I gave birth two months after my final High school exams. Lusapho refused to acknowldge our child. He Left me under the cloud to go to Jo'burg when I told him I'd not abort our child. My daggers glinted for his blood.
I heard he worked at a five star hotel. News reached me also that he had morals of an alley cat in the golden city. So I can’t say I was really he came back, seven years later, wasted, mere skin and bone of hacking coughs.
“You look like a zombie,” my, our, seven year old son said with detached brutal honesty only children are capable of when I introduced them. He did look a frightful colour of a corpse. I thought it was time I told my mother who the father of her grandson was. I had kept it secret from her all those years though I’m sure she had her suspicions. The day I told her I had gone to visit Lusapho. He was walking me back home after my visit, his charm at its peak.
“What we regret most are not mistakes but missed opportunities,” he said with sad visage, tapping the side of his nose as he always did when he was nervous.
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked upset mindedly.
“In another world, at another time, I’d have found a job in this town, married you. Then we would have become a proper family with our son.” Said he in bromidic overtones, revealing his perfect piano keys like teeth.
“But that wouldn’t have been you. We’re born the persons we become by our choices.” This sounded harsher than I had intended.
“And usually end up prisoners of our characters.” He wryly added.
My mother must have been watching us through her bedroom window because when I came inside the house she commented about the resemblance Lusapho had to my son, ‘especially when he laughs.’
“That’s because he’s the father.” My unguarded reaction told her everything. I was too tired of keeping secrets. She handed Lusapho a glass of juice with affable contempt that disembarrassed her grudge. I suppose she was glad her cynical suspicions were finally confirmed.
The following evening Lusapho sent me a poem he had written, a plaguey poor thing really, with phoney ring of self-dramatisation; but I appreciated the effort more than the results. He knew I loved literature. He constantly joked about how my love of books makes me neglect other people.
His face, my son’s face, twisted with sadness as he left for his home. The sun was no more visible behind the mountains of our youth but shone the red glow of its setting with a firmament of dying things. The careless grace of things, I thought.
Life keeps rushing to the horizon.
There’s a seed of failure in all things human, freedom even to misspend. Death, being the ultimate of all human failures. “Let us live always mindful of this moment love,” said he after the moment of eloquent silence passed between us.
Within weeks he became febrile. One night he started having serious sezuires, I had to phone the ambulance. As a doctor I knew the end was near. I took him to my arms as we waited. The caged animal in his chest beat franticly. His eyes though were full of puzzled gentleness.
The ambulance never came. Such things you expect when you stay in black townships of South Africa. It took me back to the night our son was born. I gave birth on the couch after waiting in vain for it. Luckily, my mother, a nurse, knew what to do. Ambulance drivers are stiff scared to enter the township, especially during weekends at night. I didn’t really mind with Lusapho, because, as a doctor, I knew there wasn’t much the hospital could do for him, his CD4+ lymphocyte had fallen too low to respond to antibiotics and ARV cocktails.
He didn’t show signs of fear of death. He just looked at me with resigned self-surrendering love. I injected the intravenous injections I had brought for him, which were obviously not working for him since he was plagued with polymorphous lesions, and variety of clinical cutaneous manifestations. There was Candidiasis all over his mouth and tongue. His infected lungs had spread the infection to the brain. His kidneys were bloated, having collapsed four days before. The opportunistic diseases, like TB and pneumonia were at critical stage. I realise he wouldn’t make it.
That night he fluctuated between sleep and vague awakenings in my arms, often loosing his consciousness, sinking into supine confusion. I sat with him, trying to engage in conversations to keep his consciousness. One time I went to the kitchen to fetch him a glass of water and, coming back, found him capering around the bedroom, cavorting and ranting, pop-eyed. He was dancing a twirling, shaking his head like a dervish dog that had just been splashed with water. I don’t think he could recognise who I was by then.
He died five hours later, in my arms, of meningitis complications. The AIDS virus had almost completely destroyed his immune system. The last thing he did as he gasped for his last breath was to grab, in fondling manner, my breast. Can you imagine that, with his last breath? Then a stone cold silence slowly settled in the pedestal pose of his face, wrapping it in handsome corsage.
The night was darker than the ace of spades.
Sunrise got pink in the east, bringing soul-sickening waves of violet dawn. My nerves fed on my exhaustion. People came out like ants to the organised misery of their daily grind. The rising noise, the bleak honky-tonk of hootering mini-buses, the wafting hazy mist, all sucked my spirit.
The neon light blinked under the misty hug, with the coming day pregnant with unpleasant suggestions. The surprising part was that people were just going about their business as if nothing had happened.
What use is prying fingers on wounds. If I tell you Lusapho’s death turned me on, would you be surprised with the persistence of sexual hunger, even in the dark face of death. Or would you be disgusted? I don’t have to justify myself under the hostile stare of pusillanimous deaf piano tuners. I ware my hat in the house when I want. If we must use the psychiatrists as our crutches, the terrible goings are memories of a baffled life seeking an outlet.
