There has been a fear of one man one vote since the establishment of a first recorded democratic system of government in the city state of Athens. The spokesperson of the fearful was none other than Plato, who argued that democracy only gave power to the greatest number of people that may not necessarily be right. Plato used an example of Socrates who found, to the cost of his life, that political rhetoric easily swayed the Athenian population to condemn his philosophical thinking as mischievous and misguiding the young.
Given the ease even today by which large groups of people are easily swayed by populist leaders, mostly without much substance, perhaps Plato's suspicions of democracy should be given more weight than being merely dismissed as elitist, as the philosophy of history has tended to do over the years. The American system of democracy for sale is another factor not to dismiss Plato entirely; but I want here to look at Africa, especially South Africa.
Let me first categorically state that, in my view, the dangers of those who think they know best what their countries needs are a greater evil than the dangers of democracy.
The real danger in African democracies today is ruling party manipulations and rigging of the democratic process, as recently seen (unsuccessfully) in Nigeria, and (successfully) in Zimbabwe. The concern has managed to bring closer to South Africa the nagging fear of ANC (African National Congress) dominance of national politics. In South Africa the ramifications of the fear takes several forms, like the recent rambunctious debate over street name changing, which others feel rides roughshod over minority rights.
I'm one of those who believe, rather than punishing the popularity of a party, rigorous means should be found of consolidating civic conscience of the people towards strengthening democratic institutions of the country. Very little, in my mind, suggests, so far, that South Africa is headed for the much feared erosion of our democracy, except perhaps rampart crime which can be solved by an upped determination in the South African Safety and Security ministry.
When South Africa celebrated its 14th year as a fully fledged democratic state there were overriding concerns about crime in every speaker. The general feeling was that the political freedom people gained in 1994 changed the meaning of human rights aspirations. That the major gross violations of human rights in the country now involve gruesome criminal acts, especially against women and children.
The recent crime statistics argue that there’s a general trend of decline of crime in SA, though what it terms ‘social crime’ are still on the increase. The highest increase is things like bank robbery. It has triggered the opposition parties to, in my opinion, hypocritically and opportunistically to shout at the rooftops, even calling for the resignation of the minister Safety and Security, because they feel he’s incompetent in his job.
Naturally black people, especially in the township, who lived in far worse criminal conditions, in fact under the dominion of criminal state of affairs during the apartheid years are appalled by these out cries. Indeed experience of living in the township now tells me that the criminal element has decreased to what I grew up with, not because criminals have had a change of heart. No, because, since 1994, the criminals have gained greater confidence in their criminal freedom. They no longer fear white people, hence crime has moved to urban areas and suburbs too.
I caution to say that crime in black areas is still more preponderant than urban and suburban areas where there’s still better policing than in black townships. And black people, even in the CBDs and suburbs are still greater victims of criminal acts than white people, due to population numbers, I presume. The sad reality is that there’s more hullabaloo when it comes to white victims than otherwise, while black people have learnt to live with criminal element as an occupational hazard.
The problem with the cynical impostures of SA opposition parties is in trying to politicize crime. We are all living under intolerable siege of the criminal element, but it does not mean the country is going to the dogs because of this, and the right reading of the recent statistics proves this. Without taking anything out of the problem of crime, I feel the opposition parties tend to simplify it by concentrating too much on symptoms than root causes. I feel equitable distribution of economic resources is a much more serious issue facing this country, and the major cause of the so called ‘social crime’.
South Africans do not need studied statistics to realise they are among the worst criminal offenders, and violent society in the world. This is one of the greatest indictments against our democracy. And yes, to blame it on the legacy of apartheid is no longer enough—it plumps the cushion for the proof to lie on. Even the political vandalism and spirit of belligerent mischief inspired by the call of making the “country ungovernable” in the eighties did not give rise to as much criminality as seen in the country today. There’s now intolerable constant and omnipresent reprehensible violence in the centre of our lives. “Things were bad during the apartheid years,” my grandma said as we watched TV news of yet another child-rape-murder the other day, “but what we are seeing now is total moral breakdown, rampant venality.”
Surely poverty and joblessness contribute to the worsening of the crime situation, but does it excuse it? My answer is no. A curtain has fallen over whimsical excuses like that in South Africa’s second decade of freedom. South Africans now need to subject their actions to rational criticism that discards the perpetual flurry of past wrongs if they have any hope of moving forward as a shinning example of democracy in Africa.
