One of the criticism that was directed against president T. Mbeki was that he concentrated power in the office of the presidency and orientated everything to his personality. We were told there was urgent need to strengthen local-government if our democracy had any hope of success. The ANC (African National Congress) conference in December 2007 at Polokwane took the initiative by voting T.Mbeki out as ANC president through the concerted efforts of party branch structures. Most of us were hopeful coming from that conference that things were turning for the best. Perhaps we should have been more circumspect where we saw the manner of the so called democratic process in Polokwane, which was more manipulations by organised factions within branch level of the ANC than anything else. Collectivism is not always democracy.
After Polokwane the ANC Members of Parliament seemed to breathe fresh air, voicing their views vigorously, pushing the margins of their party towards a more consultative and democratic process to guard against the erosion of our constitutional values. After the hearing process for the dissolution of the Scorpios it seems as though Parliament has gone back to its past habits of being a karaoke club for Luthili House (ANC headquarters). What the South African Parliament lacks, it seems glaringly clear now, is what Kerry Kennedy called, in a recent lecture at University of Cape Town recently, ‘moral courage’ to dissent towards the maintenance of constitutional law even against party caucus when necessary.
Caucusing in Parliament is nothing unique to the ANC, even if those in the minority do it, and tend to cry foul whenever they loose. If anything, the past few years of our democracy should have convinced us by now that “party-parliamentarism” does not really give power to mobile vulgus, but to vested interest of party leadership. This, indeed, is a false substitute for people's representatives. For check and balances we should, at the least, consider changing the system to include individual candidates for local-governance and Members of Parliament. Isn’t a ground vote the whole point behind popular representation? Our democratic system has to be organic, live up to our local challenges as they arise. This might also give us reprise from the nascent nauseating group politics within and out of the ruling party.
I do understand, nor respect, the formation of groups on economical, cooperative, territorial, educational, professional, industrial principles, or even political values for that matter. I respect formation based on moral values, which is why Kerry Kennedy’s lecture touched me so much. After Polokwane, there was lot of talk about strengthening Local Government, which was taken as the nadir of good governance. Of course there are no guarantees that a strong Local Government means good governance, if the Republic of China is anything to go by. In China the central government is almost hapless against local government that is often very corrupt and unruly in following the passed laws of the republic, especially Environmental laws that are flaunted at will by local governments when bribed by businessman. On the same breath, good local governance is possible, as exemplified in countries like Switzerland and other federal working states.
Of course, the cause for moral courage is a double edged sword. For instance, it cannot be that it is needed only in Africa, despite Ms Kennedy’s emphasis, even if Africa is the continent most fraught with problems associated with limited civil justice. As long as, for instance, trading tendencies tend to be bias against the developing world, moral courage will be needed also by those in Western countries to “Speak Truth To Power.” When people are imprisoned on secluded islands indefinitely just for suspicion of being terrorists, moral courage is also needed to speak out. There’s also a clear danger, beyond the obvious, in narrowing the borders of moral courage to include only instance one agrees with. In thinking civil justice is only concomitant with only liberal democracy, for instance.
Another cause, blatant in our country, is how the majority of our people live with hunger and permanent refugee status in different informal places around the country. But you hardly here any moral courage coming out of private people and business against it. When the first fires blazed, in the form of xenophobic attacks, there was more moralising and condemnation than moral courage. The only moral courage we saw was in the form of philanthropic help for the displaced people, which was a good thing. But the whole thing reminded me of something René Girard once said; that “The victims most interesting to us are always those who allow us to condemn our neighbors. And our neighbors do the same.” The thing about moral courage is that it requires the ever widening of borders of empathy and dissent without neglecting what’s under your nose. As the idiom goes, charity begins at home.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Tuesday, 08 April 2008
The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn M
The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn McIntosh; and Is SA crime a ‘race war’? by Rodney Warwick. The ideal situation, of course, would have been to publish different views on the issue, but as it is, the Weekend Argus chose to publish two articles of similar view at the same time.
I agree with Warwick—who we were told is completing his Ph.D in history through UCT—that ‘[t]he press can lead the way by encouraging public debate . . .’ on crime; but feel he grossly exaggerates when he says what is happening in SA is ‘similar to the late 19th century pogroms against Jews.’ In fact if I was Jewish I’d feel offended by the comparison. The major problem with Warwick’s article, even more than the tortured use of Niall Ferguson’s work in War of the World to support an unconvincing thesis, is the nauseating Oprahesque praxis of trauma assertiveness as means to win public regard.