I met the day with blend of insouciance and despair, an aura of defeat and to-hell-with-it-all. Things started creaking on my hinges. Life just started to weigh me down, down.
I’ve never really known the courageous freedom of seeking out things I feel in my heart. Lusapho had that. He was always leaving me behind in dark desperation, with cuts that shed no blood. Not this time.
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Generating Shakespeare
On Tuesday evening I watched an episode of Generations, our local sopie at SABC 1 and felt revolted. There’s this rich chick there called Karabo acted by Connie Ferguson. Apparently she had been charting on-line with a web friend. In one episode she had a public, unconvincing, altercation with a journalist character, Paul about journalistic ethics. It later turns out her web friend and day-light enemy are one and the same. Ring a bell? Sleepless In Seattle! That is why I felt revolted.
There’s nothing wrong with copying a storyline—JM Coetzee does it all the time with most of his novel. The crux of the matter is that you have to refresh the storyline and make it relevant to your audience and times—again something JM does so brilliantly. But the dystrophic copy and paste sort of thing happening in our sopies is nauseating to say the least.
Talking about re-inventing the storyline; I also watched, on the same evening, Shakespeare eMzansi in SABC 1. What a brilliant concept. I’m told it is going to be 26 episodes of 5 series. The one currently on play now, Entabeni—and no it has nothing to do with me—is certainly up to standard. It is based on Shakespear’s play Macbeth. The acting could be more professional, but the writers have brilliantly re-invented Shakespeare storyline, made it relevant for the time without loosing much of Shakespeare’s plot. They’ve also made it relevant to our situation and times.
I have heard it said that the idea was to make people revisit the dramas of Shakespeare. Well, I suspect it is working; in my home my siblings have been asking more questions about Macbeth, lately. I’ve not yet seen them read the plays, but at this rate it is only a matter of time. The other day I had my four year old nephew intimating on his bath the act we played together; Foul is fair, and fair is foul! Perhaps not an ideal first line to learn from Shakespeare, but we’ve to start somewhere, innit?
The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Our present president might be a stark reminder of that.
Lady Macbeth, while still convincing her husband to murder the irreprehensible King Duncan, accuses him of wanting to win without dirtying his hands. She says he’s not without ambition, but lacks the “illness should attend it ... that he would not play false, and yet would wrongly win.” Macbeth’s conscience is still healthy then as he replies in a monologue:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. . .
Let’s look at this in the light of our country and times, especially since ruling’s party’s last conference? The greenflies have it that a certain gentleman, who is now the vice president of the ANC has been responsible for the bad karma between their out going president and the present. It is also rumoured that at the first meeting of the ruling party’s newly elected NEC the blood was so heated their president had to be assuaged for more than twenty minutes after walking out of the meeting accusing the delegates of planning to get rid of him through his coming trial.
It turns out also that there are people in the higher echelons of the ruling party who want to win without playing false in the public eye. It’s been rumoured that Lady Macbeth occupies the parliamentary Speaker seat, and that she eggs and fire the passion of the present deputy president to overcome his repugnance for the end to justify the means:
Thou'dst have, great Glamis, / That which cries "Thus thou must do if thou have it; / And that which rather thou dost fear to do / Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round / Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem / To have thee crowned withal.
Lady Macbeth is here saying Macbeth fears to do what must be done, even though he would not wish it undone, if it were done. I hope our Macbeth has enough sense to quote and stick to the words of sober Macbeth: "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir."
Another question is, when the did is done, will we, as the general public, be better of it. As the Greek proverb goes, ‘Rule shows the man.’ No one ever knows with certainty how virtuous—or vicious—a man might be until he holds office and has power.
I cannot wait to see how the team of Shakespeare eMzansi treats, probably the most beautiful, if dry words, ever came out of any writer of all time. That passage is towards the end of the play Macbeth, and worth quoting in full:
Seyton: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Do you still think Shakespeare is passé and irrelevant? Think again. And that, I believe, is the idea behind Shakespeare eMzansi. Now; “Weary with toil I haste me to my bed...” (Sonnet 27)
There’s nothing wrong with copying a storyline—JM Coetzee does it all the time with most of his novel. The crux of the matter is that you have to refresh the storyline and make it relevant to your audience and times—again something JM does so brilliantly. But the dystrophic copy and paste sort of thing happening in our sopies is nauseating to say the least.
Talking about re-inventing the storyline; I also watched, on the same evening, Shakespeare eMzansi in SABC 1. What a brilliant concept. I’m told it is going to be 26 episodes of 5 series. The one currently on play now, Entabeni—and no it has nothing to do with me—is certainly up to standard. It is based on Shakespear’s play Macbeth. The acting could be more professional, but the writers have brilliantly re-invented Shakespeare storyline, made it relevant for the time without loosing much of Shakespeare’s plot. They’ve also made it relevant to our situation and times.
