The Dream Deferred: Thabo Mbeki (Book Review)

One thing certain about Mark Gevisser biography of the incumbent president of Republic of South Africa, The Dream Deferred: Thabo Mbeki, is that it was well timed. It came out just at the time when the governing party of South Africa, ANC (African National Congress), went to it 52nd National Conference to elect its next president after Mbeki.

After more than a seven year immersion in relevant archives and travels on two continents (Africa and Europe) Gevisser’s biography is thoroughly researched, referencing, amateurish psychoanalytic, and none too innovative. From the beginning Gevissers tells us ‘This book demonstrates that if Mbeki has been driven by one overarching dream, it is that of self-determination—personal, political and psychological.’ Then he let’s that slips for Lanston Hughes’ poem as thesis and, sometimes, forced reference point.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
Like a syrup sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explodes?

Mbeki first publicly mentioned the poem in introducing ‘debate on reconciliation and nation-building in 1998.’ All things considered this should have worked well had Gevisser been more of a storyteller than a journalist, all be it a well read and competent one. Indeed the strong point of Gevisser’s book is the broadness by which he tells the story of the ANC, especially in exile, than anything else. The book is also a mine for post apartheid South African politics even if one gets the feeling Gevisser didn’t invest enough attention into South African early history, especially implications of Frontier and Colonial implications. That section sounds more like parachute journalism with dull and glum recycled notions of Xhosa, especially Mfengu, character makings.

Givisser is more into his element when talking about Mbeki’s political experience; in the end, not too shabby for a political biography. But Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred lacks the ruthlessness necessary to streamline Mbeki’s life into a functional narrative. There are vast stretches of prohibitive dryness and repetitive material that could surely been excised to bring down the 801 paged book into, at the least, half that. (I think there should be a law against writing books that are more than 500 hundred pages; no subject is that interesting).

Gevisser’s tone is that of investigative journalism, with literary nuggets there and there. It lacks informal anecdotes and titbits that make for entertaining read in lives of politicians. Though there are instances that beg for the raw venting of feelings and deeper delving into greasy facts (like reports of the president’s womanizing tendencies) the biographer chooses only suggestive implications, giving us too much muscle without fat. In fact Gavisser’s analysis of incidences around Mbeki’s life is most of the time flattering to the president with the notable exception of Aids dissidence case.

Gevisser, who was educated at Yale, concedes that the beginnings of the book were in his profile writings for a Sunday newspapers, coupled with inspiration he got from ‘Hermione Lee’s exceptional life of Virginia Woolf’. After that he immersed himself on intricate turns of Thabo Mbeki’s life, especially sources material instead of just printed material, hence his deep familiarity with his subject. The idea of a biography, he wrote to Mbeki when canvassing the book idea, was ‘a thesis, really, about biography as a tool for transformation.’ Mbeki bitted. Though Gevisser’s biography is competent in other ways, one can’t help judging it by higher standards of books like, Nicholl's The Lodger: Shakespeare, which introduced a far interesting paradigm shift on telling of familiar stories. Instead of telling a cradle to grave story, recent biographies concentrate on a certain episode that almost defines the life of its subject with web-like strands pinned into it like a pin centre. I was hopeful, after reading the book’s insightful introduction about what happened between Mbeki and Zuma, this might be the case with Gevisser’s book. For a moment I thought Gevisser was going to tell the story backward from the dissection of that incidence. Instead he chose Lanston Hughes poems, which to him expresses Thabo Mbeki’s lifetime dream and fears since he came to power.

*

Thabo Mvunyelwa Mbeki was born in 18 June 1942 (try finding that crucial information from the biography) at a little village called Mbewuleni. The village is in a small town of Idutywa in the former Bantustan of Transkie. His father, Govan Mbeki, was a prominent member of SACP and one of Rivonia treason trialist, with the likes of Nelson Mandela. Epainette Mbeki was left to provide for the family when Govan went to jail. Thabo had one elder sister, and two younger brothers, Moketsi and Jama (a lawyer who died under mysterious conditions connected to heat squad in Lesotho). It is obvious that Gevisser tells the story of Thabo through the eyes of Epainette, his mother most of the time, who is an obvious first and constant contact for the biographer.

Thabo was educated at Lovedale College, the first fountains of education for black people in the Southern Africa with missionary origins. He was involved in politics and was expelled from the institution. He went to Johannesburg where, through his father’s contacts he met (white) people who organised a scholarship for him to study economic at Sussex University, England. He graduated with Masters in Economics from Sussex and went for a soft military training in the Lenin Military Institution at Moscow. He married Zanele Dlamini whom he met in England through political connections with the Tambos. He worked as a de facto assistant and understudy of O.R. Tambo, the then president of ANC. Though based in Lusaka, Zambia, travelled the globe a lot doing underground ANC work.

Gevisser credits Thabo for being the voice of reason, against the popular but doomed military voice within Umkhonto Wesizwe (ANC’s military wing). At one time Thabo was suspected of being an informer (something very common among the comrades in those confused times). He was lucky to escape torture like many comrades who were suspected of being informers, thanks, most probably, to his close relation with Tambo. Thabo was also often accused of living a soft life as a de facto ANC foreign minister while the likes of Chris Hani were popular for their valour in the military frontiers. Gevisser intimates that this had a bad psychological effect in Thabo’s psyche before the years the ANC was unbanned in South Africa.

According to Gevisser, Thabo initiated talks with South African delegates, first with business people before the actual apartheid politicians. This was a very unpopular move within the ANC, and Gevisser says Tambo actually used Thabo to take the flack for it while he stood to reap the successes. The most difficult years for Mbeki, according to Gevisser, was when Thabo lost the lead of negotiating status to Cyril Ramaphosa, the upstart lawyer with no ANC pedigree within the ANC (Ramaphosa came through the United Democratic Movement that kept the fire of liberation struggle burning during the years when the ANC was in exile wilderness.) This, for Mbeki, were first sign of ‘a dream deferred’; he felt used and discarded. Gevisser suggests that his not so warm relation with Mandela began at this time. Mandela, who had serious political differences with Thabo’s father, Govan, initially was not keen in regarding Thabo as his successor, but was pressured into the position by the ANC leadership. Thus Thabo became the first deputy president of democratic South Africa, and four years later, its president, serving two terms (ten years) that end next year (2009).