“Economics go to the fundamentals of human relationships,” my friend who is a university lecture says. “The brutalising effect on our society is the result of our economic stand, of the exclusion of the majority of our citizens from meaningful and economic/financial activity.” Indeed when one takes a look, especially at South African townships, one sees the atmosphere of haplessness that is gradually impregnating the youth with bibulous sentiments of social revolution. For now the sentiments vent themselves in economic, social iconoclasm, and frustrated criminal activity. The inexcusable brutal murder, for instance, of an ANC councillor in the Free State by criminals, masquerading as dissatisfied political hordes, gives us a glimpse of where the whole thing is leading to if not dealt with properly.
My friend insists that “unless the development of our country’s economic system become an organic process that reflects the character and traditions of our people we are in for a dire future.” Alas, the ever widening gap between the haves and the haves not suggests that we’re not in the right course. South African economic policies have chosen “to follow opaque ambiguities revolving around the halo of globalisation whose objective is mostly to compel necessity and reasonableness of recognising the specious wisdom of the status quo for the benefit of largely global corporations.” This makes South Africa a sitting duck to careless radicalism, as seen also in the loutish behaviour of ANC’s deputy president (Jacb Zuma) supporters outside the court of law when he was charged with corruption charges that were eventually dismissed by the court.
My friend believes “There’s a coming wave of social revolution—its fire has already caught on in Latin America—with slight diplomatic caution. The vox populi of emerging markets are gatvol [sick and tired] with settling for wasp-eaten windfalls from rich economic orchards of their own countries.” If so, don’t we need to manage this anger better before it degenerates to clumsy pyrotechnics of Zimbabwe-like situation, I ask him. “The only thing that can mange it is better distribution of resources; but the funny thing is that the people with most to loose from this blood-curdling threat are blindly bubbling in selfish greed.”
It is true that extreme polarisation of the majority is almost always followed by a climate of violent action by the mob. It is easy to lament or condemn the clumsy aggression of a populist regime, but much harder to accept that it too, most of the time, emerges as result of political and economic decomposition that left millions to survive without support, as Zimbabwe is learning the hard way. Neglected and polarised people tend to give their alliance to promises of instant remedies of populist movements, or criminal activity, in one guise or the other. How then can South Africa make sure it avoids the worse of this?
Let’s start with the structural problems South Africa is faced with.
There’s always a spectre of racism haunting every public relation n our country, even the reading of crime statistics. As a nation we’ve not yet matured to a stage where we can talk openly about implicit attitudes, and our past scars? South Africans are contrariwise conterminous people who do not discuss explicitly their implicit assumptions and fears. The public use of reason is the true condition of democratic life of a country. The aim of civil society is to create a line of critical reasoning in the public sphere.
The problem facing South Africa is what the Roman statesman, Cicero (always alert towards the corrosive effects against democracy) was wont to remind his country men about, that the Greek city-state, as the embodiment of the beginning of Western civilization, did not start out so much as to guarantee personal freedom for all residents, but to ensure the protection of property for a new meritocratic middling class of landowners. Very little has changed in the democracies of the world since then. Hence the South African debate, to my approval, is fast turning into a class issue. However, the peculiarities of South African situation (since the majority of the poor are black) is that class debate naturally overflows into racial issues.
The majority of black South Africans feel, urgently by the day, that political freedom has not extend to their personal and social lives since they are still manacled by economic conditions. The opposite is almost true for most whites, who feel their economic affluence threatened by the political freedom of black hordes. To put it crudely; whites feel threatened by the coming Barbarians, while blacks feel spite from the laughing Vandals. Whites fear blacks, like King Ahab, will soon do away with them (Naboth) if they refuse to sell their vineyard. They fear the government bureaucratic attitude towards economic change will soon turn into Stalinist ruthlessness that will force, by government diktat, and impose targets of change, like in Zimbabwe. On the other hand black people demand change for social and economic justice. Most white people see in that demand personal threats, and unconsciously hope to limit South African democracy to legal and constitutional formalism that unwittingly empowers the educated and affluent minority more than the underprivileged majority.