Reading history one understands that Fascism begins with specious recovery of certain community values, cultural and otherwise; and nostalgia for the ‘better’ past. From there, the usual route is Gleichasaltung—the coordination of social institutes to reflect the ideology of the majority group. If I understand Warwick well, he seems to think that SA is in Gleichasaltung stage. He insinuates that the present South African government tacitly condones anti-white crime, because ‘anti-white crime suits ANC perfidy of preaching non-racialism but also espousing aggressive “Africanisation” and the demolition of white South African historical identity.’
I’m not a member of the ANC, and so cannot vouch for them; but my understanding of South African black politics is that it is actually the ANC that occupies the mean against extreme Pan Africanist position of most black political organization. In fact, I dare say, the ANC is currently loosing ground in black societies because it is seen as not being Africanist enough.
Further more Warwick is selective in his choice of crime examples to suit his thesis. Ask any reader of the Daily Voice or Sowetan, and they’ll tell you of more gruesome and sadist daily acts of black on black crime, far worse than the two chosen from ‘Afrikaans Sunday newspaper’ by Warwick. The truth of the matter is that, as much as black on white violence happens, it does so far less regularly than black on black violence. And there’s scant evidence even if that is racial motivated. Farm crimes are clearly premeditated as mostly some form of revenge, but the motive is usually more personal than racial.
In his analysis of history, Warwick, puts wrong construction almost in everything. He notes, hugger-mugger, the history of Congo. A slight peruse of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost is enough introduction for the magnitude and horror of brutal Belgian colonialist rule in Congo, and how it prefigured the history of the country.
Warwick also compares the SA situation to Hep! Hep! riots that showed the depth of popular German anti-Semitism stimulated by hatred of successful Jews. He wants us to believe that SA criminal element is Khapers deployed for the pogroms. And to think we’re in a similar position as Rwandan era of Akuzu—the core of the concentric webs of political, economic, and military muscle and patronage that came to be known as Interrahamwe. All of it is baseless, mischievous and recklessly alarmist.
Crime in SA is bad, we all feel that way. White South Africans are only now waking up to how bad the situation really is. To most black people it has been a lifelong reality of tragic pain, which the coming of ANC government, with all its flaws, was the first to attempt to do anything about, though what its done is still not nearly enough. To most of us the ANC demonstrates a better record than all historic revolutionary parties for not permitting itself a discretionary exercise of power, but choosing to regulate itself more by Constitutional principles than demands of circumstances.
Warwick trespasses on the understanding of our country’s reality when he says ‘the de facto situation is that whites are under criminal siege explicitly because of their “race”’. And pushes our limit to a breaking point when he says ‘[i]t is illogical to judgementally link cultural groupings, let alone individuals, to their forefathers’ moral controversies, but shallowness of popular perception unfortunately ensures it is often inevitably.’ Further on he mockingly terms the past South African governments of prejudice a forced position on whites for their ‘radical survival option.’
Most of us, as the American journalist Sydney Harris once wrote, “believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” But I’d have expected better from a PhD candidate; better use of facts to reconcile with reality, for one. As it is, Warwick will fit well in the field of historical romancers; he does such a superb job of arranging facts to fit his passions, something very endemic to colonialist self-flutters.
Unfortunately for him, real history demands coming to terms even with blighted parts as necessary steps towards regeneration. It could be his likes stand in the way of our true understand of ourselves as a real nation, and path to true reconciliation based in honesty. ‘Tis the measure of wise men to prefer things that are necessary to those convenient and desultory.
The challenge, as it is in our country after political democracy, is to find better ways for wealth redistribution to regress the scales, which in this country are tilted to favour the bias of white people even in this generation and others to come still until we level the fields. Think of a relay marathon where are upon one group has been given a head start at the expense of holding the other by oppressive means. You don’t by releasing the other from oppressive means alone level the field, because the truth of the matter is that one group has done more rounds than the other and closer to the prize. Justice demands that you elevate the other group to where the other already is by means of interference.