I have heard it said that the idea was to make people revisit the dramas of Shakespeare. Well, I suspect it is working; in my home my siblings have been asking more questions about Macbeth, lately. I’ve not yet seen them read the plays, but at this rate it is only a matter of time. The other day I had my four year old nephew intimating on his bath the act we played together; Foul is fair, and fair is foul! Perhaps not an ideal first line to learn from Shakespeare, but we’ve to start somewhere, innit?
The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Our present president might be a stark reminder of that.
Lady Macbeth, while still convincing her husband to murder the irreprehensible King Duncan, accuses him of wanting to win without dirtying his hands. She says he’s not without ambition, but lacks the “illness should attend it ... that he would not play false, and yet would wrongly win.” Macbeth’s conscience is still healthy then as he replies in a monologue:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. . .
Let’s look at this in the light of our country and times, especially since ruling’s party’s last conference? The greenflies have it that a certain gentleman, who is now the vice president of the ANC has been responsible for the bad karma between their out going president and the present. It is also rumoured that at the first meeting of the ruling party’s newly elected NEC the blood was so heated their president had to be assuaged for more than twenty minutes after walking out of the meeting accusing the delegates of planning to get rid of him through his coming trial.
It turns out also that there are people in the higher echelons of the ruling party who want to win without playing false in the public eye. It’s been rumoured that Lady Macbeth occupies the parliamentary Speaker seat, and that she eggs and fire the passion of the present deputy president to overcome his repugnance for the end to justify the means:
Thou'dst have, great Glamis, / That which cries "Thus thou must do if thou have it; / And that which rather thou dost fear to do / Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round / Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem / To have thee crowned withal.
Lady Macbeth is here saying Macbeth fears to do what must be done, even though he would not wish it undone, if it were done. I hope our Macbeth has enough sense to quote and stick to the words of sober Macbeth: "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir."
Another question is, when the did is done, will we, as the general public, be better of it. As the Greek proverb goes, ‘Rule shows the man.’ No one ever knows with certainty how virtuous—or vicious—a man might be until he holds office and has power.
I cannot wait to see how the team of Shakespeare eMzansi treats, probably the most beautiful, if dry words, ever came out of any writer of all time. That passage is towards the end of the play Macbeth, and worth quoting in full:
Seyton: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Do you still think Shakespeare is passé and irrelevant? Think again. And that, I believe, is the idea behind Shakespeare eMzansi. Now; “Weary with toil I haste me to my bed...” (Sonnet 27)
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, 29 March 2008
A Soirée
My friends and I started what we call, after long deliberation of two months, a soiree. It turned out we could not call it a book club because there was too much beer sousing involved instead of reading and discussing books. So we came up with soirée, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a party with conversations that have intellectual pretensions, depending on the degree of alcohol consumed of course. Naturally we aim at flattering our intellectual pretensions and specious political suave.
The idea was simple. To encourage Bildung, a belief formed by engagement with art, philosophy and learning. To cultivate ourselves into Bildungsbürgertum-the cultivated middle class who regarded culture and learning as the core of an ethical and useful life, both private and public. Before you accuse us of too much pretensions, be advised that this thing is a normal among our coevals in Europe, especially in Germany.
We were each to write every month on small pieces of paper books we would like to see discussed; throw the pieces on a hat. Then we were supposed to go alphabetically, retrieving a single paper at a time. The appointed person buys and hosts the book of discussion, introduce it on the next meeting before passing it to another. At some stage everyone would have read it, then at that meeting the book would be discussed. It is with frank dissatisfaction, and a little glee, to report that we truly made a miserable job of the whole thing. Since we began, in the beginning of the year, we’ve not kept to a single schedule.
We wanted to make the discussions informal, so we chose to accompany them with braai and drinks. That was the first error. People tend to be more enthusiastic about soccer results, gossip and, as I found out when the discussion was on my house, Chris Rock, around braai fire than books. I suggested to one of my friends that perhaps we should do away with alcoholic drinks before discussions. He categorically told me we might as well dissolve the discussions, because ‘the beer drinking is the reason why they tolerate this thing.’
Perhaps we should revisit the ban on women, I suggested, thinking . . . I don’t know what was thinking. ‘That would be a recipe for disaster,' said my friend categorically. 'They come here largely to get away from their women, and be guys for a while, male bonding and all. If you throw that away they'll go with it.’ I threw my hands up. ‘We don’t need ideas, we just to need to make them interested on reading the books they chose, my friend.' My friend told me. 'How do we do that?' I asked. ‘By allowing them to chose the books they really wanna read without making them feel guilty about it, which must include sport heroes and comic books.’
