The Sentinel

Lessons from the African Arabic Front

2011-02-20T05:34:00.000-08:00

As I watched the historical protests on the TV news about the Arabic African states like Tunisia and Egypt I was reminded of how thin the nature of political authority really is, and how simple to arrive at the democratic dispensation when the will of the people asserts itself.

It also became clear to me that this sclerotic state of affairs in African politics is pervasive, not limited by party, region, ethnicity, or other demographic factors, and reminded me of the poet-prophet who walked the imperial city of London about 200 years ago wondering about the fettering chains of self-imprisonment. This led him to write the poem, London.

I wonder what William Blake would say now as he watched the people of Tunisia and Egypt throw away their chains. Would he be stunned by what he sees and feels - human misery everywhere: " ... mark in every face I meet / Marks of weakness, marks of woe." I often get the same feeling as I walk the teeming and sewerage drenched streets of Phillipi, or Enkanini (one of the shack areas of Khayelitsha).

People Blake saw as miserable were in large part because their minds were radically restricted by oppressive ways of thinking; victims of "mind-forg'd manacles," imprisoned by their own mental limits and the limits imposed upon them by others. In essence this is what the people of Tunisia and Egypt are throwing away. It even looks ridiculously simple; rising up all of a sudden after a docile period to concerted efforts to gain their political and individual freedom. And the right to exercise real democratic control over their future, rejecting all delaying tactics of leaders whose mandates has run out. It tells a story of emancipation as old as mankind of people - people who had accepted inhumane conditions from their rulers for so long, suddenly taking extraordinary risks to say enough is enough.

In our country things are slightly different. We saw the Sharpeville massacre lead to June 16 - people rising up to take the responsibility of their own liberation into their own hands. Even then, despite popular lies now, it was the handful, the rest wanted and continued with their mundane lives under the oppressive regime.

We also saw the second wave of in post liberation struggle, during the formation of the Congress of the People (Cope) - people coming into grief with the failures of the new government trying to find a frame work to structure their grievances. We are seeing it now in the nascent agitations of political parties like Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and Cope, where the majority of the supporters reel against the expired leadership that wants to hold on to power by hook and by crook beyond their allocated mandate, and in the process creating conditions of chaos so long as they extend their tenure illegitimately.

The contemporary struggle, seen here and in places like Tunisia and Egypt, is diffusing the imprisonment of the majority by the elite few, be they of the ruling or capitalist class. As such we may be subjected to "the troubled air that rages" because the elites never surrender willingly power unless it is taken from them through a revolution.

Modern revolutions, as we are witnessing, take different forms: the so-called Facebook revolution in Tunisia; Virgil revolution in Egypt, Internal implosion in our political parties. What they have in common is giving ability to the people to effectively raise their voices against the suppressive elites.

What Africa is slowly realising is that the liberation we believed to be our political redemption has become little more than a veneer for the same forces which we decried. The oppressive "kings and nobles of the land" have simply exchanged clothes with our liberators. Hence the "perfect storm" the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was talking about when she urged Middle East leaders to embrace democratic reforms. She told an international security conference in Munich that there was a "perfect storm" which made democratic change a "strategic necessity".

The "perfect storm" can be interpreted as a self designed constitutional crisis in Ivory Coast and a political party like Cope. Where the ruling parties usually rely on state security power to promote their tenures, the political parties like Cope rely on their official structures to manipulate for the antics of expired leadership to hold on to power indefinitely, and to disorientate the general public by promoting an agenda of revitalising the expired authority. But, as we are now seeing, in the end it all works out to incentivise protests that expose the sheer hollowness and illegitimacy of these leaders.

Those who look for ideological rhetoric to underpin the current agitations in our continent are misled and misinformed. The overriding ideology here is the will of the people and their dissatisfaction with the status quo of their respective leaders. The agitations themselves are a people's vote of no confidence in the ability of the given leaders to guide, or even make a meaningfully impact in the lives of their countries or parties.

It is no coincidence that leaders who do not have the backing of the numbers try to delay the inevitable through violence, chaos, endless postponements of elections, or refusing to accept their outcomes by relying on security forces or even running to the courts of laws to seek the authority they lack in the political democratic process. It is a sign of panic and impotence before the voice of democracy. But all this fear of democracy ever achieves is to tear and exposes the wisp veil of their illegitimacy.

Political leaders in Africa are largely isolated from the social spirit of their people. Hence they have to buy it through violence, chaos or material means. But what is becoming clear is that African politics are entering a maturing age where neither violence, chaos, manipulations, nor nostalgia for the past, etc, can be used to hold people down who want to be masters of their own fate.

Why rock the boat?

2010-04-08T04:54:00.000-07:00

Am I missing something here? If Zimbabwe, according to the Zimbabwean Herald, will one day be considered a “shinning example of Black Economic Empowerment” why are Zimbabweans leaving their country in droves? Or are they, in revolutionary language, counter-revolutionary.

“Wisdom should have convinced the white community in South Africa that they need to co-operate with the South African government to address the inequalities prevalent in that country,” the editorial read.

“In the same way that Zimbabweans got frustrated with the willing buyer-willing seller approach, the South Africans will also begin to take what is rightfully theirs by force if they see no progress in land redistribution."

The writer said that the fruits of Zimbabwe’s land reform programme were beginning to be seen.

“The huge payouts that new tobacco farmers are getting from the auction floors are transforming their lives.”

Zimbabwe was seen as the “bad apple” in the region led by a “delinquent leader” because it was dealing with the historic, social and economic injustices of over 100 years of colonial rule.

“But now the chickens are coming home to roost for South Africa.”

The writer found it sad that ANC Youth League president Julius Malema's call for redistribution of wealth was being "myopically dismissed by the whites in South Africa as madness on the part of Cde Malema".

"Yet his frustrations are widely shared across South Africa. Ominously, they point to the struggles for the control of resources that will soon be visiting that country."

Seemingly our comrades in Zimbabwe know more than most of us about what is in the offing in this country.

Recently I had a long discussion with my friend who is an ANC member. He confirmed to me that the wagon was on gear now. When I asked what he meant he alluded to Malema’s visit to Zimbabwe and rambled about China being the only ancient civilization in human history to have re-emerged as a major force in the world. “Africa is on that path.”

This got me thinking about China as the model of modern development.

To justify its monopoly on power, the Chinese’s Communist Party promised and delivered on constant economic growth. There was a lot of talk about patriotism—the Chinese version of the ideology of revolution when they want to be vague or hide something; as Democratic Revolution Movement is ours here.

Supporting the government, alias the Communist Party, is a patriotic act in China, and criticism of it is unpatriotic or, if done by a foreigner, is anti-Chinese. Of Big brother prefers the language of counter-revolutionary here; after our development is through the Soviet bloc, not the cultural veil for tragic politics that was Maoism.

Some people now in China, especially the educated and middle class live in extreme affluence, with a certain cosmopolitan style a Cape Townan suburban snob might find enviable. Capitalists are doing all right in post-1989 China. There’s money to be made, a lot of it, that is if you belong to a right clique, or are connected to the communist party pedigree; or if you rely on your own innovation you must know how to keep your mouth shut and “play the game”, as my friend put when trying to convince me to join their department.

I told my friend I don’t know to be anything else except myself, which is what mostly gets me into trouble. He told me I didn’t have to be shut up about my views; I just need to trim them to fit a bigger scheme of things. When I asked what was the bigger scheme of things he became evasive.

But I must give it to him, he seemed to have thought things through than I had suspected initially; and indeed China seem most likely to be their best model. I just wonder where would they find the technocrats to do all the work when they seem bent on chasing the best brains out of their organisation, or country for that matter. I don’t see Juju and his company as the technocratic types, and that is the group which should have been groomed and educated about a decade ago. They now should have been ready to take the positions of technical skill an interventionist state requires. Juju’s group prefers short-cuts, learning how grab, and they are not alone to blame, after all big brother has never really took the idea of development, educational and otherwise, too seriously. Unfortunately, as China can now boast, it is the only real thing that will turn things around. Perhaps Juju and his cabals should be sending students to study in China, late is better than never.

As it look now we would be in the near future then be ruled with a velvet glove when we behave, and an iron fist for those who refuse to “play the game”—no nice things for them, in Juju’s language.

There’s a lot of talk about Chinese people, especially in the rural areas, not being ready for democracy, that it may create chaos and mess. My understanding is that democracy is a messy thing because it is an aggregation of views and opinion to find the most popular. Ordinary people too, ignorant or otherwise, should have as much control over decision making of who must govern them, or how the national resources should be distributed. Of course this strikes at the heart of the authoritarianism, hence the talks of the party knowing what’s best for its people.

Dressing up authoritarianism by talks of patriotism or counter-revolutionarism does not hide the fact that you want people to subordinate their freedom. Others dress this subordination in cloaks of liberal grandeur like development. Why are modern parties so bent afraid of democracy and like to equate it with obedience rather than participation on the basis of equality? I don’t know. The best I can do perhaps is to end this with a quotation from Lasch as hear him scream on my head:

The people are busy–I’ve spent a lot of time around them. I’ve got a pretty good feel for this. Their jobs suck and they’re exhausted. When they get it together to do something amazing like build the CIO or create the Civil Rights movement, it’s a mitzvah composed of all kinds of things, especially incredibly tenacious, labor intensive organizing ... Some of them are wonderful, and some of them are awful, and most of them are in between–kind of like everybody else…. The world has always been a scary place, and it’s always been the fit though few who have undertaken to make stuff better. And, over time, they pick up some fellow travelers, and, oddly enough, things do get better.”

Others may see it strange that I’m very much interested in Lasch, but I think he was “attempt to provide a pedigree for a more radical, more democratic–and more consistent–brand of cultural conservatism,” one that combined economic leveling with traditional and local ways of life.

Things do get better; no thanks to any political party, only because people know exactly what is good for them and when. I trust the people, especially the ignorant ones because there’s far more wisdom sometimes in being ignorant than being clever. I distrust clever people, especially those with a political agenda.

Oh, I must go to sleep now. Paris has gone to sleep, grown tired of waiting for his mom who has just sms me that she’s just been awarded a crown of being the sexiest woman at Hout Bay—and women in Hout Bay are sexy, in an underrated kind of way that I like.

There’s growing wind, threatening to rock the boat. Outside the sea is dark, oily dark imposing a sense of mystery on things.

Lionel Trilling once quoted Charles Péguy’s memorable adage in the Preface to The Liberal Imagination—“everything begins in mystery and ends in politics.”
Perhaps; but everything that ends in politics must eventually return to mystery, or tumble into irrelevance. The times! The times!

The Dangling man

2010-04-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

As I read media reports of the president of the ANCYL going to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to "study" and "learn" about nationalization from the failed state of Zimbabwe? [Zimbabwe, the classic case study of how to run a once thriving nation into the ground]. I’m thinking what a quick learning boy. After all birds of the same feather naturally flock together. He can export and import more politics of factionalism and hatred.

Also I hear the nazists leader of the AWB is dead, from the hand he refused to feed.

With all this I’m reminded of the biblical tail titled ‘the prodigal son’, where a son demands his inheritance from his father and go squander it with harlots and drunkards only to realise later on his left with nothing and forced to feed with swines.

That’s the feeling I get when I look to the new generations of the likes of Julius Malema, who never really fought for the fruits of liberation they’ve inherited. Like the prodigal son they’re spending its capital on hooliganism they call the revolution.

Most people are baffled as how is it possible that such an obvious buffoon can get away with so much and with seeming impunity. Well, I’m not really surprised, even pygmies, when standing on the shoulders of giants can destroy the vision of the nation, or at least block its view. What is needed is for those who can see through the internal light to nuture and share with others until the whole nation can see.

For those of us who grew up in the township during the early eighties are now again getting a sense of dejavu, of having been here before. We remember how the criminals hijacked the liberation struggle then for their ends, until our communities, through organisations like United Democratic Front and Black Conscious Movement, stood up to reclaim back their communities.

Then too the criminals and opportunists spoke the language of populists and liberation, but people eventually saw through them. The same is happening now. Nothing will change until we all become the change we want to see.

The best way to counteract the bad effects of populism, lawlessness and the eventual breakdown of the constitutionalist balance is not to be part of it. To be an example. Changing things is a myth where the rot has settled, the transparent bias in that case is always towards greater and deeper decay.

It is getting clear now that the best of what has been thought and said in the world is being lost to the vulgar, unfeeling, greedy, virtueless world of commerce, consumerism and politics. Of course in Malema’s suedo revolutionary language it called making history. They confuse history with dust raising.

History is never plotted, and its ramifications are complex. It might appear as though unfolding chaotically in a given political but when you dig deeper you see a strata of order in both its public and personal dimensions.

The chaos of history has its own galvanizing potential. Though seemingly prone to the vain it tends to be resistant to triumphal vulgarism and political chauvinism in the end. Perhaps it is of our advantage that the likes of Malema never realise this until it is too late for them. Their type can only learn against the rock and when they are no longer in the pedestal they fluked with shenanigans.

Helen has come in now. I must move away from this sterile topic and hard desk to try and recapture what is, at this stage, best about our lives. [We’re going to lunch at Noerdhoek, driving through the enchanting Chapman’s Peak. Isn’t it wonderful that we are still able to delve into the world's ordinary enchantment even under conditions of emotional intensity?

When I sat at this desk I was trying to catch the creative vein, rediscover my love for storytelling but was led astray by the flattening narrative of our time and a spike of emotional intensity as watch my country descend slowly into … (ah come on, these are no times to be despondent but to confront the strictures of our era with courage. I know enough about the history of this country to know this kind of things happens all the time, and no matter how long we dangle on the abyss we always find our way back].

I’ll have that glass of Sauvignon Blanc now, La Motte to be specific; after all I’m by now complete bourgeoisie.

The land of Ulro: thinking through Milosz

2010-03-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

The Prince of This World governs number.
The singular is the hidden God’s dominion ...

We were miserable, we used no more
than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from
centuries ago –
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes
before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot,
a caravel
staving its hull against a reef – they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in
the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the
same time,
whether they were aware of it or not ...

Instead of leaving to theologians their worries, I have constantly meditated on religion ... To write on literature or art is considered an honourable occupation, whereas any time notions taken from the language of religion appeared, the one who brought them up is immediately treated as lacking in tact, as if a silent pact had been broken ...

They rage like wild beasts in the forests of affliction ... an urgent lament for the precipitous decline ...

My imperviousness to the usually rather shallow progressive-atheist arguments was like the chess-player’s contempt for cards ...

From Schopenhauer’s Godless, meaningless, ceaselessly cruel universe, in which the competitive struggle of the will to life delivers only suffering, there's no escape except in the paradoxical renunciation of the will by the will. The atheist philosopher wrote:

"Our state is originally and essentially an incurable one, and . . . we need deliverance from it . . . . Salvation is to be gained only through faith, in other words, through a changed way of knowledge. This faith can come only through grace, and hence as if from without."

The sceptical irony of the classicist is more attractive than the priest’s puritanism. Yet, what does it mean to be sufficiently well informed about Darwin if there are not rational grounds for an unaided human reason, and the gaps are glaring.

Ought I to try to explain “why I believe”? I don’t think so. It should suffice if I attempt to convey the colouring or tone. If I believed that man can do good with his own powers, I would have no interest in Christianity. But he cannot, because he is enslaved in his own predatory, domineering instincts, which we may call proprium , or self-love ... Still it does not mean man is helpless; any good that must be done in and through needs his / her openness to it and cooperation. Grace limits her work to man's intricacies. What all-powerful will limit omnipotence to the whims of a worm? Except, of course the God of love.

Human reasoning is limited, much more so than he rationalists realise. Here is placed the victory, that is, of the resurrected Christ. It confounds all powers of human reason. To conquer by death, human's ultimate failure? St Paul's foolishness of Christ's crucified.

All man of goodwill are staggering to their own victory through death, which, I suppose is essentially what is meant by redemption.

2009-04-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard an honour of travelling the length and breadth of our province (Western Cape) in the company of great men and women, most of whom like me they see in COPE a last beacon of hope for our people. Most of us, seeing the general anger of people against politicians, were concerned by what we see as the fire next time (James Baldwin) when the false promises of the Zuma Project become glaring; the social unrest that may occur in our country. Who’ll douse those flames when they flare?

Take the recent Karoo tour with the Western Cape Premier Candidate. As I was looking at the stabbing poverty of our people in towns like Beaufort West I felt like a phony, slamming it in and out of people’s difficult lives when a certain old lady, with disappointed eyes, took the premier candidate aside and said; “Boesak, I don’t want you to promise us anything; but I’m glad you came to see the kind of lives we are living.” Back on the air-conditioned car with dark windows I felt discouraged by the enormity of poverty and all. I looked back at the book I was reading, the lines I had underlined. At first they didn’t make much sense to me until later on:

One might almost imagine that there were no such thing as absolute truth, since a change of situation or temperament is capable of changing the whole force of an argument. We have been accustomed, even those of us who feel most, to look on the arguments for and against the system of slavery with the eyes of those who are at ease. We do not even know how fair is freedom, for we were always free. We shall never have all the materials for absolute truth on this subject, till we take into account, with our own views and reasonings, the views and reasonings of those who have bowed down to the yoke, and felt the iron enter into their souls. [Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale Of The Great Dismal Swamp (1856)]

I was listening to a political debate on the radio and felt we were busy arguing about who has done what, who can do what better than whom; meantime people are living hopelessly difficult lives. It’s not that our government does not have resources to ameliorate our people’s plight; it just that the money is in wrong hands of people who do not know how to spread it around and make people’s lives better. They’d rather it goes down back to the treasury than putting it to real use. Tell me then; how fair is freedom in that scenario? How can we leave with ourselves?

As I said, I felt discouraged. In my discouragement I put down my book, sent my vacant eyes to the naked poverty running on the township streets before turning to read Dr. Boesak’s, There’s never been a time like this speech: “Our hopes of yesterday are still there, but have become the disappointments of today. Our joys of yesterday in so many ways became the tears of today ... We’re here to say we have a new vision in which we can believe in, we are here to say we’re chiseling a new road that everyone can walk, a new home that can be a home for everyone. We’re here to say it is not too late; we are here to say we’ll not be ruled by fear, we’ll not be prescribed by hopelessness, and that we’ll not be hopeless. South Africa is our country; South Africa is not bound to failure, we’ve a God given calling to fulfill, and the time to fulfill that calling is now.”

I recalled that I still had my hopes and beliefs to give the people, and wrote it on my knee that I’ll never allow my leaders to forget this. I whispered in my heart for theirs to hear that the Congress of the People (COPE) will not only be a movement for the new era, with a commitment to putting its ear on the ground and basing its actions on the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, but it’ll be the vehicle of deliverance for their hopes. I said, yes COPE is a party that subscribe to democratic values while being sensitive to individual and minority rights, but it must be more; it must be the party of the people by the people through the people. COPE needs to enshrine as one of its founding principle that everyone has a right to decent life, liberty, prosperity, property, free speech, freedom of worship and assembly, and equality before the law. And COPE must believe these rights to be fundamental. That they are not subjected to a vote, or depend on the outcome of electioneering and populism.

Having seen how easy it is to manipulate governing laws to suite the capricious and arbitrary power of the day, I recalled my enthusiasm and hopes at the Sandton Convention that historic November day. When we said we’ll no longer trust even in legislation if the the values and ideals espoused by it is not robustly followed, or does not become part of the very fabric of political process. When we saw the crossroad moment of the devaluation of our institutions of our freedom and civil liberty, for the promotion of the ascendancy to power of one man, and defense of his criminal allegation, we said not in our name.

“I’m telling you now; you’re part of this moment, part of this tidal wave of the future. You are part of this vision for hope we are offering the peoples of South Africa, a home where everyone is welcome, but we will go out and challenge this country, we will pick its people up; we will hold our hopes high, and let me tell you,: There was never a time like this.” COPE’s work has just only begun. Sometimes when an idea arrives at an opportune time, and finds right leadership, of progressive spirit, it acquires a force of inevitability. COPE is an idea whose time has come, hence, as Reverend Boesak would say: COPE is on the Roll.

Fire next time?

2009-03-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

I’m surprised at those who criticize the Congress of the People (COPE) for choosing for its election strategy integrality, moral uprightness and ethical governance. What are they trying to say, that politics should be left to characters of moral dubiousness and corrupt tendencies? May be I’m taking the finger for the moon here, but isn’t the whole exercise of criticizing the venality of Tripartite Alliance politics about wishing for change and better run government? Or are we just barking at the moon to ridicule the ANC without any real end goal.

COPE in bringing Bishop Mvume Dandala as its election presidential candidate has put its money where the mouth is. This could not have been an easy decision for it’s already established leadership, but they showed signs of real leadership by putting aside personal aspirations for power for the good of the party, and ultimately the country. COPE also has shown that it shuns the easy path of attracting popular mediocrity by insisting upon the value of excellence and integrity, something not yet very popular with the black masses. By so doing it made its actions congruent to its words.

Our political life will remain both absurd and corrupt as long as long as the more excellent minds and upright characters are excluded from fruitful participation by the preponderance of mediocrities. Not that our country needs to be ruled by clerics and academics, but our political leadership needs to be in the hands of those who, by their well developed intellectual and moral abilities, are able to discern the common justice and universal good for us all. If these men are, by necessity of training, are to be found in intellectual and religious institutions, so be it.

The truth of the matter is that South African politics within the ruling party have fallen on evil days. They’ve been hijacked by men who have learnt to sublimate immorality into compound group and individual interests. Too much (in dissolving institutions that stand in their venial ways and try to change laws to suit their corrupt tendencies) already has been decided by those who are determined to make us a banana republic. Their weapon is providing bread and circus for the masses while creating ‘sclerotic society’, where the accretion of powerful vested interests robs the economy, thus the country, of its vitality. They care more about empty attachments to hereditary obsolete ideologies that are inimical to wealth-creation than making things work.

Those who officially opposed them up to now on the other radical hand tend to object to the revolutionary strain of socialism for the belief in economy that supposed to prosper when left to the free play of the market forces. Their head of steam is usually yoked to the programme of liberalism. They call their rule laissez-faire economics. There’s an impossibility they do not want to acknowledge, that of trying to build collectivist conclusions on individualistic premises. The buttress of laissez-faire is the necessity for unlimited private money-making as an incentive to maximum effort. The conclusion that individuals, acting independently for their own advantage, will produce the greatest aggregate of wealth is argued/purchased at the expense of facts.

COPE comes with an understanding that each age ought to determine for itself what the state can do, and what the individual must contribute towards the commonwealth of the nation. Private power must be subjected to democracy by decision-sharing, profit-sharing and wider share ownership of wealth. Call it Social Liberalism if you like, what’s important is that we must secure accountability from the government for the collective wealth coming from aggregated production while utilizing the technical private skill for public service also. Captains of the industry must be genially constrained by their undertaking to serve the public in wealth production. Organs of state must be run by qualified people with public service ethics who are professors, business managers, bankers, economists, scientists, etc.

COPE’s political philosophy is not just a compromise between politics of nationalism and liberalism; it involves so much more new ideas that are unfamiliar to both traditions. We can count the vetting of its parliamentary list by an independent panel as just but one example and fresh idea. In essence COPE is about real equality, fraternity, inclusiveness and democracy, and seeks to operate by organic unities that answer the challenges of the day. Call it Obama philosophy if you like, but the truth of the matter is that it is just what is demanded by the times. It is about paying attention to innate qualities of everything while doing away with what does not work.

It might seem, as we look at the Bills being passed in the US that Marx’s predictions are coming true, with Capitalism imploding from what he termed its internal contradictions. Marx was right to some degree when he said; "Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to the bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to Communism. "

But the road leads to an egalitarian (Social Liberalism) society than Communism. The short-run instability of capitalism is a greater threat to the social order than the long-run inequity in wealth and income distribution. Hence for now it is more important to adjust the internal structures of capitalism for macroeconomic stabilisation than it is to start revolutions that’ll almost always end up betraying their causes in any case. The imperative question is, will the captains of industries and government leaders learn? If not, I tell you social uprising shall be worse menace of the 21st century than the terrorist terror. People will not forever content themselves only on shackling themselves to their houses for fear of repossession. In the words of Baldwin, it’ll be fire next time. South Africa is not absolved. A whole lot of integrity is demanded of us all. COPE stands as our fresh political start and meaningful platform to meet each other halfway. How I hope we’d yield the lesson.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

2009-01-18T01:25:00.000-08:00

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

By
Mphuthumi Ntabeni

ABSA stadium in East London, where the African National Congress (ANC) celebrated its 97th anniversary the and launch of its manifesto for the 2009 national elections last week is almost a backyard of my home. I’ll not get into the insufferable noise, the street drunkenness, reckless driving, and dirt such things generate. My mother, a now wavering supporter of the ANC, had serious issues with it though, threatening to tip over her scales against the organisation. “The rowdiness of it all”; her words.