*

In truth thare’s nothing much new in all this to those who have followed Mbeki’s life with a modicum of interest. What Gevisser did is to collect material into one source, which is no mean task on its own; in fact I dare say this is a defining book concerning the political life of Thabo Mbeki. What is regrettable is that the traits of Mbeki the man do not come through very clearly; in fact you’re sometimes at pains to find simple biographical facts like his birthday mentioned on the book. He makes much about Mbeki’s ‘disconnection’ from the general mass and lack of integration. ‘From a very young age, his response to this condition of disconnection had been to sublimate all emotions,’ writes Gevisser, ‘all relationships, all desires, into the struggle for liberation. He had long made a political career—unusual indeed for a freedom fighter—around pragmatism, but at his core he was a revolutionary idealist.’

Gevisser tries to go into depth about the unconscious distrustfulness and fear of white people against Thabo Mbeki but left this reader dissatisfied. In any case the real question about South Africa now is whether the country can go beyond politics of cultural difference or grievance and popular cynicism. The tendency so far has been for everyone to hope for winning anyone into their own point view so as to establish the hegemony of their political values. It stands to be seen which side compromise would come or be subverted. Jacabo Zuma is less rigid with his values, rather lack of, and so has become the favourite of everyone in the manner of a girl who puts out being a favourite of boys in High School.

As I’ve already indicated; Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deffered reads more like an extended newsaper feature than, say, a scholarly analysis. What jars most about it is psycho bubble and lunk of metaphors, well suited for platitudinous theorising, but a little cloying for a 801 paged book. Another thing I noticed about the book is that it kept promising that soone or later a putsh of some sort would happen, that you’d rich its nadir, but for some reason you never get the satisfaction of doing so. More like make love without reaching orgasim, or a thud sneeze. But in this age when memoirs of aggrievement climb into a crowded genre of no literature ability in political writing this is a better book.

The centre of African National Congress political infighting will not old

I’ve a friend in NYC (US) who, after seeing scenes of masses taking to the streets in support of JZ’s (Jacob Zuma) case emailed to ask for my personal opinion. I told him it was more of the glue failing to hold inside the ANC than anything, and tried to convince myself that it does not affect me. I was about to narrate to him how the whole cleavage was between the formally educated and self-made man within the ANC; something that’s always been the undertone tension within the organisation even while it was in exile, but stopped myself. Who am I kidding? Whatever mess these people make will affect me directly. Now is not the time for sterile history lessons and chose to be honest instead.

The situation within the ANC, I told him, has necessitated their men of goodwill, like Mandela, to remind of the crucial need for unity, and preach on the cardinal virtues of justice, courage, self-restraint, and wisdom, but those things are out of business in the organisation. Everything has gone topsy-turvy. Their clever politicians are fighting out a Hegelian tragedy—where the causes are more about hubris and pride and both sides stand on the limited right. Accusations of state institutions being used to fight political battles are thrown; and autocratic means of secrecy, speed and tact used to plot the downfall of JZ. But JZ is doing everything in his power not disqualify, at the least delay, his opportunity to test the truth of allegations against him tested in the courts of law.

In all that ordinary people have become outdated and the constitution of the country is being stretched to near breaking point. Everybody, the accused and the accusers, complain that justice is being perverted. One thing clear is that, as the ancient Greek, Thrasymachus, would say, justice is become the interest of the stronger. Debates are given to that the effect of giving legal respectability to wickedness and corrupt tendencies of powerful men in the name of democracy and to the disadvantage of common good. Justice court judges are under imposed duress of JZ supporters who, as they say, are dancing war cries and ‘ready to kill for Zuma’.

Everywhere they step comrades are treading on each other’s corns while trying to save false public face. The only people who have courage are those of coarse fibre and vulgar minds who foolishly tend to run risks that are beyond their resources. Ignorance has become a passionate weapon to silence the enlightened. Youth leaders, with bloated faces from too much whiskey and matshisa inyama (braai vleis) rely on the assistance of ignorance and dangerous ambition to intimidate the president of the republic with obvious reluctance from his leaders to discipline him. Self-restraint is seen as a weakness. Pusillanimous caution is how those already in government strive to advance their careerism and keep their jobs by being silent. The term, kunqilwa ophetheyo [you kowtow before the one in power] is thrown around with proud braggadocio for material greed and gain. Power has become the measure of all things. And wealth the new sign of comradeship. Other animals are more equal than others, and law is relevant because it must serve the animals, not the other way round. The pigs are walking on their hind legs.

There was a time when political wisdom was means by which wool was pulled over our eyes. Now there’s dearth of well turned phrases that used to ravish us into acquiescence. Wisdom, in political arena, is rare as hen’s tooth. Things that require skills of creation lay dormant. Since the whirlwind has hit our shores we’ve been seeing a lot of isisila senkukhu [hen’s tail]. Men we took to be of great ability have recently been seen toyi-toying, like on pulled strings, outsides courts for their compromised king. Trade unionist who once took impartial view of things have revealed themselves to be nothing more than wishing to be kingmakers and intimidate to submission those who ‘don’t tow the line’. And moribund former soldiers of Umkhonto Wesizwe took the opportunity to be on the lime light by promoting violent views if JZ lost his case.

That is what is called democracy these days in our shores; the threatening overthrow of democracy by the tyranny of the masses. The saddest part is how those who should know better within the party have decided to thrown in the towel. Suddenly, since JZ took power, their private affairs seem more interesting and exacting. They’re, one by one, withdrawing from public life to go plant cabbages leaving a general political lethargy where the ignorant gain confidence and the enlightened loose the nerve. Things fall apart, and the centre cannot hold, to paraphrase the poet.

