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.
Showing posts with label Humour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humour. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Smoke and Mirrors
I was seated on the couch, trying unique ways and fresh angles to write about Women’s Day we celebrated on the 9th August. I thought of writing about the usual stuff; empowerment of women and all, but decided against it. Something that kept nagging my mind is how we live in real contradiction to our ideals. I mean everybody seem to agree that uxorial husbands are an ideal; equal representation for women is ideal; and responsible, if not doting, parents are ideal. Yet we live the opposite of these things, more like doppelgängers of what’s best in us.
Then I came a picture of a beautiful near-naked female body on a foreign magazine. She wore nothing but a bra, and hid her pelvic area, which I took to imply vagina, with a designer hand bag that she was advertising. Her eyes were cut from the picture. I thought they think of everything, because, surely, to use as a commodity a thing like sex (its not sensuality), you’ve to hide your eyes, from your soul. It was titled; Lesson 84: lead him to temptation. Is that what women’s liberation has amounted to, I found myself asking?
I was lost in such thoughts when my daughter, who’s nine, surprised me with a demand for a long mirror for her room—I must reveal, for proper understanding, that the advert was posed as though it was a mirror image. I was not sure what brought that about but could sense trouble in the offing. What’s wrong with the ones you have, I asked, trying to sound casual. I can’t see whole of myself on them, was her answer as she disappeared to her room again. She left me in confused contemplation. I stood to spy what she was up to and found her sitting in bed, combing Ami (her favourite doll). I turned back with my confusion intensified.
I’ve lived with my daughter since she was nine months old. My sisters, whom we visit frequently, make up for the female influence she needs in her life. I suppose, to be fair, not having long mirrors must be a serious drag for growing girls. On the other side I wondered why didn’t I have long mirrors, dressing table mirrors, and such things one finds on modern homes these days. Do I not like looking at myself? I recalled how uncomfortable I feel when I see my reflection on shop windows when walking city pavements—they make me seem humped. The scientific explanation of refractions and all does not help my archaic sense of self, which, I suppose, is still operating on cave man instinct embodied deep in my genetic code.
The only time I really look at myself on the mirror, since you asked, is when I go to the bathroom at parties or nightclubs, to measure how soused am I. That’s just about it, if shaving does not count. I don’t look at myself when I comb, not that I’m less narcissist than your average, less say GQ guy. It’s a practice forced in me by Catholic boarding school indigent upbringing. I suppose there’s also a bit of delusion of grandeur in supposing physical reflection is not as important as inner self-reflection. I much prefer the ‘know thy self’ and the rest of now unfashionable philhellene heebie-jeebies.
Before the mirror incident, I was sure my daughter was growing along my trends—choosing soccer at school, sleeping with miniature Ferraris next to her dolls—you know, things that make daddy-mom proud. Now it looks like I might have overestimated my influence on her. Now I notice her stopping over cosmetic section and feel, in my guts, trouble approaching. Of course there’s a possibility I’m just blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Somebody please say I’m blowing it out of proportion! Meantime I’m looking for a mirror, preferable with a pink frame; long enough to cover the height of a nine year old until she’s at least eighteen.
For those of you wondering why I’m not married at the good side of forty. Here’s the thing. When I was in Std 6, now Grade 8; we read a book where a guy chopped his wife and two children (who were actually his father’s but was suppose to acknowledge as his according to the Xhosa custom of those times) with an axe. When asked why, he kept saying: Buzani kuBawo! [Ask my father!]. I’ve never really recovered from that tragic story. I feel abused. You can tell Oprah that. I’m prepared to produce on-demand-screen saccharine tears to puff my pillow. I’ll even write a memoir of aggrievement if she promises to feature it on her show.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Bull-hard, I Presume
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!”
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!”
Tuesday, 08 April 2008
What is this, tongues again?
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.
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
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.
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.
Thursday, 13 March 2008
Loosing the Moorings
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.
“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.
Friday, 22 February 2008
Tired of Brinkmanship
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.
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.
Monday, 21 January 2008
Xhosaland
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.
*************************************************************************************
• 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.