As I went to the ABSA stadium I was listening to Bob Dylans’ song; Desolation Row: ‘They’re selling postcards of the hanging. / They’re painting the passports brown [yellow]. / The beauty palour is filled with sailors [politicians]. / The circus is in town . . .’ I was hoping against experience to hear something fresh, and battling with cynicism, thinking there must be better things to do with one’s holiday than this; ‘[E]verbody is either making love, or else expecting rain. . .’

I had noticed an interesting, even worrying, turn in the ANC campaign; the use of commodity market strategies for the election campaign. [The young lady with flowing braids—mimicking Vodacom—in a consumption pose: My ANC! ]The manufacturing of popular will does not get more narcissist than personalized commercialisation, I thought. The idea, I suppose, is to launch into the subconscious the idea of the ANC as not just a political party but a way of life to be consumed as a cultural statement, hints of suaveness and all. The ANC too now once to be part of modern culture.

The staduim was painted yellow with ANC supporters in jovial mood, ferried for free from all corners of the country. As I sat behind myriads of these t-shirts I was amazed at the irony written at their backs: Better education, health, safety and security, jobs for all, social development. They’re advertising their failures. These are the areas the ANC has proven to be shabby, to say the least. The scandolous audacity of it! I thought. ‘They all play the penny whistle. You can hear them blow; if you lean your head out, far enough from desolation row . . .’ The whole thing looked more like a stock-in-trade of some low comedy whose punch line I didn’t get.

Then came the speeches; the usual recycled self-satisfied fealty bosh and romanticized version of our history, tilting towards revolutionary heroism that lacks proper understanding of the mechanics of our national inherited history. Jacob Zuma (JZ) lacked depth, as usual. Even his leitmotif, umshini wam, seemed to have lost its spark, sounding stale and contrived. Then, in tradition of the organisation, he read the statistics of ANC’s achievements, bringing to mind what Hilaire Belloc wrote; ‘Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.’ Mark Twain put it more succinctly in the sentence (wrongly attributed to Disraeli sometimes) I used as a title of this article.

JZ spoonfeeded the masses with optimism, taking his authority from reading birds intensines; poisoned them, in totured self-confidence, with hopes of rooting out corruption, something he has no moral authority over. The masses got distracted, not paying much attention after the automaton chants. With ill equipped habits of culture, nostalgia for the past, they stood no chance to grasp the glaring truths. Overdetermined into redundancy by rehearsed political habits they’ve yet to unshackle themselves from political manipulations. You could sense their human spirit getting resteless, straining to go beyond emotional attachments of the past.

More than any other time I was convinced that attending ANC rallies is a waste of time, and subjecting oneself to verbal wasteland. Only people with vested interests can endure it, after all, gold has no smell and hungry stomachs no noses. Once again though, I doffed my hat to the ‘ill fed, ill housed and ill clothed masses’ for the resilence of their intoxicated hopes in dubious claims of blatant propaganda. ‘And nobody ever thinks too much, about desolation row . . .’

I felt dizzy and tired with going in circles on the fetish ANC wagon that’s stagnated on nostalgia. I guess that makes me elitist. So be it. Having drained my ungratified faculty of curiosity , and in grips of aggressive cynicism, I left before it became apparent I was counter revolutionary. ‘Praise be to Nero’s Neptune; the Titanic sails at dawn. Everybody is shouting, whose side are you on . . . I got your letters yesterday, about the time the dawn’ broke. When you asked how I was doing; was that somekind of joke? All these people you mention; yes I know them, they’re quite lame . . .’ The folk singer echoed in my ears.

Answering Helen Zille

2009-01-18T00:32:00.000-08:00

I seem to recall, not so long ago, in the South African National Convention at Sandton last year madam Helen Zille telling the gathered there that in the coming elections the opposition parties should try to rise above petty politics and concentrate on fighting the juggernaut power of the African National Congress (ANC). From reading her 2009 second week letter in the Democratic Alliance (DA), where she castigates the Congress of the People (COPE) for being not better than the ANC, I guess she’s no longer singing from that sheet.

Madam Zille writes; ‘it should be clear to all South Africans that the substantive choice in this election is between the ANC’s “closed crony society for some” and the DA’s “open, opportunity society for all”. . . The emergence of COPE, and the role it plays in breaking down the ANC’s monolith, should not blur this fundamental distinction. If it does, it could do more harm than good.’ Madam Zille further says ‘The split in the ANC is a direct result of the struggle for control between rival factions of a patronage-based system . . .’ And goes on to allege that the leadership of COPE is made of the same people that consolidate ‘the closed, crony system and blur the lines between party and state – a step which often signals the irreversible decline of an emerging democracy.’ Leaving aside the clear electioneering opportunism of madam Zille’s accusation, let’s see if there’s any credence in all this.

The most irresponsible statement Helen Zille makes is this; ‘Ironically, the party’s list selection process that most closely conforms to the “closed patronage model” is COPE’s. A small leadership group chooses every other representative in the party, including themselves.’ COPE ascertains that its leaders should be elected by its constituencies, which means the list of candidates should come from the Voter Districts (VD) [COPE operates on Voter District ground structure, along the Independent Election Council guidelines, instead of Branch system like most South African political parties.]

In Bloemfontein, late last year, when the interim national leadership of COPE was to be elected, it became apparent that most of the provinces didn’t have proper VD structures [It must be remembered that COPE is hardly few months old]. A decision was then made for the province representatives present at the party launch to make lists of proposals for national leadership. Most provinces came up with the required list, with the exception of Western Province that could not come up with an agreed list in time. I won’t get into the details of how that was resolved, its party internal matter. Suffice to say from the lists prepared by the provinces an aggregate was taken, based on proportional representation of all racial, ethnic, gender, age groups. The bulk of people on provincial lists became the present interim leadership structure of COPE. To say this was made by a ‘small leadership group’ of ‘closed patronage model’ is misrepresentation of facts to say the least.

‘While all candidate selection processes create a measure of conflict, it is predictable that the COPE approach will still result in profound ructions for the new party.’ Madame Zille writes. The only ruction COPE’s national election of leadership drew was the duration the structure should take. Some people felt two years was too long for an interim structure. Admittedly, there are tensions in the creation of provincial leadership at present. This because COPE is largely made up of groups from different cultural and political culture. COPE is learning the best ways to accommodate and represent these groupings. Indication is, with some difficulties, the principles of the party are prevailing.

As for the sore loser theory from Polokwane, it is tiring to have to answer this allegation. How is Charlotte Lobe a sore loser for instead, since she was elected in the present ANC National Executive Council from which she voluntarily resigned to join COPE at great political, financial and personal risk to herself. What gains of power is Terror Lekota looking for when he was not even willing to stand on the interim leadership structure of COPE and had to be persuaded in a protracted process to do so for the stability of the fledgling party. For that matter, most people who are in COPE leadership structure are doing so rather at great financial and personal strain; what is so attractive about that? And where does madam Zille feature people the likes of COPE second deputy editor,Odendaal, in her accusations? The fact is, COPE membership as it is now is largely made up of people who’ve never took any interests in politics before, and not of ANC breakaways as wrongly perceived.

Another misnomer is the notion of COPE’s lack of identity as insinuated by madam Zille when she says; ‘COPE now faces the challenge of showing that it is different from the ANC, that it is not merely a bunch of sore losers seeking to hold on to their positions by creating a separate electoral platform for themselves.’ COPE is a movement for the dawn of new era in South African politics, founded on the promise of commitment to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a will of the people of democratic values that are sensitive to individual and minority rights. COPE believes human rights overrides even democratic ones. That everyone's right to life, liberty, property, free speech, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights, are given by life and may not be subjected to vote, or depend on the outcome of electioneering.

Having seen how easy it is for majority political parties to manipulate the governing laws of the republic to suite the capricious and arbitrary power of the day, COPE founders saw that it is not enough to merely legislate laws if the values and ideals espoused by legislation for the public good is not robustly defended, or does not become part of the very fabric of political process. By doing so they woke many of us who were apolitical and complacent under the illusion that our country was in a correct political path.

COPE believes all political and legal developments must be measured against the moral principles that lie at the core of our human rights. Thus COPE sees that Rechsstaat, i.e. a society based on the rule of law, is not sufficient. We need to create a society based on social justice and dedicated to higher moral calling. This requires not simply good laws but also leadership of knowledgeable insight who are untarnished by duplicitous moral and ethical dubiousness. Hence COPE seeks to strive to be led by effective, competent, efficient, industrious leaders with organisational qualities and deeper sense of truth; a leadership who must despise personal gains at the expense of the public at large.

Another issue that has recently been in fashion is that of accusing COPE of evasive strategy when it comes to Affirmative action and Black Economic Empowerment. Madam Zille and Jimmy Manyi are examples of different extreme, which suggests that COPE in its endeavour in taking the mean between nationalist and liberal politics must be doing something right. For clarity, COPE’s Draft Policy Document has this to say on the BEE issue: ‘While in the recent past there has arisen a small group of empowered blacks or the so-called black elite, and there are signs that generally the middle-class is on the rise . . . there remains high levels of inequalities in South Africa. Race politics cannot be ignored; they still loom large. However, with class inequalities gaining prominence, race is gradually losing weight as a factor of inequality. What this means is that social tensions are not only limited to inter-race tensions; intra-race tensions along class lines are also slowly emerging. . .’

There’s another reality that is gradually emerging in South Africa – that of ‘poor whites problem’. COPE policy draft document says; ‘This also should not be overlooked on the account of the state’s Constitution imperatives however emotive this issue can be. This should be treated as part of the wider problem of rising class inequalities and poverty in society rather a special case . . . [All] this requires us to revisit some of the elements of economic policy, notably the BEE and give more meaningful effect to its broad-based component as well as to examine its social costs with respect of racial harmony.’ To an extent that it was suggested, by one of COPE’s prominent member, Farouk Cassim, that we should henceforth call this Grassroots Economic Empowerment (GEE) instead of BEE to clarify our stand of wishing to include all disadvantage people for empowerment.

It is perhaps not surprising that those of stagnant and moribund politics feel threatened by COPE’s gain of momentum and strategic positioning. Historical factors, especially its lure of proper mean between nationalist and liberal politics, are on COPE’s side, which is why it is quickly capturing the imagination of South Africans. But one would expect that at least even in politicking parties would be fair and try to criticise from an informed position. The firing pressures directed towards COPE will only serve to clarify its principles and purify its leadership. COPE is not prepared to enter into mudslinging with other political parties. Instead it invites all South Africans of goodwill to remember the rock they were hewn from, and rediscover the hope of the society they sort to build when Nelson Mandela became the president of the country.

Towards building the just society it envisages COPE commits itself towards working for:

• Rapid and sustainable economic growth.
• Distribution of resources in a fair and equitable manner that does not prejudice against others.
• Creation of fair and equal opportunities for all, regardless of colour, gender, age, or creed.
• A Constitutional democracy depending on the superiority of the constitution and committing to upholding it.
• Building a competent and apolitical public service that is composed of qualified civil servants who are committed to taking services to the people.
• Rallying all South Africans behind the idea of hard work and self-uplifment with commitment towards a vision of creating and sustaining conditions for prosperity and peace, especially in the African continent.
• Inspiring the nation with visionary leadership and commitment with moral and ethical values.
• Finding a new political narrative that fits our social needs and times, away from stagnant politics of prejudice, without neglecting our proud history of liberation struggle and individual rights.

An idea whose time has come

2009-01-05T05:57:00.000-08:00

Opinion is growing in the South African public that the Congress of the People (COPE) is turning up to be nothing more than taxonomical adjustment of the ANC with same old prescriptions and cadences. Indeed COPE has been taking in a lot of detritus dumped overboard by other political parties, giving them fresh opportunities to reboot. It is therefore understandable when people question its bona fides, after all one of COPE’s rallying points is ethical behaviour. Why, for instance, must it welcome as a heroes convicts like Allan Boesak?

Granted, Boesak was given a presidential pardon that eradicated his criminal record, but COPE sells itself as the guardian of moral principles among other things, and rallies on politics that are built on solid principles. Because of this, more than other political party, COPE is judged harshly when it shows holes on its moral fabric. On the other hand most people tend to forget that COPE also promotes the combination of reforming spirit with its ideals of constitutionalism, defence of democracy and so forth. COPE is about new beginnings, trying to realise the full potential of the country, etc.

It is correct that repentant ex-offenders should not feel left out, but be re-integrated into society and accorded all their rights as enshrined in the Constitution. There’s a danger, seen long ago by Aristotle, of vices sometimes being virtues carried to excess; the error of puritanical organisations. By accepting Boesak COPE, on top of being practical, avoids excessive virtuousness, and the superficial culture of appropriating blame as the sign of virtue. I’m sure COPE is not a post-Freudian political organisation that relaxes moral views, pardoning all on pretence of understanding all. Rather by adopting the more strenuous position that regards real virtue as a thing that require more discriminating, even less immediately gratifying populist stance, COPE put itself in a stronger position, above the slack disposition of self-righteousness by readily apportioning blame to others, and dishing double jeopardy to those who’ve paid their debt to society.

Political parties must find value on people for what they stand for now, how they, heron, conduct themselves. Otherwise they’d have to refuse admission to many people, especially politicians who almost always have shoddy pasts, one way or the other. Once you start preventing people from becoming members of your party simply because of what they did in their previous political parties, positions of employment, family matters, churches, schools, rugby clubs, soccer clubs, etc., where do you end? I’m sure COPE wants membership of great stature and credible leadership with integrity, who respects the rule of law, and will uphold the Constitution, etc. But it does not have to be finicky about these issues. It is hypocritical bêtise, and suspension of reality, to say in politics there are no second chances, as if politics were not part of life. We all believe that everyone deserves a second chance in life. As much as we want to put our country back to sound ethical and moral principles we must avoid the high frisson of reification, treating people as disposable things and demonising them because of their past.

COPE has so far been making right noises towards progressive, pluralistic, consultative, participatory, ethical democracy. It has captured the imagination of South Africans who want to move away from exhortatory passé politics of nostalgia and perpetual myth making. True, if it wants to gain the confidence of the majority of South Africans it must find ways of reducing the disabling gaps between political rhetoric and practise to eliminate performative contradictions. The real test is on whether COPE is able to avoid the cloying carnivalesque delirium of the Tripartite Alliance (TA) they so eloquently criticise. The TA has fallen victim to its own myths making by placing too much credence on its rhetorical slogans, and by conducting itself as a self-appointed messianic custodians of our freedom. Most South Africans seek a fresh break from all the stale about the so called national revolutionary politics that glorifies barren ideologies and superficial radical appeal. COPE’s success will be determined by how much it makes itself platform of expression for the spirit of our times.

COPE has chosen what is termed progressive politics where political leaders acquaint themselves with sentiments and derivations of the masses, and the narrative order of the day. Progressive politics sublimate social tensions by adopting development social spirit for common good. If COPE promotes and practice that with structural integrity of democracy and justice, break the power of stultifying illusions that has been created by the TA, people are in intelligent enough to realise where their best future rest. Sometimes when an idea arrives at an opportune time, and finds right leadership of progressive spirit, it acquires a force of inevitability.

Too much power corrupts

2009-01-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

Without belittling the global economic crisis, the shameful xenophobic attacks, the renewed fighting at the Gaza Strip, even the brilliant win of Proteas in Australia and all; this year for me go down as the one the African National Congress (ANC) showed its real intentions and scared the pants out of me with its shenanigans. That woke me out of complacency that our country, politically, was on the golden path.

It is a given fact of history that governments that hold power too long lapse into decadence and corruption. Leaving aside semantic quibbles about the callous meanings of the word corrupt, it is fair to say that the dictum of the English nineteenth century historian, Lord Acton, proved to be applicable to our post apartheid government after the pivotal moment in our modern history at Polokwane. The ANC Government has since been through crisis after another, largely from dearth of vision and lack of proper leadership. It has, in my eyes at least, lost moral authority due to scandals, sleaze, arrogance and incompetence. The worse part is that, instead of attempting to mend its structural flaws it tried to save face by amassing more powers through what can only be termed as tyranny of legislation (changing laws of the republic to suite its designs).

It has become clear that what the ANC Government, with its Tripartite Alliance (TA) partners, is seeking to do by its so called National Democratic Revolution is to establish a society of unified intent, a society where uniformity of thought is enforced by the tyranny of the majority. It is trying to adopt what in historical terms is called the machtsstaat, a state based on might of arbitrary will of the persons in power without the strict observation of the rule of law.

After the horrible apartheid years South Africa chose to follow the rote of a Rechsstaat, i.e. the government that is bound by law with powers limited by the individual rights of its people. This rule of law emphasises the absolute supremacy of law as opposed to arbitrary power, even that of the majority and has been known, since the founding of the United States Republic, as Constitutional democracy. In this system an independent judiciary interprets and enforces provisions of the constitution even when it means overturning the acts of a democratically elected legislature. Of course those within the TA tend to carelessly drum the sacrosanct of democracy even when it violates other rights.

For instance, the ANC National Executive Council (NEC) was at pains trying to justify it’s decision to unconstitutionally recall the president of the republic, Thabo Mbeki. {Our constitution states clearly that only the Constitutional Court may decide that Parliament or the President has failed to fulfil a constitutional obligation. [The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996, sec.172(4)(e).} The ANC NEC disregarded this in the recall, and the fact that in the South African system of governance only the constitution is sovereign. Section 2 of our Constitution Founding Provisions established the supremacy of the constitution above even the government. It says; “This Constitution is the supreme law of the Republic; law or conduct inconsistent with it is invalid, and the obligations imposed by it must be fulfilled.”

The supremacy of the Constitution was promulgated to prevent exactly these kinds of abuse of political power, and to control government power against the citizens. South Africa is a constitutional republic with checks and balances to minimise the impact of faction, and reduce the risk of the tyranny of the majority. This is the heritage it adopted from the American republic.

The American founding fathers realised the dangers of tyranny even from the majority rule when they established Constitutional democracy as means to control factions that may harm other citizens. James Madison, as if foreseeing what happened in SA since Polokwane, wrote in The Federal Papers that factions are “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” It is easy to control a minority faction by a democratic process. At worst, Madison wrote, a minority faction “may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.” But what of the majority disguising their abuse of law through manipulation and changing of laws?

Madison saw that the real danger arises with a majority faction. “When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” In a democratic system the tyranny of the majority and legislature (which represents the majority) is something always alive and was given colour in our country post Polokwane by the ANC. “[I]t is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.” Admonished Madison.

A person who tabulated clearly the dangers of the “Tyranny of the Majority” was the nineteenth famous French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America. He warned against the lack of sufficient limitations on majority rule and dire consequences of unfettered democracy. Thomas Jefferson, as Alexander Hamilton, Madison’s co-author, all came to a conclusion that power must be granted to constitutional courts as a barrier against the tyranny of political assemblies, and means of accountability for the government. With that the American government shifted away from majority rule towards constitutional principles, which South Africa inherited and improved in certain areas. To see that thrown down the window by a few elite group elected by political factions was highly disconcerting.

We’ve seen the reshuffles and cathartic upheavals within our government ever since Polkwane. We now find ourselves under the power of leaders with wry perspective and bruised egos whose faces we were never sold into during our last vote. And near moral and political collapse of our democracy that has been hijacked by factions. We’ve seen plotters and mutineers invoking the name of democracy, making us accomplices in their designs. Surely at some stage we have to say enough is enough.

Feel For Me a Brimming Bowl

2008-12-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

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.
*
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

2008-11-24T13:33:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-11-11T02:20:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-29T03:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-29T03:06:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-03T05:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-29T02:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-08-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

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.

*

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).

*

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

2008-08-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

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.

The Dizzying Circles

2008-07-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, Trevor Manuel, the Minister of Finance, writing in Cape Times (Monday, July, 7, 2008), invited our nation (South Africa) to enter into dialogue with him about an age old issue that has baffled almost all economic studies: How do you make a country’s economy grow? Or rather, in our case, as the minister pointed out; how do you make an economy grow in broadband extent that puts serious dent on unemployment and poverty? There have been innumerable studies about how to make a country’s economy grow since the moral philosopher (no he was not an economist, the field had not even been devised by then) Adam Smith, wrote The Wealth of Nations.

Studies mostly look at fiscal policies; others to the relationship between free trade and economic growth. By now the only thing clear is that neither free trade nor protectionism is a cure-all. Some thinkers are even starting to think the field of Economics is more masquillage than real scientific study. Our Minister of Finance seems to still have confidence in what he calls mixed economic policies. In closer scrutiny mixed policies is more or less an arbitrary term that means different things to different people. That, of course, is the ANC trump card, pragmatism and manufacturing illusions of debate while luring your opponent by subjunctive means to your point of view. Still, let’s give the minister a benefit of doubt in any case.

I can forsee Zwelizima Vavi of COSATU (after his preoccupation with march action against food price rises, and dying for Msholozi) contribution. He’d say; foreign investment is crucial for the growth of any economy; but no economy has ever been developed by foreign investment. Foreign investors are like bees; attracted only by blooming flowers that need cross-pollination, but will be on the first flight at first signs of nectar drying up. Private investors, the unionist will declare. Especially foreign ones, are impatient and unwilling to sacrifice immediate returns for future gains. They will not take risks on new industries or poor countries, at least not in the absence of some other advantage (like tariff protection or government subsidy). So the government must come up with aggressive government policies designed to protect and nurture domestic economy.

Heaven forbids, a professor of Economics somewhere will say. There is not even a guarantee that when governments create protective umbrellas—via tariffs, subsidies, restrictions on imports, etc—for domestic companies, these will have a chance over time to become globally competitive, thus raising the level of prosperity of the country as a whole. He will remind us that these umbrellas have costs because they raise prices for domestic consumers, and often cut off access to better and cheaper foreign goods. Can future economic growth of the country justify the present suffering of consumers? The prof will ask, and conclude. The ideal here is to find a balance, and then like our minister, be a little vague on the specifics.

No, no! Dr. Balde Nzimande of SACP will say. It is a fact that history tells us is free trade and free markets are more of a bane to developing countries than a boon. And those rich countries that insist poorer ones should follow neoliberal prescriptions are hypocrites, insisting on solutions they themselves did not follow at this stage of their development. They’re still doing it now; look at how they still protect their vulnerable industries, like farming, from global competition. They believe in free trade only where they have competitive advantage. No country can ever develop meaningfully without state owner¬ship of enterprises. What’s needed is for the government to give our own manufacturers an edge by protection. This will allow our country to ascend to the economic ladder so that we can eventually compete with wealthier nations. Learn from China people.

Nonsense, Helene Zillie of the DA would say. The wealth of any nation depends largely on Intangible Capital; that is skills of the populations and the quality of the country’s institutions supporting economic activity. Any country that does not adequately deal with these two issues might as well forget about any economic development. Most rich countries, for instance, in proportion to their overall wealth, have very little natural wealth; yet they use it efficiently for high production, thanks largely to skills and transparency. They find it easier to attract foreign capital because of trustworthy institutions of economic activity, like civil society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights, and effective government. Leave business alone, promote free trade, and all shall be added. By the way, I’ve been reading, rather my researchers, the laureate for Economics (1976), Milton Friedman. I think he had pretty good ideas. Why not we just abolition the Reserve Bank and replace its control over interest rates and the money supply with a mechanical rule for monetary growth. And, eh, if you want all that, vote for the DA. We shall show you how to manage the economy with clear decisive hand that benefits all.

Enraged and perspiring, the Reserve Bank will, recalling something he read in the Newsweek by Melville J. Ulmer, come shouting. What we’re trying to do in our country, he’d say, the exponent of laissez-faire economics cannot appreciate, because they ‘oppose government activity of practically all kinds. If it were up to them ‘[they] would abolish virtually all regulations on industry, working conditions, and the professions.’ Despite the blunders of Thatcherism ‘[They] would turn over to private industry the nation’s schools, highways, federal parks, the post office and all other publicly operated services like water supply, local buses and subways.... [They] would terminate all government efforts to stabilize the economy through fiscal and monetary policies, public works or other means.’ They would abolish worker’s unions because they say they help cartelize industry to the detriment of consumer. They would even rubbish the idea of “corporate responsibility”.

A researcher in the Finance ministry department, seating on a cold room, will recall being impressed with Friedman’s book, Capitalism and Freedom, even if it was worse on other issues. He’ll recall how the apostle of “monetarism” (the idea that changes in the money supply are the prime causes of inflation and the business cycle) thought even if “fiscal policy could have some useful effects, there’s no reason to believe government managers could use the policy at the right times and in the proper amounts to achieve the desired effect.” By an argument that fiscal manipulations tend to introduce “a largely random disturbance that is simply added to other disturbances.” He’ll impress his ideas on the minister who’ll immediately call a meeting with the Governor. The Governor, who’s a little obsessed with the Keynesian notion of fiscal policy as government’s best tool to manage the economy, will reluctantly agree. The question is, the Governor would ask, how do we put this in a revolutionary language that’s acceptable to Blade and Vavi. Live that to me, the Minister will say, and duty the researcher to pen an article for him and they send it to the media. The media will want to know how JZ (Jacob Zuma) sees the issue and will be told; “We’ve all confidence in cde Trevor.”