I’ve lived with a declining and harried hope that whatever is wrong inside the ANC they’re sensible enough never to allow it to negate the revolutionary gains of our past. I thought the prevalent cancer was benign. It looks like it’s malignant. Every revolution contains within itself the pull towards its own demise, the philosopher says. It looks like ours, unfortunately, is no exception to the rule, as we had hoped. The situation is no longer about knocking a few holes against the party walls of the ruling party, it is getting dire.

Unfortunately the present political oppositions do not stand a chance against the ANC, even in a wounded state. What is needed is a Mass Movement of Democratic Union (MMDU), made of all civil minded people who see where the country is headed under the present leadership of the ANC, to come together under one umbrella. The choices are simple, continue bickering, living in the wilderness, or shamefully hoping you’ll forever compromise your principles by, well, ukubusa ophetheyo; or organise. Battles in a democracy are won by political organisation. Or, at this rate, we just must loose everything we hold dear, including meaningful effectiveness of our cherished constitution.
In spite of few outstanding instances of moderation and true nobility, I say with this due consideration and deep commiseration; we are in the whole on the melancholy track of degeneration and under the stress of civil conflict. Personally, I stand with those who stand by our constitution.

The Dizzying Circles

Recently, Trevor Manuel, the Minister of Finance, writing in Cape Times (Monday, July, 7, 2008), invited our nation (South Africa) to enter into dialogue with him about an age old issue that has baffled almost all economic studies: How do you make a country’s economy grow? Or rather, in our case, as the minister pointed out; how do you make an economy grow in broadband extent that puts serious dent on unemployment and poverty? There have been innumerable studies about how to make a country’s economy grow since the moral philosopher (no he was not an economist, the field had not even been devised by then) Adam Smith, wrote The Wealth of Nations.

Studies mostly look at fiscal policies; others to the relationship between free trade and economic growth. By now the only thing clear is that neither free trade nor protectionism is a cure-all. Some thinkers are even starting to think the field of Economics is more masquillage than real scientific study. Our Minister of Finance seems to still have confidence in what he calls mixed economic policies. In closer scrutiny mixed policies is more or less an arbitrary term that means different things to different people. That, of course, is the ANC trump card, pragmatism and manufacturing illusions of debate while luring your opponent by subjunctive means to your point of view. Still, let’s give the minister a benefit of doubt in any case.

I can forsee Zwelizima Vavi of COSATU (after his preoccupation with march action against food price rises, and dying for Msholozi) contribution. He’d say; foreign investment is crucial for the growth of any economy; but no economy has ever been developed by foreign investment. Foreign investors are like bees; attracted only by blooming flowers that need cross-pollination, but will be on the first flight at first signs of nectar drying up. Private investors, the unionist will declare. Especially foreign ones, are impatient and unwilling to sacrifice immediate returns for future gains. They will not take risks on new industries or poor countries, at least not in the absence of some other advantage (like tariff protection or government subsidy). So the government must come up with aggressive government policies designed to protect and nurture domestic economy.

Heaven forbids, a professor of Economics somewhere will say. There is not even a guarantee that when governments create protective umbrellas—via tariffs, subsidies, restrictions on imports, etc—for domestic companies, these will have a chance over time to become globally competitive, thus raising the level of prosperity of the country as a whole. He will remind us that these umbrellas have costs because they raise prices for domestic consumers, and often cut off access to better and cheaper foreign goods. Can future economic growth of the country justify the present suffering of consumers? The prof will ask, and conclude. The ideal here is to find a balance, and then like our minister, be a little vague on the specifics.

No, no! Dr. Balde Nzimande of SACP will say. It is a fact that history tells us is free trade and free markets are more of a bane to developing countries than a boon. And those rich countries that insist poorer ones should follow neoliberal prescriptions are hypocrites, insisting on solutions they themselves did not follow at this stage of their development. They’re still doing it now; look at how they still protect their vulnerable industries, like farming, from global competition. They believe in free trade only where they have competitive advantage. No country can ever develop meaningfully without state owner¬ship of enterprises. What’s needed is for the government to give our own manufacturers an edge by protection. This will allow our country to ascend to the economic ladder so that we can eventually compete with wealthier nations. Learn from China people.

Nonsense, Helene Zillie of the DA would say. The wealth of any nation depends largely on Intangible Capital; that is skills of the populations and the quality of the country’s institutions supporting economic activity. Any country that does not adequately deal with these two issues might as well forget about any economic development. Most rich countries, for instance, in proportion to their overall wealth, have very little natural wealth; yet they use it efficiently for high production, thanks largely to skills and transparency. They find it easier to attract foreign capital because of trustworthy institutions of economic activity, like civil society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights, and effective government. Leave business alone, promote free trade, and all shall be added. By the way, I’ve been reading, rather my researchers, the laureate for Economics (1976), Milton Friedman. I think he had pretty good ideas. Why not we just abolition the Reserve Bank and replace its control over interest rates and the money supply with a mechanical rule for monetary growth. And, eh, if you want all that, vote for the DA. We shall show you how to manage the economy with clear decisive hand that benefits all.

Enraged and perspiring, the Reserve Bank will, recalling something he read in the Newsweek by Melville J. Ulmer, come shouting. What we’re trying to do in our country, he’d say, the exponent of laissez-faire economics cannot appreciate, because they ‘oppose government activity of practically all kinds. If it were up to them ‘[they] would abolish virtually all regulations on industry, working conditions, and the professions.’ Despite the blunders of Thatcherism ‘[They] would turn over to private industry the nation’s schools, highways, federal parks, the post office and all other publicly operated services like water supply, local buses and subways.... [They] would terminate all government efforts to stabilize the economy through fiscal and monetary policies, public works or other means.’ They would abolish worker’s unions because they say they help cartelize industry to the detriment of consumer. They would even rubbish the idea of “corporate responsibility”.