Two weeks ago we held an emergency meeting to discuss the perilous state of our group affair. It turned out my friend was right, the first problem came with the first scheduled books for discussion, Agaat by . . . I can't remember the Afrikaner woman now who wrote that boring book that was taken up by the reading fraternity of SA. People came out with legion reasons for not reading it: ‘It was too expensive.’ ‘The story line is passé.’ ‘The author is culturally callow.’ And so on and so on. I didn’t have the heart to admit I was the one who had chosen the book, and gave thanks to the anonymous process of our hat trick.
The following week the book of choice was OR Tambo: Teacher, Lawyer & Freedom Fighter by Sandi Baai. ‘Personally I’m tired of incwadi zomzabalazo [political struggle books],’ one of my friends summed the mood against it.
JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Micheal K that I was hosting (having bought and read), was dismissed as too Kafkaesque; okay maybe that’s true, but I had spent the whole Friday evening preparing the report dammit. Where will I ever get the chance again to show my acumen for belles-lettres, I thought to myself feeling let down. Suffer me to indulge my ego dear reader, I already have the note anyway. J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Micheal is vaguely based on Kafka’s Joseph K of The Castle, with all the original ingredients included: Traveling into one’s foreign home with radical internal displacement in tightening concentric circles and haphazard, frustrating journeys. Facing up to sterile civil bureaucracy, state sponsored terrorism, and desire for mother’s changeless village, which the Freudians say it’s the desire for returning to the safety of one’s mother’s womb; and fantasy of escape. The book is mimetic; actually most of JM’s books are like that; it's his style, and betrays a certain lack of imagination on the author. I coined a phrase to sum it all up: The book is generally ‘unsatisfying, carefully contrived, and depthlessness.’ Where will I ever use that ersatz learnership now?
Coconut by Kupano Motlwa was deemed too Model C by my group. Anything by Chuna Achebe was too quaint. I can’t wait to here what will be the excuse for Xolela Mangcu’s To The Brink, though I’m already, secretly playing with phrases like; ‘I’m suffering from Mbeki bashing fatigue.’ The only book that had any semblance of real discussion was The Capitalist Nigger by Dr Chika Onyeani. I had not read the book so I was at sixes and sevens in the discussion most of the time, but understood the gist of the discussion in the end.
The truth of the matter is that our soirée is bleeding into becoming just another braaing sessions, and personally I’ve ran out of ideas of how to rescue it. What’s worse now is that decent titles are drying up from the hat. We keep coming up with self-help-how-to-books like; The Power of Positive Thinking, or How to Get Rich In less than a Year; and so on. I know I’m prejudiced against that sort of thing, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain; I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.
When I look around our soirée these days, I find people to be reasonably content with these new titles, which begs the question that, perhaps, though the idea was mine, I don’t really own or belong to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days I should develop headache just when I have to attend the soirée. The cure for my headache would, of course, involve relaxing with music of Iron & Wine singing softly, and an enjoyable book at hand. Who knows, that way I just might get to read more.
My Take
All my life I grew up under the shadow of violence. The first girl I ever kissed was, twelve years old, burnt to death by the so called ‘comrades’ through cruel means then called necklace—a tyre filled with petrol and newspapers. Her sin? Being born into a family whose head, her father, decided to run for mayourship, in disregard of the call to make ‘South Africa ungovernable.’
A friend I grew up with turned up dead at a sewer after eight days, bitten into a state of pulped tomato. He was last seen being picked by the South African police Special Branch. His mother could not even recognize him, and lost her will to live afterwards, looking at us with accusing eyes, as if it was our fault we didn’t instead of her son. She died seven years later of a heart related problem. Until 1997 when houses in the area were demolished for RDP houses, her house remained empty and unclaimed. No one wanted to be associated with the house termed ‘death house’.
There was in our township something close to a celebration of death; a weekend without one was strange, even unbelievable. Modes of dying included being robbed, or even dying at the hands of those you loved, what today is termed domestic violence. There was a general anarchical break of law and moral accountability. The Afrikaner poetess and author of the grim book titled Country of my Skull, Antjie Krog, gave our township, Mlungisi in Queenstown, an invidious honour of being the first place where the necklace was used. My memory of what happened in our streets then concurs with this conclusion.
Of course we blamed the apartheid government, more for institutionalized and state violence. The more we struggled against violence the more we seemed vulnerable from the criminal element, state propagated and otherwise. We tried our best to let the immediate and outside world to hear our cry, but none cared enough to come to our rescue. Then a strange thing happened. The country gained its political independence in 1994. State violence subsided while social crime gained confidence to attack suburbs and business area. We started seeing stories of criminal element in public spaces like media, a novel and belated praecipe indeed.
This did not mean criminals gave the township a break; they still harassed us like before and more. But we all agreed then that criminals were enemies of us all, and the development of the country at large. We started seeing more police visibility in our townships that was not only concerned with political activists. It was not enough of course, but it demonstrated a political will to tackle the scourge. It made us feel our lives mattered too, and make us feel we were not treated like schlock. But the scourge continued to rise unabated. Up to this day township denizens are the worse affected by crime, but less vocal, call it fatalism or adjustment to occupational hazard, or whatever you like.