What we need most are means of rescuing ourselves from the mess we find ourselves in due to a combination of a lot of things, chief of which is deliberate impoverishment of one group of people for the promotion and hegemony of the other. If one thing should be clear to us by now is that, it is a very, very dangerous thing for all concerned to tilt the scales to the extent that others feel they’ve nothing to loose in the reign of chaos, which is what made SA produce such nihilistic and sadists criminals.
I agree with Warwick—who we were told is completing his Ph.D in history through UCT—that ‘[t]he press can lead the way by encouraging public debate . . .’ on crime; but feel he grossly exaggerates when he says what is happening in SA is ‘similar to the late 19th century pogroms against Jews.’ In fact if I was Jewish I’d feel offended by the comparison. The major problem with Warwick’s article, even more than the tortured use of Niall Ferguson’s work in War of the World to support an unconvincing thesis, is the nauseating Oprahesque praxis of trauma assertiveness as means to win public regard.
Reading history one understands that Fascism begins with specious recovery of certain community values, cultural and otherwise; and nostalgia for the ‘better’ past. From there, the usual route is Gleichasaltung—the coordination of social institutes to reflect the ideology of the majority group. If I understand Warwick well, he seems to think that SA is in Gleichasaltung stage. He insinuates that the present South African government tacitly condones anti-white crime, because ‘anti-white crime suits ANC perfidy of preaching non-racialism but also espousing aggressive “Africanisation” and the demolition of white South African historical identity.’
I’m not a member of the ANC, and so cannot vouch for them; but my understanding of South African black politics is that it is actually the ANC that occupies the mean against extreme Pan Africanist position of most black political organization. In fact, I dare say, the ANC is currently loosing ground in black societies because it is seen as not being Africanist enough.
Further more Warwick is selective in his choice of crime examples to suit his thesis. Ask any reader of the Daily Voice or Sowetan, and they’ll tell you of more gruesome and sadist daily acts of black on black crime, far worse than the two chosen from ‘Afrikaans Sunday newspaper’ by Warwick. The truth of the matter is that, as much as black on white violence happens, it does so far less regularly than black on black violence. And there’s scant evidence even if that is racial motivated. Farm crimes are clearly premeditated as mostly some form of revenge, but the motive is usually more personal than racial.
In his analysis of history, Warwick, puts wrong construction almost in everything. He notes, hugger-mugger, the history of Congo. A slight peruse of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost is enough introduction for the magnitude and horror of brutal Belgian colonialist rule in Congo, and how it prefigured the history of the country.
Warwick also compares the SA situation to Hep! Hep! riots that showed the depth of popular German anti-Semitism stimulated by hatred of successful Jews. He wants us to believe that SA criminal element is Khapers deployed for the pogroms. And to think we’re in a similar position as Rwandan era of Akuzu—the core of the concentric webs of political, economic, and military muscle and patronage that came to be known as Interrahamwe. All of it is baseless, mischievous and recklessly alarmist.
Crime in SA is bad, we all feel that way. White South Africans are only now waking up to how bad the situation really is. To most black people it has been a lifelong reality of tragic pain, which the coming of ANC government, with all its flaws, was the first to attempt to do anything about, though what its done is still not nearly enough. To most of us the ANC demonstrates a better record than all historic revolutionary parties for not permitting itself a discretionary exercise of power, but choosing to regulate itself more by Constitutional principles than demands of circumstances.
Warwick trespasses on the understanding of our country’s reality when he says ‘the de facto situation is that whites are under criminal siege explicitly because of their “race”’. And pushes our limit to a breaking point when he says ‘[i]t is illogical to judgementally link cultural groupings, let alone individuals, to their forefathers’ moral controversies, but shallowness of popular perception unfortunately ensures it is often inevitably.’ Further on he mockingly terms the past South African governments of prejudice a forced position on whites for their ‘radical survival option.’
Most of us, as the American journalist Sydney Harris once wrote, “believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” But I’d have expected better from a PhD candidate; better use of facts to reconcile with reality, for one. As it is, Warwick will fit well in the field of historical romancers; he does such a superb job of arranging facts to fit his passions, something very endemic to colonialist self-flutters.
Unfortunately for him, real history demands coming to terms even with blighted parts as necessary steps towards regeneration. It could be his likes stand in the way of our true understand of ourselves as a real nation, and path to true reconciliation based in honesty. ‘Tis the measure of wise men to prefer things that are necessary to those convenient and desultory.