A researcher in the Finance ministry department, seating on a cold room, will recall being impressed with Friedman’s book, Capitalism and Freedom, even if it was worse on other issues. He’ll recall how the apostle of “monetarism” (the idea that changes in the money supply are the prime causes of inflation and the business cycle) thought even if “fiscal policy could have some useful effects, there’s no reason to believe government managers could use the policy at the right times and in the proper amounts to achieve the desired effect.” By an argument that fiscal manipulations tend to introduce “a largely random disturbance that is simply added to other disturbances.” He’ll impress his ideas on the minister who’ll immediately call a meeting with the Governor. The Governor, who’s a little obsessed with the Keynesian notion of fiscal policy as government’s best tool to manage the economy, will reluctantly agree. The question is, the Governor would ask, how do we put this in a revolutionary language that’s acceptable to Blade and Vavi. Live that to me, the Minister will say, and duty the researcher to pen an article for him and they send it to the media. The media will want to know how JZ (Jacob Zuma) sees the issue and will be told; “We’ve all confidence in cde Trevor.”

Madiba!!! (Nelson Mandela is 90)

I recently found myself in a rather animated conversation as we watched on television Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday Bash held in London, England. The bone of contention involved Mandela’s legacy in Africa. Actually I had started the argument by recalling how once when I was still a varsity student in Jo’burg I met my Madiaba on my way to a vending machine in mid (must have been mid because I remember the night as being quite cold) of 1992.
While passing the long deserted passage through the main entrance of Great Hall to Senate House, where the vending machines were, I was suddenly shoved aside by rude gigantic, mostly white men, in black suites. Before I was able to realise what was happening Madiba came to view. He had apparently noticed how the men had rudely shoved me out of the way. He broke with the procession, extended his hand in greeting to me. I just froze, afraid the security men might not allow it.
“Hallow young man. What is your name?” He said in that hoarse, almost shrill voice of his. I was dumbfounded. He asked me also what I was studying, and when I told him he said in conclusion. “Good! The country needs people to build this country.” The encounter must have lasted less than 20 seconds but I never forgot it. Unfortunately for my ego, none of my friends believed me when I told them I had just met Mandela. I don’t know, but for some reason I felt distant from them and no longer in need to prove myself after.
As I was saying, the argument with my friends was about how black people, especially in Africa, respect the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Aimé Césaire, Julius Nyerere, Thabo Mbeki, even Robert Mugabe more. The trend was mentioning presidents who happened to be intellectuals. But where did their intellectualism lead us? I pointed to the mess that drove Ghana into Nkrumah’s assignation and military coup after another. I recalled what happened in Tanzania when Ujama failed. Say nothing of present Zimbabwe. In conclusion I said I prefer presidents who are leaders than visionaries. Visionaries tend to be blind to anything outside their vision, and usually ruthless in pursuing their vision.
“What has Mandela done since he came out of jail.” One of my friends asked. “We all know he was just a ceremonious president, with Zizi (T. Mbeki) playing his prime minister and running the show.” He nearly got me there. I recalled how in 1990 we travelled from Jo’burg to Cape Town to listen to Madiba’s first speech since coming out of jail. All our difficult lives in the township we had idealised the moment of Mandela’s coming out of jail as the day of our liberty. We thought he would come sounding trumpet blast with explosive wisdom from all the years he (they) spent in contemplation of our future in jail. To say his speech leaved much to be desired that day is to be respectful. I was awfully disappointed.
But what is Mandela’s legacy?
For me it is seeing a helpless person being shoved around and taking time to reassure them that they matter. It is not intellectualising or moralizing about this or that, but having a heart in a right place, and inviting others to share in the aura of goodness by spontaneous generosity. It is not the aesthetic pleasure of philosophical musing, but life given meaning by ability to forgive, to extend your hand even to your enemies and shame them by goodness if need be. When your heart is in the wrong place, all the education you acquire affords nothing, except you end up being a contradiction even to your own mind.
I’m lucky enough to come from a (African) culture that values what’s in your heart more than what’s in your head. My head has been trained in Western education—I’ll admit to regarding it as a better way of living an authenticity life until, with maturity, I became appalled by some of its falsified posturing and too individualist way of life masquerading as enlightenment. I’ve since strived to liberate my mind both from Western excesses and African atavistic oppressions.
My friend says my choosing Madiba as my best African leader of all time is a symptom of having fallen for ‘white trickery’, what he termed ‘Mandela Cult’. They’ve claimed him away from us. I do not mind that if it is our goodness they’ve claimed. I get the feeling that my friend confuses eloquence with truth. I’ve read enough to discover how sometimes learned men use charm of elegantly arranged words to collapse truth to the fascination superficial charisma; that used to be called sowing silk over sackcloth. I’ll rather be a priest in the Madiba oracle than a malleable automaton in quibbling visions that loose their saltiness with passing years.
Ngxatsho ke tata uMadiba, siyabulela, for all you’ve given up for the freedom of all of us. Now at last, I too, am able to extend my hand to you.
Fourscore and ten, you are very strong tata. But then again the lime quarries of Robben Island knew that already when they could not prevail over you. Ahh! Dalibhunga!!! Madiba omhle!

Writing As the Culture of Celebrity

I first attended the Cape Town Book Fair at the Convention Centre last year (2007). It gave me a sinking feeling that writers were fast becoming what Susan Sontag called “an aspect of the culture of celebrity”. Artists entering the celebrity cult? Of course artists too are people (people who happen to remember and record in a wonderfully transmuted way what make for our life experiences). They make art by depicting the nuances of our lived experiences, something that is rare and cannot be contrived. But why they should be compelled to behave like jobbing preachers is something worrying.

This year I found most people commenting what a good thing the direction of South African writing has taken, with writers ‘telling personal stories more’ as compared to political novels. At first I concurred, but when I read what this entailed in our recent literature I got concerned a little again. When I discovered subjectivism was being made the pinnacle of personal narrative I recalled something Hans Jonas Paton said in criticising existentialist philosophy. “We should be particularly on our guard when the guide makes no pretence at objective thinking, which stands or falls by the argument independently of the personality of the thinker, but rests his case on the inwardness of his own personal experience. . .”