Then another strange thing happened. Nelson Mandela put down the reigns as the president, handing them to Thabo Mbeki. Within no time the criminal element was no longer just an enemy of us all, but a fault of government. Arguments were made that the government was not treating the matter as an emergency. People, white folks mostly, started asking if the solution was not in declaring national state of emergency. Naturally, those of who grew up on the conditions of abuse that comes with state emergency are opposed to this solution.
By Thabo Mbeki’s second tenure crime was no longer just a government’s fault but that of the president. The president was termed a denialist. Again we tried to follow the argument. In the end the real crime of the president was what was called a defiant non-sympathetic mood against the citizenry that was suffering consequences of crime—the hidden one being the fact that he has become the boogey man of imperialist hegemony, and scapegoat of everything that goes wrong in the country.
In no time it became clear the country didn’t have the best police force in the world; but there is evidence also that most policemen are of average courage and integrity, under appreciated and poorly paid. But the evidence of corruption against some of them prevails and feeds the pessimistic mood against the police force in general. This prompted the president to call us, with some justification, “. . . spokespersons of doom or cheerleaders of bad news.”
The truth of the matter is that the scourge of crime affects us all. It has been a rude wakening for those who spent their lives in this country in comfortable cocoons into the realization that this country was founded, and still subsists, on abnormality. It also gives those made impotent by their prejudices and political dispossession, together with the rest of opportunist doomsayer footlickers, to spew invective in attempt to catch the coattails of liberal specious enlightenment, a handle to beat the government by. Crime has been used, especially by white South Africans, as means to discredit the present South African, and cry wolf for a failing state in the offing.
A friend I grew up with turned up dead at a sewer after eight days, bitten into a state of pulped tomato. He was last seen being picked by the South African police Special Branch. His mother could not even recognize him, and lost her will to live afterwards, looking at us with accusing eyes, as if it was our fault we didn’t instead of her son. She died seven years later of a heart related problem. Until 1997 when houses in the area were demolished for RDP houses, her house remained empty and unclaimed. No one wanted to be associated with the house termed ‘death house’.
There was in our township something close to a celebration of death; a weekend without one was strange, even unbelievable. Modes of dying included being robbed, or even dying at the hands of those you loved, what today is termed domestic violence. There was a general anarchical break of law and moral accountability. The Afrikaner poetess and author of the grim book titled Country of my Skull, Antjie Krog, gave our township, Mlungisi in Queenstown, an invidious honour of being the first place where the necklace was used. My memory of what happened in our streets then concurs with this conclusion.
Of course we blamed the apartheid government, more for institutionalized and state violence. The more we struggled against violence the more we seemed vulnerable from the criminal element, state propagated and otherwise. We tried our best to let the immediate and outside world to hear our cry, but none cared enough to come to our rescue. Then a strange thing happened. The country gained its political independence in 1994. State violence subsided while social crime gained confidence to attack suburbs and business area. We started seeing stories of criminal element in public spaces like media, a novel and belated praecipe indeed.
This did not mean criminals gave the township a break; they still harassed us like before and more. But we all agreed then that criminals were enemies of us all, and the development of the country at large. We started seeing more police visibility in our townships that was not only concerned with political activists. It was not enough of course, but it demonstrated a political will to tackle the scourge. It made us feel our lives mattered too, and make us feel we were not treated like schlock. But the scourge continued to rise unabated. Up to this day township denizens are the worse affected by crime, but less vocal, call it fatalism or adjustment to occupational hazard, or whatever you like.
Then another strange thing happened. Nelson Mandela put down the reigns as the president, handing them to Thabo Mbeki. Within no time the criminal element was no longer just an enemy of us all, but a fault of government. Arguments were made that the government was not treating the matter as an emergency. People, white folks mostly, started asking if the solution was not in declaring national state of emergency. Naturally, those of who grew up on the conditions of abuse that comes with state emergency are opposed to this solution.
By Thabo Mbeki’s second tenure crime was no longer just a government’s fault but that of the president. The president was termed a denialist. Again we tried to follow the argument. In the end the real crime of the president was what was called a defiant non-sympathetic mood against the citizenry that was suffering consequences of crime—the hidden one being the fact that he has become the boogey man of imperialist hegemony, and scapegoat of everything that goes wrong in the country.
In no time it became clear the country didn’t have the best police force in the world; but there is evidence also that most policemen are of average courage and integrity, under appreciated and poorly paid. But the evidence of corruption against some of them prevails and feeds the pessimistic mood against the police force in general. This prompted the president to call us, with some justification, “. . . spokespersons of doom or cheerleaders of bad news.”
