A Real-Life Spy Story

The ANC Spy Bible: Surviving across enemy lines by Moe Shaik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A real-life spy story that is as gripping and exciting as any novel.

But I very nearly didn't read this book. I picked it off the library shelf and when I saw the name of the author, and immediately a phrase sprang to mind: "a generally corrupt relationship". 

Those were the words of a High Court judge speaking about Schabir Shaik, brother of the author, and his relationship with a prominent politician, Jacob Zuma. I very nearly put the book back on the shelf. I didn't want to read about sleaze, and nothing more could be more sleazy than the dealings of corrupt politicians and businessmen. 

And then I thought, aren't you being prejudiced? Take it out and read it, and if it's too sleazy, you can change it for another book in a fortnight's time -- you're not buying the book. So I took it out, and I'm glad I did. It is well worth reading and raises a lot of interesting and important questions.

Moe Shaik was a member of the African National Congress (ANC) underground in South Africa in the 1980s when the movement was banned and being a member was illegal. He was arrested and detained for questioning about the whereabouts of an ANC courier, and after being tortured by the Special Branch was eventually released, but not before making contact with someone in the Special Branch (SB) who was sympathetic, and after his release began feeding him with information from within the SB.

This resulted in Moe Shaik starting a special intelligence unit within the ANC. Just as the Special Branch tried to collect information on the ANC, so the ANC began collecting information on the SB -- what they knew and what they didn't know, and some of their sources of informatio0n within the ANC. It was dangerous work, and there was always the risk of being caught.

When the ANC was unbanned in 1990, and political prisoners were released, people like Moe Shaik had to continue underground for a while. The National Party politicians might be willing to negotiate with the ANC, but there were many in the security services who continued to fight the war, perhaps in the hope that they could change the minds of their political bosses.

As the new democratic South Africa was born, Moe Shaik and his colleagues were faced with a different question: what was the role of an intelligence and security service in a democratic society?

This is one man's view of events, one man's memoir, but it is just such personal views that make history come alive and be more than a boring chronicle that reads like minutes of a meeting. It gives valuable insights into the history of the period, and if you like spy fiction, you'll probably also enjoy it.

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I never drove white voters away: Malema

The Yanks have Sarah Palin; we have Julius Malema. I don't know which is worse. I know that there are political loose cannons in every country, but, as someone once said, the trouble with political jokes is that they get elected.

I never drove white voters away: Malema: City Press: Politics: News:

Malema told delegates that it was not true that he drove whites away from the ANC, saying only that white voters never voted for the governing party even during former president Nelson Mandela’s leadership.

“They (whites) never voted for Mandela in 1994 and they never voted for (president) Thabo Mbeki,” he said.

Malema said whites had not voted for Mandela even when he was involved in reconciliation.

I've got news for you, my china.

I'm white, and I voted for Mandela in 1994.

I voted for Mbeki in 1999, though not in 2004.

In 2004 and 2009 I voted for Patricia de Lille and the ID, because I thought voices like Patricia de Lille's needed to be heard in parliament.

I didn't vote in the local government elections last month. I don't get to vote for the mayor of Cape Town, and I didn't even know who the candidates were in our ward. But the main reason was not ideological. I happened to be away on holiday (and you can see our best holiday pics here -- I think they're quite cool, even though I say so myself).

And more and more I'm seeing the truth of what G.K. Chesterton wrote:

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy.

But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

Or, as Jeremy Taylor used to sing:

One fine day I'll make my way to 10 Downing Street
"Good day," I'll say, "I've come a long way excuse my naked feet.
But I lack, you see, the energy to buy a pair of shoes
I lose my zest to look my best when I read the daily news,
'cause it appears you've got an atom bomb
that'll blow us all to hell and gone
I've I've gotta die then why should I
give a damn if my boots aren't on."

And the death of Albertina Sisulu last week rubs it in.

It's not the atom bomb that threatens us now, but when I read the daily news it's all about a bottomless sea of greed and mediocrity.

Politicians of Albertina Sisulu's generation stood for something and they fought for something, and one could admire them.

If we had a General Election today I wouldn't know who to vote for.

As someone else said, How do politicians resemble a bunch of bananas?

