Sunday Times Cocktail

 

I am an avid reader of Africa's best-selling newspaper.  One of my favorite preachers used to say that a Christian should have a Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.  Well, just as The Message is my favorite expression of scripture, the Sunday Times wins hands down for its insights.

Yesterday it contained various pieces that touched on three themes that are near and dear to me:

1. Inter-racial relations
2. Good governance
3. The key role of civil society in democratizing Africa

Barack Obama did me a huge favour this week.  I had been skeptical about him.  I could see that he was no Stokley Carmichael, so radicalism didn't worry me - but we hear the term “coconut” so often in Africa that I wondered if he had really come to terms with his identity of being both non-white and non-black.  Even his now-famous speech on Race didn't convince me entirely.  But this week, as I sat and watched the press conference in which he cut his ties with his former pastor, I was  moved.  He was dealing with a deep and confusing issue, and he did us proud.  He showed respect, angst and decisiveness, when most so-called “coconuts” will never lay their cards on the table.

I have written more than once about Malcolm X and how he tried to distance himself from the dogma of his own Nation of Islam – to his peril.  What Obama did takes guts.  I am so glad that I can now point to a more recent example than Malcolm X.  Fred Khumalo compared Obama to his former pastor: “The two men are, in real terms, not diametrically opposed in what they stand for.  The older man, through his left-leaning politics, is merely saying the US cannot and should not forget its past of slavery and of gross economic disparity between races.”

“He is saying the US's militaristic jingoism is a major problem, as it diverts money to fighting wars that could be better used to address poverty at home, education, housing and other social problems.”

“Obama, on the other hand, is young, informed by a non-racial heritage of having a black father and a white mother, and also by the optimism of youth.  But, as is evident in his speech, he is very aware of the US's ugly past and is equally opposed to his country's pugnacious foreign diplomacy.  Yet he emphasizes reconciliation and the need to start building on the present.”

“But the problem still remains: Obama is black in a predominantly white nation that is still distrustful of articulate, independent-minded, progressive, educated black men who do not simply go with the flow.” 

As a white person writing in a predominantly black nation, I empathize.  Andrew P Jones wrote in another article called There it is, in black and white: “The founding fathers of the US, themselves slave owners, understood that the nation they were building was capable of both significant good and evil.  They knew that for the fragile democracy to survive, great leaders would have to rise to the occasion of defending it, more often than not, against itself.  Less than 100 years after they forged their ideals into a constitution, Abraham Lincoln plunged the nation into a civil war, in part to free the slaves...”

“Condoleeza Rice is black, but her blackness is irrelevant to what she does, which is to serve the imperial interests of George W Bush.  Our candidate, on the other hand, stands as a symbol, in fact the most powerful symbol the country has right now, of what needs to be done right to correct what Bush has done wrong.”

Not only the USA is grappling with what to change, to get it right.  This week, party president Jacob Zuma was interviewed in London by R W Johnson, who in 1988 described Desmond Tutu as “a deliberate personification of the 'cheeky kaffir'.” Aside from Johnson being no friend of the ANC, one also has to remember that Zuma has been characterized as something of a chameleon – telling people what he thinks they want to hear.

Asked about affirmative action, this is what Zuma had to say: “We can't have a situation where some people are given jobs they're just not qualified to do, while those who are qualified are not allowed to work – that's unacceptable.”

What Zuma says is “unacceptable” is orthodoxy in South Africa today.  This fragile democracy just has to come to terms with the implications of its founding ideals.  When asked about Mbeki, he said: “He is a ruthless man, and he is thorough.”  This echoed the editorial by Mondli Makhanya: “It has been like this since those dramatic days in Polokwane, when what is now referred to as the 'old order' was swept aside by mass sentiment.  A new leadership was ushered in and immediately set about re-examining the doings of the old order.  In its utterances, the new leadership spoke as if it belonged to a different party from the old.”  This is a case of defending a country against itself.

Tokyo Sexwale is one of the top ANC leaders who influenced the “swing vote” away from Mbeki.  An upbeat story on his business investments across Africa quotes his deputy chairman Mikki Xayiya: “Since Mvela's inception 10 years ago, it was always Tokyo's and our aim to create a company that wasn't limited to being a black economic empowerment (BEE) company or constrained to investing in SA.”  This approach is as much of a challenge to prevailing orthodoxy in SA as Obama is to Bush!