Madiba!!! (Nelson Mandela is 90)

2008-07-24T03:03:00.000-07:00

I recently found myself in a rather animated conversation as we watched on television Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday Bash held in London, England. The bone of contention involved Mandela’s legacy in Africa. Actually I had started the argument by recalling how once when I was still a varsity student in Jo’burg I met my Madiaba on my way to a vending machine in mid (must have been mid because I remember the night as being quite cold) of 1992.
While passing the long deserted passage through the main entrance of Great Hall to Senate House, where the vending machines were, I was suddenly shoved aside by rude gigantic, mostly white men, in black suites. Before I was able to realise what was happening Madiba came to view. He had apparently noticed how the men had rudely shoved me out of the way. He broke with the procession, extended his hand in greeting to me. I just froze, afraid the security men might not allow it.
“Hallow young man. What is your name?” He said in that hoarse, almost shrill voice of his. I was dumbfounded. He asked me also what I was studying, and when I told him he said in conclusion. “Good! The country needs people to build this country.” The encounter must have lasted less than 20 seconds but I never forgot it. Unfortunately for my ego, none of my friends believed me when I told them I had just met Mandela. I don’t know, but for some reason I felt distant from them and no longer in need to prove myself after.
As I was saying, the argument with my friends was about how black people, especially in Africa, respect the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Aimé Césaire, Julius Nyerere, Thabo Mbeki, even Robert Mugabe more. The trend was mentioning presidents who happened to be intellectuals. But where did their intellectualism lead us? I pointed to the mess that drove Ghana into Nkrumah’s assignation and military coup after another. I recalled what happened in Tanzania when Ujama failed. Say nothing of present Zimbabwe. In conclusion I said I prefer presidents who are leaders than visionaries. Visionaries tend to be blind to anything outside their vision, and usually ruthless in pursuing their vision.
“What has Mandela done since he came out of jail.” One of my friends asked. “We all know he was just a ceremonious president, with Zizi (T. Mbeki) playing his prime minister and running the show.” He nearly got me there. I recalled how in 1990 we travelled from Jo’burg to Cape Town to listen to Madiba’s first speech since coming out of jail. All our difficult lives in the township we had idealised the moment of Mandela’s coming out of jail as the day of our liberty. We thought he would come sounding trumpet blast with explosive wisdom from all the years he (they) spent in contemplation of our future in jail. To say his speech leaved much to be desired that day is to be respectful. I was awfully disappointed.
But what is Mandela’s legacy?
For me it is seeing a helpless person being shoved around and taking time to reassure them that they matter. It is not intellectualising or moralizing about this or that, but having a heart in a right place, and inviting others to share in the aura of goodness by spontaneous generosity. It is not the aesthetic pleasure of philosophical musing, but life given meaning by ability to forgive, to extend your hand even to your enemies and shame them by goodness if need be. When your heart is in the wrong place, all the education you acquire affords nothing, except you end up being a contradiction even to your own mind.
I’m lucky enough to come from a (African) culture that values what’s in your heart more than what’s in your head. My head has been trained in Western education—I’ll admit to regarding it as a better way of living an authenticity life until, with maturity, I became appalled by some of its falsified posturing and too individualist way of life masquerading as enlightenment. I’ve since strived to liberate my mind both from Western excesses and African atavistic oppressions.
My friend says my choosing Madiba as my best African leader of all time is a symptom of having fallen for ‘white trickery’, what he termed ‘Mandela Cult’. They’ve claimed him away from us. I do not mind that if it is our goodness they’ve claimed. I get the feeling that my friend confuses eloquence with truth. I’ve read enough to discover how sometimes learned men use charm of elegantly arranged words to collapse truth to the fascination superficial charisma; that used to be called sowing silk over sackcloth. I’ll rather be a priest in the Madiba oracle than a malleable automaton in quibbling visions that loose their saltiness with passing years.
Ngxatsho ke tata uMadiba, siyabulela, for all you’ve given up for the freedom of all of us. Now at last, I too, am able to extend my hand to you.
Fourscore and ten, you are very strong tata. But then again the lime quarries of Robben Island knew that already when they could not prevail over you. Ahh! Dalibhunga!!! Madiba omhle!

Writing As the Culture of Celebrity

2008-07-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

I first attended the Cape Town Book Fair at the Convention Centre last year (2007). It gave me a sinking feeling that writers were fast becoming what Susan Sontag called “an aspect of the culture of celebrity”. Artists entering the celebrity cult? Of course artists too are people (people who happen to remember and record in a wonderfully transmuted way what make for our life experiences). They make art by depicting the nuances of our lived experiences, something that is rare and cannot be contrived. But why they should be compelled to behave like jobbing preachers is something worrying.

This year I found most people commenting what a good thing the direction of South African writing has taken, with writers ‘telling personal stories more’ as compared to political novels. At first I concurred, but when I read what this entailed in our recent literature I got concerned a little again. When I discovered subjectivism was being made the pinnacle of personal narrative I recalled something Hans Jonas Paton said in criticising existentialist philosophy. “We should be particularly on our guard when the guide makes no pretence at objective thinking, which stands or falls by the argument independently of the personality of the thinker, but rests his case on the inwardness of his own personal experience. . .”

The complaint here is that of making an individual the measure of all things.

Celebrity is a contrived thing, which is why I’m surprised by this trend of artists entering the glamour culture. It can only mean one or two things; that our art is getting contrived—meaning it’s no longer art—or commodified. The commodification of art is a sad but necessary thing in an imperfect world (artists have to make a living too). But there’s difference between commodifying and commercialising art.

A commercial artist is like a performing seal that must do tricks to satisfy the feeding hand. Have artists been turned (turning themselves) into performers? Some do it because they are searching, not only for commercial gain, but mana—power and prestige. I do not suppose there ever was time when artists were indifferent to ambition and fame, but, unlike our times, they always regarded art first and foremost as a calling, or at least pretended to be disdainful of the hype.

I’m not trying to be pious about distant glories, but the truth of the matter is that hype is usually accompanied by poor writing standards. When I mentioned this to a colleague he accused me of being finicky. He was glad writers were getting what he termed ‘the seriousness they deserve.’

Writing as a celebrity cult is different from the ideal of writers being taken seriously. As much as it is always wonderful to meet good writers it is a rare thing to meet them among the celebrity lot, who are mostly celebrated for one thing or the other, but not necessary good writing. Celebrity authors are treated in these Book Fairs like pop stars, and sadly, they turn to behave like some. Book Fairs are now fast becoming parties where writers are solely judged by how much personality fun they dish to visitors. I’m flabbergasted by the flamboyant superficiality of it all.

Writers are not public utility. Their work might be but not their persons.

In her essay on translation, The World as India, Susan Sontag noted. “A writer is first of all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short. It is from reading, even before writing, that I became part of a community—the community of literature—which includes more dead than living writers.”

As writer-reader I’m daily finding that good books are becoming rarer by the day the more the quantity of publication increases. It is still possible to find nuggets of gold among the rabble, but gone are the days when writers percolated what they wanted to say, and the style by which they say it. Books now compete with other stuff of our instant culture. As the result one rarely finds a book that is elegantly written, charming, candid, mordant, and so on. In instead you find yourself glad at the end for having managed to finish a book; rejoicing with Dr. Johnson that it was not longer than it actually was.

It is said of Edmund Wilson that, as his reputation grew, he printed up a postcard that he sent to those who requested his services. On it he checked the appropriate box: Edmund Wilson does not write articles or books on order; he does not write forewords or introductions, does not give interviews or appear on television, and does not participate in symposia. Perhaps it is time contemporary writers rediscover the wisdom in this so as to get back to serious stuff of writing books, good books.

As for subjectivism in literature, it has contributed a lot in the protection and enhancement of our common humanity. The psychological brooding yielded many fresh and penetrating insights, and gave us more understanding of individual pathos; but it mastered the Hegelian concept of synthesis between the self and the external world to an extent of cloying hallucinatory tinge.

The problem with individual centred starting-point in literature and philosophy is that it tends to show less appreciation for other things, like history. It tends to run riot with morbid forms of subjectivism and individualism; looking only at the personal side of life with unduly anthropomorphic understanding of reality. When a man is isolated as a centre of interests he tends to see himself, and those who share his point of view, as the highest and authentic forms of existence. That’s dangerous narcissism.

Unhealthy intensity of subjectivism promotes anti-socialism, elitism, and escape from necessary collision with history. Every country, every nation, needs means to collide with its past. Escapism promoted by subjectivism avoids this to the detriment of discursive art. Present day German art is good example of a nation trying to grapple with it’s demons through what they call Bildung; that is an engagement of history through art, philosophy and learning in general. Perhaps the South African ideal for literature too should be of that lot, especially since we too have many skeletons on our closet.

The Rot is settling in

2008-07-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

It was always going to be a long day. My colleague had phoned to inform me there might be a chance of getting a glimpse of the ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe; "Perhaps we might be lucky to get an interview." I knew chances were slim for that but wanted to see if there was a way we could at least by pass the gatekeepers and schedule one with the SG.

I spent the night before wondering about a best angle to catch the attention of the SG without raising his irk—he is notorious for not suffering fools gladly, which is perhaps why I think he might be ANC's hope in the present mayhem of YL leaders speaking with their foot on the mount. I even contemplated using the little personal information of where he went to school, as told by my aunt who says she was with him in bygone days at Cala in the Eastern Cape. Talk about desperate measures.

It is clear that things are going to the dogs within the ANC as far as discipline is concerned. The ANCYL leadership especially is bent on dragging the organization towards a militant tone. "We're following the legacy of the organization." As its president Julius Malema clumsily put it. The Secretary General of COSATU, Zwelinzima Vavi, never one to shy away from controversy, joined the chorus of what most of us initially dismissed as the howling of the firebrand youth.

So I spent the night before formulating my questions, anticipating his answers so as to compel him into taking a clear stance on the issue. I imagined the SG saying, in his brash finger pointing manner; "You see, the political activism of our people taught the youth to give faith in theatricals, sometimes chaotic confrontations, as source of getting attention denied by apartheid authority. We grew with the ideology of unconstrained voluntarism, triumphalism of political will. Unfortunately because our leaders were mostly in jail or in exile we tended to lack in discipline and ethical standards, as you and would clearly remember from Consumer Boycotts in Queenstown that sometimes had tragic consequences. We grew with contemptuous disregard for authority and exaggerated regard in forceful democratic processes. With adventurist willingness to engage in violence that provokes crises of making the country ungovernable. The consequent is the legacy of militant behaviour noticeable in our youth. What is important now is to instil the realisation in our youth especially that lorhulument ngowabo [this government is theirs]. If they want to engage it with something there are proper legitimate chanells."

My aim was in making him realise that the ANC administration he's part of has come to power in that militant youth ticket, how do they suppose now they can clamp what has put them into power. Needless to say we never got near the SG. As I walked back between Company Gardens and Parliament that wet and cold Cape Town late afternoon I was visited still by more thought. An old Oak tree lay uprooted on Parliament flower garden, having just missed the marble statue of Princess Victoria in its fall from the rot. I wondered if this was some kind of prophecy. I recalled with repugnance that an exact replica stands before Main Library entrance at Port Elizabeth. Victoria stands, bloated with imperialism, a rod in one hand container of burning incense on the other. It was hard to miss the intended implications from Psalm 2: Thou shall break them with a rod of iron, thou shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. I recalled how always despised that implication when entering the library to research the Frontier history at the Africana section. The boulder dashed into pieces, in my mind, by Victoria was the Xhosa nation.

The wind was coming in front. It felt as though I was carrying zinc sheets on my head, as the Xhosa proverb goes. I think, when the doors of opportunity opened (freedom) for black South Africans, it found the very values necessary for success—thrift, self-control and personal responsibility— dispensed by culture of greed, euphemistically called ambition. This introduced brèche , a rupture with the continuity of history, especially in organizations like the ANC (African National Congress). The consequence of which are empty howling vessels like Malema, the rot gnawing at the roots of ANC.

What is this thing Malema calls the legacy of ANCYL? A passage in Mike Gevisser's book The Dream Deffered: Thabo Mbeki, came to mind. 'And so after a long dormancy in the 1920s and 1930s, African nationalist politics gathered new energy: the ANC Youth League was formed in 1943, attracting angry young men such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. The League's prime mover was Anton Lembede, a brilliant young lawyer with stern morals and evangelical tendencies, who saw redemption for his people in return to African values.' [pp 37]

Stern morals? How does Malema measure on that? Is this the legacy he's talking about? True, the ANCYL has always had an oedipal paradigm (reaction of radical resentment against characterized backwardness of their leadership) towards the progress of their political movement. That's how the likes of Nelson Mandela and O.R. Thambo shot into prominence. The advantage of Mandela's coevals is that they took time to educate themselves, politically and otherwise. Barabula. How does Mamela measure on that, since he's proud of being the present carrier of their baton? Not only that, past ANCYL leadership tended to hold in high regard good ethical standards.

Today's youth, the likes of Malema, capitalize on ignorance, irrationality, careerism, consumerism, drunkenness, driving flashy cars, and so forth. They are typical stereotype of backward evolution of what J.M. Coetzee in his novel, Age of Iron expressed as; 'Now, in South Africa, I see eyes clouding over again, scales thickening on them, as the land-explorers, the colonists, prepare to return to the deep.' The sad part is that rest of the organisation too is hollowing out. The party's hierarchy has lost coherence and control of its own apparatus. What undermines is the present leadership is being blackmailed by the militant wing it came to power on its ticket, coupled with lack of ideas in handling the root causes of the country's tremendous challenges.

Post 1994 ANC politics made an error of focusing on tactics at the expense of vision; of not grooming the next generation leadership as O.R. Tambo did with the likes of T. Mbeki. To compound ANC problems is the present influence of its gate-crusher later-day millionaires who are determined to make themselves electable through their pockets. They themselves do see much beyond the next contested seat, and have little idea how to transform politics by means of ideas. Hence lack of political substance will probably complete the rot of the party. Where their ideas are not anachronistic they are poorly thought out, uninformed and mostly radically inconsistent. It looks like the time for a 'revolution' founded on a philosophy of history was over. I wonder what Mantashe mean to do about that? Meantime, as we are prevented from asking relevant questions, the rot is settling and taking root fast.

The Brink of Prejudice

2008-06-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

I'm often fascinated at how people who write about President Thabo Mbeki always end up putting on a fool's hat with a bell (revealing more about themselves than their subject). Dr. Xolela Mangcu, in his book To The Brink: The State of our Democracy, is no exception. At the beginning he informs us that the book came out of his urgent need to rescue black intellectual tradition from violation (the book does betray urgent composition). By whom? Who else, but the convenient scapegoat of all our failures and mediocrity, Thabo Mbeki.

Dr. Mangcu dedicates about three thirds of the book trying to convince us that President Mbeki is the architect of violation against black intellectuals. He says 'our heritage of racial syncretism is being overwhelmed by racial nativism that has taken hold of our political culture under President Thabo Mbeki's rule.' And explains racial syncretism as 'a dynamic process of identity formation that have always underpinned black people's encounter with European modernity . . .' Not feeling any wiser for reading this definition of racial syncretism I decided to look up the word on the dictionary. Syncretism: an inconsistent attempt to unify or reconcile differing school of thoughts. Inconsistent attempt being the operative word here.

What is 'racial nativism'? Dr. Mangcu explains it as that which 'harkens to purist essential conceptions of identity', and requires one have 'black skin' or must have 'participated in the liberation struggle to overcome apartheid.' He says its qualifications that 'provide one with exclusive license to speak or banish those with opposing views . . . as if those who participated in that struggle have a monopoly on wisdom and morality.' Monopoly on wisdom and morality ? The phrase is very telling. It was used (Dr. Mangcu reworked it a little and neglects to tell us) by Steve Biko to define "the characteristic arrogance of assuming a 'monopoly on intelligence and moral judgement'" [my emphasis ] of white liberals whom he said made themselves 'self-appointed trustees of black interests . . .' Are we to assume in reading this that Dr. Mangcu is revealing that what he despises is the fact that President Mbeki has made himself a self-appointed trustee of black interests?

Often, very often, when I read Dr. Mangcu's newspaper articles I wished he would write a book, to give himself better platform of elucidating his views. I always felt his articles to be superfluous at best, and facile at worst, something I thought was due to space limitations of newspapers columns. Now that his book is out I see it is actually Dr. Mangcu's writing style that's the problem, together with his irritating inability of making a point without throwing confetti of quotations. Dr. Mangcu's thinking is tangential, tedious in telling, and generates more heat than light.

He tells us that the book 'is not a collection of the newspaper columns . . .' Well, what do you call a book littered on every chapter with an average of two long excerpts—sometimes you get as much as four—from past newspaper columns? Such things are telling of the urgency by which the book was composed. Dr. Mangcu bakes and eats his own cake by commenting on his commentary. He's more in dialogue with himself, and gives an impression of being impressed with his own erudite voice.

My favourite Chapter in the book is the first one; titled, Bearing Witness. It is a personal memoir and general summary of Xhosa intellectual heritage. On it Dr. Mangcu manages to be more coherent even if he almost spoils the authentic voice with a self-aggrandising tone. I also do not understand why Dr. Mangcu, being Xhosa speaking, felt the need to follow Noel Mostert's less than discriminating use of the word amakholwa (religious believers) where he means amagqobhoka (assimilators of Western culture that might include or not include belief). I know this is a petty grievance, but precision in meaning is helped in transmission by maximum modality.

After the first chapter Dr. Mangcu dedicates three thirds of the book brandishing his axe to grind against President Mbeki. Very little of it is new from the bells and whistles of what Dr. Mangcu and the rest of Mbeki's detractors in the media have already said ad nauseam: Aids denailism, Zimbabwe, Corruption, Stalinism, Zanufication of the ANC, and so on. Only Dr. Mangcu comes now with an impression of an intellectual Hercules cleansing our Aegean political stables. But each time you follow his argument closer you discover its cloth is hung on a peg of received opinions.

Dr. Mangcu says, for instance, that he has 'frequently suggested that Mbeki's behaviour gives a sense of someone who feels betrayed—betrayed by the white liberal and business community who fêted him lavish reception when he came back from exile and black intellectuals who failed to come to his defence during the troubled relations with the media and white society more broadly.' How he fails to correlate this sense of betrayal with his late doyen, Steve Biko, who wrote, in his seminal paper, White Racism and Black Consciousness (delivered at inter-racial conference in Cape Town in 1971) beats me. Biko felt 'the myth of integration as propounded under the banner of liberal ideology must be cracked and killed because it makes people believe that something is being done when in reality the artificially integrated circles are a soporific to the blacks, while salving the conscience of the guilt-stricken white.' [I Write What I Like: pp 70]

What is the value of racial syncretism ? Dr. Mangcu does not say in clear terms; he's more concerned with racial nativism. Biko, anticipated Mangcu's concern in answering advocate Soggot, on his last trial; '. . . it is not our intention to generate a feeling of anti-whitism amongst our members. We're merely forced by historic considerations to recognise the fact that we cannot plan side by side with people who participate in their exclusive pool of privileges, to make share that both privileges are shared. We don't believe—we don't have faith in them anymore, that they are willing to share with us without any form of . . .' So, would Biko be more of Mbeki gestalt or Mangcu today if he were alive? It does not matter.

What is obviously clear, which Dr. Mangcu sees but refuses to follow to its logical conclusion, is that Mbeki started his struggle against apartheid in high hopes of multiracialism and became disillusioned along the way, which probably is what has made him seem more radically black-conscious as the years of our democratic freedom pass. Dr. Mangcu on the other hand started on radical black conscious thought and grew more malleable towards racial pragmatism with post apartheid South Africa. Which position between them is better justified by our history and status quo is matter of interpretation, and, frankly, sometimes I suspect, individual privilege. But it cannot be one's multiracialism must be measured by how many white / black friends one keeps, otherwise many of us would fail the test in this country.

It is too convenient for the likes of Dr. Mangcu to make one person a scapegoat for almost everything that has gone wrong in our country in the last decade or so. Surely the ANC government made some mistakes under the leadership of Mbeki, some even deserving our strongest condemnation, like the Aids controversial dilly-dallying. Mbeki's overly 'Orwellian' sensitivity to political criticism is also founded; as is his impotent arrogance about Zimbabwe, trying to charm a tyrant's heart, which is tragic when it is clearly not working. But to blame the unease with the rot of our national psyche, what Mangcu terms 'paranoid's nativism' to Mbeki is falling for temptation of vilification is simplifying matters. Dr. Mangcu on the later chapters of his book concedes that there's nothing pluralistic about South African denialist society that clot our deferential path towards a multiracial pluralistic society. But why is it 'racial nativism' when Mbeki says similar things it beats me.

There is, in Thabo Mbeki, a punctilious rationality that verges on Nietzschean brilliant insanity, which his detractors fail to tackle masterly. Not that one ever expects to get qualitative analysis from our media, but, for Christ sake, one would expect better than this combing asses' tails from people who write books, especially if they position themselves to be public intellectuals. Unfortunately, all you get in analyses of Mbeki's regime, are spurious geniality mingling with benevolence, distrusting tendencies denigrating to downright vilification; or excessive wheedling.

Dr. Mangcu's predictions about post-Polkwane directives mostly follow the direction of the birch, and sail a wrong tack; so I won't dwell on them. All the same, To The Brink: The State of our Democracy, is good gift for someone who has not been following what's happened in the country in the past few years. Those looking for better depth of our political analyses will not find a cygnet in its duckling. Its analysis lacks penetration, is mostly worn to buff with borrowed thought, and even lacks artistic vitality. At times it ranks of conjectural conspiracies. But its major short-coming is that it lacks coherent distinctive philosophical sensibility of well-thought-out views on the significant questions.

Happy birthday my dear angel daughter.

2008-06-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

08/06/2008 is Loza's 9th birthday. I can't beleive how quickly time passes. It is almost a decade since she's come into my life. Feels only like yesterday I watched her tiny body at hospital in Port Elizabeth. Love has happened since.

Happy birthday my dear angel daughter. May you find the fulfilment you seek in life!

Back to the Basics

2008-06-07T03:13:00.000-07:00

The Kafkaesque strain, running through Beckett to post-modern popular writers, like Coetzee, has ran its course. The idea of wrestling ‘fiction free from 19th-century constraints like plot and character, and to wrest objects free from imposed meaning’ [RACHEL DONADIO] has itself now become tired, gaping for fresh air. Reading the fast aging masters of post-everything style of literature with their dreamlike fragment of narrative characterization and existential doubt of navel gazing you see they’ve reached a certain degree of stagnation. Where then is the novel going from here?

Sartre’s desire, towards the end of his life, was to free us from our morbid internal lives. The glazed inward looking hero with mannerist poses of alienation and ‘nightmarishly looping, repetitive semi-narrative, drenched in incantatory.’ Despite Sartre’s wishes, the last century in literature has been of ‘master of aridity, cultivated cactuses.’ But without any doubt the age of 'psychological man,' the herd of loners in modern things, especially literature, is, in our era, on its way out. It has tiresomely proved the truth of ‘Tocqueville's observation that in modern times the average man is absorbed in a very puny object, himself, to the point of satiety.’

The rallying call in every literature convocation I attend these days is the return to the classics, hunger for universal inspiration and simplicity. As the result writers like Pushkin, with their staggering simplicity are back in vogue. Attractive stories now are those that deviate from linguistic juggling for preference that is uniquely spare, laconic, and all that traditional aesthetic once dubbed “minimalism”. As a fan of Classical Realism I must confess, I’m thrilled about this turn of events.

Classical Realism, down from the Greeks to the Latinists, rediscovered by the Renaissance, promulgated by the Beaux-Arts academies, nearly exterminated by the modernists is resurgent again. What is Classical Realism? It is the narrative style that puts high premium on observed reality, which sublimates emotion away from the sensational while admitting the tragic. It is a pressure point of experiences towards the renegotiation and re-examination of pact with tradition, the collective way things have always been done.

In the first half of the 20th century, for instance, English literature especially, was very narcissistic, focused mostly on itself, its language, its literary structures; hence was almost cut off from actual reality. Addressing true reality, asking political, social, economic questions, became taboo, unless one was blatantly of say, Marxist political school.
The turn into Classical Realism is present obvious with French literature, where scholarship is happily united with clear thinking and witty writing. I can think of recent books by Jonathan Littell, “Les Bienviellantes” [“The Kindly Ones”], and other works of contemporary French writers such as Annie Erneaux and Pascal Quignard. Here the novel is structured on traditional strictures of strong characters, melodramatic narrative that is not self-indulgent, is not be fictionalized reportage, whose large-scale story development has a central idea that holds it together. As the result you might find in them dramatized the same sort of dilemma, like life with narrowing options. But there are subtle differences of plot, tone, location, nuance and effect. Something you get from Virgil tackling the fall Troy, which though based on Homer’s Illiad, is obviously a complete different book.