The answer: They're all yellow, they hang together, and there's not a straght one among them.

Actually there's one guy left I might be prepared to take seriously.

That's Zwelinzima Vavi, the trade union leader.

In today's paper he was quoted as saying

You cannot tell the workers and the poor that your real ambition is accumulation and more and more (of an) expensive bourgeois lifestyle and opulence; you have to talk their language even though everything you are is about accumulation and self-centredness. Tenderpreneurs present themselves as mMessiahs to advance their narrow economic agenda.

At least he sees the problem, or part of it.

Trouble is, as long as the tripartite alliance lasts, there's no chance of voting for him.

Tinyiko Sam Maluleke's Blog: South African Public Sector Strike: The Beginning of the End?

I didn't notice the public servants' stike much, perhaps because I don't get out a lot, especially since my car wouldn't start for a few weeks and I had to save up for a new battery. So it's just the snippets I've caught on the news that have made me aware of it. But blogs now provide an alternative to the mainstream media, and I think some of my blogging friends hav said things worth sharing.

I think Tinyiko Maluleke, a missiologist at the University of South Africa, has it right when he says: Tinyiko Sam Maluleke's Blog: South African Public Sector Strike: The Beginning of the End?:

These developments are revealing. The unions are on the back-foot. They have been outmaneuvered, firmly rebuffed and roundly rebuked. Sensing that it will be hard for the unions to sustain this strike for two more weeks without losing public support and the morale of their members, government has mischieviously made an offer that is no great improvement on the previous offer. Of course government does not have the money. We all know about the budget deficit. Of course 7.5 percent is above the current inflation rate. But 7.5 percent of what? The widespread perceptions of a wasteful government which is tolerant of corruption will not win much sympathy for the government position.

But there are some things that make one lose sympathy for the strikers' cause too. As Jenny Hillebrand, a Methodist seminary student in Pietermaritzburg puts it: Carpenter's Shoes: Caution:

The seminarians spent the afternoon at the hospital again today. When I arrived I was waved away from the gate by the seminary president who was on his cell phone to union leaders. The striking workers had warned him that if we went in to the hospital they would call a crowd who would make it difficult for us to get out again. He negotiated, and as far as I understand, it was agreed that we could go in for two hours, we were to clean the wards, but not care for patients and one of the union members would come with us. There were a handful of policemen and a handful of strikers.

In the end we went in and out quite uneventfully. I know that the strikers want more money, but I can't see the justice in allowing helpless people to suffer as a tool to get their own way.

I have an ambivalent feeling about this. I feel sorry for neglected patients in hospitals, and feel that it is irresponsible to neglect them. At the same time, I wouldn't want to be a scab.

Cori quotes from another source: Cori's Blog: South Africa: Hopeful:

Yes, the strikes are about money, but there's something deeper going on - something at the relational level. The mere occurence of a strike, it could be argued, bears evidence of relational breakdown. Then there are relational implications in the huge earnings differentials between top and bottom public service officials - it says something about how people are valued. Intimidation and violence only occur where relational capacity is already damaged, and they certainly effect little that is relationally redemptive. It might not be enough to address the money issues without addressing the relational issues. Justice is a complex matter, but at its heart, justice has to be relational.

and goes on to say:

I thought this an important slant on the situation and it leads me to wonder what I can do to restore relationship with my fellow South Africans. On a really small scale, it felt important to me that when a few hundred teachers sang and danced their way through The Junction (a relatively upmarket shopping center in Pretoria North) I stood by and listened to what they were saying and read their signs. It felt important to listen and hear and take in. It felt important that I could exchange a few words with some of these teachers and show them that I cared about what they had to say. It sounds really insignificant but it feels important to me that we think about our relationship with others who feel unjustly treated. By being open to hear them, we may be taking a small step towards redemptive relationship.

And lurking behind all this is what is going on to the north of us, in Zimbabwe. Tinyiko Maluleke mentions the strains in the tripartite alliance between the ANC, Cosatu and the Communist Party. In Zimbabwe the relationship between the government and the trade unions lies shattered, and all Thabo's horses and all Thabo's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. Is the same thing happening here? When it happened in Zim, millions of refugees came here. If it happens here, where will they, and we, go?