The truth of the matter is that the scourge of crime affects us all. It has been a rude wakening for those who spent their lives in this country in comfortable cocoons into the realization that this country was founded, and still subsists, on abnormality. It also gives those made impotent by their prejudices and political dispossession, together with the rest of opportunist doomsayer footlickers, to spew invective in attempt to catch the coattails of liberal specious enlightenment, a handle to beat the government by. Crime has been used, especially by white South Africans, as means to discredit the present South African, and cry wolf for a failing state in the offing.
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, 07 March 2008
Times Are a Changing
Something new is happening in the new age politics of the world, from Europe’s biggest economies (Germany and France) to populist local movements of Latin America. The Zeitgeist is towards more left-leaning corrective measures to the glut of capitalist greed. Political leaders of our age are discovering the hard way that people’s Weltanschauug has turned against insatiable pursuit of profits, and tired of business as usual mentality. They are demanding real change which the politicians ignore at their own peril. The casualties range from the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder whose welfare reforms cost him job in 2005 to our own out going president Thabo Mbeki.
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, to offset internal criticism in his country, opted to take the route of industrial protectionism as measure for reviving France’s economy, instead of following the US model. He calls it “Economic Patriotism.” What these leaders are discovering is that to ignore one’s constituency on excuses of imperatives of globalism is detrimental in democratic dispensation.
Germany’s new leftist party is growing fast on the anti-supercapitalist ticket, finding support even among mainstream circles of civil society and parliamentarians. It gains support largely from the resentment of globalization and the country’s reaction against right-wing demagoguery and xenophobia.
Venezuela is the typical example of the present Latinist popular politics. Before it was dominated by two official parties who represented the interests of the wealthiest Venezuelans, but ignored the needs of the 80% who were living in poverty until the firebrand Hugo Chavez was elected as a president. Chavez was elected by a due coalition of popular forces that rejected “business as usual”. Subsequently, Corporate influence, in secret coalition with corrupt union leaders, tried to overthrow Chavez in 2002. Masses of Venezuelan people took to the streets to defend their democracy. Since then Venezuelans have time and again re-elected Chavez with growing majority on every election.
Chavez derives his popularity from the fact that he has given Venezuelan communities direct power to administer their own social programs. His government supports community cooperative enterprises—from worker-run factories, to thousands of other community driven cooperatives. He uses profits from the country’s natural wealth to support these cooperatives. Oil money to diversify the economy, improve agrarian participation for ordinary citizens, and to provide them with efficient public health system.
Chavez’s success comes from his espousing of participatory democracy, i.e. maximizing the direct involvement of communities, rather than minimizing it as bureaucracy of government officials of representative democracy tend to do. Of course Chavez has his short-comings, like a tendency to suppress voices of dissent, and his bunker mentality towards the media. He could also show better concern for environmental issues. But to say he’s an enemy of democracy is disingenuous.
A lot of hypocritical democrats, who though not having any problem with 85% wealth of the nations being controlled by only 8 % elite hands, see what Chavez does as chauvinistic and curtailment of freedom of free market system. We all know by now the fallacy of the invisible hand of the markets having a corrective effect. In effect we’ve been waiting for it since the inception of capitalist system.
The major attraction of free markets is that they create wealth that underwrites democratic political participation. The success China’s economy and India has broken down even this correlation between free markets and plural politics from both ends. Wealth also is supposed to create and sustain organizations and groups independent of the government: business, trade unions and professional associations. Globalisation, at its present form, clearly violates this notion. In short, free market is fast loosing its endearing traits.
What is becoming clear is that Global markets have unleashed economic forces that are becoming too powerful for democratic institutions to control. The free markets have created “supercapitalism” that is suppressing democracy. Instead of leading to free societies, supercapitalism is constraining the power of people to achieve their civic and personal goals. This is the growing opinion even amongst leading economics, and the likes of Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor and now professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley.
Reich argues that social responsibility by global cooperation is not enough to offset the corrosive effect of supercapitalism on individual freedom and national sovereignty of the countries. But the blame does not only lie with supercapitalism. In Zimbabwe, for instance, democracy has enabled a culture of impunity on long time serving leaders. In South Asia democracy has been derailed by dynastic politics, where political trust depends on patronage based on personalities and elite class rather than institutions of civil liberty. So local culture and habits are not always good for democracy either when not informed by forces of enlightenment.
In theory, global ‘trade should drive down corruption, nepotism, gate-keeping and market distortions of all kinds.’ But in fact it is otherwise. The irony is that, with all the rhetoric of free market competition, often you find its just a masks for private monopolies. It does not take a genius to see that behind the façade of boastful competition of free market often lies a world of inequality and domination by few elite groups or families. While praising the competitive market, those who actually work the marketplace specialize in mergers and acquisitions, takeovers and cartels, liquidations and ¬sell¬offs that are designed to curtail free competition.