Last year I attended, for the first time, Cape Town Book Fair. I found most commentators commenting that the good thing about the direction of South African writing is that people are “telling personal stories more” as compared to our past that was awashed with more political novels. I don’t dispute the merit of this, but get concerned when subjectivism becomes the pinnacle of personal stories.
Subjective literature has contributed a lot in the protection and enhancement of our common humanity. It’s psychological individual brooding yielded many fresh and penetrating insights, and gave us more understanding of individual pathos. But this individual centeredness is itself is starting to pall. It has mastered the Hegelian concept of synthesis between the self and the external world to an extent of cloying hallucinatory tinge.
Rushdie, who has suffered a lot in the hands of politics encroaching in literature, had this to say in his lecture recently at Stanford University; “At a time when politics invades so much the boundaries of ordinary life, going to the frontiers and pushing back is the . . . There is a thing in the novel that wants to be provincial and wants to be small, to be intimate, . . . wants to never lose sight of the human scale, but novelists in our time have been forced to do that.” All good. Rushdie ended the lecture by saying; “Great art tries to open the universe a little more, . . . increases, by some small amount, what it’s possible to know, do, say and, therefore, to be. And we can’t do that sitting in the middle.”
The complaint here is that of making an individual the measure of all things, as Hans Jonas Paton put it when criticising some existentialist philosophers. “We should be particularly on our guard when the guide makes no pretence at objective thinking, which stands or falls by the argument independently of the personality of the thinker, but rests his case on the inwardness of his own personal experience. . .”
The problem with individual centred starting-point for literature and philosophy is that it tends to show less appreciation for other things, like history. It tends to run riot with morbid forms of subjectivism and individualism; looking only at the night side of life with unduly anthropomorphic understanding of reality. When a man is isolated as a centre of interests he tends to see himself, and those who share his point of view, as the highest and authentic forms of existence. That’s dangerous narcissism that often leads to fascism.
Unhealthy subjectivism promotes anti-socialism, elitism, and escapist tendencies from necessary collision with reality. Every country, every nation, every individual needs means to collide with its own reality. Escapist subjectivism avoids this to the detriment of discursive art. [Present day German art is good example of a nation trying to grapple with it’s demons through what they call Bildung; an engagement of history through art, philosophy and learning in general.]

Alexandra Township, You’ve Shamed Us

2008-05-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

I watch what’s happening in Alexandra township with deep shame and embarrassment for being a South African. Sadly I first saw these kinds of xenophobic attacks when I was still in Port Elizabeth in early 2004, and knew it’s just a matter of time before other townships explode in similar fashion since the Eastern Cape township seem to spawn everything that’ll happen on South African townships. Now that it has happened in Alex I cannot say I’m surprised but wish my fellow South Africans had proved my forebodings wrong.

It is no excuse, even insensitive, to say that when people are under a tight belt they’ll look for the closest convenient means to vent their anger on. We’ve been, as black township denizens, in situations more dire than the present food rises has put us to, but we’ve never, ever, been so foolish and cruel as to take it out on migrants who are already suffering under difficult conditions, far worse than we endure. We should be ashamed. It is part of our culture of Ubuntu to regard wonderers as messengers of God. Needless to say we’ve, in this, offended even the deity. To all the Zimbabweans, Malawians, Somalis, and even our own Vendas who has been affected by the cruel vulgarity happening at present in Alex township, South Africa’s father township, your pain is our shame as the majority of South Africans.

Bull-hard, I Presume

2008-04-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

There’s a play, coming soon at the theatre near you. It shall be acted by the maximum of three actors called, in order of their appearance, protagonist, deuteragonist and tritagonist.
It’s epithalamium is by none other than Rudyard. Kipling:

Take up the White Man’s burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard.

The protagonist is a certain aspersive columnist who has been accused of racist tendencies, because he writes with disturbing understanding of the Weltanschauung of his fans, depicting their gesalt in ironic tone of subliminal racism. The natives of the backward country, where he’s settled, feel he creates too much political and racial tension. They feel he acts too much as an impotent imperialist stranded in a ‘dark continent’, like his predecessors, the likes of Henry Morton Stanley and Dr. Livingstone. Like them he wishes to transform the ‘dark continent’ after his disputed kind that refuses to embody the genius loci, the spirit of the land. So, due impotence, decays in slow burn of liver-lipped irony and sterile imagination.

The protagonist, in one of his column, decides to represent the social context of what he sees as Africans stasis as something waiting to be discovered by the élan and vitality of the Occident, or sinological adventurers. This gets the goat of another columnist, the deuteragonist of the play, who, having just awoken to the dupery and condescension of deflating imperialist mind, writes, in not so complementary manner, about the protagonist, ending up baying for his blood on public radio. The editor of the protagonist is forced by mutual detritions of working relationship, and public outcry, to dismiss the protagonist, who subsequently is duly elected to column chair by another newspaper group whom the previous editor insinuates has better tolerance for prejudice. The protagonist then continue sowing his myth relating havoc with effects of racial outrage in renewed energy and vindicated assumption. And is thinking of ways to spur the implied stasis of African collective psyche into progress.

In the absence of repenting nostos from the protagonists, the creators of the play decided, for dramatic effect, to stage the denouement in a court of law. The protagonist is summoned to appear before the judge, the tritagonist, to argue the merits of his case, which he proceed to defend as freedom of speech against intentions of prejudice. During the court case he invokes the likes of J.S. Mill, On Liberty, to support his argument for freedom of speech, neglecting to reveal that Mill emphasized absence of hurt and prejudice to others for that freedom to be justified.

The deuteragonist, who opened the case against the protagonist bases the gist of his accusation on the fact that courts of law must not allow the dressing up of paternalistic tendencies and racial undertones as ill-worn defence for freedom of speech. His argument is dressed up in banalities, clotted and circumbendibus to make appeal for profundity. The judge subsequently recueses himself on ground of suffering from ifobesity as result of argument before him.

The new judge is forced on his first day to dust his Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to familiarize himself with moral virtues as characterised by the deuteragonist’s argument. This judge tritagonist is an ambitious, protean man, who’s not above the ruck and muck of political shenanigans. And feel the time has arrived for him, since he was deracinated by the speed by which apartheid system was ditched without his personal contribution, to prove his bona fides in catching the politics of liberation by their coattails. He wishes to make example of our protagonist, but the law is against him. Eventually he has to admit that legal justice is ill-suited to judge moral ethics, especially in a society fresh from historical prejudice against one group of people. Thus the judge was heard, in his closing remarks, saying; “The comprehensiveness of legal justice would demand that all of us queue in the gallows for our respective sins, and those of our inheritance, were we to apply to rigorously apply them to moral ethics. Moral law’s justice cannot rest on precept that ‘whatever the law does not command, it forbids.’ That would make it barbaric and too closely based on the Mosaic law of afore. Hence we’re compelled to go with Ubuntu here, the precept that magnanimity is the value that embodies all moral ethics.”

Thus the element of tragedy is averted. An aristo-trash columnist is saved by African law he disparages, and is not wrongly made into martyr for freedom of speech. ‘The height of error in writing without any sense of history,’ the local paper quoted the closing remarks of the judge; ‘is revealed in using writing as means of performance art without sense of responsibility. Writers who obsess over the past might reflect history through a prism of pain and misfortune, a tragic outlook that’s depressive sometimes; but in turn they avoid the foolishness of trivialising other people’s pain. Be that as it may. Trivialising other people’s pain might be highly irresponsible and reprehensible, but it’s not criminal. We should stop the wrong mentality of criminalising and demonising people who do not agree with us . . . Often our struggle against prejudice affords us opportunity to come to independent sense of who are . . . It is the writer’s consoling capacity to create explanatory myths for their passions, even prejudice. But they can never be held responsible for the actions others take, even if inspired by their writings. That is the moral tertium quid this court is not willing to enter into, even for pursuit of justice. Case dismissed.’ The judge then pounded his gavel, and when interviewed outside court he said; “As Max Beerbohm said of Kipling, we may say of his lesser talented chichi chicks with ‘the fascination of abomination’; in whom ‘the schoolboy, the bounder, and the brute’ find ‘brilliant expression.’ Let’s stop being so Bull-hard about it!”

Zimbabwe

2008-04-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

To me the Zimbabweans are the most complicated political lot I’ve ever had the invidious task to follow. Here are people who are supposed to have voted the opposition party into majority of government, and speculatively presidential seat. They’re rightly asked by that opposition into a stay away strike until the electoral results are released. What do they do? Only 15% of them heed the call. What do you call that? It completely baffles me.

Some have said Zimbabweans are afraid to stay out because they’d loose their jobs. But I thought private business in Zimbabwe was supposed to be on the opposition side, ipso facto, one would expect them to support that call. Others have said Zimbabweans are too poor and hungry to heed stay-away. Do they think people who fight for political change in their respective countries do so because of full stomach? Two things are possible here. Either those who report on Zimbabwean issues do not know what they’re talking about; or have vested interests in reporting as they do.

Personally I maintain the stance that Zimbabweans, and no one else, know exactly what is going on in their country. And as outside people the best we can do is to support their endeavors, but we can do the work for them. In my opinion, it wrong what the ZEC is doing, withholding electoral results for this long. It can only foster a bad situation into flared up civil war. Please, let’s here more condemnations from our leaders that the situation there is untenable. Zimbabwe is tottering into a very, very bad situation. Zimbabwes, please, it is time you take up the situation in your country into your own hands wherever you are. You cannot keep saying we’re running away from a monster (Mugabe). Monsters, when are slain is by ordinary people who become heroes to their your own inspirations. Mandelas are not born, but made by circumstances.

Regret

2008-04-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

I gave birth two months after my final High school exams. Lusapho refused to acknowldge our child. He Left me under the cloud to go to Jo'burg when I told him I'd not abort our child. My daggers glinted for his blood.
I heard he worked at a five star hotel. News reached me also that he had morals of an alley cat in the golden city. So I can’t say I was really he came back, seven years later, wasted, mere skin and bone of hacking coughs.
“You look like a zombie,” my, our, seven year old son said with detached brutal honesty only children are capable of when I introduced them. He did look a frightful colour of a corpse. I thought it was time I told my mother who the father of her grandson was. I had kept it secret from her all those years though I’m sure she had her suspicions. The day I told her I had gone to visit Lusapho. He was walking me back home after my visit, his charm at its peak.
“What we regret most are not mistakes but missed opportunities,” he said with sad visage, tapping the side of his nose as he always did when he was nervous.
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked upset mindedly.
“In another world, at another time, I’d have found a job in this town, married you. Then we would have become a proper family with our son.” Said he in bromidic overtones, revealing his perfect piano keys like teeth.
“But that wouldn’t have been you. We’re born the persons we become by our choices.” This sounded harsher than I had intended.
“And usually end up prisoners of our characters.” He wryly added.
My mother must have been watching us through her bedroom window because when I came inside the house she commented about the resemblance Lusapho had to my son, ‘especially when he laughs.’
“That’s because he’s the father.” My unguarded reaction told her everything. I was too tired of keeping secrets. She handed Lusapho a glass of juice with affable contempt that disembarrassed her grudge. I suppose she was glad her cynical suspicions were finally confirmed.
The following evening Lusapho sent me a poem he had written, a plaguey poor thing really, with phoney ring of self-dramatisation; but I appreciated the effort more than the results. He knew I loved literature. He constantly joked about how my love of books makes me neglect other people.
His face, my son’s face, twisted with sadness as he left for his home. The sun was no more visible behind the mountains of our youth but shone the red glow of its setting with a firmament of dying things. The careless grace of things, I thought.
Life keeps rushing to the horizon.
There’s a seed of failure in all things human, freedom even to misspend. Death, being the ultimate of all human failures. “Let us live always mindful of this moment love,” said he after the moment of eloquent silence passed between us.
Within weeks he became febrile. One night he started having serious sezuires, I had to phone the ambulance. As a doctor I knew the end was near. I took him to my arms as we waited. The caged animal in his chest beat franticly. His eyes though were full of puzzled gentleness.
The ambulance never came. Such things you expect when you stay in black townships of South Africa. It took me back to the night our son was born. I gave birth on the couch after waiting in vain for it. Luckily, my mother, a nurse, knew what to do. Ambulance drivers are stiff scared to enter the township, especially during weekends at night. I didn’t really mind with Lusapho, because, as a doctor, I knew there wasn’t much the hospital could do for him, his CD4+ lymphocyte had fallen too low to respond to antibiotics and ARV cocktails.
He didn’t show signs of fear of death. He just looked at me with resigned self-surrendering love. I injected the intravenous injections I had brought for him, which were obviously not working for him since he was plagued with polymorphous lesions, and variety of clinical cutaneous manifestations. There was Candidiasis all over his mouth and tongue. His infected lungs had spread the infection to the brain. His kidneys were bloated, having collapsed four days before. The opportunistic diseases, like TB and pneumonia were at critical stage. I realise he wouldn’t make it.
That night he fluctuated between sleep and vague awakenings in my arms, often loosing his consciousness, sinking into supine confusion. I sat with him, trying to engage in conversations to keep his consciousness. One time I went to the kitchen to fetch him a glass of water and, coming back, found him capering around the bedroom, cavorting and ranting, pop-eyed. He was dancing a twirling, shaking his head like a dervish dog that had just been splashed with water. I don’t think he could recognise who I was by then.
He died five hours later, in my arms, of meningitis complications. The AIDS virus had almost completely destroyed his immune system. The last thing he did as he gasped for his last breath was to grab, in fondling manner, my breast. Can you imagine that, with his last breath? Then a stone cold silence slowly settled in the pedestal pose of his face, wrapping it in handsome corsage.
The night was darker than the ace of spades.
Sunrise got pink in the east, bringing soul-sickening waves of violet dawn. My nerves fed on my exhaustion. People came out like ants to the organised misery of their daily grind. The rising noise, the bleak honky-tonk of hootering mini-buses, the wafting hazy mist, all sucked my spirit.
The neon light blinked under the misty hug, with the coming day pregnant with unpleasant suggestions. The surprising part was that people were just going about their business as if nothing had happened.
What use is prying fingers on wounds. If I tell you Lusapho’s death turned me on, would you be surprised with the persistence of sexual hunger, even in the dark face of death. Or would you be disgusted? I don’t have to justify myself under the hostile stare of pusillanimous deaf piano tuners. I ware my hat in the house when I want. If we must use the psychiatrists as our crutches, the terrible goings are memories of a baffled life seeking an outlet.
I met the day with blend of insouciance and despair, an aura of defeat and to-hell-with-it-all. Things started creaking on my hinges. Life just started to weigh me down, down.
I’ve never really known the courageous freedom of seeking out things I feel in my heart. Lusapho had that. He was always leaving me behind in dark desperation, with cuts that shed no blood. Not this time.

Generating Shakespeare

2008-04-10T03:49:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday evening I watched an episode of Generations, our local sopie at SABC 1 and felt revolted. There’s this rich chick there called Karabo acted by Connie Ferguson. Apparently she had been charting on-line with a web friend. In one episode she had a public, unconvincing, altercation with a journalist character, Paul about journalistic ethics. It later turns out her web friend and day-light enemy are one and the same. Ring a bell? Sleepless In Seattle! That is why I felt revolted.

There’s nothing wrong with copying a storyline—JM Coetzee does it all the time with most of his novel. The crux of the matter is that you have to refresh the storyline and make it relevant to your audience and times—again something JM does so brilliantly. But the dystrophic copy and paste sort of thing happening in our sopies is nauseating to say the least.

Talking about re-inventing the storyline; I also watched, on the same evening, Shakespeare eMzansi in SABC 1. What a brilliant concept. I’m told it is going to be 26 episodes of 5 series. The one currently on play now, Entabeni—and no it has nothing to do with me—is certainly up to standard. It is based on Shakespear’s play Macbeth. The acting could be more professional, but the writers have brilliantly re-invented Shakespeare storyline, made it relevant for the time without loosing much of Shakespeare’s plot. They’ve also made it relevant to our situation and times.

I have heard it said that the idea was to make people revisit the dramas of Shakespeare. Well, I suspect it is working; in my home my siblings have been asking more questions about Macbeth, lately. I’ve not yet seen them read the plays, but at this rate it is only a matter of time. The other day I had my four year old nephew intimating on his bath the act we played together; Foul is fair, and fair is foul! Perhaps not an ideal first line to learn from Shakespeare, but we’ve to start somewhere, innit?

The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Our present 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 been rumoured that Lady Macbeth occupies the parliamentary Speaker seat, and that she eggs and fire the passion of the present 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."

Another question is, when the did is done, will we, as the general public, be better of it. As the Greek proverb goes, ‘Rule shows the man.’ No one ever knows with certainty how virtuous—or vicious—a man might be until he holds office and has power.

I cannot wait to see how the team of Shakespeare eMzansi treats, probably the most beautiful, if dry words, ever came out of any writer of all time. That passage is towards the end of the play Macbeth, and worth quoting in full:
Seyton: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Do you still think Shakespeare is passé and irrelevant? Think again. And that, I believe, is the idea behind Shakespeare eMzansi. Now; “Weary with toil I haste me to my bed...” (Sonnet 27)

The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn M

2008-04-08T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn McIntosh; and Is SA crime a ‘race war’? by Rodney Warwick. The ideal situation, of course, would have been to publish different views on the issue, but as it is, the Weekend Argus chose to publish two articles of similar view at the same time.

I agree with Warwick—who we were told is completing his Ph.D in history through UCT—that ‘[t]he press can lead the way by encouraging public debate . . .’ on crime; but feel he grossly exaggerates when he says what is happening in SA is ‘similar to the late 19th century pogroms against Jews.’ In fact if I was Jewish I’d feel offended by the comparison. The major problem with Warwick’s article, even more than the tortured use of Niall Ferguson’s work in War of the World to support an unconvincing thesis, is the nauseating Oprahesque praxis of trauma assertiveness as means to win public regard.

Reading history one understands that Fascism begins with specious recovery of certain community values, cultural and otherwise; and nostalgia for the ‘better’ past. From there, the usual route is Gleichasaltung—the coordination of social institutes to reflect the ideology of the majority group. If I understand Warwick well, he seems to think that SA is in Gleichasaltung stage. He insinuates that the present South African government tacitly condones anti-white crime, because ‘anti-white crime suits ANC perfidy of preaching non-racialism but also espousing aggressive “Africanisation” and the demolition of white South African historical identity.’

I’m not a member of the ANC, and so cannot vouch for them; but my understanding of South African black politics is that it is actually the ANC that occupies the mean against extreme Pan Africanist position of most black political organization. In fact, I dare say, the ANC is currently loosing ground in black societies because it is seen as not being Africanist enough.

Further more Warwick is selective in his choice of crime examples to suit his thesis. Ask any reader of the Daily Voice or Sowetan, and they’ll tell you of more gruesome and sadist daily acts of black on black crime, far worse than the two chosen from ‘Afrikaans Sunday newspaper’ by Warwick. The truth of the matter is that, as much as black on white violence happens, it does so far less regularly than black on black violence. And there’s scant evidence even if that is racial motivated. Farm crimes are clearly premeditated as mostly some form of revenge, but the motive is usually more personal than racial.

In his analysis of history, Warwick, puts wrong construction almost in everything. He notes, hugger-mugger, the history of Congo. A slight peruse of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost is enough introduction for the magnitude and horror of brutal Belgian colonialist rule in Congo, and how it prefigured the history of the country.

Warwick also compares the SA situation to Hep! Hep! riots that showed the depth of popular German anti-Semitism stimulated by hatred of successful Jews. He wants us to believe that SA criminal element is Khapers deployed for the pogroms. And to think we’re in a similar position as Rwandan era of Akuzu—the core of the concentric webs of political, economic, and military muscle and patronage that came to be known as Interrahamwe. All of it is baseless, mischievous and recklessly alarmist.

Crime in SA is bad, we all feel that way. White South Africans are only now waking up to how bad the situation really is. To most black people it has been a lifelong reality of tragic pain, which the coming of ANC government, with all its flaws, was the first to attempt to do anything about, though what its done is still not nearly enough. To most of us the ANC demonstrates a better record than all historic revolutionary parties for not permitting itself a discretionary exercise of power, but choosing to regulate itself more by Constitutional principles than demands of circumstances.

Warwick trespasses on the understanding of our country’s reality when he says ‘the de facto situation is that whites are under criminal siege explicitly because of their “race”’. And pushes our limit to a breaking point when he says ‘[i]t is illogical to judgementally link cultural groupings, let alone individuals, to their forefathers’ moral controversies, but shallowness of popular perception unfortunately ensures it is often inevitably.’ Further on he mockingly terms the past South African governments of prejudice a forced position on whites for their ‘radical survival option.’

Most of us, as the American journalist Sydney Harris once wrote, “believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” But I’d have expected better from a PhD candidate; better use of facts to reconcile with reality, for one. As it is, Warwick will fit well in the field of historical romancers; he does such a superb job of arranging facts to fit his passions, something very endemic to colonialist self-flutters.

Unfortunately for him, real history demands coming to terms even with blighted parts as necessary steps towards regeneration. It could be his likes stand in the way of our true understand of ourselves as a real nation, and path to true reconciliation based in honesty. ‘Tis the measure of wise men to prefer things that are necessary to those convenient and desultory.

The challenge, as it is in our country after political democracy, is to find better ways for wealth redistribution to regress the scales, which in this country are tilted to favour the bias of white people even in this generation and others to come still until we level the fields. Think of a relay marathon where are upon one group has been given a head start at the expense of holding the other by oppressive means. You don’t by releasing the other from oppressive means alone level the field, because the truth of the matter is that one group has done more rounds than the other and closer to the prize. Justice demands that you elevate the other group to where the other already is by means of interference.

What we need most are means of rescuing ourselves from the mess we find ourselves in due to a combination of a lot of things, chief of which is deliberate impoverishment of one group of people for the promotion and hegemony of the other. If one thing should be clear to us by now is that, it is a very, very dangerous thing for all concerned to tilt the scales to the extent that others feel they’ve nothing to loose in the reign of chaos, which is what made SA produce such nihilistic and sadists criminals.

What is this, tongues again?

2008-04-08T03:32:00.000-07:00

It is told that Aesop, the fabler and slave to the philosopher, Democritus, was asked by his master to prepare a sumptuous meal for a banquet with his friends and student. Aesop, being cheeky too big for his shoes slave decided to teach his master a lesson in manners. He prepared a meal made up of only tongues. Twice he did, dishing them accompanied by well thought lectures on the values of tongues. The third time when one of Democritus’ friend was served a dish of tongues exclaimed; ‘What is this, tongues again? Democritus, I’m getting tongue tied from eating tongues.’ Thus he stood up to go and puke outside.

That the feeling I had when some of you this week drew my attention to our begrudged friend, David Bullard, the aspersive columnist at the Sunday Times. After reading his latest stint, Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing, I discovered he’s growing less subtle in stating the tract of his column in his recent article. The gist of his argument, as always, is that it is thanks to the Occident that Africa, and South Africa in particular, is civilized and developed.

Personally, even as far as imperialist go, Bullard has became quite unoriginal and, frankly, boring as a broken record long time ago. He’s really nothing more than a waste of creative energy with recycled superior complex, mouldy with depth bang of a wet firecracker. It’d be an even greater waste of time to write about him if what he was saying was not something going around South African white liberal corridors, prattling as bons mots.

The kind of vulgarity associated with Bullard’s writing rise to anarchist level when it attempts to engage serious subjects like history with its flurry of coruscating callow cartoonist logic. He just adds to the scarifying cacophony than the voice of reason in our country. Where he is right it’s for the wrong reasons, and is rude. And as Eric Hoffer’s lovely line goes; “rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

I use to be a fan of Bullard’s antagonistic humour until I found what I thought to be medicine in sugar coat gradually turning into sugar coated poison. There’s next to nothing cathartic about it, in fact I found it not to be offensive and sometimes downright racist, as most of you have now come to realise from his latest issue, Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing. Of course Bullard and his coterie would see me as too sensitive to the race issue and, together with the likes of president Mbeki, accuse of having Stalinist sensitivity to criticism. So I shall leave it at that, acquiesce with a realisation that the distant between our worlds seem to be uncrossable.

I thought I made it clear also that I’m rather tired of the autistic babble of the Sunday Times. And so am rather discouraged when people egg me on to check this article or the other there. I must emphasise; I’m sure there are people out there who get pleasure and edification in reading that sort of thing, I’m not one of them, hence I stopped buying it. Even now, reading it after a welcome hiatus of about two months, I felt I was returning into a caldron of hectoring, bragging, lazy makers of mash-ups and vapid insights. The only thing worse than living in an unbearable society, as SA is gradually growing, is having to read the unbearable nonsense written by most of the commentators there. So please, have mercy on me. The best way to treat a bore is to ignore them.