The complaint here is that of making an individual the measure of all things.

Celebrity is a contrived thing, which is why I’m surprised by this trend of artists entering the glamour culture. It can only mean one or two things; that our art is getting contrived—meaning it’s no longer art—or commodified. The commodification of art is a sad but necessary thing in an imperfect world (artists have to make a living too). But there’s difference between commodifying and commercialising art.

A commercial artist is like a performing seal that must do tricks to satisfy the feeding hand. Have artists been turned (turning themselves) into performers? Some do it because they are searching, not only for commercial gain, but mana—power and prestige. I do not suppose there ever was time when artists were indifferent to ambition and fame, but, unlike our times, they always regarded art first and foremost as a calling, or at least pretended to be disdainful of the hype.

I’m not trying to be pious about distant glories, but the truth of the matter is that hype is usually accompanied by poor writing standards. When I mentioned this to a colleague he accused me of being finicky. He was glad writers were getting what he termed ‘the seriousness they deserve.’

Writing as a celebrity cult is different from the ideal of writers being taken seriously. As much as it is always wonderful to meet good writers it is a rare thing to meet them among the celebrity lot, who are mostly celebrated for one thing or the other, but not necessary good writing. Celebrity authors are treated in these Book Fairs like pop stars, and sadly, they turn to behave like some. Book Fairs are now fast becoming parties where writers are solely judged by how much personality fun they dish to visitors. I’m flabbergasted by the flamboyant superficiality of it all.

Writers are not public utility. Their work might be but not their persons.

In her essay on translation, The World as India, Susan Sontag noted. “A writer is first of all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short. It is from reading, even before writing, that I became part of a community—the community of literature—which includes more dead than living writers.”

As writer-reader I’m daily finding that good books are becoming rarer by the day the more the quantity of publication increases. It is still possible to find nuggets of gold among the rabble, but gone are the days when writers percolated what they wanted to say, and the style by which they say it. Books now compete with other stuff of our instant culture. As the result one rarely finds a book that is elegantly written, charming, candid, mordant, and so on. In instead you find yourself glad at the end for having managed to finish a book; rejoicing with Dr. Johnson that it was not longer than it actually was.

It is said of Edmund Wilson that, as his reputation grew, he printed up a postcard that he sent to those who requested his services. On it he checked the appropriate box: Edmund Wilson does not write articles or books on order; he does not write forewords or introductions, does not give interviews or appear on television, and does not participate in symposia. Perhaps it is time contemporary writers rediscover the wisdom in this so as to get back to serious stuff of writing books, good books.

As for subjectivism in literature, it has contributed a lot in the protection and enhancement of our common humanity. The psychological brooding yielded many fresh and penetrating insights, and gave us more understanding of individual pathos; but it mastered the Hegelian concept of synthesis between the self and the external world to an extent of cloying hallucinatory tinge.

The problem with individual centred starting-point in literature and philosophy is that it tends to show less appreciation for other things, like history. It tends to run riot with morbid forms of subjectivism and individualism; looking only at the personal side of life with unduly anthropomorphic understanding of reality. When a man is isolated as a centre of interests he tends to see himself, and those who share his point of view, as the highest and authentic forms of existence. That’s dangerous narcissism.

Unhealthy intensity of subjectivism promotes anti-socialism, elitism, and escape from necessary collision with history. Every country, every nation, needs means to collide with its past. Escapism promoted by subjectivism avoids this to the detriment of discursive art. Present day German art is good example of a nation trying to grapple with it’s demons through what they call Bildung; that is an engagement of history through art, philosophy and learning in general. Perhaps the South African ideal for literature too should be of that lot, especially since we too have many skeletons on our closet.

The Rot is settling in

It was always going to be a long day. My colleague had phoned to inform me there might be a chance of getting a glimpse of the ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe; "Perhaps we might be lucky to get an interview." I knew chances were slim for that but wanted to see if there was a way we could at least by pass the gatekeepers and schedule one with the SG.

I spent the night before wondering about a best angle to catch the attention of the SG without raising his irk—he is notorious for not suffering fools gladly, which is perhaps why I think he might be ANC's hope in the present mayhem of YL leaders speaking with their foot on the mount. I even contemplated using the little personal information of where he went to school, as told by my aunt who says she was with him in bygone days at Cala in the Eastern Cape. Talk about desperate measures.



It is clear that things are going to the dogs within the ANC as far as discipline is concerned. The ANCYL leadership especially is bent on dragging the organization towards a militant tone. "We're following the legacy of the organization." As its president Julius Malema clumsily put it. The Secretary General of COSATU, Zwelinzima Vavi, never one to shy away from controversy, joined the chorus of what most of us initially dismissed as the howling of the firebrand youth.



So I spent the night before formulating my questions, anticipating his answers so as to compel him into taking a clear stance on the issue. I imagined the SG saying, in his brash finger pointing manner; "You see, the political activism of our people taught the youth to give faith in theatricals, sometimes chaotic confrontations, as source of getting attention denied by apartheid authority. We grew with the ideology of unconstrained voluntarism, triumphalism of political will. Unfortunately because our leaders were mostly in jail or in exile we tended to lack in discipline and ethical standards, as you and would clearly remember from Consumer Boycotts in Queenstown that sometimes had tragic consequences. We grew with contemptuous disregard for authority and exaggerated regard in forceful democratic processes. With adventurist willingness to engage in violence that provokes crises of making the country ungovernable. The consequent is the legacy of militant behaviour noticeable in our youth. What is important now is to instil the realisation in our youth especially that lorhulument ngowabo [this government is theirs]. If they want to engage it with something there are proper legitimate chanells."