To that mix comes the complicated personality of the present South African president, Thabo Mbeki. In his weekly Letter in ANC Today (www.anc.org.za), where he often speaks with his mouth on his foot; he insinuated that out cries against crime in the country is “a massive propaganda campaign... in many instances without any regard and respect for truth. ” Mbeki referred to a deep entrenched racist attitude amongst white South Africans that always see the coming barbarians and sons of biblical Cain in black restlessness. He regretted the BBC coverage of crime in South Africa for its unbalanced reportage that does not portray redeeming qualities of South Africa. Needles to say most white people found this letter titled, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, rather disturbing, with harsh racial overtones.
The chattering class of South Africa, who usually rant from their bellies, subjected the document to gimlet-eyed scrutiny without engaging much in any of the concerns it raised. A white friend of mine quoted George Orwell as he sat down to write a distrait piece against the document: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give solidity to pure wind.” What my colleague was ignorant about is the fact that what Mbeki was saying was something commonly held by most black South Africans. When I tried to point this out to him he accused me of being soft against the government, and of being caught up in the mental constraints of cognitive dissonance (the discomfort from holding two conflicting thoughts).
I'm all for trashing leaders that are without substance, but the South African media tends to get trapped in the gossamers of political bias and a predilection to trade in demolishing stocks of icon bashing. It can be very cloying sometimes.
My friend’s use of George Orwell, who was concerned about the degradation of language through political manipulation, avoided Orwell’s real concerns, which is that language should act, in Heinrich Böll’s memorable words, as “the bulwark of freedom.” Indeed, Mbeki’s blunt and static document was itself not an achievement of brilliant analysis, but had enough jolts of reality to snap intellectual callousness of our media back to brain activity. The swooning obstructiveness of Mbeki’s writing style does not negate the veracity of his argument. We must learn to understand that there is something more important than talent and erudition, which is the value of veracity, despite a person’s political beliefs.
The essence of the matter is that South Africans are drifting apart along ill mended racial lines. I remember listening to Mbeki's most popular speech, I am an African, given at the occasion of adoption of the Constitutional Assembly of the new South African Constitution, about a decade ago. The first thing that came to mind then in excitement was; “We'll all be Africans after this.” My reaction were confirmed by the chattering class when, in dissecting, praised the speech to the mountains. But now, a few years down the line, the South African rainbow dream seem to be buckling on its structural faults. Why? Is it a failure of multiculturalism or resurrection of deep strains of racial divide?
What got me wary later on when I thought about Mbeki’s speech even then, was the way he tried to minimise South African racial complexities by mythologizing his identity, and thus of all Africans. The myth in the speech overwhelmed reality. As the result it became fashionable henceforth to identify oneself with previously ignored people. Everyone suddenly became aware of the Khoi-San blood running in their veins, even those in the past who identified themselves more with Europe or black tribal imperialism. For instance the Afrikaner veteran journalist, Max Du Preez, in his book Pale Native described himself thus:
I am a native of this land, but unlike most other natives, I am pale. The tongue of
my heart and my soul is a tongue born in Africa and called after Africa, but after
many decades of abuse it is now resented by many as the tongue of alien invaders.
Du Preez, towards the end of his book, asks in disappointment, after telling us how impressed he was in meeting Mbeki in Senegal: “There’s just one big unanswered question: What on earth happened to the charming, smiling, generous, warm, straightforward Thabo Mbeki we got to know in Dakar?”
Mbeki and Du Preez, in different ways, wanted us to acknowledge the fundamental truth of our mixed blood. Scientific studies, especially genetics, tell us that “The idea that we constitute 'races' is now unquestionably a myth. . . (Prof Wilmot James; Cape Times, Thursday, March 22, 2007). But if recent reports of rising Right Wing sects, and radical left tendencies among blacks in South Africa are anything to go by, things are not as cosy as all that. Mbeki now is being accused of having made a volte-face because he raises the uncomfortable need for frank discussion of “whether we have the courage to engage in a truth and reconciliation process even with regard to the challenge of openly confronting the cancer of deeply dehumanising racist stereotypes that developed over many centuries.”
On the other hand this novel Mbeki, who no longer pander to fashions of specious mixed identities, captures the Völkerwanderung of the black majority. His Letter was followed by similar articles from black intellectuals like, Achille Mbembe, a senior researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research who threw down the gauntlet in his very competent article titled “Culture of Mutual Resentment Precludes Nonracial Future” [Sunday Times (01 April 2007)]. But the challenge, to my knowledge, was not picked up by the white community. What you get is sneaking white liberal tendencies of downplaying the South African project at every opportunity they get overseas, like the recent article of RW Johnson in Wall Street Journal.