There is Papua New Guinea something they call kros, a traditional angry tirade by a wife directed at a husband with the intention of being heard by everyone in the village. Many husbands endure it without uttering a single word as one of those things a guy has to go through, pms induced and all. Pass the kros of course the wife usual gets a beating from the husband if he keeps on it longer than it is necessary. Why not we take the likes of Bullard as something we’ve to go through, imperialist induced nostalgia and all. Not that I propose the use of stick if they keep on it longer than necessary. Let’s rather stick to our constitutional values, and never resorting to any violent means to silence anyone. We use the same logic against those who scream for the death penalty: You don’t rise above cruelty, foolishness, prejudice, or injustice by descending to its level.

Paul Theroux, reviewing Tim Jeal’s biography of Henry Morton Stanley, Stanley, I Presume begins thus: ‘Poor Africa, the happy hunting ground of the mythomaniac, the rock star buffing up his or her image, the missionary with a faith to sell, the child buyer, the retailer of dirty drugs or toxic cigarettes, the editor in search of a scoop, the empire builder, the aid worker, the tycoon wishing to rid himself of his millions, the school builder with a bucket of patronage, the experimenting economist, the diamond merchant, the oil executive, the explorer, the slave trader, the eco-tourist, the adventure traveller, the bird watcher, the travel writer, the escapee, the banker, the busybody, the Mandela-sniffer, the political fantasist, the buccaneer and your cousin the Peace Corps Volunteer.’ And now we can also add; the impotent imperialist stranded a wrong century. Their wish, most, is to transform themselves while wanting to change Africa, but, as that original master imperialist of them all, Stanley, saw it; “We went into the heart of Africa self-invited—therein lies our fault,”. And they never really embodied her genius loci, the spirit of the land, so they decay in slow burn motion of liver-lipped irony and sterile imagination.

The Kangaman, the Strawman, and the Fisherman

2008-04-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

Easters in the South African political calendar is usually the time when political leaders go cavorting at Moria gatherings of ZCC (Zionist Christian Church). The tradition, funny enough, was begun by the groot krokodil [P.W. Botha] in 1985, much to the indignation of anti-apartheid movements. F.W. Deklerk and Nelson Mandela didn’t disdain the practice; and so did Gatsha Buthelezi. We’ve seen President Mbeki too prancing on stage at the gatherings, much against temperament. One can only conclude that making political gain demands displays of religious allegiance in this country.

I thought the kangaman, alias JZ, would be in Moria this year; after all he’d be in character with all the prancing and gyrating; putting down Umtshin’ wam for the rod for the moment. And if the gathering in Moria are anything similar to ZCC township gatherings, then he’s guaranteed at least a ratio of 5 women to himself. Surely the kangaman must be salivating at such prospects.

Or perhaps, judging by the answer he gave at the Jewish gathering he addressed recently, he draws limits on religious bounds. I imagined him thinking about the nuisance of going through legion rituals trying to please a yenta. All that Krank and God, the burden of Yom ha-Kippurim, and kosher diet. After all if the kangaman is not terefah he’s nothing. Imagine him having to follow Shohet rules to slaughters eNkandleni, just for the flip of a Bedouin tent. No thanks, thought the kangaman, despite himself; putting it euphemistically; ‘If one can be arranged we can talk . . .’ when the question was thrown if he’d consider taking a Jewish bride. Then followed that awkward moment, when it was not certain whether the gathering was laughing with or at him. Such are growing pains to the top job of the country.

Now that politically he’s firing from all cylinders, the kangaman, must be wondering who shall be his spiritual advisor. I suspect the specious pastor is challenged on the moral and theological department. As a strawman, he like to mimics what goes with the wind. He, as a columnist of the Mail and Guardian coined, speaks bread to the bakers, meat to the butchers, and pies when the two are gathered; which is not as bad as it sounds actual. Our country, divided at its seams as it is, needs more people who can speaks pies, so to speak. But the kangaman must feel in need of spiritual anchor now and then even if the reed is more useful than an oak in times of storms. I’m sure a shaman, a marabout, anything to appease the makombwe ancestors he would not shun.

Methinks it is inevitable that the kangaman must go to Moria, even if its next year, to assist his traditional propitiation if nothing else. If they throw in a wife or two, I’m sure he won’t mind, but things are going beyond the pale regarding his coming corruption trial. He needs all the help he can get; and burning impepho outside the courthouse his time might just not cut it. Hence I say the only way to go for the kangaman is to follow the momentum of the rising rebellion of the masses. We all know the ZCC is the biggest independent church in the land. It’d be stupid for him not to milk that cow. So if he knows what’s best for him he’d be acquainting himself nemingqungqo yase Zion [with Zionist prance songs]. Perhaps he’s already ahead of us, what with all his Jewish association, which after all, is the seat of Zion. What he needs to add now is the spiritual hooey and African trim to the Masonic bunkum. What has he got to loose but the chains zakwa Nomgqungqo [of jail].

As a pastor he might even be given a platform to preach at Moria. I’ve thought about his homily, but will desist from suggestions since this is a family site. Okay, I’ll give you a clue; he’ll frequently quote from The Book of Songs: I’m black but I’m beautiful . . . If I wer him though I’ll conclude with an Aesopic fable, as told better by Herodotus in his History (I 141).

Herodotus narrated how the Ionian Greeks, who had resisted the call for assisting the Persian King Cyrus in attacking Croesus, the rich Lydian king. When they had Croesus had been subjugated by Cyrus they sent ambassadors to offer their submission. Cyrus’ reply was to tell Aesop’s fable. “A flute player saw some fish and started to play, with the idea that the fish would come out on land. When they disappointed him he took a net, cast it, and hauled a great quantity of fish. When he saw them jumping around, he said to them: ‘[Why wretched creatures] You don’t need to dance for me now, since you wouldn’t come out and dance when I played my flute.” Herodotus assures us that the Greeks did not miss the point of the fable. I’m sure none will miss it here too.

Time To Face Up To Issues

2008-04-02T02:51:00.000-07:00

Time To Face Up To Issues

Last year, towards the ANC (African National Congress) Polokwane conference, I wrote in the Mail and Guardian a piece [The Media is no innocent messenger] on the need for our media to engage with ANC conference documents. To its credit the Mail and Guardian subsequently established a column titled Polokwane Briefing to give platform to that. The debate was mostly vigorous, if at times a little dull. It offered readers opportunity to make up their own minds about the issues, something very rare in South African manipulative media.

Now that pessimism is a prevailing mood in our country, especially concerning racial issues, like in the late eighties, perhaps it is time we establish another public platform to revisit the foundations of our so called Rainbow Nation. We could talk about many things, like trying to shed some light on matters of moral character in public office. But I would suggest we commence with our scourge, racism.

We’ve to investigate the retrogressive aspects of our time that has given confidence to the plague of racism to asperse our reconciliatory efforts. We all know the Rainbow Nation notion has never really had much substance in our racial charged society. For a moment, when Mandela was in the helm of power, it gave us a monkey branch to hide so as to gain confidence to strive away from reality through wishful thinking. Now reality has return with vengeance. Our news is contaminated with racial incidences, and the manner by which we comment on them betrays our still prejudiced mental frames.

The truth of the matter is that most white South Africans are in denial about racism, just as most blacks are in resentment. The cataclysmic manner by which the ruling party (ANC) ousted its president, Thabo Mbeki, for the controversial figure, JZ (Jacob Zuma) gave confidence to opposition parties that all might not be quiet within the ANC front; that it might not be vulnerable on the next elections. It also gave colour to irresponsible speculations of the Cassandras, especially in our media that mostly pander to the thralls of mocking infamy towards the ruling party. The coterie of their commentators, whose use of facts mostly amounts to innuendo against the government—not half bad when not subject to suspicious motives—went on over drive.

The Weltanschauung of the media in SA (South Africa) is liberal media, a good thing under normal circumstances. But in SA liberal does not necessary mean mean non partisan free debate in the media. It means, more or else, secret appendage of, and patronage machine for the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance with designs of conscious manipulation of our organised habits and opinions to harness to haughty pretensions of subtle racism in the name of enlightenment. It is little more than superlative, hackish, uninspired, repetitive and depthless hauteur of hand-me-down pseudo liberal kitsch pretending to champion values of humanity and freedom. That on its own would be tolerable if it were not done with such nauseating degree of manipulation and news selection designed to subvert other point of views.

Another problem with South African version of liberalism is undercurrents of colonial crapulosities. South African liberal commentary mostly has what Edward Said in his 1978 book, Orientalism, termed Western essentialisation of Arab world. Substitute Africa for Arab and you get similar modes of discourse bound up with impositions of imperial power. Only the New Imperialism instead of wishing to civilise the natives, aims at ‘enlightening’ them into the so called humanism. This reification of imperialist mentality strives, this time, for dominance, not by creating an Empire, by through linguistic hegemony and condescending liberal mantra.

The New Imperialism is supported by some high-minded black pests and wannabe epicurean exploiters—the so called foot-lickers—who pour black skin on white prejudices on mistaken idea that it made them enlightened. They too use knowledge as powering disguise for subversive tendencies in the name of freedom of expression and such nauseating never tiring tendencies of cry wolf fingering pointed at failing African states.

There’s also a boomlet of Pan Africanist tendencies aiming to crown their own version of hegemony, but their designs are obvious and clumsy, less subtle, for everyone to see; so no need to go into depth about here.

From all this the South African chattering class finds itself increasingly living in an era of enclaves and niches, squelched by diversity and suspicious of the other. Hence, I say, the establishment of an aseptic public platform may assist in ironing out these issues. Weary as we maybe of these convocations they’re means to introduce our respective points of views when conducted in frank honest manner. It is time SA grooms its coat of many colours so as to pass it to the next generation with lesser fleas.

A Soirée

2008-03-29T04:35:00.000-07:00

My friends and I started what we call, after long deliberation of two months, a soiree. It turned out we could not call it a book club because there was too much beer sousing involved instead of reading and discussing books. So we came up with soirée, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a party with conversations that have intellectual pretensions, depending on the degree of alcohol consumed of course. Naturally we aim at flattering our intellectual pretensions and specious political suave.

The idea was simple. To encourage Bildung, a belief formed by engagement with art, philosophy and learning. To cultivate ourselves into Bildungsbürgertum-the cultivated middle class who regarded culture and learning as the core of an ethical and useful life, both private and public. Before you accuse us of too much pretensions, be advised that this thing is a normal among our coevals in Europe, especially in Germany.

We were each to write every month on small pieces of paper books we would like to see discussed; throw the pieces on a hat. Then we were supposed to go alphabetically, retrieving a single paper at a time. The appointed person buys and hosts the book of discussion, introduce it on the next meeting before passing it to another. At some stage everyone would have read it, then at that meeting the book would be discussed. It is with frank dissatisfaction, and a little glee, to report that we truly made a miserable job of the whole thing. Since we began, in the beginning of the year, we’ve not kept to a single schedule.

We wanted to make the discussions informal, so we chose to accompany them with braai and drinks. That was the first error. People tend to be more enthusiastic about soccer results, gossip and, as I found out when the discussion was on my house, Chris Rock, around braai fire than books. I suggested to one of my friends that perhaps we should do away with alcoholic drinks before discussions. He categorically told me we might as well dissolve the discussions, because ‘the beer drinking is the reason why they tolerate this thing.’

Perhaps we should revisit the ban on women, I suggested, thinking . . . I don’t know what was thinking. ‘That would be a recipe for disaster,' said my friend categorically. 'They come here largely to get away from their women, and be guys for a while, male bonding and all. If you throw that away they'll go with it.’ I threw my hands up. ‘We don’t need ideas, we just to need to make them interested on reading the books they chose, my friend.' My friend told me. 'How do we do that?' I asked. ‘By allowing them to chose the books they really wanna read without making them feel guilty about it, which must include sport heroes and comic books.’

Two weeks ago we held an emergency meeting to discuss the perilous state of our group affair. It turned out my friend was right, the first problem came with the first scheduled books for discussion, Agaat by . . . I can't remember the Afrikaner woman now who wrote that boring book that was taken up by the reading fraternity of SA. People came out with legion reasons for not reading it: ‘It was too expensive.’ ‘The story line is passé.’ ‘The author is culturally callow.’ And so on and so on. I didn’t have the heart to admit I was the one who had chosen the book, and gave thanks to the anonymous process of our hat trick.

The following week the book of choice was OR Tambo: Teacher, Lawyer & Freedom Fighter by Sandi Baai. ‘Personally I’m tired of incwadi zomzabalazo [political struggle books],’ one of my friends summed the mood against it.

JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Micheal K that I was hosting (having bought and read), was dismissed as too Kafkaesque; okay maybe that’s true, but I had spent the whole Friday evening preparing the report dammit. Where will I ever get the chance again to show my acumen for belles-lettres, I thought to myself feeling let down. Suffer me to indulge my ego dear reader, I already have the note anyway. J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Micheal is vaguely based on Kafka’s Joseph K of The Castle, with all the original ingredients included: Traveling into one’s foreign home with radical internal displacement in tightening concentric circles and haphazard, frustrating journeys. Facing up to sterile civil bureaucracy, state sponsored terrorism, and desire for mother’s changeless village, which the Freudians say it’s the desire for returning to the safety of one’s mother’s womb; and fantasy of escape. The book is mimetic; actually most of JM’s books are like that; it's his style, and betrays a certain lack of imagination on the author. I coined a phrase to sum it all up: The book is generally ‘unsatisfying, carefully contrived, and depthlessness.’ Where will I ever use that ersatz learnership now?

Coconut by Kupano Motlwa was deemed too Model C by my group. Anything by Chuna Achebe was too quaint. I can’t wait to here what will be the excuse for Xolela Mangcu’s To The Brink, though I’m already, secretly playing with phrases like; ‘I’m suffering from Mbeki bashing fatigue.’ The only book that had any semblance of real discussion was The Capitalist Nigger by Dr Chika Onyeani. I had not read the book so I was at sixes and sevens in the discussion most of the time, but understood the gist of the discussion in the end.

The truth of the matter is that our soirée is bleeding into becoming just another braaing sessions, and personally I’ve ran out of ideas of how to rescue it. What’s worse now is that decent titles are drying up from the hat. We keep coming up with self-help-how-to-books like; The Power of Positive Thinking, or How to Get Rich In less than a Year; and so on. I know I’m prejudiced against that sort of thing, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain; I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.

When I look around our soirée these days, I find people to be reasonably content with these new titles, which begs the question that, perhaps, though the idea was mine, I don’t really own or belong to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days I should develop headache just when I have to attend the soirée. The cure for my headache would, of course, involve relaxing with music of Iron & Wine singing softly, and an enjoyable book at hand. Who knows, that way I just might get to read more.

My Take

2008-03-29T04:32:00.000-07:00

All my life I grew up under the shadow of violence. The first girl I ever kissed was, twelve years old, burnt to death by the so called ‘comrades’ through cruel means then called necklace—a tyre filled with petrol and newspapers. Her sin? Being born into a family whose head, her father, decided to run for mayourship, in disregard of the call to make ‘South Africa ungovernable.’

A friend I grew up with turned up dead at a sewer after eight days, bitten into a state of pulped tomato. He was last seen being picked by the South African police Special Branch. His mother could not even recognize him, and lost her will to live afterwards, looking at us with accusing eyes, as if it was our fault we didn’t instead of her son. She died seven years later of a heart related problem. Until 1997 when houses in the area were demolished for RDP houses, her house remained empty and unclaimed. No one wanted to be associated with the house termed ‘death house’.

There was in our township something close to a celebration of death; a weekend without one was strange, even unbelievable. Modes of dying included being robbed, or even dying at the hands of those you loved, what today is termed domestic violence. There was a general anarchical break of law and moral accountability. The Afrikaner poetess and author of the grim book titled Country of my Skull, Antjie Krog, gave our township, Mlungisi in Queenstown, an invidious honour of being the first place where the necklace was used. My memory of what happened in our streets then concurs with this conclusion.

Of course we blamed the apartheid government, more for institutionalized and state violence. The more we struggled against violence the more we seemed vulnerable from the criminal element, state propagated and otherwise. We tried our best to let the immediate and outside world to hear our cry, but none cared enough to come to our rescue. Then a strange thing happened. The country gained its political independence in 1994. State violence subsided while social crime gained confidence to attack suburbs and business area. We started seeing stories of criminal element in public spaces like media, a novel and belated praecipe indeed.

This did not mean criminals gave the township a break; they still harassed us like before and more. But we all agreed then that criminals were enemies of us all, and the development of the country at large. We started seeing more police visibility in our townships that was not only concerned with political activists. It was not enough of course, but it demonstrated a political will to tackle the scourge. It made us feel our lives mattered too, and make us feel we were not treated like schlock. But the scourge continued to rise unabated. Up to this day township denizens are the worse affected by crime, but less vocal, call it fatalism or adjustment to occupational hazard, or whatever you like.

Then another strange thing happened. Nelson Mandela put down the reigns as the president, handing them to Thabo Mbeki. Within no time the criminal element was no longer just an enemy of us all, but a fault of government. Arguments were made that the government was not treating the matter as an emergency. People, white folks mostly, started asking if the solution was not in declaring national state of emergency. Naturally, those of who grew up on the conditions of abuse that comes with state emergency are opposed to this solution.

By Thabo Mbeki’s second tenure crime was no longer just a government’s fault but that of the president. The president was termed a denialist. Again we tried to follow the argument. In the end the real crime of the president was what was called a defiant non-sympathetic mood against the citizenry that was suffering consequences of crime—the hidden one being the fact that he has become the boogey man of imperialist hegemony, and scapegoat of everything that goes wrong in the country.

In no time it became clear the country didn’t have the best police force in the world; but there is evidence also that most policemen are of average courage and integrity, under appreciated and poorly paid. But the evidence of corruption against some of them prevails and feeds the pessimistic mood against the police force in general. This prompted the president to call us, with some justification, “. . . spokespersons of doom or cheerleaders of bad news.”

The truth of the matter is that the scourge of crime affects us all. It has been a rude wakening for those who spent their lives in this country in comfortable cocoons into the realization that this country was founded, and still subsists, on abnormality. It also gives those made impotent by their prejudices and political dispossession, together with the rest of opportunist doomsayer footlickers, to spew invective in attempt to catch the coattails of liberal specious enlightenment, a handle to beat the government by. Crime has been used, especially by white South Africans, as means to discredit the present South African, and cry wolf for a failing state in the offing.

Loosing the Moorings

2008-03-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine from New York City recently visited me. He was in his Kiddushin [a period of sanctification, a year after marriage when a Jewish man is excused from all obligations to cheer up his wife]. He was in good spirits, a drastic change from the last time I saw him, immediately after G.W. Bush won his second tenure.

“The American people are rediscovering sense, as South Africans seem to be regressing.” He said as we sat in a coffee shop at Gardens Centre. He was, of course, talking about the seeming certain comeback of Democratic Party in the US; and the shenanigans within the South African governing circles. We went on to discuss how things have changed since the bright hope that came with ANC (African National Congress) coming to power. He had then travelled to South Africa to find, with my contribution, an NGO called, Ubuntu Education Fund.

“I hear all sort of bad things now about SA political brinkmanship, and think, that’s not the SA I know.” I was thinking about an sms my mother had sent me the previous day my mother had sms(ed) me from England. She said she was watching a documentary titled No More Mandelas on BBC programme called Panorama. It is not complementary of Jacob Zuma, and paints Thabo Mbeki as an isolated figure who was ditched as the president of ANC on its 52nd conference. Mother had written.

“Politics happened, and lack of reasonable demarche from opposition parties.” I said trying to answer my friend.
“It is almost an unwritten law of democracy that governments should never last for more than 10 years. Politicians who take that long in office tend to be infected with the virus of arrogance, insensitivity and complacency.” We talked about the ANC conference in Polokwane last December, which we associated with Ortega y Gasset's ‘revolt of the masses’.
“And now mob psychology has taken over the higher echelons of ANC since,” he said and continued by quoting from J.M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron;“Now, in South Africa, I see eyes clouding over again, scales thickening on them, as the land-explorers, the colonists, prepare to return to the deep.” Backward evolution, or nervousness of majority rule?

“Mbeki’s government has been on the back foot for the last six years or so, reacting to its failures than innovating. Unfortunately for them, people elect governments to foresee problems and lead events rather than merely react to failures. Mbeki’s major failure started with his selective dissemination of public posts to his loyalists. Looks like nothing will change with the incoming management of Zuma who seem bent on trading in nepotism, gate-keeping and moral distortions of all kinds.”

We talked about how when democracy enables a culture of impunity for those who govern it breeds cynicism that nurtures extremism on citizens. “There’s always danger in extremism when irrational radicals enjoy the protections of the mob.” My friend said.
“In South Africa extremism thrives because democracy has failed to provide the mass of citizens with basic endowments that enables them to participate in the activities of the country, especially economic, with dignity and material security. We cannot run away from that fact, despite all else. I admit that Mbeki’s patronage-based elite-class democracy too was a breeding ground for mass upheaval. But . . .”
“So you think he was given an axe for what Bakunin described as la pédantocratie when he attacked Marx—the government by professors, which he regarded as the most oppressive form of despotism?” Asked my friend.
“Exactly, and now it is the turn of the elites to be concerned. The democratic tsunami in Polokwane has brought fears for the rule by the mob, which, inter alia, is always inclined to demagogy, an enemy of economic liberty.”
“This is an age of globalism and supercapitalsim, South Africa cannot afford to be different.”
I answered him in a hurry. “That is just the thing. People have seen through the wool that supercapitalism is killing democracy instead of leading to free societies. It trumps all means deployed to protect citizen rights by constraining the power of people to achieve their civic and personal goals. European citizens too are waking up to this realisation, while America is still caught up in overwhelming consumerists desires on which supercapitalism thrives on.”
“They hate supercapitalism but like its products and conveniences?”
“That’s the conundrum.”
“What next then for SA?”
“We can only wait and see. Frankly I don’t see this duckling hatching a swan. Looks like the boat has lost its moorings.” My friend I then agreed to put the candle on the window, hoping for the best. The aptness of that syllogism caught me by surprise considering we were suffering power cuts in the country.

Times Are a Changing

2008-03-07T02:55:00.000-08:00

Something new is happening in the new age politics of the world, from Europe’s biggest economies (Germany and France) to populist local movements of Latin America. The Zeitgeist is towards more left-leaning corrective measures to the glut of capitalist greed. Political leaders of our age are discovering the hard way that people’s Weltanschauug has turned against insatiable pursuit of profits, and tired of business as usual mentality. They are demanding real change which the politicians ignore at their own peril. The casualties range from the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder whose welfare reforms cost him job in 2005 to our own out going president Thabo Mbeki.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, to offset internal criticism in his country, opted to take the route of industrial protectionism as measure for reviving France’s economy, instead of following the US model. He calls it “Economic Patriotism.” What these leaders are discovering is that to ignore one’s constituency on excuses of imperatives of globalism is detrimental in democratic dispensation.

Germany’s new leftist party is growing fast on the anti-supercapitalist ticket, finding support even among mainstream circles of civil society and parliamentarians. It gains support largely from the resentment of globalization and the country’s reaction against right-wing demagoguery and xenophobia.

Venezuela is the typical example of the present Latinist popular politics. Before it was dominated by two official parties who represented the interests of the wealthiest Venezuelans, but ignored the needs of the 80% who were living in poverty until the firebrand Hugo Chavez was elected as a president. Chavez was elected by a due coalition of popular forces that rejected “business as usual”. Subsequently, Corporate influence, in secret coalition with corrupt union leaders, tried to overthrow Chavez in 2002. Masses of Venezuelan people took to the streets to defend their democracy. Since then Venezuelans have time and again re-elected Chavez with growing majority on every election.

Chavez derives his popularity from the fact that he has given Venezuelan communities direct power to administer their own social programs. His government supports community cooperative enterprises—from worker-run factories, to thousands of other community driven cooperatives. He uses profits from the country’s natural wealth to support these cooperatives. Oil money to diversify the economy, improve agrarian participation for ordinary citizens, and to provide them with efficient public health system.

Chavez’s success comes from his espousing of participatory democracy, i.e. maximizing the direct involvement of communities, rather than minimizing it as bureaucracy of government officials of representative democracy tend to do. Of course Chavez has his short-comings, like a tendency to suppress voices of dissent, and his bunker mentality towards the media. He could also show better concern for environmental issues. But to say he’s an enemy of democracy is disingenuous.

A lot of hypocritical democrats, who though not having any problem with 85% wealth of the nations being controlled by only 8 % elite hands, see what Chavez does as chauvinistic and curtailment of freedom of free market system. We all know by now the fallacy of the invisible hand of the markets having a corrective effect. In effect we’ve been waiting for it since the inception of capitalist system.