After the ball(ot) is over

Our fourth democratic elections have come and gone. Most of the votes have been counted and it is clear that the ANC will form the national government for the fourth term running, and will control the government of eight of the nine provinces.

There are no great surprises there, so what’s to write about?

Some people have asked me what I thought of the elections and how i feel about the results, and what will happen next. So even though I’m not a great political fundi, and nowadays don’t take much interest in politics until there’s an election, since they asked, and for myself to refer to later, I’m jotting down a few thoughts.

There's a rather sentimental Victorian song, After the ball is over.

After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone,
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all—
Many the hopes that have vanished after the ball.

The ANC had a ball after the ballot in the library gardens in Johannesburg, and some of the hopes of opposition parties had vanished.

That the ANC won the election was no surprise -- it has increased its majority at every election since 1994 -- but this time its majority was reduced in every province but one, the exception being KwaZulu-Natal.

There was also far more interest in this election than in the 2004 one. One reason for that may be that floor-crossing has been abolished. For the last few years, because of a weakness in the constitution, members of parliament were allowed to switch parties in mid-term without losing their seats in parliament, which made a mockery of elections. In effect the voters elected parliament for 18 months, and thereafter the politicians elected themselves. This led to cynicism among the youth, especially. Our sons refused to vote in 2004, but floor crossing has been abolished, and they did vote this time.

A more significant reason for greater interest was a split in the ruling party, the ANC, and the formation of a new opposition party, COPE, the Congress of the People Party, mainly from disaffected ANC members who were pushed aside when Jacob Zuma was elected as president of the ANC in 2007. There was considerable resentment in the ANC of Thabo Mbeki’s top-down leadership style, and Jacob Zuma was supported by a variety of interest groups, perhaps initially because it was felt that he had been unfairly victimised by Mbeki. Those who left, however, were not simply motivated by sour grapes. Jacob Zuma had been accused of corruption when he was deputy president, but instead of taking the matter to court to clear his name spent a lot of time and money and energy trying to avoid appearing in court at all. The leader of the ANC youth league, Julius Malema, for one, was proclaiming, in effect, “We want Zuma, corrupt or not”. COPE, perhaps to emphasise the contrast, brought in a former head of the Methodist Church, Mvume Dandala, perhaps because he could be presented to voters as Mr Clean.

So this is what happened:

With 400 seats in parliament, a party needs 0,25% of the vote for each MP.

Two of the smaller parties that have been represented in parliament since 1994 seem to have been wiped out in this election: Azapo and the PAC. The former represented the Black Consciousness movement of the 1970s, whose best-known exponent was Steve Biko, murdered by the security police in 1977. The PAC (Pan-African Congress) tried to keep alive the Africanist vision of the 1950s and 1960s. Its logo shows light streaming to Africa from Ghana, the first British colony in Africa to become independent in 1957. There was a vision of a postcolonial United States of Africa. The PAC tried to keep the Africanist vision alive, but the ANC’s Thabo Mbeki stole their thunder with his vision of an African Renaissance, and their only young and dynamic MP, Patricia de Lille, sick of the dithering and squabbling among the leaders, broke away to form the Independent Democrats, which did quite well, for a new party, in the 2004 elections, but saw its electoral support halved in 2009.

So we come to the Independent Democrats.

I voted for them in 2004, mainly because I thought it was a good idea to have Patricia de Lille in parliament. And I think there were quite a lot who voted ID for the same reason. De Lille asked awkward questions of ministers, and kept them on their toes. If there was a whiff of corruption, she would be on to it, trying to lay bare the truth. Unfortunately she was not able to attract other leaders of the same quality of herself to her party. It was, and remains, basically a one-woman party. Some of the elected leaders were opportunists, who disappeared through the floor-crossing windows when offered suitable inducements by other parties.

Then along came COPE, and stole most of the ID's thunder. Its policies were not identical, but were close enough to attract many of the same people. As I pointed out in another blog post, I did one of those quizzes to see which party’s policies came closest to my thinking, and the ID and COPE tied for first place, so I voted for both - the ID nationally, and COPE at the provincial level.