The challenge, as it is in our country after political democracy, is to find better ways for wealth redistribution to regress the scales, which in this country are tilted to favour the bias of white people even in this generation and others to come still until we level the fields. Think of a relay marathon where are upon one group has been given a head start at the expense of holding the other by oppressive means. You don’t by releasing the other from oppressive means alone level the field, because the truth of the matter is that one group has done more rounds than the other and closer to the prize. Justice demands that you elevate the other group to where the other already is by means of interference.
What we need most are means of rescuing ourselves from the mess we find ourselves in due to a combination of a lot of things, chief of which is deliberate impoverishment of one group of people for the promotion and hegemony of the other. If one thing should be clear to us by now is that, it is a very, very dangerous thing for all concerned to tilt the scales to the extent that others feel they’ve nothing to loose in the reign of chaos, which is what made SA produce such nihilistic and sadists criminals.
Wednesday, 02 April 2008
Time To Face Up To Issues
Time To Face Up To Issues
Last year, towards the ANC (African National Congress) Polokwane conference, I wrote in the Mail and Guardian a piece [The Media is no innocent messenger] on the need for our media to engage with ANC conference documents. To its credit the Mail and Guardian subsequently established a column titled Polokwane Briefing to give platform to that. The debate was mostly vigorous, if at times a little dull. It offered readers opportunity to make up their own minds about the issues, something very rare in South African manipulative media.
Now that pessimism is a prevailing mood in our country, especially concerning racial issues, like in the late eighties, perhaps it is time we establish another public platform to revisit the foundations of our so called Rainbow Nation. We could talk about many things, like trying to shed some light on matters of moral character in public office. But I would suggest we commence with our scourge, racism.
We’ve to investigate the retrogressive aspects of our time that has given confidence to the plague of racism to asperse our reconciliatory efforts. We all know the Rainbow Nation notion has never really had much substance in our racial charged society. For a moment, when Mandela was in the helm of power, it gave us a monkey branch to hide so as to gain confidence to strive away from reality through wishful thinking. Now reality has return with vengeance. Our news is contaminated with racial incidences, and the manner by which we comment on them betrays our still prejudiced mental frames.
The truth of the matter is that most white South Africans are in denial about racism, just as most blacks are in resentment. The cataclysmic manner by which the ruling party (ANC) ousted its president, Thabo Mbeki, for the controversial figure, JZ (Jacob Zuma) gave confidence to opposition parties that all might not be quiet within the ANC front; that it might not be vulnerable on the next elections. It also gave colour to irresponsible speculations of the Cassandras, especially in our media that mostly pander to the thralls of mocking infamy towards the ruling party. The coterie of their commentators, whose use of facts mostly amounts to innuendo against the government—not half bad when not subject to suspicious motives—went on over drive.
The Weltanschauung of the media in SA (South Africa) is liberal media, a good thing under normal circumstances. But in SA liberal does not necessary mean mean non partisan free debate in the media. It means, more or else, secret appendage of, and patronage machine for the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance with designs of conscious manipulation of our organised habits and opinions to harness to haughty pretensions of subtle racism in the name of enlightenment. It is little more than superlative, hackish, uninspired, repetitive and depthless hauteur of hand-me-down pseudo liberal kitsch pretending to champion values of humanity and freedom. That on its own would be tolerable if it were not done with such nauseating degree of manipulation and news selection designed to subvert other point of views.
Another problem with South African version of liberalism is undercurrents of colonial crapulosities. South African liberal commentary mostly has what Edward Said in his 1978 book, Orientalism, termed Western essentialisation of Arab world. Substitute Africa for Arab and you get similar modes of discourse bound up with impositions of imperial power. Only the New Imperialism instead of wishing to civilise the natives, aims at ‘enlightening’ them into the so called humanism. This reification of imperialist mentality strives, this time, for dominance, not by creating an Empire, by through linguistic hegemony and condescending liberal mantra.
The New Imperialism is supported by some high-minded black pests and wannabe epicurean exploiters—the so called foot-lickers—who pour black skin on white prejudices on mistaken idea that it made them enlightened. They too use knowledge as powering disguise for subversive tendencies in the name of freedom of expression and such nauseating never tiring tendencies of cry wolf fingering pointed at failing African states.
There’s also a boomlet of Pan Africanist tendencies aiming to crown their own version of hegemony, but their designs are obvious and clumsy, less subtle, for everyone to see; so no need to go into depth about here.