The major attraction of free markets is that they create wealth that underwrites democratic political participation. The success China’s economy and India has broken down even this correlation between free markets and plural politics from both ends. Wealth also is supposed to create and sustain organizations and groups independent of the government: business, trade unions and professional associations. Globalisation, at its present form, clearly violates this notion. In short, free market is fast loosing its endearing traits.

What is becoming clear is that Global markets have unleashed economic forces that are becoming too powerful for democratic institutions to control. The free markets have created “supercapitalism” that is suppressing democracy. Instead of leading to free societies, supercapitalism is constraining the power of people to achieve their civic and personal goals. This is the growing opinion even amongst leading economics, and the likes of Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor and now professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley.

Reich argues that social responsibility by global cooperation is not enough to offset the corrosive effect of supercapitalism on individual freedom and national sovereignty of the countries. But the blame does not only lie with supercapitalism. In Zimbabwe, for instance, democracy has enabled a culture of impunity on long time serving leaders. In South Asia democracy has been derailed by dynastic politics, where political trust depends on patronage based on personalities and elite class rather than institutions of civil liberty. So local culture and habits are not always good for democracy either when not informed by forces of enlightenment.

In theory, global ‘trade should drive down corruption, nepotism, gate-keeping and market distortions of all kinds.’ But in fact it is otherwise. The irony is that, with all the rhetoric of free market competition, often you find its just a masks for private monopolies. It does not take a genius to see that behind the façade of boastful competition of free market often lies a world of inequality and domination by few elite groups or families. While praising the competitive market, those who actually work the marketplace specialize in mergers and acquisitions, takeovers and cartels, liquidations and ¬sell¬offs that are designed to curtail free competition.

Real democrats, as now emerging in European countries like Germany and France, see through all this farce. Wealth is hardly produced these days, but reshuffled and expropriated. Real competition is avoided, and the risk in whose name profit is supposedly earned, is socialized. Taxpayers are now and again compelled to bail out corporate failures, while profits, though no longer earned by taking real risks, are kept private, reserved for shareholders and overpaid corporate managers. Deregulation, said to enhance competition, in reality has entrenched price fixing, like recently in bread industry in our country. And deregulation facilitates cartels and the kinds of monopoly we see on Microsoft “bundling” for instance.

In developing countries, especially, many of the public goods that citizens require for their freedom to thrive, such as public education, environmental protection and social insurance, are in scarce supply. Developing states lack revenue to offer citizens assurances of equity or security, thus the logic of the free market, which endows global brands with tools that poorly organized and diffuse citizens or civic society lack, sets the economic policies. These countries are overwhelmed by the enormous lobbying power of global companies into towing the line of free market system designed for the vested interests of the companies.

The solution then does not lie only on free markets that are speciously supposed to create pathways into liberalization of political expression, or local culture, but on a working mixture of these. Local culture must feed on global democracy and freedom without necessarily shedding its local responsibilities. The idea here is to maintain the level of democracy and national freedom that trade openness tends to violate by careless pursuit of profits. To introduce corrective measures for democratic stability against increased inequality that global big companies disrupt.

That is what is happening in counties like Germany, France; to a radical effect in Venezuela, and gradually South Africa. Whether you call this left-leaning or developmental state is just semantics. In the end countries are forced to offset bad elements of the enormous lobbying power of global big business, not only to protect their citizenry, but for the sake of saving the wonderful production system capitalism, and better wealth distribution.

What is certain is that, as President Thabo Mbeki declared, it can no longer be business as usual for any country. Times are a changing. The world majority is waking up, and shedding the ransoming chains by the elite few who happen to have shares they expect ridiculous profits on.

In our country, for instance, there’s a constant blackmail by business class of threatening to take their business elsewhere whenever the government does not comply with their demands. My take is that in democratic dispensations everyone has right to go and take their business wherever they like. It probably, in the long run, is better when we rid ourselves of parasites who operates in the name of business. Sure a loss of business is painful for any economy, but we are better off allowing the storm to shake off few bad apples from the tree so that their decomposition may facilitate more trees to fill the orchard.

To their surprise they might discover that the world over is changing. Young people of the world, especially, seek, not necessary a new world order, but to purify the best of what we already have. Some tend to call themselves environmentalists, others new socialists, but what’s common with them is dissatisfaction with the status quo of business as usual. The candidate for US presidency, senate Barack Obama is riding on the same wave.

There is no question about it, the growing preoccupation with consumption, economic growth, and meaningless pursuit of wealth has subverted our search for authenticity and self-realisation. But people are slowly waking up to reality, and realisation that you need to give a little to take a little. The new world demands sacrifice, responsibility, respect for the dignity of the other, education to make better choices, and, of course a patriotic sense of pride for one’s identity and country. Are we up to the challenge?

Tired of Brinkmanship

2008-02-22T00:37:00.000-08:00

It has not happened something that does not happen in Thabo Mbeki’s government. Democratic governments that overstay their welcome tend to haemorrhage from loss of moral authority caused, inter alia, by scandal, sleaze, arrogance, incompetence. As the late Xhosa poet S.K. E. Mqhayi would say; ‘Lento kaloku yinto yalonto, thina nto zaziyo asothukanga nto. . .’ [‘These things happen as thus, we who know are not surprised at all . . .’]

During the national strike of civil workers last we wrote in these pages that Thabo Mbeki’s administration has grow ‘too big for their boots’ when the minister of Public Works, Geraldine Fraser-Moketsi, demonstrated reckless conceit in addressing the worker’s grievances—obviously taking her cue from his master. We wrote that if the ANC (African National Congress) knew what’s good for it they should fire the whole of Mbeki’s administration. That is exactly what happened on the ANC 52nd national conference late last year at Polokwane—by changing its NEC (National Executive Council) the ANC effectively got rid of Mbeki’s administration for the next government. And I was the first one to be dumbfounded.

I was dumbfounded by how swift and effective the democratic system inside the ruling party is. The move to get rid of Mbeki’s administration was orchestrated from the ground roots (regional offices of the party).

It is almost an unwritten law of democracy that governments should never last for more than 10 years. Politicians who take this long in office tend to be infected with the virus of arrogance and insensitivity. Most of Mbeki’s ministers are typical rusted long serving servants, had taken an attitude of talking patronisingly to their audiences. They had become slipshod in their briefs and all. With the exception of few, many never took off, in any case, never up to their jobs from the start.

Most of us were shocked at the naivety of Mbeki in deciding to contest the third term as the ANC president. Nothing except that he’s been too sheltered from reality for far too by surrounding himself with a cocoon of sycophancy and careerists. He collided with Ortega y Gasset's “revolt of the masses”, and learned reality against the stone in Polokwane. It looks like it did him a lot of good too, for it fostered a spirit of humility on him, even inspired him to come out of his cocoon and emotional insularity.

Mbeki’s speech of apology for failures of government during his opening of the parliamentary section for 2008 was too little too late. We elect governments to foresee ‘problems and lead events rather than merely react to their own failures’. Reacting to their own failures is exactly what the government of Mbeki has been doing for the past six years or so. It is enough, they must hand the baton over to others who might have better ideas.

But the manner by which the opposition parties grandstanded by calling for early elections, due to what they called loss of confidence in Mbeki’s government, was ridiculous and self-defeating. Naturally they have their vested interests, wanting to harvest people’s disillusionments for their political gain.

Tabling a vote of no confidence in Mbeki’s government was a stupid opportunistic move of wanting to get on stage lights for the opposition parties, and feast on the carcass of lame duck president. Mbeki must be allowed to finish his term, if anything to set right the mess he has put the country through; otherwise we’re going to be in a situation where the next leader will excuse his incompetence to his predecessor’s failures. Mbeki must find a way getting us out of this reversal of values and general confusion.

Be that as it may, the ANC needs a way to avoid the present fiasco of Parliamentarians being reduced into plotters and mutineers in the festering boil of underground tug in the clout between the president of the ruling party (Jacob Zuma) and that of the Republic (Thabo Mbeki). Things have already gotten out of hand, with MPs wandering into rebellious factional plots instead of reflecting and doing their proper jobs.

There probably is no way Mbeki can redeem his name now with the fiasco of dissolving the crime busting unit, The Scorpios; and firing the head of National Prosecuting unit under suspicious circumstances. Hostility on him and his government from all direction has prevailed, fanned by his nemesis, the media, which influences public opinion. Now is not the time to pick media scabs, well-known failings and prejudices. Mbeki has himself to blame anyway, for developing a bunker mentality towards the media, which usually spells the first falling step for a public figure.

Mbeki is/was the ultimate spinner, a habit he learnt in England during the struggling years. The wages of spin are always political death, why should he be any different? The only way left for Mbeki is graceful exit by lowering his neck to raise the stature of his successor, Jacob Zuma, for the stability of the country if nothing else. So the country maybe rid of political brinkmanship, démarche and all. He had more than ten years for siloviki self-gratification, now its time to be saintly.

By the looks of things, in the respect he paid to Jacob Zuma during the opening of Paliamentary session for 2008, the lesson is beginning to sink on him. Besides that, the only interesting thing left for him to do is to sit down and write frank and honest memoirs so the rest of us could have an idea of what the fuck actually happened within the echelons of the ANC.

Xhosaland

2008-01-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

Most of us are born and live in places without ever really discovering their treasures because we take them for granted. It usually takes the coming of fresh eyes for us to see our homes with born-again eyes. It took my need to showcase my home to my girlfriend, who’s from Botswana, for me to discover home.
We started from the township of PE where I am closely associated with the founding of an NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) called Ubuntu Education Fund, “an international organization dedicated to developing grassroots health and education programs in South Africa and promoting ubuntu—the South African belief in a universal bond of sharing that unites all of humanity”.

My homeland is the land we may, for convenience sake, call Xhosaland. It is situated in the province of the Eastern Cape (South Africa), roughly extending from Lady Frere through the Winterberg Mountains; incorporates the former Ciskei and Transkie, sweeping to the coast along East London to PE (Port Elizabeth), eBhayi. So it was ideal for us to start at PE.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of SA (South Africa) knows that British settlers established PE around 1820. It was called Algoa Bay until the then acting governor of the Cape Colony, Rufin Donkin, named it after his recently died wife Elizabeth. But the history of South African coast encountering the distant people goes much further than that if the ancient Greek historian Herodotus is to be believed.
According to Herodotus the first ships to sail along the coast of Southern Africa were those of an expedition dispatched from the Red Sea by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho, which were manned by Phoenician sailors six centuries before Christ. The ships found their way to the east coast of Africa, rounded the southernmost point of the continent, proceeded up the west coast, passed through the Pillars of Hercules, and arrived back in Egypt at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile after an adventurous journey that lasted three years. Herodotus tells us the ships anchored each autumn at some convenient spot on the coast and the crew planted grain and rested while it ripened, and after harvesting the plants their sea journey was resumed. Historians suppose that one of the autumnal sojourns was made on the part of the coast that now constitutes the sea boundary of the republic of South Africa, most probably the east coast where Xhosaland is situated.
There are other apocryphal later versions of the Phoenicians rounding Africa from the likes of Strabo, the Greek geographer. But we know for sure that Batholomue Diaz’s expedition sailed into Algoa Bay, passed to St Croix and Bird Island, eventually anchoring near the mouth of Bushman’s River. There they erected a stone column or prado on the rocky promontory on the mainland we now know as Kwaihoek. The date was 3rd of February 1488. They sailed for three days passing the mouths of Kariega and Kowie Rivers until they arrived at the Great Fish River where they reluctantly turned back. On their return journey to Europe their two ships passed within sight ‘of magnificent promontory’ past which they had been unwittingly driven by storm on the outward journey. They named the imposing landmark Cape of Storms which was changed by his King John II to Cape of Good Hope. Vasco da Gama completed Diaz’s work by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, up the coast of Africa to cross to India. The British settlers of 1820 sailed to Algoa Bay exactly three and one third century after Diaz, and all hell broke loose in Xhosaland.

In the words of C.L. Stretch, the beloved Xhosas Resident Agent with the Ngqikas during the middle ninetieth century: the Xhosaland “presents a fine background to the finest pasturage interspersed with fine clumps of bush, beautifully [dispersed] and extending along an extensive tract of country east and west.” The Governor of the Cape Colony from April from 1814 to March of 1826, Lord Charles Somerset, though not partial with his love towards the natives, especially the Xhosas— whom he saw as restless savages adverse to the advantages of Western civilisation— described the land to the then Secretary for the Colonies in Britain, Earl Bathurst, in his usual grandiloquent manner and false delicacy of his era, as resembling a “succession of parks from Bushman’s River to Great Fish River in which, upon the most verdant carpet, Nature has planted in endless variety, the soil well adapted to cultivation is peculiarly fitted for cattle and pasturage.” Needless to say he coveted this Eden for white settlement, if only it could be rid of the serpent, the Xhosas, whom he regarded as ‘barbarous savages, whose lives are ruled by ignorance, cruelty and superstition, the stock-in-trade of clever witch-doctors.’
To the white colonists the Xhosas were known as kaffirs, a Moslem word for unbelievers. Some say they were called so because of the texture of Xhosa hair that resemble sorghum, which the colonists called kaffir-corn. To me it is highly likely that sorghum was called thus after kaffir hair than the other way round since most colonists regarded Xhosas as ‘incorrigible unbelievers earmarked for eternal hellfire without the assistance of the master race.’ I am, according to a Sheridanean quote, indebted to my imagination for that fact. Xhosaland rises from the sea in Port Elizabeth in gentle varied contours. On uplands the air is so clear the eye can rise to the sky indefinitely and peep at the gods. The earth, once it leaves the caramel sands of dazzling dunes of sensitive vegetation on the seashore, is copper coloured. Verdure of trees grows on it. It is not rare to see semi-tropical birds flashing their bright coloured plumage, sucking nectar from the scarlet flowers of prickly-pear cactus that grow in the scrub bush that is very nutritious to herds of bushbucks, kudus, gazelles, elands and other variations of antelopes like the elastic springbucks. Various other wild animals habituates the area to the extent that the region boasts of numerous game reserve where you can still watch the big five without worrying about diseases like malaria. The Addo Elephant National Park is one of them and plans to be the first game reserve in the world to offer sites for the “Big 7” (elephants, lions, leopards, buffaloes, rhinos, whales and great white sharks) in their natural habitant. It is a great park comprising a 240 000 hectare terrestrial zone and a 120 000 hectare marine zone. Only lions still have to be reintroduced to the "Greater Addo" area. It also includes islands that are home to the world’s largest African penguins and gannets, unrivalled natural diversity, with five of South Africa’s seven major vegetation zones (biomes), and rich heritage of archaeological and historical sites. Accommodation and activity options are for all
tastes as wild life meets the marine wild life to create one of the most endearing sights in the world. It was in this area that the "Big 5" (elephant, black rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard) were first documented before vast numbers of wild animals were greatly reduced, some even to the verge of extinction, due to irresponsible hunting practices. Places like the private Shamwari Game Reserve are succeeding in reversing that. Shamwari is probably, I kid you not, the most successful effort at nature conservation and responsible tourism in the world. A visit to it though comes at price, but you’re guaranteed to rub shoulders with the likes of the Prince Charles of Whales and the John Travolta’s of this world. A way to sneak in for the not so rich and famous is by a gap year or something. They’ve various conservation programmes of wildlife reserves for those who wish to learn more about nature conservation called Eco Africa Experience program.

Between Sundays, which the Xhosas call iNqweba, and the Great Fish, iNxuba, Rivers was the bone of most contention between the natives and early white settlers of the eighteenth century. The Cape-Dutch farmers, commonly referred to as Boers, met up with the Xhosas, the Khoi, and the San people. The Cape-Dutch farmers, on account of the sourness of the grass, called the area Zuurveld. These groups mingled in the area in ill-fated relationship of their first encounters as compact racial groups towards the end of the Eighteenth century. Mutual plundering that lead to skirmishes between the groups was common. The white farmers, who got away with mischief with more impunity, because the called upon the assistance of British forces, when the region fell under Cape Colony, or Batavian Republic when it was once under it, whenever things got too hot, got the better benefit from the skirmishes. The colonial forces identified the Xhosas as the nuisance of the area and drove them further beyond iNxuba to minimise the risk of reiving. The river was eventually declared the border between the Colony and Xhosaland, which was then called Kaffirland. This made the Xhosas very resentful, returning like birds that have been disturbed by violence to a tree whenever the danger passes. The danger being ‘The Red Devils’ (the scarlet-coated British ‘Red-Coats’) as the Xhosas called them.

The end of slave trade, Napoleonic wars, the flood of wondering migrants fleeing the wars of Shaka (eventually known as Wonderers (Mfengu)), exacerbated the conflicting situation between these racial groups. It did not help matters that the white settlers saw the natives as the inferior labouring race. It was easier for the white farmers to hire and apply, mostly severe, control over the despondent Mfengus; to attract the covetous Khoi with the jangle of harnesses; but the Xhosas and the San people were another matter. The San were incorrigible hunters and gatherers who were mostly not interested any other form of life. The Xhosas saw themselves as self-sufficient custodians of the land. Whoever wanted to settle on the land, in the eyes of the Xhosas, had to assimilate and abide by the, sometimes, despotic authority of their chiefs. This caused discontent and was the beginnings that eventually caused the liaison between the two racial groups to be a crushing burden of suspicion and animosity, which embroiled the Frontier for the greater part of the nineteenth century, easing only with the weakening of the Xhosa nation towards the end of that century.

When you extend the borders from iNqweba all the way to iVuba (Zuurbergen) Mountains near Uitenhage, you get what today is referred to as the Nelson Mandela Bay. From those mountains, along the banks of pellucid Nqweba River, in the midst of thick Addo Bush, are prosperous citric farms that offer bush camping experience. We stayed a weekend on one of them called Umlambo, meaning the river. The owner was an easy going fourth generation Afrikaner on the farm. When we were checking in he jokingly wanted to verify if “you’re not terrorists”. That an Afrikaner farm can joke with a black dude like that, to me, shows how far the country has come. He told of wonderful things happening to the farms post 1994; how the partnership with his workers has improved the production capacity of the farm and all. He also told us about things his grandfather experienced in his youth on the region, like the trekbokken. “They say when the trekbokken comes you’re awakened one morning by a sound like the strong winds before the thunderstorm. This is then followed by the trampling of thousands of all kind of game—wilderbeest, bleskop, springboks, quaggas, elands, antelopes of all sorts and kinds. This covers the area and fills the streets and gardens as far as eyes can see. They graze off everything edible before them, drinking up waters in the furrows, fountains, dams and wherever they could get it. Fagged and impoverish people would kill them in numbers in their gardens and streets. It takes about three days before the whole trekbokken passes living behind a country looking as though destructive heat had passed over it. But it’s indeed a wonderful sight.”
The camping facilities are basic, self-catering wooden cabins, with donkey geysers for ‘warm washing water,’ one luxury yours’ truly, like Napoleon, can’t do without. The air is fresh, sounds recreationally natural, and the river, with minimum intrusion of paddling boats, even the bilibili kind, is quiet, slithering through the bush like a shinning green mamba. In most places the banks are precipitous, covered with rank bush and tall indigenous trees.
Drinking whisky and braaing steaks and green peppers stuffed with bacon around a bonfire felt natural. The silence and the vastness of the sky was divine. In the morning we couldn’t help, though we had promised no gadgets, connecting the Ipod, to the car radio. Leonard Cohen completed the picture for us:
Suzanne takes you down When he walked upon the water
To her place near the river And he spent a long time watching
You can hear the boats go by From his lonely wooden tower
You can spend the night besides her And when he knew for certain
………. Only drowning men could see him
And Jesus was a sailor He said, “All men will be sailors then . Until the sea shall free them.”

When you leave PE by the N2 route after about twenty kilometres you meet up with construction works. They’re building a deep-water port near the mouth of iNqurha (Coega) mouth to host the first Industrial Development Zone in South Africa. From time in memorial native people came there to collect salt from the natural salt plates. When the white settlers came the area became more industrious with sometimes fierce battering. There are concerns now that the industrial development will come at the expense of nature conservation and tourist attraction. As a person who lives among the grinding poverty of township I’m inclined to say, as much as I love the beauty of the area, the trade-offs for job creation outweighs the negative consequences. All modern means of development, to gain credence, must reconcile themselves, in a healthy balance, with the dignity and life needs of man of all classes.

Governor Somerset was aware the importance the Xhosas assigned to their land, yet his careless and provocative vacillating policies eventually led to the annexation of the land by the British. This was the watershed of Frontier politics. The Xhosa, in desperate attempt to reclaim their land, went to war with the Cape Colony. Subsequent Frontier Wars were, one way or the other, an attempt by the Xhosa to reclaim this land. The land issue was never far from most active war chiefs of amaNgqika like Maqoma and Tyhali. They’re perhaps the fathers of Pan Africanism in the Xhosa nation. Ngqika, their father, fell foul in the eyes of other Xhosa chief, and eventually that of his sons, because his friendship with the colonial government was perceived as the major cause for loss of Xhosaland to white settlers.
If ever a land was haunted by it’s past, it is Xhosaland. If you cannot find something to satisfy your yearn for an African adventure there, the chances are you’ll never find it anywhere else.

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• Ubuntu Education Fund can visited at www.ubuntueducationfund.org
• Map of the Eastern Cape by compliment of Coega development.
• Pictures taken at Addo National Elephants Park, which can be contacted at www.addoelephantpark.co.za and Shamwari Game Reserve www.shamwari.co.za
• Nelson Mandela Bay can be contacted at www.nelsonmandelabay.com
• Eastern Cape is home to some famous sons and daughters of South Africa like Nonjoli (Ngqika’s mother), Nongqawuse, Nxele alias Makana, Ntsikane, Nelson Mandela, O.R. Tambo, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Steve Biko, Thabo Mbeki, etc.

Buying Flowers in Cape Town

2007-12-14T01:43:00.000-08:00

January 2007: I’m holidaying in Cape Town. I’ve just eaten lunch at Nando’s restaurant. I’m standing at a shaded corridor called Trafalgar Place. Costermongers are selling flowers. I stand dazed, spellbound, as if struck by lighting.

What’s the matter?

I’m not the one who usually cares much for pressure points of guide books, but I had read in one of them that the shaded area was once where they sold human slaves in the eighteenth century. It just sort of came to me all of a sudden. I stand there imagining how they must have sat there in rows, bruised and harried, damp and fever fogged, waiting to be auctioned while the buccaneering hardiness of their blackbirding sellers auctioned and documented their misery.

I buy two bunches from a coloured lady whose eyes dance with joviality. She looks at me strangely as I lay them down not far from where she is seating. On second thoughts I bruise them. “Arnica and eyebright; to treat bruises and for pained eyes.” I say as I move away. The panhandling car park guide, used to tourists and never shy of audience, poses for me to take a picture; but I decline, not wanting to be part of the pasquinade. He smuggles his way into my affection anyway.

I had been wondering how best to explore the Mother City; through buying flowers the motif came to me. I immediately took to quick research on the internet. In the end I discovered that it’d take a lifetime to explore everything associated with slavery in the Cape—since seemingly the region was built on slave labour—so I decide (for sanity) to limit myself to the city centre, the Company Gardens in particular.

Knowledge is burden.

With the acquired knowledge the city changes in my eyes, utterly. Everywhere I go I see tragic undertones of human slavery; old buildings, and gardens. The studied ebullience of statues, especially, look more like a kowtowing exercises to the narratory of Western colonialism and imperialism.

Cape Town, of course, as a city was established when Dutch East India Company (DOC) formed a half-way station, a toehold on the African continent, at the Cape in 1652. The idea was not to colonise, but to maximise profits of spice trades to India. Jan van Riebeeck became the first commander at the Cape and the founder of the city; mandated to plant fresh vegetables for the Company, which is how the Company’s Gardens were established at the top of Heerengracht, now Adderly, Street.

The problem is that there was not enough labour, so in 1654 the ship Roode Vos went on a slaving expedition to Mauritius and Antongil Bay in Madagascar but returned empty. The first slaves in the Cape arrived on 28 March 1658 brought by the ship Amersfoot after being captured from a Portuguese slaver that was on its way from Angola to Brazil.

About 63 000 slaves were imported into the Cape between 1658 and 1808, the year slave trade was abolished throughout the British Empire. Most of them were brought from India {Bengal, Malabar and Coromandel (36.4%)}, East Indies (31.47%), Ceylon (now Sir Lanka, 3.1%), Mozambique, Madagascar and East African coast (26.65%), and the rest came from Malaya and Mauritius.

I seat on a public bench to read the edifying correspondence between Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson during the foundations of the American Republic: ‘I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the manuscript-assumed authority of the dead.’ Says Jefferson.