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.
*************************************************************************************
• 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.
Friday, 14 December 2007
Buying Flowers in Cape Town
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).
Monday, 10 December 2007
The Dye is cast
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!,’
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!,’
Monday, 19 November 2007
The Bobobo Life
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.”
Tuesday, 02 October 2007
Saffron Revolution
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
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.
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
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.
Saturday, 08 September 2007
Wagner’s Fans
I suppose I should not have been surprised when I read last week at The Sunday Times that our assiduous cultivator of his own subversive image, David Bullard, is a Richard Wagner’s fan (http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=552418) . After all the tone and context of his column, Out To Lunch, does read like he’s someone infected with embourgeoisement and Deutschtum [the German guiding idea of regenerating the human race], so disgustingly exploited by the Nazis. Thus Mr. Bullard is in the invidious company of Adolf Hitler who too was a Wagner fanatic.
I do not want to labour the similarities, or coincidences, of Mr. Bullard’s attendance of Wagnerian festival—of all the festivals to attend—but I’m using the same logic he uses in his satirical provocation that parodied South African politics to Wagnerian music. So if bright scorn is good for the gender it is good for the goose. In fact let’s do more than just follow Mr. Bullard let’s go into the attitudinising behind the topes and motes of his sarcastic grouchiness using the Wagnerian music he chose.
How and what Mr. Bullard writes in his column is not knew. Through out history imperialistic consciousness has needed and utilised culture to justify its hegemonic claim. From that has always been a small step for it to prattle in self-regarding aggressive mentality. Imperialist consciousness despises contamination to its own cultural ideal, and calls foreign influences vulgar to justify its racist and ethnic elitism.
What Mr. Bullard conveniently forgets to mention in his ominous piece, . . . are pompous and bombastic tendencies of Wagner’s music—just the thought of listening to Lohegrin makes my blood churn—perhaps because there are disturbing similarities to his writing style and Wagner’s stage theatrics, and pretensions to culture.
Thomas Mann was one writer who had a clear love hate relation to Wanger’s music. He defined it better when he equated it to a delighting adrenalin surge, holding the promise of flight and freedom. But he also warned that Wagner’s music has deathly powers of seduction; and when played, more often than not paralyzes the will. Perhaps frau Bullhard should make note too because Wagner’s music has been linked with impotence also, something the Nazi were very susceptible to.
Mr. Bullard in his comparison of The Rhinegold to South African politics; where the family of gods taking possession of a castle in Valhalla, and the Buddenbrooks occupy the house in Mengstrasse in Lübeck, is in his iconoclastic best. He forgot to add that conflicts ensue when the giants demand reimbursement for their construction work, and the Gotthold Buddenbrook seek payment for services rendered. Perhaps because this would have compelled him to mention that Gold and Geld [German for money] are at the heart of the story.
Some tend to read The Rhinegold as the demand by the ‘uncultured’ for their due; seeing that the proud ‘culture’ the Bildungsbürgertum (cultivated middle class) preen about is mostly built by the blood sweat of servile poor. But that cuts too close for the denunciatory embourgeoisement tendencies of Mr. Bullard.
Nazism has taught us, if anything, that there’s a fatal connection between conscious elitism of culture with subtle racism. Once it achieves power its outlets run tragically amok. Nazism used the dominant Wagnerian culture as a gateway into the educated bourgeois classes.
In South Africa, racial laagers use the competent articulating contempt of Mr. Bullard that prattles as integrity for similar tendencies. His column has ingratiated itself to the subtle prejudiced minds. In a country like ours, where rats are returning with steaming fetors of ideas of Rassenhygiene [racial hygiene], it would be ideal for columnists to medicine manners instead of adding force of cultural pretensions to racial illusions. Culture is never maintained in political vacuum.
Irony is the modern mode of commenting on frivolity and bleakness of our lives without falling into dourness and didactism. But sensitive balance has to be kept since our past is still a bruising place. That’s the lesson Mr. Bullard still needs to learn. Our future will also be coloured and refracted by our present cultural assumptions and attitudinising. And despite what the chattering class believes, the winner of the propaganda battle does not get to mold society, reality always gets the last laugh.