From all this the South African chattering class finds itself increasingly living in an era of enclaves and niches, squelched by diversity and suspicious of the other. Hence, I say, the establishment of an aseptic public platform may assist in ironing out these issues. Weary as we maybe of these convocations they’re means to introduce our respective points of views when conducted in frank honest manner. It is time SA grooms its coat of many colours so as to pass it to the next generation with lesser fleas.
Last year, towards the ANC (African National Congress) Polokwane conference, I wrote in the Mail and Guardian a piece [The Media is no innocent messenger] on the need for our media to engage with ANC conference documents. To its credit the Mail and Guardian subsequently established a column titled Polokwane Briefing to give platform to that. The debate was mostly vigorous, if at times a little dull. It offered readers opportunity to make up their own minds about the issues, something very rare in South African manipulative media.
Now that pessimism is a prevailing mood in our country, especially concerning racial issues, like in the late eighties, perhaps it is time we establish another public platform to revisit the foundations of our so called Rainbow Nation. We could talk about many things, like trying to shed some light on matters of moral character in public office. But I would suggest we commence with our scourge, racism.
We’ve to investigate the retrogressive aspects of our time that has given confidence to the plague of racism to asperse our reconciliatory efforts. We all know the Rainbow Nation notion has never really had much substance in our racial charged society. For a moment, when Mandela was in the helm of power, it gave us a monkey branch to hide so as to gain confidence to strive away from reality through wishful thinking. Now reality has return with vengeance. Our news is contaminated with racial incidences, and the manner by which we comment on them betrays our still prejudiced mental frames.
The truth of the matter is that most white South Africans are in denial about racism, just as most blacks are in resentment. The cataclysmic manner by which the ruling party (ANC) ousted its president, Thabo Mbeki, for the controversial figure, JZ (Jacob Zuma) gave confidence to opposition parties that all might not be quiet within the ANC front; that it might not be vulnerable on the next elections. It also gave colour to irresponsible speculations of the Cassandras, especially in our media that mostly pander to the thralls of mocking infamy towards the ruling party. The coterie of their commentators, whose use of facts mostly amounts to innuendo against the government—not half bad when not subject to suspicious motives—went on over drive.
The Weltanschauung of the media in SA (South Africa) is liberal media, a good thing under normal circumstances. But in SA liberal does not necessary mean mean non partisan free debate in the media. It means, more or else, secret appendage of, and patronage machine for the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance with designs of conscious manipulation of our organised habits and opinions to harness to haughty pretensions of subtle racism in the name of enlightenment. It is little more than superlative, hackish, uninspired, repetitive and depthless hauteur of hand-me-down pseudo liberal kitsch pretending to champion values of humanity and freedom. That on its own would be tolerable if it were not done with such nauseating degree of manipulation and news selection designed to subvert other point of views.
Another problem with South African version of liberalism is undercurrents of colonial crapulosities. South African liberal commentary mostly has what Edward Said in his 1978 book, Orientalism, termed Western essentialisation of Arab world. Substitute Africa for Arab and you get similar modes of discourse bound up with impositions of imperial power. Only the New Imperialism instead of wishing to civilise the natives, aims at ‘enlightening’ them into the so called humanism. This reification of imperialist mentality strives, this time, for dominance, not by creating an Empire, by through linguistic hegemony and condescending liberal mantra.
The New Imperialism is supported by some high-minded black pests and wannabe epicurean exploiters—the so called foot-lickers—who pour black skin on white prejudices on mistaken idea that it made them enlightened. They too use knowledge as powering disguise for subversive tendencies in the name of freedom of expression and such nauseating never tiring tendencies of cry wolf fingering pointed at failing African states.
There’s also a boomlet of Pan Africanist tendencies aiming to crown their own version of hegemony, but their designs are obvious and clumsy, less subtle, for everyone to see; so no need to go into depth about here.
From all this the South African chattering class finds itself increasingly living in an era of enclaves and niches, squelched by diversity and suspicious of the other. Hence, I say, the establishment of an aseptic public platform may assist in ironing out these issues. Weary as we maybe of these convocations they’re means to introduce our respective points of views when conducted in frank honest manner. It is time SA grooms its coat of many colours so as to pass it to the next generation with lesser fleas.
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