The voorlopers (drum majors) are drumming Dutch liedjies (songs) to keep the dead on their wake. It’s 2nd January, the time of Minstrel Festival in the Mother City. At this time denizens of the city get a modicum of care-free camaraderie between each other, especially those of different races. I am obstructed by a frozen disgust at the violence that lies at the foundations of the city. The caravan moves on, sowing bustle. I go up Wale Street, take some few photographs of the Slave Lodge before entering the Company Gardens.

‘The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead,’ Thomas Jefferson insists in another letter exchange with James Madison in the fall of 1789. Madison wrote back intimating that; ‘the social world, unlike the natural, genuinely has been inherited. It is the manufactured.’ The gist of his argument is that the social order was built, maintained, and left to us not just by a vague and nameless antiquity, but by particular people, within living memory and link to the past.

The Company Gardens is now a botanical. It gives a relaxed ambience for lovers, families, and all those who want to escape the metropolis compelling distresses for a while. It hedges Parliament buildings and the South African presidential palace called Tynhys [Summer House]. Tynhys was built on slave labour by Simon van Da Stel, the first governor of the Cape and brother-in-law of Riebeek.

Madison, of course, was of the opinion that we receive the buildings from those who came before us. We speak the languages they spoke, read the books they wrote, and are basically the avatars of their biological and moral choices; just as others will receive ours. Just as others will receive ours. That thought strikes a chord. What will others receive from us? Crimes of complicity, of evasion, of silence, of going with the comfortable flow because we don’t want to disturb the status quo; or prejudice a superficial reconciliation?

The American fathers, and those who use these kind of arguments, wanted the new Republic to find stability by accepting public debt and the consequent role of prior generations. Fine! Why then there’s a minimum of two statues of Smuts in the Company Gardens while you don’t find a single one dedicated to slaves? Didn’t their blood and toil erect those gardens? Is the silent hidden Bell enough?

There are heated debates about changes of street names and all in our country all most in every municipality building you go to. Up to this present day the U.S.A still vacillates between two points of view; wanting to acknowledge or forget the past. South Africa has just set in on that course. One says; ‘Let us forget the past.’ The other answers; ‘Because you want to rob me of its strength.’ Then another says; ‘Let’s live in the past.’ Another answers; ‘Because you have not prepared yourself for the future.’

I seek not apologies, nor reparations; just awareness of what has been with a promise to be better than we are. Just to take a moment from living in the dizzy heights of the moment without descending to presentism. History is enough Gorgon’s head as it is. Human manufacture settles nothing. We may buy flowers to ward off the stench where human beings were auctioned like animals, but pray we don’t trample on their graves.

Ernest Renan insisted that the nation is constituted in large measure by the shared memories of sufferings and sacrifices of the past that make the present generation willing to endure sufferings and sacrifices of its own. To keep faith with those who have come before the role of memory is crucial. Is it any wonder that Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address invoked the “mystic chords of memory”. People are usually ready to sacrifice for a greater future when they see that the sacrifices of those who came before them have been honoured.

I seat at another park bench watching the birds career the air in matinal excitement. The pulchritudinous tranquillity feels insulting to my mood. Table Mountain, bandaged in mist, is scowling at my neck. Grief is the beginning of the healing process. I had come to Cape Town intending to be merry, instead I found a home. Home is often where the heartache is, especially for those of us caught up on TS Eliot’s communication of the dead with their tongues of fire.

It was another American, Edmund Bruke, who said; ‘If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feeling will be drawn that way . . .’ I can’t wait change to come and my country be normal. Though the scars run too deep, there’s a clamp of hope on the aching mist (Philip Lark).

The Dye is cast

2007-12-10T01:20:00.000-08:00

Lately, since he received overwhelming majority nomination on regional ANC (African National Congress) branches, JZ (Jacob Zuma) has been gallivanting on the globe acting like a an incumbent president, selling the skin of bear he has not even shot—the actual elections are only happening at the ANC conference from 15-20 December 2007 in Polokwane.
There’s no doubt that JZ sees his presidential mission as fait accompli. But what is the word from the ANC delegates who’d be voting in Polokwane? From the few I’ve talked with the general attitude is that ‘I’ve nothing personal against JZ, but my take is that, with all the baggage he’s been burden with it’d reflect badly on us as the country if he were to be our next president. You must not worry; the ANC in the end will come to its senses.’ I’ll doff my hat off if they manage to pull that one off, that is, preventing JZ from being the next president of the ANC.
Personally I prefer what I see as the lesser evil of Mbeki’s click (President: Thabo Mbeki; Vice president: Nkosazana Dlamani-Zuma; and so on) to continue for another five years. My concern is that; the voice of the majority on the ground is clearly for Zuma. What message would be the delegates passing if they ignore that voice? The ANC motto is that ‘The People Shall Govern.’
Having said that; the dye is now cast. The two elephants are about to clash in Polokwane next weekend. As those who grew on the struggle the only thing to say about this kind of confrontation is: Ayihlab’ ihlome!
I’ve in the past weeks, in agony of diplomacy, been trying to join the debate about the election of the next ANC president. Now that the direction of things is clear I think I shall close to this topic with a very frank talk. I imagine listening to a fresh leader—something the ANC is clearly adverse to—speaking in the opening ceremony of the ANC 52nd Conference (Polokwane). This is what he would say:
My pity collects and is roused when I look at you. I think of the glorious manner by which you conducted yourself in fighting the scourge of apartheid over years. It is up to you now to continue on that path, or to divert from it for strange sayings and principles. You have in the past elected leaders that were blameless as flowers, others not so blameless, but you’ve always managed to wade through because you allowed the principles of democracy and human rights to guide you.
Now you’ve come to your 52nd National Conference to elect your next president. Leading to this conference has been disappointing signs of your neglect, even shunning, the founding principles of your organisation. Others among you want to be in power in perpetuity, against your traditions and principles. Others behave immorally against the principles of human rights you purport to support, yet they still want to be elected leaders of your party.
There is nothing wrong with ambition but one wishes its objectives were more edifying. I see now that your fantasies have generated realities. Is there been a dearth of leadership material in your party that you should allow yourselves to be manoeuvred to this unattainable self-defeating position. You stupid, stupid people! Wake up! This is your last chance or soon you shall be fondling your dust and weep over your own ruins.
I face your idiocy with stunned astonishment. Go ahead and elect your paranoid kings and false prophets. Build tyrants who’ll enslave you through your greediness. You’ve shown that in this matter you’ll not accept the command of reason, you shall then be degraded by your bellies. You stupid, stupid people walking plagues of foolishness. Looks like now you’ve decided to ‘cast shadows that are contrary to the sun.’ All good and well then; ‘we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told, . . . Now, gods, stand up for bastards!,’

Ngxola Boys At The Gates

2007-11-29T02:10:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up in the township of Mlungisi in Queenstown we were terrorised by a gang of organised criminals called Ngxola (Noise) Boys. Just going to the shops was a scary thing and sometimes meant your death. People abhorred the Ngxola Boys but were helpless because they were unorganised. The apartheid government, naturally, did care anything happening in the townships so long it was not politically motivated. It came to an extent that people organised vigilante groups—I remember one called Inyosi (Bees) that finally broke the back of Ngxola Boys. But not before the township was thrown into tremendous turmoil, more like a civil war.

The thought of JZ (Jacob Zuma) becoming president, bringing his Ngxola Boys—Vavi, Mbalula and the rest—brought back that feeling and I shuddered to my soul. I’ve never hid from the fact that I’m adverse to Zuma’s presidency; I just think it’d be bad pro job for the country, but more to the point I don’t think his has sufficient suave to understand contemporary politics, especially intercontinental and international.

The popular currency of JZ is the weariness with Thabo Mbeki’s regime. Mbeki in most people’s minds has come to symbolise everything wrong with our country. Black people blame him for delayed economic freedom; that is for economic policies that favour big business (read white business). White people fear his independence of mind and blame him for abandoning the so called Mandela legacy (read maintaining the status quo of white affluence served by black servile class).

In my book Thabo Mbeki is the best president this country—hell this continent—has ever had, and yes I mean even better than Mandela who was mostly just a ceremonial snow haired daddy figure. I’m all for reconciliation, the so called Mandela’s legacy, but fuck it if it must be maintained but the servitude and sacrifices of only one race. The so called Mbeki intransigency and style of government has been his downfall, especially among the vox populi who see him as a distant enigma whose vision does not seem to take them into immediate consideration.

Of course the cynic echo of the gutter that fast racked Mbeki’s demise is the South African chattering class, from which he radically dissents. Mbeki is not intellectually or politically clubbable, something that’s very frustrating to the lazy lot of our chattering class. He does not fit any labels they echo. For instance, most of what is directed against Mbeki as the blight to his leadership is the South African government dithering at a point of Aids crisis. No one cares to point out that this failure started even during Mandela’s era; in actual sense Mandela was in a better position to show some real leadership concerning the issue but deferred it to the background. If anybody should take the brunt of this failure, without excusing Mbeki’s failures, is Mandela. It is unfortunate that our chattering class cloaks its frustrations and hate for Mbeki in this moralistic righteousness manner.

It has become fashionable in the chattering class circles to call Mbeki a tyrant, equating him to a budding Robert Mugabe. None are able to provide you with clear evidence of course of his tyranny except that he happens to have different opinions to their prevailing consensus which is not necessary that of the people on the ground. And lately, making strange birdfellows, they have been in collaboration with those whove been left out of the career wheel with the Tripartite Alliance.

Methinks if we need protection against the tyranny of the president we also need one against the tyranny of prevailing opinion of the chattering class and the empty howlings of careerists. We need a break from the chattering class’ tendency of imposing, by overt scribbling means, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct. Our chattering class, especially the clowns at Johnnic Media, give off too much heat with paeans to sensationalism and thoughtless commentary. They want to fit our minds into their own agendas because they happen to have the weapons of publicity at their disposal. Most of their criticism of Mbeki is more of an empty teapot telling a kettle it’s out of steam.

If Mbeki is perceived as being not in touch with the general gestalt JZ, our Priapus, has fulfilled the role of a messiah with feet of clay, or should that be schlong (penis) of clay. JZ has come with the popular wave against Mbeki, not because of any discernable qualities, but because he happens to be seen as the victim of Mbeki’s vindictiveness since he was fired as a deputy president of the country. The irony is that with all its hate of Mbeki the chattering class has prepared a way for a candidate they fear more—not for originality and independence of mind, but for exactly opposite qualities; clumsiness, gullibility, and too much association with the left. They had been canvassing, to no avail, for the magnate Tokyo Sexwale, who would have been perfect as a teddy bear leader to be pampered with media flattering compliments into submitting to their vision of things. JZ instead comes with the burden of expectations on the ground, and will probably sing from the trade unionist tune to pay his dews.

The crux of the matter is that the people seem to have made their preference in a clear voice during the regional nominations of ANC. JZ is their preferred next president. Whether that will be endorsed at the coming ANC conference where the actual elections will be held between 15-20 December is now an ANC internal matter. As the fifteenth-century philosopher and Roman Catholic cardinal Nicholas of Cusa: “There is in the people a divine seed by virtue of their common birth and equal natural right of all men so that all authority — which comes from God as does man himself — is recognized as divine when it arises from the common consent of the subjects.”

The people’s voice is that of God, if that makes you shudder, perhaps it is time you re-examine your values. Personally I would have preferred Cyril Ramaphosa to be our next president, and Nkosazana Dlamani-Zuma as his deputy; but the people are speaking and I’m listening.

Pruim is Polokwane This Year

2007-11-27T03:14:00.000-08:00

Watching the giddy excitement around the country on ANC (African National Congress) branch meetings preparing for the coming conference in Polokwane (5-20 December 2007) one is much reminded of the Jewish celebrations of Purim.

Pruim celebrates the bravery of a Jewish woman, Esther, who married King Xerxes, one of the great warrior kings of Persia the Bible named as Ahasuerus. King Xerxes’ Grand Vizier, Haman, plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia—a large flourishing community who were descendents of Jews seized and deported from Judea by king Nebuchadnezzar.

Haman was willing to pay cash to anyone who would come up with a way of killing Jews efficiently; and even casting lots to determine how to destroy all the Jews throughout Xerxes whole kingdom. Letters and stern decrees were sent throughout the provinces on Haman’s orders. The Jews were to be killed and their belongings taken as booty.

Haman’s last straw against the Jews came by the hand of a certain Mordecai, who happen to be Esther’s cousin also. Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman with reverence necessitating Haman to prepare special gallows where he would hang him. Mordecai obtained a copy of the decree against the Jews and sent it to Esther begging her to save her people and herself. To cut the story short, Esther prevailed in convincing the king to reverse the decree, and Haman was hung instead of Mordecai on the special gallows.

Since then the Jews have celebrated the day with much joviality and cussing of Haman’s name. For instance, whenever the name of Haman is read on the Scroll of Esther in Jewish congregation the children make loud noises with rattles and banging so that his name will not be heard above the din and be blotted out memory. Anyone who has been attending the ANC regional conferences lately would have noticed the same tendency when either the name of Mbeki or Zuma was mentioned; childish din to blot out and cuss the name out. The non-partisan, like Buridan’s starving ass, stand perfectly equidistant between two piles of hay, undecided, even sometimes disgusted, which way to turn.

Jewish friends during Pruim send themselves Hamantaschen (Haman’s ears)—delicious sweet-filled pastry with poppy seeds. The custom these days during the celebrations is much drinking, ‘joy and gladness’ to an extent that one no longer knows weather he is blessing Mordecai or cursing Haman (Naturally the rabbis do not approve of this excess). It is the same feeling you get on ANC meetings these days. People are so excited, so elated, you find it difficult whether they are blessing Zuma or cussing Mbeki. Of course things are much more serious than that, since it is—let’s cease these pretensions—no longer just about politics but careerism. If Thabo goes down he goes with a trail of his hanger-ons. That might spell a lot bank repossession of X5 (BMW).

Our kvetch media (political) commentary, not to be outdone, has joined the fray. They are glad to have some excitement to the usual dull straightforward ANC politics engineered backstage. They are having a field day striking and trying to chip the ANC rock, but the harder they struck the more it just emits sparks in no particular consistent direction. Hence with the help of survey after survey—those wonderful invention to answer ancient’s custom of studying bird’s entrails—they sleep with this and wake with that.

Personally I’ve come to the conclusion that it’d take years to understand what is happening within the ANC now. Hence I’m not surprised when conveyed commentary on the presidential race tends to be skewed, confused, and even contradictory. We are on uncharted grounds here with no authority of precedents. These elections are doubling up as another means to explore the concept of our nationhood that operates through the complex tensions of our past, like ethnic, regional, even racial identities.

We all know that both the Mbeki and Zuma camps have no different political identities. Their identities are predicated on the personalities and vested of their leaders, give or take fluid edges there and there. Even the tacit assumptions upon which both these leaders differ tend to be inchoate and vague. I sometimes suspect they themselves do not know. Theirs has now become just another Darwinian struggle. No body has who understand the feeling on the ground has ever doubted the popularity of Priapus, the minor Hellenistic deity with the major schlong who inspired laughter but was himself “not a happy god”. But if it ANC history tells us anything it is that the popularity of a leader is no guarantee of his being elected a president. Otherwise we would have had president Winnie Mandela at some stage of our political life.

The growing consensus within the higher echelons of the ANC is that both Zuma and Mbeki have failed the organization by standing on the coming presidential race. But it seems the voice that is adverse to a Zuma presidency than that against Mbeki’s third term is in the majority; so the game is not over yet. The ANC NEC (National Executive) has tremendous powers and influence. Be that as it may the organisation finds itself without an inclusive collective voice except the usual appeals to the historical structure of the organisation that favours Zuma.

Single-party systems reach their heights when, like in SA, their vision has been universally received. To maintain their popularity they must renew from the centre, or employ totalitarian softer tactics, like state-backed propaganda and, at worst, use coercive force. When a regime moves towards strict authoritarian models it is often a sign that it is loosing grip on society. Which stage the ANC is at seems to depend on one’s political persuasions, but I personally don’t think things are forlorn.

The truth of the matter is that no one can really predict what will happen in Polokwane. The only thing certain is that Zuma’s supporters are louder, and even vulgar sometimes, but that does not mean Zuma has secured the majority vote yet. Another thing is certain, the frumpy, eclectic, broadbandness of the ANC has reached another watershed point this year. Things will never be the same again within the party regardless of who holds the reigns. It’s settled assumptions have been tested and found wanting. It might be possible for the ANC to go back to the unifying effects of its structure, but it has certainly lost the collaborative strength between its members.

All democratic governments are in a learning curve, a perpetual state of maturity, by the virtue that they derive their mandate from the people. In democratic dispensations the voice of the people is the monarch. The ANC’s homogenising effect, better known as comrade effect, abuses the monarchy and encourages anachronism. It is what needs to go to make way for authentic political and economic policy parity or antipathy of its members. That is the only way the ANC will find a way of renew itself for the twenty first century without relying on past conditions all the time. There is no running away from the fact that our identity is conditioned by, and mediated through the past. But there comes a time when the past too must adapt or die.

Then again, as the Yiddish saying cautions: ‘A high temperature is not an illness and Pruim is not a festival!’ Unfortunately some people are not privy to that saying. As we speak people are involved in various forms of fitrah (the cleansing rituals, on top of all the manicurist obsession of cutting nails and armpit hair, trimming moustaches and clean shaving hair that have befallen comrades lately), and numerous visits to amaGqirha (witch-doctors) to cast or ward the spells. Bobby Zimmerman, alias, Bob Dylan, would probably describe this sheer giddiness of things with his song Desolation Row: They’re selling the postcards of the hanging / they’re painting passports brown / the beauty pallor is filled with sailors / the circus is in town . . .

As the din rises I’m reminded of another senile old man, Shakespeare’s Richard III. In Act 4, Scene 4, Richard has drums beaten to drown his mother’s curses: ‘A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarum, drums! Let not the hearers hear these tell-tale women Rail on the Lord’s anointed: Strike I say!’ I wonder if president Mbeki has re-read Richard III lately since the days he made the farewell speech, in high spirits, for Mandela?

The Bobobo Life

2007-11-19T01:24:00.000-08:00

My friend and were seating chatting in of those Sunday afternoons when nothing seem interesting seem to happen. You kind of feel caught in between things, wanting to rest and finishing off the weekend. So instead of having a couple of beers you decide on watching, more like surfing, TV. And so that’s why you end up watching a National Geographic documentary on bobobos.

“I think I wanna be a bobobo in my next life.” Says my friend with an usual assumed determination. You watch the program t into the end. You talk and laugh it over. And then you decide to learn more about bobobos. With the help of some quick research on the internet you get more information.

Apparently, along with chimpanzees, bobobos are humans’ closest animal relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Yet they are completely different to their warlike cousins because bobobos live in matriarchal tribes.

“That not entirely good.” Says my slightly parochial friend.

“Listen to this,” I say interrupting him. “In bonobo society conflicts are settled by sex, and since the quarrel a lot they have lots and lots of sex. Surely if that does not make you wish for a woman next president that alone should persuade you.”

“Yes I saw that part on the program; they even have sex to greet one another, which I think is way, way cool.”

“They use sex to socialise, resolve conflicts . . .”

“Imagine all that makeup sex, and more of it sex as the current of negotiation. What I found most impressive is the variety of positions they have it on.”

“And they are not finicky about gender either. Partners can be male or female, of literally any age, and are often taken from within an individual’s immediate family as well as outside of it.”

“Okay, I’ll admit that’s creepy.”

“Within each tribe,” the information goes on, “even the lowest-status female is considered superior to the highest-status male. Older bobobo females keep younger females in check by snubbing them: walking away from a grooming attempt or refusing to share food.”

“Grown male bobobos cling to their mothers in order to attain status and protection.” “Listen to this, I think it is the kicker: Male bonobos live longer and are generally healthier than male chimps, since they aren’t required to fight for status and don’t live with the stress that chimps do.”

“That’s a clincher. I’m choosing to be a bobobo in my next life. The bastards have it made.”

South African Presidential Race

2007-11-12T01:41:00.000-08:00

It is goes to the natural arrogance of every age to feel its era is the most important in history, but the 52nd ANC (African National Congress) from 15 to 20 December 2007 will probably go down in the history books of South Africa as a much anticipated political conference of all time. The next ANC (African National Congress) president, ipso facto, of the republic, will be elected there by the structures of the party.

By the time Nelson Mandela stepped down as the president of the republic Thabo Mbeki and his supporters had manoeuvred the internal structures of the ANC into making him the only candidate at the national conference that elected him. Constitutionally Mbeki now cannot stand for a third term as a South African president though he has recently been giving Caesar like indications that should ‘the party’ structures elect him to stand as the next president of the ANC he would accept the nominations as his duty. Most people fear the untenable situation of two seats of power should the president of the ANC be different to that of the republic. Or wourse a situation where Mbeki, as the president of the ANC, would become a puppet master of the next president of the republic.

I was glad when the ANC branch of Gaby Shapiro in Rondebosch, Cape Town (where I stay) elected Cyril Ramaphosa as its preferred candidate to be the next president of the ANC. The election was by an overwhelming vote against the likes of Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Tokyo Sexwale. It’s a pity that our province, Western Cape—termed the Cape of political storms—seems not privy to the advantages of endorsing Ramaphosa’s nomination (the candidacy of Mbeki is ahead overall in the province).

It seems to me Cyril Rhamaphosa is the only non compromised candidate among the choices we presently have. He competently represented the ANC in the CODESA negotiations in Kempton Park that saw the establishment of a government of national unity, a precursor to a fully fledged South African non racial democratic government. He had the blessing of Nelson Mandela to be his successor until the ANC party stalwarts convinced Mandela otherwise. Ramaphosa has a long history with the trade union organizations, and just might be the one candidate to restore COSATU’s (Congress of South African Trade Unions) confidence on the Tripartite Alliance without alienating the so called Mbeki and Zuma factions. The majority of those, sometimes termed ‘inxiles’, who made for the general movement that fought apartheid from within the country known then as the UDF (United Democratic Front), would have their ayes behind Ramaphosa who also has deep roots in that movement.

With the credentials of a trade unionist, businessman and lawyer Ramaphosa would enjoy the confidence of business, the erudite class, and the lumpenproletariat (underclass). He just might be the only leader who can achieve the mammoth task of repulsing the reciprocity of suspicion between South Africans concerning the remerging beast of race and worrying class divide. He’s such an obvious candidate that only those with other vested interests object to his candidacy as the next president.

What’s the alternative?

The later-day overnight magnate, Tokyo Sexwale, is too much spin, pose, samizdat fanzines and feigning of cultivated taste with false humility. He has a worrying tendency of manufacturing and manipulating facts for show, plugging inculpating twigs as goes walk along; involving himself in this and all that as only characterless individuals would do. He’s too much of a drama queen; and of course the white liberal press love him. He’s married to a white woman, and his millionaire status assuages the upper middle-class fears and flatters their aspirations.

Sexwale shot to fame with his Mark Anthony grace after the then most popular politician after Nelson Mandela, Chris Hani, was murdered by Right wing hired guns for his communist beliefs. Sexwale was the first politicians to be caught on camera on the scene his track-suit dripping the blood of his comrade and all. He was then appointed to be the premier of South Africa richest and economic engine province, Gauteng. He refused to take the second term, opting to shedding his communists pelt by going to full time to business where he acquired enormous wealth at a lightning speed through some Black Economic Empowerment mining deals. Sexwale’s major error was trying to mint his own coins by independently declaring his availability for candidacy, through foreign press (BBC) nogal. The usual ANC practise is allowing the organic process of the ANC’s structures to nominate one starting at branch level. He has since been tangling and hanging himself by his own words and ambitions.

Jacob Zuma, the current ANC deputy president, blends balderdash with shoddiness; unites vacuousness to suspicious morality, and tends to accommodate his passions to historical prejudices. His recent loosing a High Court case against the National Prosecuting means he’s liable to be charged for corruption soon, which might make a terrible PR job for the country. But he is without a doubt the most popular candidate among the vox populi. His stalwarts, amongst whom is the ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League) and COSATU are unfazed in their support for his candidacy. The majority of Zuma’s supporters are the disgruntled lot who feel South African economic growth and fiscal has been largely at their expense for the benefit of the business class alone.

The ANC electoral process has a history of shunning popular candidates; but the dark cloud of the corruption case might make Jacob Zuma desperate enough to adopt Caesar Borgia’s motto: Aut Caesar aut nihil [Caesar or nothing] at which state all hell might break loose. He has the support of the people behind him even if scoffed by the general middle-class aspired and usually conservative with subtle right wing tendencies.

Jacob Zuma has laid hold of the popular disquiet and discontent of ordinary South Africans who, are now starting to show serious signs of being tired of making sacrifices to perpetual illusions of economic panacea, have very little to lose. People on the ground have started to disdain submission in the name of unfulfilled promises. What the next presidential elections will clearly reveal is reconciliation and ruin faces of the same coin; and how the failure of the other inspire the success of the other where the dream has been deferred.