My aim was in making him realise that the ANC administration he's part of has come to power in that militant youth ticket, how do they suppose now they can clamp what has put them into power. Needless to say we never got near the SG. As I walked back between Company Gardens and Parliament that wet and cold Cape Town late afternoon I was visited still by more thought. An old Oak tree lay uprooted on Parliament flower garden, having just missed the marble statue of Princess Victoria in its fall from the rot. I wondered if this was some kind of prophecy. I recalled with repugnance that an exact replica stands before Main Library entrance at Port Elizabeth. Victoria stands, bloated with imperialism, a rod in one hand container of burning incense on the other. It was hard to miss the intended implications from Psalm 2: Thou shall break them with a rod of iron, thou shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. I recalled how always despised that implication when entering the library to research the Frontier history at the Africana section. The boulder dashed into pieces, in my mind, by Victoria was the Xhosa nation.



The wind was coming in front. It felt as though I was carrying zinc sheets on my head, as the Xhosa proverb goes. I think, when the doors of opportunity opened (freedom) for black South Africans, it found the very values necessary for success—thrift, self-control and personal responsibility— dispensed by culture of greed, euphemistically called ambition. This introduced brèche , a rupture with the continuity of history, especially in organizations like the ANC (African National Congress). The consequence of which are empty howling vessels like Malema, the rot gnawing at the roots of ANC.



What is this thing Malema calls the legacy of ANCYL? A passage in Mike Gevisser's book The Dream Deffered: Thabo Mbeki, came to mind. 'And so after a long dormancy in the 1920s and 1930s, African nationalist politics gathered new energy: the ANC Youth League was formed in 1943, attracting angry young men such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. The League's prime mover was Anton Lembede, a brilliant young lawyer with stern morals and evangelical tendencies, who saw redemption for his people in return to African values.' [pp 37]



Stern morals? How does Malema measure on that? Is this the legacy he's talking about? True, the ANCYL has always had an oedipal paradigm (reaction of radical resentment against characterized backwardness of their leadership) towards the progress of their political movement. That's how the likes of Nelson Mandela and O.R. Thambo shot into prominence. The advantage of Mandela's coevals is that they took time to educate themselves, politically and otherwise. Barabula. How does Mamela measure on that, since he's proud of being the present carrier of their baton? Not only that, past ANCYL leadership tended to hold in high regard good ethical standards.

Today's youth, the likes of Malema, capitalize on ignorance, irrationality, careerism, consumerism, drunkenness, driving flashy cars, and so forth. They are typical stereotype of backward evolution of what J.M. Coetzee in his novel, Age of Iron expressed as; '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.' The sad part is that rest of the organisation too is hollowing out. The party's hierarchy has lost coherence and control of its own apparatus. What undermines is the present leadership is being blackmailed by the militant wing it came to power on its ticket, coupled with lack of ideas in handling the root causes of the country's tremendous challenges.

Post 1994 ANC politics made an error of focusing on tactics at the expense of vision; of not grooming the next generation leadership as O.R. Tambo did with the likes of T. Mbeki. To compound ANC problems is the present influence of its gate-crusher later-day millionaires who are determined to make themselves electable through their pockets. They themselves do see much beyond the next contested seat, and have little idea how to transform politics by means of ideas. Hence lack of political substance will probably complete the rot of the party. Where their ideas are not anachronistic they are poorly thought out, uninformed and mostly radically inconsistent. It looks like the time for a 'revolution' founded on a philosophy of history was over. I wonder what Mantashe mean to do about that? Meantime, as we are prevented from asking relevant questions, the rot is settling and taking root fast.

The Brink of Prejudice

I'm often fascinated at how people who write about President Thabo Mbeki always end up putting on a fool's hat with a bell (revealing more about themselves than their subject). Dr. Xolela Mangcu, in his book To The Brink: The State of our Democracy, is no exception. At the beginning he informs us that the book came out of his urgent need to rescue black intellectual tradition from violation (the book does betray urgent composition). By whom? Who else, but the convenient scapegoat of all our failures and mediocrity, Thabo Mbeki.



Dr. Mangcu dedicates about three thirds of the book trying to convince us that President Mbeki is the architect of violation against black intellectuals. He says 'our heritage of racial syncretism is being overwhelmed by racial nativism that has taken hold of our political culture under President Thabo Mbeki's rule.' And explains racial syncretism as 'a dynamic process of identity formation that have always underpinned black people's encounter with European modernity . . .' Not feeling any wiser for reading this definition of racial syncretism I decided to look up the word on the dictionary. Syncretism: an inconsistent attempt to unify or reconcile differing school of thoughts. Inconsistent attempt being the operative word here.



What is 'racial nativism'? Dr. Mangcu explains it as that which 'harkens to purist essential conceptions of identity', and requires one have 'black skin' or must have 'participated in the liberation struggle to overcome apartheid.' He says its qualifications that 'provide one with exclusive license to speak or banish those with opposing views . . . as if those who participated in that struggle have a monopoly on wisdom and morality.' Monopoly on wisdom and morality ? The phrase is very telling. It was used (Dr. Mangcu reworked it a little and neglects to tell us) by Steve Biko to define "the characteristic arrogance of assuming a 'monopoly on intelligence and moral judgement'" [my emphasis ] of white liberals whom he said made themselves 'self-appointed trustees of black interests . . .' Are we to assume in reading this that Dr. Mangcu is revealing that what he despises is the fact that President Mbeki has made himself a self-appointed trustee of black interests?



Often, very often, when I read Dr. Mangcu's newspaper articles I wished he would write a book, to give himself better platform of elucidating his views. I always felt his articles to be superfluous at best, and facile at worst, something I thought was due to space limitations of newspapers columns. Now that his book is out I see it is actually Dr. Mangcu's writing style that's the problem, together with his irritating inability of making a point without throwing confetti of quotations. Dr. Mangcu's thinking is tangential, tedious in telling, and generates more heat than light.



