kameraad mhambi

Image by albert bredenhann via Flickr

Last year (2008) left Mhambi feeling a bietjie bitter.

I felt betrayed, and it’s not the first time I put my hopes in the politicians of the ANC only to have them dashed.

This time, instead of anger, a kind of numbness has settled on my inherently cheerful disposition.

Loving South Africa is like having an affair with a passionate, gorgeous, complicated woman.

No – more like a woman with a violent cruel schizophrenic tic. Yes, that’s right – this is the stuff of a fatal attraction.

Some of her lovers are fleeing.

But many of them are in denial. Just the other day I met one – a journalist with a prominent paper nogal – fresh out of South Africa.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked.

“I am not leaving South Africa. I just want to see the world” came the rapid fire response. A tell tale denial I tell you. He doth protest too much.

The question was innocent, I was really interested in what job he had secured in a fast sinking UK economy. But to white South Africans questions about what and where is riddled with a very real existential identity crisis.

The year started off so promising.

The imperious and disastrous presidency of Thabo Mbeki was shown the door when he was not re-elected in Polokwane as the ANC leader. I tuned into SAFM and my heart skipped a beat when the defeat of Mbeki was announced.

It was Steven Friedman who had alerted us in September 2006 to what he called the opening up of public debate. This opening up that came with the friction and questioning of sacred ANC orthodoxy as the Zuma camp dared to go up against Mbeki.

“It is hard to imagine a series of events which hold so much democratic promise. A pattern of loyalty to authority figures has suddenly given way to one in which leaders face new demands to account for what they do and say.”

When Mbeki lost commentators like Anton Habour agreed that its good for South African democracy. Our mistress was opening up at last.

Friedman did warn even way back then that the Zuma camp were no angels. In the unlikely event they ever got the upper hand there were clear dangers:

“…excitement at democracy’s gathering strength is tempered by the knowledge that all these events are centred around a campaign to ensure that an individual becomes president — and that the campaign has been accompanied by less democratic tendencies, such as hostility to the media, refusal to accept the accountability of politicians to the law, and disregard for women’s dignity and rights.

This raises the uncomfortable possibility that the support for difference and democracy we have seen these past few days is not an attempt to make leaders more accountable, but to switch authority from one leadership figure to another.”

But I thought. The horse has bolted.

Attacks on democracy

Friedman’s warning could not have prepared me for the banal attacks on the judiciary and constitutional institutions by the likes of Cosatu head Zwelinzima Vavi and SA Communist party chief Blade Nizimande. There were many in 2008.

How odd that in a coalition with a broad mandate like the tri-partite alliance – and which should have many potential leaders – and with a country with such intractable social problems, keeping Jacob Zuma from facing a trial for corruption is the main concern of both these gents.

I felt conflicted. The organisations they represent, yes – even the Communist party – has a proud heritage in ending apartheid and establishing a platform – the new constitution. And with that they created the potential for a more just South Africa.

Julius Malema, the belligerent ANC youth leader was worse than Vavi or Nzimande. He was a man I had already discounted as a young, but dangerous fool. But discounting Malema did not help. Malema also came with dollops of collateral disappointment.

Why?

It came from the lack of a real and clear repudiation by Jacob Zuma himself and other senior ANC leaders (like Gwede Mantashe) of Malema’s violent bouts of verbal diarrhea. Yes, I expected that. What a fool I am.

It is this lack of statesmanship by Zuma in the face of the rising wave shrill attacks on the foundation of our democratic dispensation which gnawed on me all year.

The real ill – the arms deal

Truth be told these attacks were in fact the symptoms of the real malaise afflicting our beloved country. A malaise which Zuma or the ANC had not addressed.

And what is this? It is what veteran journalist Alistair Sparks called the ’serialised scandal’ that has become a new phenomenon in our public life – the infamous arms deal.

Sparks points out that many voices of moral authority – like Desmond Tutu – have called for a commission of inquiry into the deal. But that this will in all likelyhood be ignored.

“There will be no commission of inquiry because only the president can appoint one and President Kgalema Motlanthe dare not do so. He was not elected by the people of SA but was “deployed” to the job by the leadership of the ANC, which means that if he displeases that leadership they can “recall” him as they did Thabo Mbeki.”

Ah Motlanthe!

He was yet another of the 2008’s disappointments.

Sparks points out something rather obvious that should make all ANC supporters mortified.