Real democrats, as now emerging in European countries like Germany and France, see through all this farce. Wealth is hardly produced these days, but reshuffled and expropriated. Real competition is avoided, and the risk in whose name profit is supposedly earned, is socialized. Taxpayers are now and again compelled to bail out corporate failures, while profits, though no longer earned by taking real risks, are kept private, reserved for shareholders and overpaid corporate managers. Deregulation, said to enhance competition, in reality has entrenched price fixing, like recently in bread industry in our country. And deregulation facilitates cartels and the kinds of monopoly we see on Microsoft “bundling” for instance.
In developing countries, especially, many of the public goods that citizens require for their freedom to thrive, such as public education, environmental protection and social insurance, are in scarce supply. Developing states lack revenue to offer citizens assurances of equity or security, thus the logic of the free market, which endows global brands with tools that poorly organized and diffuse citizens or civic society lack, sets the economic policies. These countries are overwhelmed by the enormous lobbying power of global companies into towing the line of free market system designed for the vested interests of the companies.
The solution then does not lie only on free markets that are speciously supposed to create pathways into liberalization of political expression, or local culture, but on a working mixture of these. Local culture must feed on global democracy and freedom without necessarily shedding its local responsibilities. The idea here is to maintain the level of democracy and national freedom that trade openness tends to violate by careless pursuit of profits. To introduce corrective measures for democratic stability against increased inequality that global big companies disrupt.
That is what is happening in counties like Germany, France; to a radical effect in Venezuela, and gradually South Africa. Whether you call this left-leaning or developmental state is just semantics. In the end countries are forced to offset bad elements of the enormous lobbying power of global big business, not only to protect their citizenry, but for the sake of saving the wonderful production system capitalism, and better wealth distribution.
What is certain is that, as President Thabo Mbeki declared, it can no longer be business as usual for any country. Times are a changing. The world majority is waking up, and shedding the ransoming chains by the elite few who happen to have shares they expect ridiculous profits on.
In our country, for instance, there’s a constant blackmail by business class of threatening to take their business elsewhere whenever the government does not comply with their demands. My take is that in democratic dispensations everyone has right to go and take their business wherever they like. It probably, in the long run, is better when we rid ourselves of parasites who operates in the name of business. Sure a loss of business is painful for any economy, but we are better off allowing the storm to shake off few bad apples from the tree so that their decomposition may facilitate more trees to fill the orchard.
To their surprise they might discover that the world over is changing. Young people of the world, especially, seek, not necessary a new world order, but to purify the best of what we already have. Some tend to call themselves environmentalists, others new socialists, but what’s common with them is dissatisfaction with the status quo of business as usual. The candidate for US presidency, senate Barack Obama is riding on the same wave.
There is no question about it, the growing preoccupation with consumption, economic growth, and meaningless pursuit of wealth has subverted our search for authenticity and self-realisation. But people are slowly waking up to reality, and realisation that you need to give a little to take a little. The new world demands sacrifice, responsibility, respect for the dignity of the other, education to make better choices, and, of course a patriotic sense of pride for one’s identity and country. Are we up to the challenge?
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, to offset internal criticism in his country, opted to take the route of industrial protectionism as measure for reviving France’s economy, instead of following the US model. He calls it “Economic Patriotism.” What these leaders are discovering is that to ignore one’s constituency on excuses of imperatives of globalism is detrimental in democratic dispensation.
Germany’s new leftist party is growing fast on the anti-supercapitalist ticket, finding support even among mainstream circles of civil society and parliamentarians. It gains support largely from the resentment of globalization and the country’s reaction against right-wing demagoguery and xenophobia.
Venezuela is the typical example of the present Latinist popular politics. Before it was dominated by two official parties who represented the interests of the wealthiest Venezuelans, but ignored the needs of the 80% who were living in poverty until the firebrand Hugo Chavez was elected as a president. Chavez was elected by a due coalition of popular forces that rejected “business as usual”. Subsequently, Corporate influence, in secret coalition with corrupt union leaders, tried to overthrow Chavez in 2002. Masses of Venezuelan people took to the streets to defend their democracy. Since then Venezuelans have time and again re-elected Chavez with growing majority on every election.
Chavez derives his popularity from the fact that he has given Venezuelan communities direct power to administer their own social programs. His government supports community cooperative enterprises—from worker-run factories, to thousands of other community driven cooperatives. He uses profits from the country’s natural wealth to support these cooperatives. Oil money to diversify the economy, improve agrarian participation for ordinary citizens, and to provide them with efficient public health system.
Chavez’s success comes from his espousing of participatory democracy, i.e. maximizing the direct involvement of communities, rather than minimizing it as bureaucracy of government officials of representative democracy tend to do. Of course Chavez has his short-comings, like a tendency to suppress voices of dissent, and his bunker mentality towards the media. He could also show better concern for environmental issues. But to say he’s an enemy of democracy is disingenuous.
A lot of hypocritical democrats, who though not having any problem with 85% wealth of the nations being controlled by only 8 % elite hands, see what Chavez does as chauvinistic and curtailment of freedom of free market system. We all know by now the fallacy of the invisible hand of the markets having a corrective effect. In effect we’ve been waiting for it since the inception of capitalist system.