He tells us that the book 'is not a collection of the newspaper columns . . .' Well, what do you call a book littered on every chapter with an average of two long excerpts—sometimes you get as much as four—from past newspaper columns? Such things are telling of the urgency by which the book was composed. Dr. Mangcu bakes and eats his own cake by commenting on his commentary. He's more in dialogue with himself, and gives an impression of being impressed with his own erudite voice.



My favourite Chapter in the book is the first one; titled, Bearing Witness. It is a personal memoir and general summary of Xhosa intellectual heritage. On it Dr. Mangcu manages to be more coherent even if he almost spoils the authentic voice with a self-aggrandising tone. I also do not understand why Dr. Mangcu, being Xhosa speaking, felt the need to follow Noel Mostert's less than discriminating use of the word amakholwa (religious believers) where he means amagqobhoka (assimilators of Western culture that might include or not include belief). I know this is a petty grievance, but precision in meaning is helped in transmission by maximum modality.



After the first chapter Dr. Mangcu dedicates three thirds of the book brandishing his axe to grind against President Mbeki. Very little of it is new from the bells and whistles of what Dr. Mangcu and the rest of Mbeki's detractors in the media have already said ad nauseam: Aids denailism, Zimbabwe, Corruption, Stalinism, Zanufication of the ANC, and so on. Only Dr. Mangcu comes now with an impression of an intellectual Hercules cleansing our Aegean political stables. But each time you follow his argument closer you discover its cloth is hung on a peg of received opinions.



Dr. Mangcu says, for instance, that he has 'frequently suggested that Mbeki's behaviour gives a sense of someone who feels betrayed—betrayed by the white liberal and business community who fêted him lavish reception when he came back from exile and black intellectuals who failed to come to his defence during the troubled relations with the media and white society more broadly.' How he fails to correlate this sense of betrayal with his late doyen, Steve Biko, who wrote, in his seminal paper, White Racism and Black Consciousness (delivered at inter-racial conference in Cape Town in 1971) beats me. Biko felt 'the myth of integration as propounded under the banner of liberal ideology must be cracked and killed because it makes people believe that something is being done when in reality the artificially integrated circles are a soporific to the blacks, while salving the conscience of the guilt-stricken white.' [I Write What I Like: pp 70]



What is the value of racial syncretism ? Dr. Mangcu does not say in clear terms; he's more concerned with racial nativism. Biko, anticipated Mangcu's concern in answering advocate Soggot, on his last trial; '. . . it is not our intention to generate a feeling of anti-whitism amongst our members. We're merely forced by historic considerations to recognise the fact that we cannot plan side by side with people who participate in their exclusive pool of privileges, to make share that both privileges are shared. We don't believe—we don't have faith in them anymore, that they are willing to share with us without any form of . . .' So, would Biko be more of Mbeki gestalt or Mangcu today if he were alive? It does not matter.



What is obviously clear, which Dr. Mangcu sees but refuses to follow to its logical conclusion, is that Mbeki started his struggle against apartheid in high hopes of multiracialism and became disillusioned along the way, which probably is what has made him seem more radically black-conscious as the years of our democratic freedom pass. Dr. Mangcu on the other hand started on radical black conscious thought and grew more malleable towards racial pragmatism with post apartheid South Africa. Which position between them is better justified by our history and status quo is matter of interpretation, and, frankly, sometimes I suspect, individual privilege. But it cannot be one's multiracialism must be measured by how many white / black friends one keeps, otherwise many of us would fail the test in this country.



It is too convenient for the likes of Dr. Mangcu to make one person a scapegoat for almost everything that has gone wrong in our country in the last decade or so. Surely the ANC government made some mistakes under the leadership of Mbeki, some even deserving our strongest condemnation, like the Aids controversial dilly-dallying. Mbeki's overly 'Orwellian' sensitivity to political criticism is also founded; as is his impotent arrogance about Zimbabwe, trying to charm a tyrant's heart, which is tragic when it is clearly not working. But to blame the unease with the rot of our national psyche, what Mangcu terms 'paranoid's nativism' to Mbeki is falling for temptation of vilification is simplifying matters. Dr. Mangcu on the later chapters of his book concedes that there's nothing pluralistic about South African denialist society that clot our deferential path towards a multiracial pluralistic society. But why is it 'racial nativism' when Mbeki says similar things it beats me.



There is, in Thabo Mbeki, a punctilious rationality that verges on Nietzschean brilliant insanity, which his detractors fail to tackle masterly. Not that one ever expects to get qualitative analysis from our media, but, for Christ sake, one would expect better than this combing asses' tails from people who write books, especially if they position themselves to be public intellectuals. Unfortunately, all you get in analyses of Mbeki's regime, are spurious geniality mingling with benevolence, distrusting tendencies denigrating to downright vilification; or excessive wheedling.



Dr. Mangcu's predictions about post-Polkwane directives mostly follow the direction of the birch, and sail a wrong tack; so I won't dwell on them. All the same, To The Brink: The State of our Democracy, is good gift for someone who has not been following what's happened in the country in the past few years. Those looking for better depth of our political analyses will not find a cygnet in its duckling. Its analysis lacks penetration, is mostly worn to buff with borrowed thought, and even lacks artistic vitality. At times it ranks of conjectural conspiracies. But its major short-coming is that it lacks coherent distinctive philosophical sensibility of well-thought-out views on the significant questions.

Happy birthday my dear angel daughter.

08/06/2008 is Loza's 9th birthday. I can't beleive how quickly time passes. It is almost a decade since she's come into my life. Feels only like yesterday I watched her tiny body at hospital in Port Elizabeth. Love has happened since.

Happy birthday my dear angel daughter. May you find the fulfilment you seek in life!

Back to the Basics

The Kafkaesque strain, running through Beckett to post-modern popular writers, like Coetzee, has ran its course. The idea of wrestling ‘fiction free from 19th-century constraints like plot and character, and to wrest objects free from imposed meaning’ [RACHEL DONADIO] has itself now become tired, gaping for fresh air. Reading the fast aging masters of post-everything style of literature with their dreamlike fragment of narrative characterization and existential doubt of navel gazing you see they’ve reached a certain degree of stagnation. Where then is the novel going from here?

