kameraad mhambi

Last Sunday, a South African Sunday paper published a homophobic polemic by John Qwelane. In it, Qwelane was asking for ‘a politician with balls’ to change the constitution to ban gay marriage and equating marrying a same sex partner with marrying a goat. He went on to praise Robert Mugabe’s stance towards gays.

It’s highly objectionable stuff, but in a country where gays are not tolerated and lesbians are regularly raped and tortured, it is grossly irresponsible as well.

On the Blacklooks blog some of these crimes against Lesbians have been documented.

‘Sizakele Sigasa, lesbian activist and outreach worker with the Positive Women’s Network (PWN), and her friend, Salome Masooa, were first tortured and then murdered.

Sizakele was found with her hands tied together by her underpants and her ankles tied together by her shoelaces, with three bullet holes in her head and three in her collarbone.

In June, Simangele Nhlapho , a member of a support group for women living with HIV run by PWN, was, along with her two year old daughter, raped and murdered. Her daughter’s legs were also broken. In April this year, 16 year-old Madoe Mafubedu, was raped and repeatedly stabbed until she died.’

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) reports on another case, the murder of former women’s national football team player Eudy Simelane. A case that really should have made the headlines:

‘The murder of Eudy Simelane 31-year-old Eudy Simelane former Banyana Banyana midfielder was gang raped and stabbed to death, last week Monday 28th of April 2007. Her body was laid to rest last week Sunday 4th of May. She was murdered in KwaTema, Ekurhuleni east of Johannesburg, returning home with friends from a tavern. She was confronted by a gang who allegedly gang raped and repeatedly stabbed her to death. Her half-naked body was found in a field near the hostel KwaThema last Tuesday.’

Mhambi is absolutely addicted to news. I read everything I can lay my hands on.

I was rather startled when I learned on the Constitutionally speaking blog of Eudy Simelane’s death, which was mentioned in response to the Qwelane article. Why did I not pickup on this? I Googled ‘Banyana Banyana murder’ and it soon became clear why. If you don’t follow the gay and the human rights press you would probably not have known about it.

Eudy Simelane’s murder was only a couple of days before South Africa’s recent bout of xenophobic violence in which at least 62 foreigners were killed. I had blogged about South Africa’s xenophobic murders for more than two years, and had been decrying the paltry press response.

Come to think of it. The reason I was well informed about the xenophobic murders was that I had heard allot about them from a friend working at Lawyers for Human Rights.

When compared to the blanket coverage of the local and international press reaction to the Skierlik shootings and especially the Reitz video abuse - cases where white’s were the perpetrators, the contrast in the coverage was striking.

It’s no secret that I think that whites, but Afrikaner’s in particular have been perpetually cast by the press as the bad guys in their South African narrative. That this twisted view of South Africa is harming the country and black South Africans themselves is a point I have tried to make again and again.

Eudy Simelane’s death was another case of where the manner of the murder and the profile of the victim should have reverberated around South Africa and the world. Yet it had’nt. Why is that?

Ivor Chipkin attempted an explanation in relation to the xenophobic violence. In an article titled The curse of African nationalism he said that one has to look deeper at the ideologies at work in our society.

One the ideological tenets of the Mbeki administration has been - “whites could not escape their racism” and from that followed “they could not be trusted in public life.” This is the essence of what the government transformation policy is said Chipkin.

This thinking is closely associated with “African nationalism” he added.

‘It is distinguished from the politics of non-racialism by its insistence that the post-apartheid government is a black government.’

And he diagnoses the negative fall out of this kind “African nationalism” (I disagree, I think its racially exclusive Africanism, but I digress).

The result of this is the dismissal of all criticism which is invariably equated as racism. And it works quite simply like this:

1. the government is a black government;
2. criticism of the government is, therefore, criticism of blacks; and
3. criticism is racist.

‘The inability to come to terms with the agency of black people is, ironically, the hallmark of African nationalism. It is driven to reduce the actions of blacks to the machinations of others (white racists, in particular). Claims of a “third force” are merely instances of this political logic — a refusal to come to terms with the racist nationalism of those committing ethnic cleansing throughout the country.’

Like I said, I don’t think this is African nationalism, but there certainly is an ideology at work here. And it’s not an ideology found only on our shores. It exists world wide but has a particular negative impact in this country where very real power are in the hands of black South Africans.

Ideology blinds people to their own deeply held beliefs an ideas. Pierre de Vos, Constitutional Law blogger, who roundly condemns Qwelane, but fails to see how his past utterances contribute to the problem is a case in point.