The skunk and skelter is pilling in at the rucks as our ruling party goes to Polokwane to nominate our next leader. Debate is vigorous and very healthy within our media, a wonderful thing one hopes the ruling party would adopt at the Polokwane National Conference. But freedom comes with respective responsibilities. And responsibility does not necessary mean dour dullness and lapsing into bien pensant clichés.
I do not want to labour the similarities, or coincidences, of Mr. Bullard’s attendance of Wagnerian festival—of all the festivals to attend—but I’m using the same logic he uses in his satirical provocation that parodied South African politics to Wagnerian music. So if bright scorn is good for the gender it is good for the goose. In fact let’s do more than just follow Mr. Bullard let’s go into the attitudinising behind the topes and motes of his sarcastic grouchiness using the Wagnerian music he chose.
How and what Mr. Bullard writes in his column is not knew. Through out history imperialistic consciousness has needed and utilised culture to justify its hegemonic claim. From that has always been a small step for it to prattle in self-regarding aggressive mentality. Imperialist consciousness despises contamination to its own cultural ideal, and calls foreign influences vulgar to justify its racist and ethnic elitism.
What Mr. Bullard conveniently forgets to mention in his ominous piece, . . . are pompous and bombastic tendencies of Wagner’s music—just the thought of listening to Lohegrin makes my blood churn—perhaps because there are disturbing similarities to his writing style and Wagner’s stage theatrics, and pretensions to culture.
Thomas Mann was one writer who had a clear love hate relation to Wanger’s music. He defined it better when he equated it to a delighting adrenalin surge, holding the promise of flight and freedom. But he also warned that Wagner’s music has deathly powers of seduction; and when played, more often than not paralyzes the will. Perhaps frau Bullhard should make note too because Wagner’s music has been linked with impotence also, something the Nazi were very susceptible to.
Mr. Bullard in his comparison of The Rhinegold to South African politics; where the family of gods taking possession of a castle in Valhalla, and the Buddenbrooks occupy the house in Mengstrasse in Lübeck, is in his iconoclastic best. He forgot to add that conflicts ensue when the giants demand reimbursement for their construction work, and the Gotthold Buddenbrook seek payment for services rendered. Perhaps because this would have compelled him to mention that Gold and Geld [German for money] are at the heart of the story.
Some tend to read The Rhinegold as the demand by the ‘uncultured’ for their due; seeing that the proud ‘culture’ the Bildungsbürgertum (cultivated middle class) preen about is mostly built by the blood sweat of servile poor. But that cuts too close for the denunciatory embourgeoisement tendencies of Mr. Bullard.
Nazism has taught us, if anything, that there’s a fatal connection between conscious elitism of culture with subtle racism. Once it achieves power its outlets run tragically amok. Nazism used the dominant Wagnerian culture as a gateway into the educated bourgeois classes.
In South Africa, racial laagers use the competent articulating contempt of Mr. Bullard that prattles as integrity for similar tendencies. His column has ingratiated itself to the subtle prejudiced minds. In a country like ours, where rats are returning with steaming fetors of ideas of Rassenhygiene [racial hygiene], it would be ideal for columnists to medicine manners instead of adding force of cultural pretensions to racial illusions. Culture is never maintained in political vacuum.
Irony is the modern mode of commenting on frivolity and bleakness of our lives without falling into dourness and didactism. But sensitive balance has to be kept since our past is still a bruising place. That’s the lesson Mr. Bullard still needs to learn. Our future will also be coloured and refracted by our present cultural assumptions and attitudinising. And despite what the chattering class believes, the winner of the propaganda battle does not get to mold society, reality always gets the last laugh.
The skunk and skelter is pilling in at the rucks as our ruling party goes to Polokwane to nominate our next leader. Debate is vigorous and very healthy within our media, a wonderful thing one hopes the ruling party would adopt at the Polokwane National Conference. But freedom comes with respective responsibilities. And responsibility does not necessary mean dour dullness and lapsing into bien pensant clichés.
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