The opposition party that did best in the elections, and indeed better than last time around, is the Democratic Alliance (DA).

Like the ID, it is now led by a woman, Helen Zille, who has apparently done a good job as mayor of Cape Town, and gathered a lot of support that way, especially in the Western Cape, some at the expense of the ID. Its family tree goes back to 1959, the same year that the PAC started, when a group of MPs broke away from the (white) parliamentary opposition party, the United Party, to form the Progressive Party, which was one of the distant ancestors of the DA of today, and it has tended to pass on one rather undesirable gene to its offspring. The Progressive Party and its successors never saw themselves as an alternative government, but as an alternative opposition. They raised opposition not merely to a fine art, but to an obsession. The rivalry between them and the United Party was far fiercer than that between them and the ruling National Party. They would induce a few “young Turks” from the UP to join them, and each time this happened they changed their name, to the Progressive Reform Party, then the Progressive Federal Party, and each time they moved a bit further to the right, since the people they were absorbing were further to the right than they themselves were. Eventually the United Party disappeared, and the Democratic Party was born. In the 1994 elections the previous ruling party, the National Party, became the official opposition, and the Democratic Party, led by Tony Leon, set their sights an replacing them as the official opposition, and so set out to make itself the party of the white right. They contested the 1999 elections with slogans like “Fight back” (against what? democracy?). Well, they were the opposition weren’t they? In their view the function of the opposition is to oppose everything that the government does, good or bad. So not for them the constructive opposition of Patricia de Lille, opposing the bad, but supporting the good, and offering suggestions for improvement. The DA opposed for the sake of opposing. Eventually they absorbed the rump of the National Party, but a lot of them couldn’t take it and went on to join the ANC.

It looks as though the DA has mellowed a little since Helen Zille replaced Tony Leon as leader (what is it about politicians called Tony? Leon, Blair or Yengeni, they all seem to go wrong). But when we drove to the polling station to vote on Wednesday we were faced with posters saying “Stop Zuma”, so it looks as though they are still up to their old tricks. I’d rather know what they are for than what they are against. And I’d rather know what they are against than who they are against.

At one municipal election a few years ago I was met at the polling station by two burly gentlemen sporting rosettes, who escorted me, one on either side, to the polling station, each telling me that his party was the only one that could “stop the ANC”. One was from the DA and the other from the Freedom Front +. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, otherwise I would have asked what it was they wanted to stop the ANC doing, and why they automatically assumed that I would want to stop it too. What they did not tell me was how they would run the city better than the ANC had been doing, so I went in and cast my two votes, the proportional one for the ANC, and the local ward one for the only candidate who did not seem to be affiliated with any political party.

There’s one other party I’ve occasionally considered voting for, but never have, which also lost support heavily in this election. That is the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP). My biggest gripe with them is that they claim to have a monopoly of Christian principles, when some of their principles don’t seem all that Christian to me. What really clinched it, though, was that in previous elections, just when I was thinking of voting for them, the ACDP would send me a bundle of right-wing propaganda written by one Ed Cain. Ed Cain used to publish far right political propaganda, some of it subsidised by the former Department of Information (remember Muldergate?) aimed at the Christian market. He could publish radically different theological views without a qualm, side-by side, and didn’t care how theologically inconsistent they were, as long as they promoted a consistently right-wing political point of view.

The other parties are composed of sinful men and one expects to find human failings among them. Until Christ comes again, human politics will be tainted by human sinfulness. But when a party has the hubris to claim that its equally tainted principles and organisation have somehow had an immaculate conception, even when they are (like Ed Cain’s) the most ungodly of the lot, that’s when I look elsewhere on the ballot paper.

And there are two parties that I was never tempted to vote for, both regional. One is the United Democratic Movement of Bantu Holomisa. The quiz I did actually placed it second, tied with the DA. But Bantu Holomisa once staged a coup in Transkei, and I’ll never be tempted to vote for a politician who has tried to bypass voting and seize power. They lost most of their support to COPE, I should think, and that’s probably a good thing. The other is the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which was started as a cultural movement, but Gatsha Buthelezi (as he was then known) turned it into a rival to the ANC when he was snubbed by the ANC. It seemed like a silly and unnecessary quarrel, and provided a lever for PW Botha’s “third force” to try to destabilise the first democratic elections. Hundreds of people died as a result. And now that the ANC has a Zulu leader, people in KwaZulu-Natal are switching their votes to the ANC, because they can see that the propaganda that painted the ANC as “anti-Zulu” was grossly exaggerated, or simply false.