Pierre certainly is not an African Nationalist or a racial Africanist, but he is beholden to the general left discourse that invokes colonialism and apartheid as a matter of course and that still is widely accepted as gospel.

He like many other lefties (John Pilger’s recent weak explanation for the Mugabe phenomena springs to mind) regularly abrogates black agency and responsibility when seeking to explain South Africa’s and Africa ills.

I can demonstrate how self defeating these arguments can be.

In another article in April (before the publicised xenophobic violence) this year Pierre laments the sentencing of a number of Egyptain men for being gay and wondered why this is not covered in the press more widely.

‘Why do we not get to read about this flagrant abuse of human rights in our local papers? While the newspapers report every move from Zimbabwe, every farm invasion and every utterance from Mugabe’s thugs and while opposition parties and now even the ANC seems to be clamouring for President Mbeki to “do something” about Zimbabwe, there is not a peep from anyone about this scandalous abuse of the rights of innocent and defenseless individuals in another African country.’

In response at the time I commented that like the Egyptian case, the murder of South African farmers (as opposed to Zimbabwean farm evictions) and Somalis were not covered by the press either:

‘Pierre sometimes I think many South Africans including you are caught in a parallel universe of prejudice…

…even English speaking SA newspapers hardly cover SA farm murders so we cant expect UK ones to do so. Compare this to the farm murder in the Mark Scott-Crossley (who was white an accused) case. It was covered by every UK newspaper I could lay my hands on.

The relentless xenephobic killings of Somalis since 1997 in SA are a another case in point. How many serious reports can you find about that in SA or international newspapers. Very very few. Somalis dont matter to anyone it seems and besides they are being killed by blacks which makes for even more of a non story.’

To which he replied:

‘I for one would not choose to focus on farm murders in South Africa as I do not see it as a pressing human rights issue. This is because the farmers are NOT being persecuted or murdered by the state or agents of the state, but by fellow citizens completely independent of the state, they are not targeted because they form part of a group that have traditionally been marginalised and oppressed and the scale of the killings is modest compared to the kind of mass murder that happens in many parts of the world.’

I disagree. Like lesbians and foreigners, white farmers are a vulnerable minority. But the fact that their murders don’t get column inches in the newspapers is not a consequence of their identity.

It is a consequence of the identity of their attackers and the dominant discourse that seeks to consistently pin responsibility to western colonialism.

“A consequence of its legacy of white supremacy and apartheid”

When Googleling for information about the murder of lesbians in South Africa, I came across an American blog, named rather aptly - The Primary Contradiction. In a post titled ‘Rape and murder of South African lesbians‘ and tagged ‘white supremacy’ the following was written:

‘Like the United States, South Africa is a deeply misogynist, racist, and homophobic society, a consequence of its (our) legacy of white supremacy and apartheid. It has one of the highest per capita sexual violence rates in the world, and women who identify as lesbians or who are thought to be LGBT are routinely targeted for rape. Police are often unresponsive to this violence and insensitive to its victims. Perhaps not surprisingly, misogynist-homophobic violence often hits Black women and girls the hardest.

Despite the tremendous achievements that LBGT people have gained in South Africa over the years, most notably the legalization of same-sex marriage, homophobic hate crimes remain an ever-present threat in society, as they do here in the States. As people brainstorm strategies for combating the violence, the deeply entrenched remnants of colonialism that feed this violence cannot be ignored.’

Two commentators objected to the allusion that this hate crime was a white problem. A white South African lesbian who said as much were cast as subliminally racist by one Julian and Yolanda.

Lerato, a South African black lesbian countered:

‘It is clear that you have no idea of what is happening in South Africa. The girls in question were my friends.The were murdered and brutally raped by BLACKS!!!!! Like I was gang raped - by BLACKS!! As Landi said it was cultural. Before you want to lift your opinion you should understand my community, my culture! It is an insult in South Africa to be GAY! Let go of the old excuse of rasism. Not everything in the world is about rasism or the whites.The only place where we can truly be “Lesbians” are amongst the white gay people. Between the Blacks we get spat on. We focus on the problems that we face as gays not as blacks.’

Lerato’s opinion was promptly and condescendingly pooh-poohed. What blacks say and do are irrelevant to our ideologists.

The Yolanda’s and Julian’s on this blog are of the same ideological stripe as Pierre (if not as tolerant to diverging opinions). Their analysis is not only shallow and stale, it’s wrong.

If it was true that colonialism, and white racism is the genesis of homophobia, how strange that it is one of the countries which have suffered from the longest colonial histories in Africa and suffered apartheid on top of that, is South Africa. The only gay districts in the whole of Africa exist in South Africa.