President Mbeki, no matter how competent, has been on the helm for too long. It’s time he made way fro some new blood, new ideas and all. Besides there’s been too much meed of clucking and cackling involving his name, like the so called Aids denialism and Arms Deal scandal. The green flies [rumour] has it his office is proposing the alternative idea of making Joe Netshitenzhe, the current government strategist, the next president of the republic. Netshitenzhe is on the high circles of Mbeki advisers and thus will probably present a seamless transition from his government.

Be that as it may, I personally feel it is time for new blood and fresh ideas. Ramaphosa has consular dignity needed for the first citizen of a country. Coming from the meretricious argumentation and paradox-mongering of our outgoing president, Ramaphosa’s lawyerly chaste brevity might be the breath of fresh air we need. But it looks like the only chance he has now is a highly unlikely 25% backing in the next ANC conference at Plokwane in December; or if the Mbeki and Zuma faction should reach a stalemate.

I’m of the opinion that the master chess player, Thabo Mbeki, has done it again. It’ll be a miracle if anyone except himself comes out victorious from the Polokwane ANC Conference. The only real question now is who’ll be his deputy who surely will be the next president of the republic and most likely a pawn in the hands of our master player. Looks like whichever way you look at it, South African politics shall be defined according to Mbeki for a foreseeable future.

What South Africa needs from its next leader is someone who would be able to build a conducive and enabling atmosphere for business to thrive, while giving support to the general populace to gain economic participation, and regain its civic conscience and cultural patrimony that was destroyed by decades of racial and colonial oppression.

There is, especially in the township—a social ticking bomb—instances of unrest rising exponentially. This obviously suggests a rising tide of discontent. If this anger is not well managed it will degenerate to the clumsy pyrotechnics of Zimbabwe-like situation. The next leader would be well advised to take seriously this fire of restlessness. Thomas Paine was of the opinion that; “Whatever the apparent cause of any riots maybe, the real one is always want of happiness. It shews that something is wrong in the system of government, that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.” It is easy to lament or condemn the clumsy aggression of a populist regime, like that of Robert Mugabe, but much harder to accept that it usually emerge as result of political and economic decomposition that left millions to survive without support. Neglected and polarised people tend to give their alliance to promises of instant remedies of populist movements.

What South Africa needs is what Thomas Paine called a revolution in the state of civilization. “A revolution in the state of civilization, is the necessary companion of revolution in the system of government. If a revolution in any country be from bad to good, or from good to bad, the state of what is called civilization in that country, must be made conformable thereto, to give that revolution effects.”

Rant The Beloved Country

2007-11-12T01:39:00.000-08:00

Remember that ditty circulating in the internet round about the time the U.S.A. attacked Iraq: If you cannot find Osama, / Bomb Iraq. / If the market's hurt your Momma, / Bomb Iraq. / If the terrorists are Saudi, / And they’ve repossessed your Audi, / And you're feeling kinda rowdy, / Bomb Iraq!

Wide spread loss of trust in public authority is chic in our era. In South Africa we go further by making the government a repository of all our dissatisfactions. Lucky for us we’ve the tyranny of opinion polls—the modern day answer to ancient practise of reading the animals entrails for guidance—leaping about in response to every latest headline or cock-up to back our illusions. And so it goes:

The news is yo-yoing your opinions as the corollary to the loss of anchorage you feel deep within making you feel kind of fanciful and abstract. You are not in the mood of confronting your illusions? Why not undermine the government in cross-stitched logic and vague quatrains of Nastradamus. Call it the crime thing.

You feel a little exhaustion from your imperialist hangover and nostalgia, and are walking around tired of being a nonentity why not manufacture your popularity from the flattering delusions your barmates give you when you are ‘out to lunch’. Better still; you’ve been having bad dreams lately of apocalypse and deeper misgiving of Cassandra fantasies that we’re tilting to wards Zimbabwe like situation. Rant! Rant, my epicurean fad; there are government’s inefficiencies all over, only the business class is perfect (and of course they promote you). Rant! The barbarians are at the gates.

You support political leaders not on principles but on shallow fancy of whether Hugo Boss shirts are in, or Armani? Base your support not on any deeply held belief or commitment, but on the fact that you wanna get on the Gravy Train. Bring on the rip-roaring umshini wam Zulu boy to fan factionalism and scar liberals out of their wits.

You are irritated by party politics and desperate for life style politics that judge your leaders by personality rather than political factors? The leader does not have a Cheshire cat smile, and is an unapologetic dweeb who walks like he’s wearing sock garters. All this flames you but can’t really nail his fault except he looks down and expose your sophisticated ignorance? Scandalise and ostracise him. Everyone is distancing themselves from their past to be pc while dwelling on its weeds in their hearts of hearts; why can’t he just go with the flow and let sleeping dogs lie?

If your moral campus is spinning out of control and you are not sure why; blame it on the government. If your partner is living you, and your first born is doing drugs. The government is surely to blame.

If you kind of feel like some publicity-generating eccentric with a tinpot flare. Pluck a crisis from thin air, and like a Pharaoh getting his authority from Ra, suck your thumb and implicate the government on your delusions. If they deny it proof enough they’ve done it. Besides, who cares, you got publicity spin-offs. You need to demonstrate to occidental masters that Africa has an independent free non subordinate press.

If you are feeling a little relative morally; feel like crapping on some pities because you are annoyed that the fundamentalist do not respect or give a f#*% about your Switzerland position—but are shit scared to offend them lest they are hiding Osima or an Inquisitor on their backyard—transfer it to the government. Those ignorant former terrorists are safer target for your blunt fictions.

You kind of feel dissatisfied with economic growth, and feel, as Clive Hamilton writes in his book, The Growth Fetish, “restless dissatisfaction, chronic stress and private despair, feelings that give rise to a rash of psychological disorders” of anxiety, depression, substance abuse that makes you “engage in a range of behaviours aimed at compensating for or covering up these feelings.” It’s definitely the government’s fault. Shout out! Get some attention. ‘Me! Me! Me!’

Who’s your Tata now? Madiba! Help, we’re sinking!

Feeling déclassé; can’t afford brands that define the fetishism of your imagined trendy self style. You discover pen marks on the surface of your expensive handbag, or too much accumulated lint at its bottom? The government is polluting your world. The made is late? This government of fishes and loaves is giving her ideas that are making her too big for her boots. You diss and dish without creative drive; it’s not that you’ve confined your ambition to the consumerist’s mentality; no it’s the government that’s clipping your wings.

In the end what is all this noise but “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing” feeling intoxicated by freedom and the yo-yoing of moods, grateful to the times, and the government, for allowing freedom to run amok. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” Wisdom here is not the purchase of the day.

Well Done To The Springboks!!!

2007-10-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

We did it! Thanks to the concerted support of the nation and the Springbok's hard work, South Africa is the 2007 Webb Ellis Trophy winner. In Gugs, we celebrated the win with tom-toms and vuvuzelas blasting on the streets. Braai fires were lit in every corner. Other sheebens went as far as to give everyone a free round at the strike of the eighth minute as the Boks proudly lifted a very proud president Mbeki on their shoulders. We decided to honour the Boks with the metronymic name of our township, Gugulethu (Our Pride).

Of course, there were spoilsports who thought us mad for celebrated a still leaves too much to be desired when it comes to transformation South African Rugby team. To me they were the missing the point, which is to put it pithily: My country, right or wrong.

Understandably England was not just going to hand us the victory. In fact the game was too much on the technical for charlatans like me, which was a good thing I decided to watch through the expert's eyes next to me. With my limited knowledge it seemed the English were more committed, almost desperate, than the calm and collected Bokke. The Bokke played as if they were the defending champions and not the other way around. The Proteas can learn a lot from the Bokke with that calm under pressure, and sticking into your game. And Bafana would do well to learn precision of skill in executing and punishing the opponent's mistakes.

Something that spoilt my celebrations in my eyes was the surly attitude of English players after the game. Perhaps I was spoilt the graciousness of Fiji players after loosing to SA, those long lap of humility and all. As the result they become my second favourite team. I counted about three English players who snubbed president Mbeki's extended handshake during medal presentation. I was thinking what's that all about. My friend, when I asked, just shrugged his shoulders and sighed; "There goes our colonial masters again."

It takes just a quick perusal in the sober stile of history to see how bad losers the English are, not just in sport. Remember the battle at Ntab' Enzima, which history books as Waterkloof. In that Frontier War, amaXhosa, in the leadership of Maqoma, a chief of amaNgqika and son of Ngqika, routed amaJoni, otherwise know then as the 'Red Devils' then. Today you'll hardly find a single English historian admitting to that. The Zulu Impis did the same at the battle of Isandlwana; the same happened in many of the skirmishes that made for what used to be called Anglo-Boer War, now the South African War.

As I write the English press, ever easily led away by ancient prejudice, are spouting rants of sophisticated ignorance about this or that concerning the game, our players, and our country. Well, you know how the saying used to go: "Nothing doth make havock of mankind as the sons of Albion." Always when involved in anything they want to flourish even to rankness by uniting prejudice and fraud to force, trying to out master the Roman imperialistic mischief. In their outrage I see their weaknesses, polished and published as wounded pride.

In 1994 we made a contract, called a Constitution, which, in the words of Mandela was 'to lead our country out of the valley of darkness." The following year it was cemented by the euphoria of winning the Rugby World cup. The euphoria is back again to assist us with the renewal of our vows. Luckily the majority of us still agree to stand by our contract, the general kind of commitment; a commitment not merely of the will but that must be of deeds also.

We all each have to compromise there and there to further this collective deal. We must divest ourselves from prejudice, paternalism, and worship into the deal the ideal of 'nationhood' as defined by Ortega y Gasset called 'nationhood'. Gasset was of the opinion that we must first get the statehood right. "State begins when man strives to escape from the natural society of which he has been made a member of by blood or any other natural principle like language, race, or ethnicity."

I truly believe this country of ours is destined for glory. Of course there will be prices to pay, like proper differentiation of the burden of our history and overcoming the baggage of attitudes that need to be changed. "A State is," said Gasset, "a superation and cross-breeding of these natural origins." As the young poet (Philip Larkin) saw it; If one can accept the dream / The rest is best forgot.

Swabbing the Deck

2007-10-22T05:33:00.000-07:00

There was a time when 'freedom of the press' laid largely on the fact that it was not an industry, but those times are now long gone. The press, as a forth estate, is not only an industry, but foremost a business and striving to be a political force. Perish the idea then that the press is an independent non biased messenger and let's look at issues straightly.

In modern times the press has forged its stance as a counter-medium of dissemination, mostly hostile to government propaganda. In our country this as can be noticed in present Pikoli saga. Regrettably it is prone to exaggeration in reporting, especially when it comes to government short-comings. For instance, the press should have correctly reported the suspension of Vusi Pikoli, the national director of persecution as a suspension, not a dismissal, since the law does not permit the president to suspend the national director of persecution without due Parliamentary process. It is no wonder that Frank Chikane, the director general of the Presidency and Secretary of the Cabinet, accused it of manufacturing a crisis.

Be that as it may, it does not mean all the issues the press raises lend credence to centaurs and satyrs. Personally I agree with the leader of the opposition party, Helen Zille, that Frene Ginwala is not an ideal person to lead the inquiry of the suspension of the national director of persecution. We don't doubt her competence, just her bona fides, considering the fact that she is the member of the National Executive Council, thus too associated with the higher echelons of the ruling party. In the ideal world this would have no bearing on her objectivity, but we don't live in an ideal world.

I also think that, for maintaining the dignity of the office the National Commission of the SA Police Service, Jackie Selebi should at least step down until all the shenanigans that surrounds him are sorted out. For the press to say the whole thing is what Rabelais evoked as inevitable sites of murmur and plot might be spreading it too thickly, but that it is what the press does when not supplied with clear information. Rev Chikane might despise the rattle, or try to disown the gibberish, but providing clear information is the only thing that'll relieve the fatigue of the situation.
On the other hand if the reported allegations against the Sunday Times editor and his deputy of illegally being in possession of the health minister's hospital records are true then the law must take its course. None of us are above the law, and freedom of expression does not excuse anyone from obeying journalistic ethics and the laws of the country. It beats me how that would spell degrading towards the Zimbabwean situation, as some of our media commentators (especially at Johnnic Media—I’m not sure what those guys are smoking), howling on the strength of delusions of their pen, have taken to vacuously saying.
The ideal would be for our journalistic commentary to broaden the perceptions of our collective consciousness into nationhood, instead of invoking people to retreating Lagers that are defined by their respective prejudices. As it is now we're trapped in cloying political leader trashing than proper analysis. Whatever maybe wrong with our president's style of leadership it sometimes seems more is growing wrong with our avuncular self-assured rehearsed imitative arguments. The problem is not that we are underlings, but are iconoclasts bent only on bringing the prominent to dust.

Perhaps what we need now, more than in 1995, is to win the Rugby World Cup to re-inject our sense of national pride. Something that'll embody the conception of social and cultural transformation while giving voice to the true nature of our generation. We need something that will attribute our characteristics and values across racial, social, cultural, and historic timelines on the basis of our common geographical and experiential roots.

It does not mean we need to stop being frank and honest on with each other; whitewashing things is not going to help us. But a change of tone and depth in analyses as opposed to superficial pettiness is desirable. Somehow we've to find ways of rising above our purée of disgust and inherited mistrust for we're starting to sound ludicrous and foolish.

Ghandi once said that "the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality". And Steve Biko was wont to quote Aimé Césaire that no one "possesses the monopoly on truth, intelligence, force and there is room for all of us at the rendezvous of victory." If only.

Saffron Revolution

2007-10-02T02:06:00.001-07:00

The only thing that has been keeping us informed about what has been termed the Safron Revolution in the Burma, the Bloggers, is now been silenced. How disgusting and self-defeating. The Burma Junta has seen the capabilities and freedom that comes with people on the ground who have in the past weeks been keeping us informed of what was happening in that country as monks and ordinary people marched on the streets to demand more freedom and democracy in their country. Pity that the country has no coveted natural resources otherwise the elected junta in Washington would have long made a fuss about liberating the Burmese people. Like Mandela, Aung Suu Kyi, shall be free soon, and with her the Burmese. There’s no resisting the will of the people when they stand united. The struggle goes on!

Mbeki vs The Press

2007-10-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

South Africa got its political freedom at the time when the era of ideologies came to an end, ushering the politics of personalities and fear. The ANC profited well from the charisma and statue of Nelson Mandela but his departure from the political scene drove it into politics of fear.

Politics of fear are something almost all political parties of significance in South Africa rely on. The DA was built on the foundations of ‘fighting back’ strategies and fear of turning South Africa into another corrupt African State. The fear ANC relies on is that of things going back to the realities of apartheid era. Its current talk of ‘The enemy manoeuvres but it remains the enemy’ trying to offset the gains of ‘National Democratic Revolution’ make the point clear.

To complicate issues in our nascent democracy, there’s has been a rise in careless prattle and untrained clump of words that are the usual consequent of dynamics of free press, which is lifting the lids off the immature ANC government. Instead of taking this trumpeting manifesto as occupational necessity of a free democratic country the ruling party wants to compete with it.

Mallarmé once ironically explained his poem, La nuit approbatrice, to his friend Henri Cazalis by saying; ‘If you murmur it yourself a couple of times, you get a fairly cabbalistic sensation.’ Mostly what the press murmurs gives it cabbalistic sensation they believe to be the splendour of truth.

Unfortunately the cabbalistic sensation has rubbed off into the ruling party, as demonstrated by statements like; ‘Our historical opponents have the task to convince the nation that under our leadership, the democratic revolution has failed. The revolutionary duty of the ANC is not only further to accelerate the process of social transformation, but also to conduct the political and ideological struggle to ensure the cohesion of the masses of our people as a united force engaged in the long march towards the creation of a truly non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous democracy.’ [ANC Today; Volume 7, No. 34 • 31 August—6 September 2007; A silent mood of trepidation?] Talk about wearing the mantle of your purported enemy.

R.S. Roberts’ competent book, ‘Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki’ is a clear example of what happens when one allows the need to address the platitudinous tendencies of the media distract you. The book reads more as if its purpose was to prove the impotent shallowness of our media commentators. Even when you achieve this goal, as Roberts has, the victory is pyrrhic. Taking the media too seriously when it violates modesty by heaping spleen and cultivating hysteria against is like squaring circles. It is self-defeating and dancing to their drums.

Impression is a survival skill to the media, more valuable than reflection. It is in the nature of the media to leech in order to inject vitality on its content. Press freedom has, world over, been raised into a political creed. That’s what is meant by the Fourth Estate. The sooner the ANC government realises this the more it’d be better structured to exploit, rather than fight it.

Although political parties are still electoral machines—mostly out of inertia—the times have changed. Political parties have ceased to be issuers of alternative ideas as can be seen by writers and thinkers throwing their lot with broadcasting networks that have acquired industrial and commercial life. In short, money has become the only sinew in the war of airwaves. Hence instead of ideas has come the struggle of images and personalities, the battles of the scoop and the soundbites.

The only way political parties will survive here is by aligning themselves, for tactical reasons, with media communication. That’s what the aesthetically assertive leader of DA, Helen Zille, with her look-at-me style of politics, has learnt very well to do. Instead of huffing and puffing about she milks it, beating the tom-toms of publicity to her advantage.

The press is not only an industry, but now an industry first and foremost. Political journals, like ANC Today, might serve as internal organs for intellectual power struggles, but to capture the attention of the vox populli you need media. Media form bridge between the theory of the vanguard and the spontaneous movement of the class, in Lenin’s idiom.

The ANC needs to stop retreating to bellicose politics and placidly put out into the world why millions keep voting it into government election after election. Despite what the self-appointed fundi of our political scene say about the nostalgia and ignorance of masses who keep voting for the ANC, people know exactly which side their bread is buttered. It is the failure of the ANC technique that it has not translated its democratic legitimacy into sound publicity strategies.

The lesson we all need to relearn, as the bickering starts to show some serious personal misfiring, is that that politics is essentially about maintaining social stability. Transformation is a necessary step for furthering our freedom but none of us have anything to gain from the state of anarchy. It might be that every anarchic situation is the herald of a renaissance, but there are no guarantees, and the price to higher to pay. The gods of apartheid who fled through the front door of our democracy are starting to come back through the backdoor and the windows. It is time to take caution.

Drawing their authority from the sun, like Egyptian Pharoahs, some in the media have lately been at pains trying to convince us that things in our country are falling apart. Most of us do not believe the bagarre in the Tripartite Alliance (ANC, COSATU & SACP) leading to Polokwane means anything more than proper differentiation within the alliance. They’re encouraging signs of democratic change happening, and the necessary beginnings for severance of artificial coalitions that have outlived their usefulness.

We all need to be done with our irrational anger, dishonest evasiveness and greedy opportunism, and admit some few truths to ourselves with the humility they deserve. Like the fact that we are a country emerging from a wounding past, bankrupt of ideas to take us into a non-racial and multicultural future we want to be; instead of trying to be poor ersatz of other systems and countries.

Our media needs to learn sensitivity to complex issues, whose value is to be found in its receptiveness and proper understanding of our past experience. The government, especially our president, needs to open up more, learn not to be emotional against the criticism of their policies and failures; because this is how the country will establish its own reflective consciousness. Only then will we be done of these cabbalistic sensations.No one is saying the battle for hegemony should also sieze.

म्बेकी

2007-10-02T01:50:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coffee-House Guilt

2007-09-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

Cape Tow last weekend was having a coffee festival thing (actually I’m not sure what that entails but, as coffee lover—more like coffee addict—I kind of liked the idea). I also heard it reported on South Africa’s Catholic national paper, The Southern Cross, that in Pusan, South Korea, some nuns have opened a coffee-book shop where people have an opportunity to discuss their faith in a relaxed atmosphere. If only we were so lucky here in Cape Town too.

The first thing that attracts you about Cape Town intercity, despite narrow streets and blasting underground clubs, is the airy cafe of round tables on pavements of people chattering in tell-tale vivacity, consciously dedicated to relaxed pleasure. They give a cultivated image of French characteristic enlightenment. I’m personally partial, too partial actually, to a good cup of coffee.

My favourite living philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, has lot to say about coffee and what it has done for Western civilisation. Coffee is one of those commodities, unlike sugar, not too associated with guilt ridden (slavery) foundations of Western civilisation. The history of coffee in recent years is wonderfully written by Markman Ellis in his competent book The Coffee-House: A Cultural History.

Most people wrongly attribute the discovery of coffee to the natural philosopher, Leonhard Rauwolf, when he first certifiably noticed it Aleppo in 1573. Yet, Ellis tells us, coffee was known for a very long time in the highland regions of Ethiopia before it was even discovered by the Turks who in turn introduced it to the Europeans. So coffee, like Cola, is an African thing even if the Europeans popularised and refined its usage.

Ellis tells us that the coffee-house throughout history has been a socialising idea, especially for gossip and debate. More than any commodity in the world it rewrote the experience of metropolitan life. The earliest users of coffee discovered that it induces mental alertness that delays sleep. It was even charged with qualities of comforting the head and heart, and good for digestion.

The shy and retiring librarian of Christ Church college Oxford, Robert Burton in his seminal treatise, The Anatomy of Melancholy of 1632, recommended coffee as a cordial for ‘mending the Temperament . . . to expell feare [sic] and sorrow, and to exhilarate the mind.’ He thought coffee had a potential for curing melancholy.

To early merchants coffee-houses were a nuisance that encouraged idleness. The businessmen associated them with ‘skiving and absenteeism’. To the puritan coffee-houses encouraged ‘licentiousness and superstition’. Men then in general did not think highly of the morals of women who frequented coffee-houses. To men of science the coffee-house was place for universal circulation of intelligence where latest developments and quack remedies were discussed.

To autocrats the coffee-house encouraged political dissent, rebellious attitudes and seditious intent. To the republicans coffee-houses were a home of spirit of faction, popular dissatisfactions and debate where to stoke fires of controversy. To the man of law they ‘harboured rogues and criminals’. To spies coffee-houses were a place to collect intelligence, suppress revolutionary notions and gauge public opinion.

For the man on the make, like Pepys, the coffee-house was a network of potential patrons and possibility of aggrandizing oneself to a better government position. And for the ordinary man a relaxing opportunity for speaking freely in an atmosphere where the fiction of hierarchy was cancelled; where one could put oneself on route to enlightenment, and live for a moment life under the rule of reason. To professional newsmongers, hack writers, sycophantic back-slappers, streetwise fops, and purveyors of gossip, rumour, innuendo, and scandal, coffee-houses were a heaven.
The coffee-house was where you could sway government or business personnel by flattery, insinuation or bribery. Where even the political emasculated could go to listen to the latest scandals. Where the stream of opinion, often undifferentiated, could easily be caught, and moral emptiness of the city closely observed.

The reporters of the first London daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, frequented the coffee-shop. So as you can see the coffee-shop has actually been active in breaking the bonds of feudal society; and for encouraging the culture of human improvement, even if it tended to be more of a mixed home of high culture and vulgar entertainment.

The murmur of coffee-houses, with the background of sipping and smell of ground coffee is something a free spirit can never fail to appreciate. From what I’ve read, it looks like the initial atmosphere of coffee-houses was more like our present alcohol bars today; with squabbles often degenerating into fist fighting. There were no polite limits as can be appreciated in most coffee-houses of our present day.

The coffee-house habituates to the customs and manners of its times, but its main popularity come in the rote of free communication and camaraderie. I guess you could say the coffee-house was the internet of those times. Is it any wonder in the present day you can go on-line in most coffee-houses. Artists, writers, aesthetes, decadents and the rest of fainéant purposeless men that beautify the experiences of our lives throughout history have been closely associated with coffee-house.

Cape Town is fast becoming Africa’s fairyland, with its nascent notions of egalitarianism and liberty to be filthy rich (Joburg has become too vulgar, flashy and fake with its roll calling imitative innovation and competition that’s corrupted by too much American pretensions). Still in Cape Town there’s still much that is foreign to the native eye, especially the opposing signs of magnificence and poverty.

Something still tugs at my mooring as I see too many people not having enough to buy basic needs while I sit seeping lattés I don’t really need. I know I cannot make the world right over night, but I just can’t stop thinking about story the young girl and the star fishes at the beach. Throwing one star fish back into the ocean sure makes a lot of difference. But there’s just so many of them. Perhaps if we each at least pick one star fish and throw back to the ocean before we seat and laugh, talking about the colour of Paris Hilton’s dress, we would get somewhere.

Well, the sea is sucking at the pebble beach, whiskers of mist rise in the clean shaven air. I order an extra shot of espresso to ease my itch and pull my hat about my ears. Twilight is deepening as the sun bleeds away in fiery strips of clouds.