“Think back to the great Information Scandal. Muldergate. A puny affair in both moral and monetary terms compared with the arms deal, but it brought down the Vorster government. John Vorster, he of the 90-day and 180-day detention laws, the creator of BOSS and the condoner of torture, the most feared man of his time, was kicked upstairs into a ceremonial presidency while his two cohorts, Connie Mulder and Eschel Rhoodie, were dismissed into obscurity. There was justice and closure in those evil times.”

It is at these times where we reflect on our past and draw comparisons that we realise how far we have strayed from the stated course. It is at these times that a person like me has creeping doubts – a traitors heart – about the very basis of the struggle against apartheid.

Something to hold onto

But early on in 2008 signs of the continued South African Prague Spring wafted through the balmy air. Vusi Pikoli – the head of the national prosecuting authority (NPA) – decided to charge Jackie Selebi, the National Police Commissioner and Mbeki ally, with corruption.

Pikoli was promptly suspended from his post. This suspension was a more accurate signal of the real nature of the year to come.

It’s no wonder one grasps at straws – or a now apparent straw man. I did. We had raised our hopes because of the appointment of Kgalema Motlanthe as the countries president after the Nicolson Judgement that ended Mbeki’s tenure.

But he made little impact on the ANC’s continued slide into a cynical moral nihilism. When the first real hurdle came he flunked it.

Vusi Pikoli appears to be one of the very few public officials left who discharged his duties without fear or favour as the constitution required. A rare black South African with both power, courage and integrity. Motlanthe confirmed his suspension by firing him.

The most likely explanation? The South African prosecutors office could not possibly have such an independent minded chap at the helm. Not at a time when the ANC is desperately seeking to keep one person from appearing before the courts. It would be so convenient if a pliable ja-broer was head of the NPA.

Afrikaner racists

As the year progressed a couple of students of the University of the Free State filmed a highly objectionable video, humiliating unwitting and trusting university workers the students apparently knew well.

The event prompted me to write on the peculiar nature of Afrikaner racism. One of the better things I have written so far. But for all Cosatu’s huffing and puffing about the incident and coverage in the international media the event was a sideshow.

2008 was also the year when police entered white middleclass South Africa’s lives in a way they have done to black South Africa (and black foreigners) for generations: As thugs.

Where’s the power to the people – Infrastructure failure

And we were hardly into 2008 when it dawned on South Africans that the countries power network had suffered from years of under investment and incompetent management.

Later on in the year the theme of crumbling infrastructure was revived when a CSIR scientist delivered a paper that claimed the country faces a water disaster.

False dawn in Zimbabwe

We thought, and the BBC had forecast that 2008 will be the year where we will see the back of Robert Mugabe. And hope upon hope, the new openess in South Africa played its part.

South African doc workers made us all proud when they blocked an arms shipment, approved by Mbeki, from China to Zimbawe. And the Zuma camp made promising anti-Mugabe nioses.

And in spite of massive intimidation Mugabe was indeed beaten at the polls.

But a new dawn it was still not to be. A new election was called and Mugabe stood unchalleneged. A deadlock which is still unpicked.

It was around this time that Ferial Hafagee, editor of the Mail and Guardian wrote what is to my mind a short but one of the articles asking the most difficult questions about the current state of South Africa. The arguments of the John Pilgers and Patrick Bonds of the world that apartheid did not die is wrong she said. Were not still beholden to colonialism and apartheid even if:

‘In real terms household incomes have come down. Our Gini coefficient, the measure of the wealth gap, is now the highest in the world, an ignominious honour that we spend far too little time understanding and fighting.

Our children are less bright in the freedom years, our schools possibly worse than they were under the dead hand of Bantustan administrators. Our public hospitals are so bad that not a single provincial minister of health uses them.

Awful, all of it. The reasons for this are more complex than a simple pretence that the change of power did not happen in 1994.

To revert to simplistic analysis is to eschew accountability from the democratically elected government or to understand freedom and its constraints.‘

With more news of friends thinking of leaving South Africa and Israel’s 60th birthday I received an angry response from an Afrikaner at my AWB bashing. It set me thinking a depressing thought: What’s better – Moving into a volkstaat or immigrating?

Xenophobia – and the man from Bakerton

2008 came to be the year when years of xenophobic violence against foreigners finally made the national and international headlines.