But we can not gloat. There’s reason to be worried. Braamfontein’s scene - the gay area in Johannesburg - is no more. In Greenpoint Cape Town gay clubs and bars are closing. These dying gay districts are the canaries in the South African coal mine. They signal a democratic displacement from the cities and public spaces of South Africa.

Am I saying that African culture is intrinsically anti-gay? Despite most African clerics and African leaders saying as much, we can not be sure. I have read little academic studies on the matter.

Paternalistic and macho it is for sure, but so is Afrikaner culture. And Afrikaner culture has a rich body of gay literature, while camp artists like Nataniel are volksbesit in spite of the best efforts of some in the Afrikaner Nationalists.

Is the homophobia in SA today because of poverty or a lack of education? It probably plays a role. But there’s no escaping that South Africa’s black elite and middleclass have yet to condemn Qwelane. Just as when the likes of Xolela Mangcu had nothing to say about the xenophobic killings before it was impossible to ignore, I won’t hold my breath that they will now.

Acknowledging that there’s a problem and condemning South Africa’s Qwelane’s is an important condition to fighting homophobia.

But there are other big hurdles to cross. The biggest factor at play here is not the just unacknowledged intolerance and hate, but it is the inability of the state to provide protection. There are many homophobes the world over including Britain and the USA, but their gay communities are thriving.

One of the lessons the world will eventually learn from the South African experience is that the rule of law and effective policing can provide for a kind of democracy, even in an autocracy, that a broken and dysfunctional democracy can not. Just ask the women of Iraq.

There are a few Mandelas. The Hyde Park Mandela is one. It’s the Mandela of the West. The one that’s always got the most column inches.

This Mandela is a simplistic construction: A good man that fought unspeakable injustice in the form of racial oppression. He reconciled with and forgave what was essentially undeserving oppressors, and won a democratic and multi-racial future for South Africa.

Inside South Africa things ain’t that simple. Here we have other Mandelas.

Many of the leading lights of the ANC, the party he once lead, regard him at best as a dotting old timer, way past his revolutionary sell by date. At worst he is the embodiment of the one good native syndrome. This Mandela is not completely different form the first. This Mandela is the negative flip side of the simplistic hagiography that is his Western image.

The one good native syndrome is a belief that the West and many white, asian and coloured South Africans perpetuate the view that blacks are simply not up to the job of running a country. Bar the one good native: Nelson Mandela. This Mandela is great to his followers because he is the Afro-pessimist exception.

But for believers in the one good native syndrome Mandela comes with allot of negative baggage. An over emphasis on reconciliation at the expense of the maintenance of white privilege.

Thabo Mbeki is the prime believer in the one good native syndrome and as such has sought to undo much of what Mandela built. But there are others.

Zwelenzima Vavi, secretary general of the labour federation Cosatu recently referred to the South African Human Rights Commission as yesterday’s hero. The Commission, a product of the Mandela lead ANC is now a potential stumbling block to his ‘revolution’. Is Mandela by implication yesterday’s hero?

There are more subtle allusions to the over-sized fuss made of Mandela. Pierre de Vos, the popular law blogger on Constitutionally Speaking is a case in point. He wrote this week:

I was wondering though: what about all those other guys who were on Robben Island with Mandela, who have died or are now forgotten. Don’t they get a bit irritated that the chattering classes make such a fuss about Mandela while they do not warrant a mention?

Mandela is a remarkable man and we are an incredible lucky country to have such a leader. But many others also sacrificed to make freedom possible. We should not forget them.

There is also a Mandela that is a neo-liberal pawn. The Mandela that ditched the distributive Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) in favour of the business friendly Gear. The result, an entrenchment of a more insidious type of apartheid.

This Mandela exists in the minds of John Pilgers and Naomi Kleins the world over. And like the one good native Mandela, this Mandela was way too reconciliatory with the agents of neo liberalism - exploitative whites.

Fashion bad girl Naomi Cambell

The redemptive Mandela

It’s my contention that Mandela really is remarkable, and that much of the fuss about him is warranted. Not because he is a saint. But because his personal narrative is such a powerful human story of redemption. And stories are powerful.

Stories help us make sense of the world. They carry emotional weight. We remember them. The BBC ran a program on JACKANORY POLITICS. Looking at the narratives politicians like Bill Clinton projected they explained how all good and captivating stories share certain features and how powerful they can be.

All these features are present in the life of Mandela and in a way thats much larger than anything Clinton could boast. And its present in a way that’s far more real.

“They have the passion with which you tell them; a hero, which provides a point of view for your listener to make the story their own; a problem the hero is confronting; an antagonist - sometimes that’s personified as a villain but it’s really just an obstacle; a moment of awareness that allows the hero to overcome that obstacle; and the change that occurs.”