The paradigm-shift is captured in a letter to an advice columnist.  Chriselda wrote: “DEAR Sister Beatrice – In the old days I was a militant member of the Black Consciousness Movement.  But after 1994 I embraced non-racialism and Madiba's ideal of a rainbow nation.  When Thabo Mbeki succeeded Mandela, I became an ardent advocate of the African renaissance, Nepad, Age of Hope and all the wise and lofty ideals that our great President espoused.  Throughout this time my law firm was rewarded handsomely with contracts befitting a patriot.  Now I am trying my damdest to make friends with the Jacob Zuma brigade, but none of them seem to be interested in me.”

Do not make the mistake of thinking that so-called coconuts are reactionary.  Mohau Pheko is as articulate a woman as Hilary Clinton: “Globalization is just a form of new colonization, giving permission to the few to determine the lives of the majority.  Some would like us to believe that globalization is merely the connectivity of people across the global village.  They purport that peace and harmony are a reality because youth around the world are united in their Levi's jeans and hip-hop music.  It purports that a uni-culture is embodied by our cups of Starbucks coffee or McDonald's burgers.  It pretends that MTV is a unifying force for human understanding.”

“What none of these people tells us is that the real interlocutor between the North and the South is a cheap supply of goods and labour from the South to the North...  Globalization has legitimized a standard of life, that is determined by an exclusive minority who are self-appointed and self-exalted.  The vast majority of the world, but primarily we in the South, must pay a tax to subsidize the overconsumption and self-interest of a self-acclaimed few.  The current global fuel crisis illustrates this point starkly with the statistic that a week's fuel consumption in New York equals a year's consumption in Africa.”

In world affairs, South Africa sees itself as “non-aligned”.  One feature of its political landscape is peculiar to the point of being bizarre - the trade unions are part of the tripartite congress that runs government.  These are not in Civil Society, as they are in most other countries, like Zimbabwe, where the opposition to a Marxist-Leninist regime arose from the ranks of organized labour.

This peculiarity leaves Civil Society relatively weak, and many of us see that as intentional.  One of the most important roles of civil society organizations, in a Democracy, is to engage government in dialogue about public policy.  In many countries, like Zimbabwe, government grabs the media to brainwash people.  The current regime has taken a few steps in that direction.  But in this country, freedom of expression in the media has protected democracy from being hijacked.  The churches have helped relatively little,  as there are so many clergy in the ranks of the ruling party.

Probably the most vocal non-government organization has been Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) which represents citizens who are living positively with HIV and AIDS.  Mondli Makhanya wrote: “When Mbeki and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang condemned thousands of South Africans to certain death by denying them HIV/Aids treatment and a coherent prevention message, the ANC attacked those who spoke sense and reason as counter-revolutionaries.”

I second the emotion.  Government has basically centralized resource flows to such an extent (compared to other countries) that they can decide who in Civil Society gets funded.  Not only has BEE been over-emphasized in the selection process, but of course non-government organizations that critique public policy are basically punished.  This is how they keep civil society on a leash.

To quote Mondi Makhanya's editorial again: “The party has even started reaching out to nongovernmental organizations, structures that the Stalinists in Mbeki's inner circle treated with contempt.”

Read all about it!  Our own organizational growth at C4L has been stunted as a result.  But that pales in comparison to the lives that were lost by state indifference.

Remember that the ruling congress also includes the SA Communist Party.  That's where the Stalinism comes from, it was not just a figure of speech!  I wonder if history will conclude that the failure of the Mbeki regime was a result of ideological gridlock?  How can Stalinists, denialists, and  a brigade of Stokley Carmichaels run a country coherently?!

In the background are the trade unionists, snafooed from civil society, but riding in the back seat behind that unholy alliance in the driver's seat.  Imagine an e-mail by Sandile Swana, exhorting the leaders of organized labour to drive SA's economic success : “Cosatu president Zwelinzima Vavi has to concern himself with increasing wages and increasing productivity.  The ideas of hard work, entrepreneurship and thrift have to be popularized...”  A country where you have to exhort trade unionists to set the pace of “hard work, entrepreneurship and thrift” is a curiosity indeed.  Obama will take America from right-of-middle to left-of-middle.  God grant South Africa a new leader who can do what the people want!