The major attraction of free markets is that they create wealth that underwrites democratic political participation. The success China’s economy and India has broken down even this correlation between free markets and plural politics from both ends. Wealth also is supposed to create and sustain organizations and groups independent of the government: business, trade unions and professional associations. Globalisation, at its present form, clearly violates this notion. In short, free market is fast loosing its endearing traits.
What is becoming clear is that Global markets have unleashed economic forces that are becoming too powerful for democratic institutions to control. The free markets have created “supercapitalism” that is suppressing democracy. Instead of leading to free societies, supercapitalism is constraining the power of people to achieve their civic and personal goals. This is the growing opinion even amongst leading economics, and the likes of Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor and now professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley.
Reich argues that social responsibility by global cooperation is not enough to offset the corrosive effect of supercapitalism on individual freedom and national sovereignty of the countries. But the blame does not only lie with supercapitalism. In Zimbabwe, for instance, democracy has enabled a culture of impunity on long time serving leaders. In South Asia democracy has been derailed by dynastic politics, where political trust depends on patronage based on personalities and elite class rather than institutions of civil liberty. So local culture and habits are not always good for democracy either when not informed by forces of enlightenment.
In theory, global ‘trade should drive down corruption, nepotism, gate-keeping and market distortions of all kinds.’ But in fact it is otherwise. The irony is that, with all the rhetoric of free market competition, often you find its just a masks for private monopolies. It does not take a genius to see that behind the façade of boastful competition of free market often lies a world of inequality and domination by few elite groups or families. While praising the competitive market, those who actually work the marketplace specialize in mergers and acquisitions, takeovers and cartels, liquidations and ¬sell¬offs that are designed to curtail free competition.
Real democrats, as now emerging in European countries like Germany and France, see through all this farce. Wealth is hardly produced these days, but reshuffled and expropriated. Real competition is avoided, and the risk in whose name profit is supposedly earned, is socialized. Taxpayers are now and again compelled to bail out corporate failures, while profits, though no longer earned by taking real risks, are kept private, reserved for shareholders and overpaid corporate managers. Deregulation, said to enhance competition, in reality has entrenched price fixing, like recently in bread industry in our country. And deregulation facilitates cartels and the kinds of monopoly we see on Microsoft “bundling” for instance.
In developing countries, especially, many of the public goods that citizens require for their freedom to thrive, such as public education, environmental protection and social insurance, are in scarce supply. Developing states lack revenue to offer citizens assurances of equity or security, thus the logic of the free market, which endows global brands with tools that poorly organized and diffuse citizens or civic society lack, sets the economic policies. These countries are overwhelmed by the enormous lobbying power of global companies into towing the line of free market system designed for the vested interests of the companies.
The solution then does not lie only on free markets that are speciously supposed to create pathways into liberalization of political expression, or local culture, but on a working mixture of these. Local culture must feed on global democracy and freedom without necessarily shedding its local responsibilities. The idea here is to maintain the level of democracy and national freedom that trade openness tends to violate by careless pursuit of profits. To introduce corrective measures for democratic stability against increased inequality that global big companies disrupt.
That is what is happening in counties like Germany, France; to a radical effect in Venezuela, and gradually South Africa. Whether you call this left-leaning or developmental state is just semantics. In the end countries are forced to offset bad elements of the enormous lobbying power of global big business, not only to protect their citizenry, but for the sake of saving the wonderful production system capitalism, and better wealth distribution.
What is certain is that, as President Thabo Mbeki declared, it can no longer be business as usual for any country. Times are a changing. The world majority is waking up, and shedding the ransoming chains by the elite few who happen to have shares they expect ridiculous profits on.
In our country, for instance, there’s a constant blackmail by business class of threatening to take their business elsewhere whenever the government does not comply with their demands. My take is that in democratic dispensations everyone has right to go and take their business wherever they like. It probably, in the long run, is better when we rid ourselves of parasites who operates in the name of business. Sure a loss of business is painful for any economy, but we are better off allowing the storm to shake off few bad apples from the tree so that their decomposition may facilitate more trees to fill the orchard.
To their surprise they might discover that the world over is changing. Young people of the world, especially, seek, not necessary a new world order, but to purify the best of what we already have. Some tend to call themselves environmentalists, others new socialists, but what’s common with them is dissatisfaction with the status quo of business as usual. The candidate for US presidency, senate Barack Obama is riding on the same wave.
There is no question about it, the growing preoccupation with consumption, economic growth, and meaningless pursuit of wealth has subverted our search for authenticity and self-realisation. But people are slowly waking up to reality, and realisation that you need to give a little to take a little. The new world demands sacrifice, responsibility, respect for the dignity of the other, education to make better choices, and, of course a patriotic sense of pride for one’s identity and country. Are we up to the challenge?
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