Mandela is a great character, somebody with flaws and human desires, someone with whom we can identify. He left his first wife, was a bit of a dandy - a lover of nice clothes and bling. He has always had an eye for beautiful women.

He loves to hob knob with celebrities (from David Beckham to the Queen) and has described meeting the Spice Girls as one of the greatest moments in his life.

He made plenty of mistakes.

He moved the ANC to what turned out to be an imprecise and shambolic armed struggle, something they were never good at, and which arguably now still leaves a negative legacy, contributing to South Africa’s violence.

Mandela was caught and put on trial and sent to prison.

But remarkable he is

But Mandela overcame all these considerable obstacles. Not least of which was his chief antagonist: Afrikaner racism and Afrikaner Nationalism and the system we built - apartheid.

Mandela also had a moment of awareness that paved the way for his success against all odds. And in the process he changed from young firebrand to agent of peace and reconciliation. And through it he changed South Africa.

It’s Mandela redemptive promise - not just his own - but the effect he has on others, that makes this him so powerful. This redemptive quality come in part from his history of suffering, and his personality.

Mandela is a remarkably positive individual. He believes that people are actually good. He also has a keen understanding of human nature, and unlike leaders like Mbeki, he has immense self belief freeing him to interact in ways other South African politicians have not been able to.

A number of incidents highlight this resilient and warm personality. Much have been written about the day during the Rugby World Cup Final in 1995 when he walked into the seething pit of Afrikaner and white power and had the crowd chanting his name. This was no isolated incident.

Below is a Radio 4 documentary of people that met Mandela. In one, an ex police body guard from the old police service tells how Mandela spontaneously walked up to a wide eyed police colonel on the day of his inauguration and told him: “You are now our police Colonel”. The Colonel proceeded to bowl his eyes out.

 

 Knowing Nelson Mandela: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zelda le Grange, an Afrikaner woman form Pretoria is Mandela’s personal assistant. The day they met is another case in point for Mandela’s redemptive power:

She had to find a job closer to home and a typist position became available in the president’s office, working not with Mandela but with his economics department, and she applied for it. But when she went for an interview at the Union Buildings she was buttonholed by Mandela’s private secretary, Mary Mxadana, who was desperate for people to work alongside her. Before she knew it, she had become a typist on the president’s personal staff.

‘I had been working there two weeks - this was in August 1994 - when I ran into him for the first time as I was going into Mary’s office to fetch a document. He came out as I entered and I shivered. By that time I had started reading a bit about him. I knew that he was a friendly man. I had seen him greeting other people, but I had never had any encounters with him. But then I ran into him, as I say, by accident and he started speaking Afrikaans to me, which I didn’t understand immediately because the last thing I expected was for him to speak in my own language to me. His Afrikaans was perfect but I was in such a state that I didn’t understand what he was saying. I was shivering.’

Why? ‘Because I was scared of him, not knowing what to expect of him, whether he was going to dismiss me, humiliate me … and instantly it was that feeling of guilt that all Afrikaners carry with them.’ Guilt? As regards black people in general, or him in particular? ‘No, him in particular, because you could see he wasn’t 60, he was 75 at the time, and you could see he was old and the thing that immediately crosses your mind is, “I sent this man to jail”. My people sent this man to jail! I was part of this even though I couldn’t vote. I was part of this, of taking from a person like him his whole life away. And then I started crying. And then he shook my hand, and he held my hand.

A month after the rugby world cup final Mandela decided to visit Betsy Verwoerd, HF Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid’s widow, in Orania.

Orania is a small white only Afrikaner community that set itself apart of the new South Africa. Betsy Verwoerd proceeded to read a prepared speech after she and Mandela had some tea and koeksisters in private. Beeld reported:

Tant Betsie het van ’n velletjie papier begin lees: “Baie dankie, meneer die president, dat . . . ” Toe begin die papier in haar hande bewe.

Madiba vat die papier sorgsaam vas en voltooi die sin: “ . . . u Orania besoek het”.

Aunt Betsie took the piece of paper and began to read: “Thank you very much, Mister President that… “. And then her piece of paper began to shake.

Madiba took a firm hold of the paper and completed the sentence: “… that you visited Orania.”

Mandela’s realisation

These were all examples of Mandela’s moment of awareness that came to him sometime during his time in prison. In an article this week Time Magazine identified this awareness when they remarked of Mandela:

Mandela understood that blacks and Afrikaners had something fundamental in common: Afrikaners believed themselves to be Africans as deeply as blacks did. He knew, too, that Afrikaners had been the victims of prejudice themselves: the British government and the white English settlers looked down on them. Afrikaners suffered from a cultural inferiority complex almost as much as blacks did.

