the manner of a girl who puts out being a favourite of boys in High School.

As I’ve already indicated; Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deffered reads more like an extended newsaper feature than, say, a scholarly analysis. What jars most about it is psycho bubble and lunk of metaphors, well suited for platitudinous theorising, but a little cloying for a 801 paged book. Another thing I noticed about the book is that it kept promising that soone or later a putsh of some sort would happen, that you’d rich its nadir, but for some reason you never get the satisfaction of doing so. More like make love without reaching orgasim, or a thud sneeze. But in this age when memoirs of aggrievement climb into a crowded genre of no literature ability in political writing this is a better book.

The centre of African National Congress political infighting will not old

I’ve a friend in NYC (US) who, after seeing scenes of masses taking to the streets in support of JZ’s (Jacob Zuma) case emailed to ask for my personal opinion. I told him it was more of the glue failing to hold inside the ANC than anything, and tried to convince myself that it does not affect me. I was about to narrate to him how the whole cleavage was between the formally educated and self-made man within the ANC; something that’s always been the undertone tension within the organisation even while it was in exile, but stopped myself. Who am I kidding? Whatever mess these people make will affect me directly. Now is not the time for sterile history lessons and chose to be honest instead.

The situation within the ANC, I told him, has necessitated their men of goodwill, like Mandela, to remind of the crucial need for unity, and preach on the cardinal virtues of justice, courage, self-restraint, and wisdom, but those things are out of business in the organisation. Everything has gone topsy-turvy. Their clever politicians are fighting out a Hegelian tragedy—where the causes are more about hubris and pride and both sides stand on the limited right. Accusations of state institutions being used to fight political battles are thrown; and autocratic means of secrecy, speed and tact used to plot the downfall of JZ. But JZ is doing everything in his power not disqualify, at the least delay, his opportunity to test the truth of allegations against him tested in the courts of law.

In all that ordinary people have become outdated and the constitution of the country is being stretched to near breaking point. Everybody, the accused and the accusers, complain that justice is being perverted. One thing clear is that, as the ancient Greek, Thrasymachus, would say, justice is become the interest of the stronger. Debates are given to that the effect of giving legal respectability to wickedness and corrupt tendencies of powerful men in the name of democracy and to the disadvantage of common good. Justice court judges are under imposed duress of JZ supporters who, as they say, are dancing war cries and ‘ready to kill for Zuma’.

Everywhere they step comrades are treading on each other’s corns while trying to save false public face. The only people who have courage are those of coarse fibre and vulgar minds who foolishly tend to run risks that are beyond their resources. Ignorance has become a passionate weapon to silence the enlightened. Youth leaders, with bloated faces from too much whiskey and matshisa inyama (braai vleis) rely on the assistance of ignorance and dangerous ambition to intimidate the president of the republic with obvious reluctance from his leaders to discipline him. Self-restraint is seen as a weakness. Pusillanimous caution is how those already in government strive to advance their careerism and keep their jobs by being silent. The term, kunqilwa ophetheyo [you kowtow before the one in power] is thrown around with proud braggadocio for material greed and gain. Power has become the measure of all things. And wealth the new sign of comradeship. Other animals are more equal than others, and law is relevant because it must serve the animals, not the other way round. The pigs are walking on their hind legs.

There was a time when political wisdom was means by which wool was pulled over our eyes. Now there’s dearth of well turned phrases that used to ravish us into acquiescence. Wisdom, in political arena, is rare as hen’s tooth. Things that require skills of creation lay dormant. Since the whirlwind has hit our shores we’ve been seeing a lot of isisila senkukhu [hen’s tail]. Men we took to be of great ability have recently been seen toyi-toying, like on pulled strings, outsides courts for their compromised king. Trade unionist who once took impartial view of things have revealed themselves to be nothing more than wishing to be kingmakers and intimidate to submission those who ‘don’t tow the line’. And moribund former soldiers of Umkhonto Wesizwe took the opportunity to be on the lime light by promoting violent views if JZ lost his case.

That is what is called democracy these days in our shores; the threatening overthrow of democracy by the tyranny of the masses. The saddest part is how those who should know better within the party have decided to thrown in the towel. Suddenly, since JZ took power, their private affairs seem more interesting and exacting. They’re, one by one, withdrawing from public life to go plant cabbages leaving a general political lethargy where the ignorant gain confidence and the enlightened loose the nerve. Things fall apart, and the centre cannot hold, to paraphrase the poet.

I’ve lived with a declining and harried hope that whatever is wrong inside the ANC they’re sensible enough never to allow it to negate the revolutionary gains of our past. I thought the prevalent cancer was benign. It looks like it’s malignant. Every revolution contains within itself the pull towards its own demise, the philosopher says. It looks like ours, unfortunately, is no exception to the rule, as we had hoped. The situation is no longer about knocking a few holes against the party walls of the ruling party, it is getting dire.

Unfortunately the present political oppositions do not stand a chance against the ANC, even in a wounded state. What is needed is a Mass Movement of Democratic Union (MMDU), made of all civil minded people who see where the country is headed under the present leadership of the ANC, to come together under one umbrella. The choices are simple, continue bickering, living in the wilderness, or shamefully hoping you’ll forever compromise your principles by, well, ukubusa ophetheyo; or organise. Battles in a democracy are won by political organisation. Or, at this rate, we just must loose everything we hold dear, including meaningful effectiveness of our cherished constitution.
In spite of few outstanding instances of moderation and true nobility, I say with this due consideration and deep commiseration; we are in the whole on the melancholy track of degeneration and under the stress of civil conflict. Personally, I stand with those who stand by our constitution.