The killings came to the center of Johannesburg and it could no longer be ignored. It threatened to spiral out of control. Commentators quickly lined up with ready made answers as to what transpired. Self hate was one explanation.

Others have embellished on similar prosaic themes: It’s due to poverty, increased inequality, rising food prices, followed closely by government neglect and widespread corruption by the state when dealing with township dwellers. I endorsed and still do endorse these views to an extent.

Another view was expressed by the likes of Rhoda Kadalie. Kadalie argues that black South Africa has clothed themselves as perpetual victims which makes them oblivious to their own hate. Foreigners that are successful threaten this victim edifice.

Some pointed at a nation brutalised by apartheid. Xolela Mangcu reckoned the nature of the violence is the ANC’s fault for using and creating a theatrical and terrifying form of violence to attain political hegemony.

Nationalism the double edged sword

But there was also signs that South Africans were being nationalistic.

Yes, faced with its ugly self madame South Africa made what I detected as frigtening but perhaps curiously also encouraging noises. It was the best and worst of times.

I have long argued that one of the things the new South Africa lacks is nationalism.

When Jacob Zuma visited the East Rand to calm the violence (Mbeki never did) he was in for a rude awakening, in a town hall in Bakerton:

“While the leader was loudly welcomed by the crowd — packed into a small community centre — he received an unusually tough response as members demanded the government deal with the influx of foreigners.

A young man shouting from the back of the hall urged Zuma to ensure government kept out foreigners from neighbouring countries.

“You talk to (Zimbabwe President Robert) Mugabe, you talk to (Mozambique President Armando) Guebuza. Tell them to tell their people they must not harass us in our country. This is our country.”

He said foreigners in the country were “riding on the gravy train”.

“We are looking to make you our president (in 2009 elections) so beware.

If you are a stumbling block, we are going to kick you away,” the man warned, as the crowd erupted with deafening support for the sentiments. (My emphasis)”

Ivor Chipkin, Wits Professor and author of Do South Africans Exist? roundly denounced African Nationalism in a commentary The curse of African nationalism. I wrote another piece warning that one should not confuse Thabo Mbeki’s racial Africanism with Nationalism.

What had transpired in Bakerton might be the sign that South Africa would never go the way of Zimbabwe. Ordinary South Africans will not let the government get away with it.

But the dangers inherent in this chauvinism were all to aparent as well. The murder of foreigners continued and other vulnerable groups likes gays and lesbians have continued to suffer.

To Cope – the best we can hope for?

When Judge Nicolson found that Thabo Mbeki had interferred with the NPA and that the Zuma trial therefore could not go ahead, things came to a head.

The Zuma ANC found the pretext to get rid of Mbeki as the countries president (having earlier lost his position as head of the ANC.) Mbeki gave a great speech when he left. Too little too late.

Good news immediately followed as Barbabra Hogan was appointed Health Minister, replacing Aids denialist and Mbeki confidant Manto Shabalala Msimang.

And so it came to pass that Terror Lekota and Sam Shilowa made noises about starting their own party. Archbishop Tutu lamented the impending split in the ANC when if fact it was a good thing.

But Lekota was Mbeki’s right hand man. Often he was a core part of the Mbeki team that silenced debate. Steven Friedman once called this “the right issues being raised by the wrong people”. True, but that’s beside the point I reassured myself. Lekota’s somewhat hypocritical political point scoring is politics as normal. This is how adversarial politics is supposed to work.

But as Cope was launched I was still left wondering who one should support.

Barack Obama set an example when he seemed to redeem the USA from its sad racial history. He and gave a dramatic victory speech I wondered:

“How much have we not lost since then with our cynical, divisive, denialist, inhuman, corrupt and racial politics? Can we get another chance?

South Africa needs a uniting inspirational figure like Mandela or Obama.”

Credit Crisis

2008 was also the year where massive economic storm clouds gathered, which South Africa initially weathered. But it will change the world. South Africa wont escape. But that will be the story of 2009.

This lover of madame South Africa has been hiding from her for years. Just nipping in and out to stay in touch, without having to directly deal with her many problems. 2008 was also the year when I thought, if I don’t go back to her now, I’ll never will.

Perhaps she’ll see me in 2009.

Related deployments:

1. Zapiro is guilty of being a cartoonist in South Africa
2. England and South Africa win the Ashes
3. The 74 Lions in South Africa
4. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 3)
5. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 2)