Sartre’s desire, towards the end of his life, was to free us from our morbid internal lives. The glazed inward looking hero with mannerist poses of alienation and ‘nightmarishly looping, repetitive semi-narrative, drenched in incantatory.’ Despite Sartre’s wishes, the last century in literature has been of ‘master of aridity, cultivated cactuses.’ But without any doubt the age of 'psychological man,' the herd of loners in modern things, especially literature, is, in our era, on its way out. It has tiresomely proved the truth of ‘Tocqueville's observation that in modern times the average man is absorbed in a very puny object, himself, to the point of satiety.’

The rallying call in every literature convocation I attend these days is the return to the classics, hunger for universal inspiration and simplicity. As the result writers like Pushkin, with their staggering simplicity are back in vogue. Attractive stories now are those that deviate from linguistic juggling for preference that is uniquely spare, laconic, and all that traditional aesthetic once dubbed “minimalism”. As a fan of Classical Realism I must confess, I’m thrilled about this turn of events.

Classical Realism, down from the Greeks to the Latinists, rediscovered by the Renaissance, promulgated by the Beaux-Arts academies, nearly exterminated by the modernists is resurgent again. What is Classical Realism? It is the narrative style that puts high premium on observed reality, which sublimates emotion away from the sensational while admitting the tragic. It is a pressure point of experiences towards the renegotiation and re-examination of pact with tradition, the collective way things have always been done.

In the first half of the 20th century, for instance, English literature especially, was very narcissistic, focused mostly on itself, its language, its literary structures; hence was almost cut off from actual reality. Addressing true reality, asking political, social, economic questions, became taboo, unless one was blatantly of say, Marxist political school.
The turn into Classical Realism is present obvious with French literature, where scholarship is happily united with clear thinking and witty writing. I can think of recent books by Jonathan Littell, “Les Bienviellantes” [“The Kindly Ones”], and other works of contemporary French writers such as Annie Erneaux and Pascal Quignard. Here the novel is structured on traditional strictures of strong characters, melodramatic narrative that is not self-indulgent, is not be fictionalized reportage, whose large-scale story development has a central idea that holds it together. As the result you might find in them dramatized the same sort of dilemma, like life with narrowing options. But there are subtle differences of plot, tone, location, nuance and effect. Something you get from Virgil tackling the fall Troy, which though based on Homer’s Illiad, is obviously a complete different book.

Last year I attended, for the first time, Cape Town Book Fair. I found most commentators commenting that the good thing about the direction of South African writing is that people are “telling personal stories more” as compared to our past that was awashed with more political novels. I don’t dispute the merit of this, but get concerned when subjectivism becomes the pinnacle of personal stories.
Subjective literature has contributed a lot in the protection and enhancement of our common humanity. It’s psychological individual brooding yielded many fresh and penetrating insights, and gave us more understanding of individual pathos. But this individual centeredness is itself is starting to pall. It has mastered the Hegelian concept of synthesis between the self and the external world to an extent of cloying hallucinatory tinge.
Rushdie, who has suffered a lot in the hands of politics encroaching in literature, had this to say in his lecture recently at Stanford University; “At a time when politics invades so much the boundaries of ordinary life, going to the frontiers and pushing back is the . . . There is a thing in the novel that wants to be provincial and wants to be small, to be intimate, . . . wants to never lose sight of the human scale, but novelists in our time have been forced to do that.” All good. Rushdie ended the lecture by saying; “Great art tries to open the universe a little more, . . . increases, by some small amount, what it’s possible to know, do, say and, therefore, to be. And we can’t do that sitting in the middle.”
The complaint here is that of making an individual the measure of all things, as Hans Jonas Paton put it when criticising some existentialist philosophers. “We should be particularly on our guard when the guide makes no pretence at objective thinking, which stands or falls by the argument independently of the personality of the thinker, but rests his case on the inwardness of his own personal experience. . .”
The problem with individual centred starting-point for literature and philosophy is that it tends to show less appreciation for other things, like history. It tends to run riot with morbid forms of subjectivism and individualism; looking only at the night side of life with unduly anthropomorphic understanding of reality. When a man is isolated as a centre of interests he tends to see himself, and those who share his point of view, as the highest and authentic forms of existence. That’s dangerous narcissism that often leads to fascism.
Unhealthy subjectivism promotes anti-socialism, elitism, and escapist tendencies from necessary collision with reality. Every country, every nation, every individual needs means to collide with its own reality. Escapist subjectivism avoids this to the detriment of discursive art. [Present day German art is good example of a nation trying to grapple with it’s demons through what they call Bildung; an engagement of history through art, philosophy and learning in general.]

Alexandra Township, You’ve Shamed Us

I watch what’s happening in Alexandra township with deep shame and embarrassment for being a South African. Sadly I first saw these kinds of xenophobic attacks when I was still in Port Elizabeth in early 2004, and knew it’s just a matter of time before other townships explode in similar fashion since the Eastern Cape township seem to spawn everything that’ll happen on South African townships. Now that it has happened in Alex I cannot say I’m surprised but wish my fellow South Africans had proved my forebodings wrong.

It is no excuse, even insensitive, to say that when people are under a tight belt they’ll look for the closest convenient means to vent their anger on. We’ve been, as black township denizens, in situations more dire than the present food rises has put us to, but we’ve never, ever, been so foolish and cruel as to take it out on migrants who are already suffering under difficult conditions, far worse than we endure. We should be ashamed. It is part of our culture of Ubuntu to regard wonderers as messengers of God. Needless to say we’ve, in this, offended even the deity. To all the Zimbabweans, Malawians, Somalis, and even our own Vendas who has been affected by the cruel vulgarity happening at present in Alex township, South Africa’s father township, your pain is our shame as the majority of South Africans.