I’m one of those who believe that Mbeki’s perceived harsh tone is not the results of a volte- face but of wanting to fix our sight on the vision of a South African future, not only on reinvented ostensible collective identity, but by facing up to the truth of our past. I believe Mbeki wants to deepen our national identity beyond our ancestral commonality into addressing our psychological fears also. Hence he asks in his Letter; “why are the Whites so determined to frighten themselves! The answer of course is that they have taken no such decision. Rather, the problem is that entrenched racism dictates that justification must be found for the persisting white fears of 'die swart gevaar'”.
It is no secret that under the spell of relativist postmodernist theory of the twentieth century erstwhile progressive people tend to seek intellectual refuge in identity politics. Indeed Mbeki and Du Pleez make strange bedfellows in that they fall in this category. Both say are struggling against embedded prejudices, and that their perpetual struggle has always been against the negative role played by the media in sidelining and covering, if not altogether eliminating, undesirable news. Yet they find themselves shouting at each other from opposite banks. Why?
The first answer lies with failure and fear of Multiculturalism. Multiculralism—and this is not unique to SA—seems to act only to divide populations into factions of competing ethnicities. The chaos of the twenty first century is largely based on this division. As nice sounding the South African motto ‘unity in diversity’ might be, it requires the kind of tolerance most of us just seem not to posses.
Multiculturalism presupposes diversity, and diversity demands solidarity of values. Let’s even be done with equivocations and get to the crux of the matter. In Occidental gesalt democracy is great only when it serves liberal values. Nothing wrong with that as far as I am concerned if only liberals were not so illiberal when it comes to other people’s values.
The question, then for South Africa, is not whether we’ll all be Africans, but that as diverse Africans we can learn to live in respect of each other? Sharing a geographical sphere and political inheritance does not make people a nation. Neither does sharing some ancestors, because few Boers and Xhosas had Khoisan wives or chattels. I’m sure Mbeki's intentions of wanting to inject common energy in South African collective identity was based on noble motives, but it was conscious myth making.
Myth is not an entirely bad base for nation building. But conscious myths are a different thing altogether from the myths that emerge from the unconscious history (fears and longings) of a people. Unconscious myths convey truth because they are a residue of life and the after-image of people’s suffering. Conscious myths, however, are instruments of human purpose, that is spin-doctoring.
Plato believed that truth is the business of philosophy, but knew also that it is rhetoric, not philosophy, that moves the crowds. One of the advantages of Platonic school of philosophy is that it encourages us to prefer simple theory to messy reality. But it’s limiting factors is that it inclines us to select only the data that fit our theories. Mbeki’s I am an African speech was chiefly poetic rhetoric. Hence it is incumbent upon us to distinguish lies, even noble lies, among the rhetorical devices of politicians. Mbeki’s speech, with all its intents, was a noble lie whose real sentiments are betrayed by the brass angst of Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right letter.
Perhaps Mbeki’s letter, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, should have preceded the I am an African speech, not the other way around. In the Letter Mbeki is irritated by the manner of those who, though ostensible inheritors of progressive rational Enlightenment tradition, still smuggle racism under the banner of preserving cultural values and standards. This is the common thing in South Africa that he should have pointed out before the I am an African speech.
South Africans are in urgent need of true integration. Steve Biko, in his book, I Write What I Like, said, “If by integration you understand breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and codes of behaviour by whites, then yes I am against it.” Integration and multiculturalism has to mean much more than blacks acting white if it has to have true meaning. It is time for South African white community to understand and learn to accept black culture if the country has any hope of forging any pretensions of being a real nation.
It was said—back to the Greeks again—of the laws of Solon, that, though not the best in themselves, were the best “which the interests, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit”. Perhaps that can be said also of South African Constitution with an added aperçu from Gramsci that: “[T]he old is dying, and yet the new cannot be born … In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms …”
Whatever will happen in South Africa in the future its vital force will rise from the now buried lives in the appendixes of its townships. My overriding fear is that not those who govern nor those who fear them, have any real understanding of what makes them tick. There’ll come a time, in fact it has already arrived, when, as the hordes on the receiving end of the bad South African stick, they’ll run out of patience before the new is fully born. Indeed our country is living its collective life at the edge, unfortunately it is not the edge of reason.
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