It was this awareness that guided South Africa’s peaceful transition.

The redemptive power of Mandela at work has held this country together. Nobody knows this better than Afrikaners. He redeems no one as much as he does redeem us.

There was not one single reason that South Africa decided to invade Angola. There were a number.

Some historians have suggested that a series of escalating incidents drew the South Africans into the conflict. But this ignores that there were some over arching South African goals and one of them in particular - Afrikaner acceptance - swung Vorster into action.

The Swapo insurgency

South Africa had, since the first operation against Plan insurgents at Ongulumbashe in May 1966, been fighting a guerrilla war against Swapo. Swapo who formed in the 1950’s, was a typical black Nationalist movement fighthing for independence. In its case fighting for independence for South West Africa from South Africa.

It operated from Zambia via Angola. Importantly, one of the rebel groups battling the Portuguese in Angola, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, provided Swapo with sanctuary and support.

Unlike the ANC who had hardly attempted and failed in executing successful military incursions into South Africa, Swapo’s PLAN did it with increasing regularity and even sometimes successfully hit targets.

This was even more impressive in that Swapo managed their attacks while the Portuguese were still in control of Angola. The South African concern was that a black Angolan regime would only strengthen Swapo’s hand.

Calueque

On top of this South Africa had invested hundreds of millions of Rands into the building the Calueque hydro electric dam, a few kilometers into the Angolan border. The project had just been completed, but it was already supplying electricity to most of the Northern part of South West Africa. As the Portuguese commenced pulling out, South Africa sent troops to protect it.

A battle for infuence and oil

Both Russia, China and the US had long already backed two pro independence groups in Angola. The stakes were higher than for many other African countries, Angola it was thought was rich in minerals and had proven oil reserves.

The Russian’s backed the oldest movement, the MPLA. It was a Marxist liberation movement centered around the capital in Luanda, and as such had an intellectual base and included a number of mixed race Angolans.

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Both the Chinese and US had backed Holden Roberto’s FNLA, an movement with an ethnic support base in the Bakongo people found in the North of the country and in the then Zaire.

Jonas Savimbi, broke with the FNLA to create UNITA. UNITA was an ‘Africanist’ party emphasizing ethnic and rural rights in distinction to the urbanized Marxism of the ruling MPLA, but in reality represented one group: Ovimbundu. The Ovimbundu who lived in the center and South of the country was the largest ethnic group in Angola.

Both the US and China tried to court UNITA, both supplying weapons and funds.

Each of the three liberation movements had signed a peace agreement with Portugal recognizing that November 11 1975 would be Angola’s independence day. With Portugal out of the picture, the liberation movements turned on each other, fighting for control of Luanda and international recognition.

The MPLA was in pole position. And through further military successes, backed up by Soviet help, it was gaining ground.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was due to meet in November 1975 to clarify the situation. At this meeting Africa would accept and legitimise one of the rebel groups as the government of Angola.

It was in this environment that the US approached Pretoria to provide training and weapons to the FNLA and UNITA who had agreed to form a pact against the MPLA. They were due to attack the capital in a grand pincer movement from the North and South.

From a South Africa perspective such a pact backed by themselves would remove UNITA as a key Swapo ally.

But there was a more important consideration to Vorster.

Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko who was allied to the FNLA and underwritten by the US and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, who supported Savimbi, were also in on the deal. They were pressing for action. Vorster agreed.

Operation Savanna

And the plan? The plan was to ensure that the FNLA and UNITA not only became the de facto government in their territories, but to threaten Luanda so, that the OAU would be forced to recognise all three movements in a government of national unity.

To do this, the SADF decided to ship both canons and an artillery crew to the North of Angola via Cabinda, in order to support the FNLA. But at the same time also to invade with a strike force via the South. It was to push towards Luanda.

Is it the sumtotal of the factors mentioned above that swung Vorster in favour of war? Yes, but there was to his mind yet another more important opportunity.

Vorster had for some time tried desperately to woe African leaders like Kaunda. To him the key to Afrikaners survival in Africa was acceptance by Africa. He hoped to achieve thus through leaders like Kaunda.

It was for this reason that he gave up on Rhodesia’s Ian Smith. Vorster, virulently anti-British, was willing to sacrifice white Rhodesia - who he did not consider African - to save Afrikanerdom.

It was a chance for Afrikaners not to be seen as colonialists Vorster thought. He pointedly told his head of the army, General Constand Viljoen, that if Africa asks them to do something for them, then South Africa can’t say no.