It's Just Business

I was in my hometown, Queenstown, recently when I unwittingly found myself at, probably, Tokyo Sexwale's first campaign public gathering. The big weights of the ANC Eastern Cape province, like Nceba Faku, the former executive mayor of Nelson Mandela Metropole, were present, giving credence to the rumour that the Province was switching its support for the presidency to Sexwale. [I would have believed it more had I seen Mr. Stone Sizani, the stalwart in the helm of provincial ship at the present moment.]

What first was strange to me about the day was the enthusiasm with which my coeval, who is an attorney and owns several businesses in the town, was taking the whole gathering. The last time I checked he was apolitical. The gathering did not give you the usual vox populli activity we are used to in political gatherings of this tenure. The attandance was mostly the immediate supporters of faction lines within the organsisation, reporters and curious onlookers who were, like me, caught up by the moment.

Ground politics in Queenstown are radical, or atleast they were when we were growing up, due to the palpable influences of people like Bra Chris [Hani], who was born in a dusty town of Comfimvaba, just about sixty kilometres outside Queesntown. I thought if anywhere here would be the place best to tell me about the dierection of our politics, and the leadership race. You could feel something struggling to express itself in the atmosphere but was not openly declared.
The currency of Tokyo's speech was how South Africa needed business people, and the ANC a bridge between its present warring factions. None of that speaking about public good and condemning private pursuit of profit thing. The topic was not misplaced too since most people seem to have gone there to see the wonder of this gnome of BEE who, in such a short space of time, has aquired such enormous wealth; perhaps even looking, in more ways than one, for ways of making it rub off.

Something broke clear within me. So this would be Tokyo's ticket; using to his advantage the general desire for wealth in most people and placing himself as a bridge between warring factions.

I lokked around me, and true as the light of day, the majority in attandence were white collars , Polo golf-shirts, business wallets, and the rest of upper middle-class gudgets and pretensions. None of that Zuma rouble-rousing loathsome marriage of conspiracy theories, mass ignorance, corrupted public virtue and cultural unity in conditions of political barbarism with “steady increase in carnality, vulgarity, brutality,” Tocqueville warned against. I also recalled that Tokyo was rocketed to political stardom by the death of his friend Hani. Was his friend, a staunch Communist, now paving his way or waving his doom. Something is stirring inside the tomb of our past, I thought to myself. But does the whiff sours or perfumes the air? That's the question.
Why did you take me to that meeting, I asked my friend later on. I wanted you to see the future that is here. The Chief [Mbeki] is like Mao. He wants the impossible; open debate to keep the system lively, yet he wants to fix in advance the outcome of the debate. “I told the rightists to criticize us in order to help the Party,” Mao is reported to have once said to his doctor. “I never asked them to oppose the Party or try to seize power from the Party.” There is no longer politics now, just businesses.

My friends' last sentece rang in my ears all the way home. I kept thinking; yes Mao had his faults, but he was right in thinking that a society does require shared moral values; that a good society is more than gadgets and cars; but his idealism did end up in oppression for the majority. Why didn't he just surrender power when the time came? Thought I to myself, and remembered that most people in high places will endure virtually any humiliation before surrendering a position of power.

There's no doubt in my mind that Tokyo might be able to build civic freedoms that can win public middle-class bourgeoisie aspiration. But what will that do for the poor majority? Make them fodder for the grist of our economic mill? Tokyo reminded me of Giancarlo Pajetta, the Italian Communist leader, saying: “I have finally understood what pluralism is; it’s when lots of people share my point of view.” Perhaps Tokyo will change it slightly into; “Now I understand what democracy is all about; it's when lots of people want to be rich like me.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same).