So that’s my take on the election. A view of one voter out of about 17 million, and if you asked all of them you’d probably get 17 million different views, so it doesn’t really count for much. Now my political interest has dropped. There was a time, years ago, when I was more politically active, because then we were indeed fighting an ungodly government, founded on ungodly principles. But those political goals were achieved, in 1994. And on Wednesday, standing in the queue to vote autumn sunshine in the school yard, seeing the big thorn trees with their heavy seed pods, seeing the people of South Africa, black and white, moving slowly forward to vote, that was my political goal achieved. If someone tries to take that away from us, as has happened in Zimbabwe, then I might become a political acvtivist again. But one of the advantages of democracy is that one can, within limits, leave politics to the politicians.

But, if I’m still alive in 2014, maybe I’ll look back on it and see what I missed, and what I thought would happen, but didn’t.

So what do I think will happen? How important is it to “stop Zuma” as the DA exhorted us?

I have my doubts about whether Zuma will ever get to start. I don’t find him impressive as a political leader, that’s why I didn’t vote for him. He doesn’t strike me as a person with visionary leadership. He’s basically a shrewd politician who’s good at getting himself elected. What he does when he’s elected is a different matter. And the people who agreed to support him at Polokwane in 2007 -- they’re all hoping for different things from him. I doubt he’ll be able to deliver everything that they are expecting. But if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll concentrate on getting competent people who can improve service delivery for the millions who voted for him, and if he succeeds, he may stand a chance of being reelected in 2014.

But the ANC is still the ANC. It’s a popular organisation, and a lot of people in it still take seriously the slogan “the people shall govern”. Thabo Mbeki forgot that, and they kicked him out. And if they kicked Mbeki out, they can kick Zuma out too.

See also Cori's Blog: Why I would still vote ID.

Politics, politics, politics

After the busyness of Holy Week and Pascha, there's a bit of time to notice the political turmoil in the country as we prepare for a general election this week.

The newspapers are saying that the problem in this country is that we only have Mickey Mouse opposition parties. That's true, of course, but now we have a Mickey Mouse governing party as well. They all come up with vacuous or silly slogans. There's no wit in them, nothing to stir enthusiasm, nothing to inspire confidence.

There was a headline in one Sunday newspaper that Cosatu felt aggrieved that its alliance partner, the ANC, was not considering Cosatu candidates for top posts in party lists. Well, what did they expect? They supported an opportunist candidate to lead the ANC, one who was quite clearly trying to be all things to all men in order to gain support. Newspaper columnists try to point out that an election should not be a popularity context, but that is what our politicians have turned it into.

They tell us that this or that ANC luminary is joining the breakeaway Congress of the People Party (COPE), or not, or thinking about it, or thinking about returning to the ANC. The problem is that if all the competent people in the ANC leave and join COPE, the ANC is in all probability going to be the government after the election, so having the competent people leave it for the opposition is likely to be a mixed blessing.

The Democratic Alliance looks slightly better under Helen Zille than under Tony Leon. It's no longer trying quite so hard to be the party of the white right. The problem is, having set out to, and largely succeeded, in attracting the support of the white right, if they are no longer trying to attract that support, they might find it evaporates, and drifts to the Freedom Front Plus (plus what, one wonders?). But as in Tony Leon's day, some of the DA's campaign slogans are an insult to the intelligence of the voters. There is the same old mantra of stopping the ANC from getting a 2/3 majority, but under our electoral system a vote for any opposition party could contribute towards that.

A Sunday newspaper published a specimen ballot sheet. There are 26 parties contesting the election (trimmed by the Independent Electoral Commission from 114). But half of them I have never heard of, and have no idea of their history, leaders and policies. If the media won't inform us, who will? Otherwise, how can we make an informed choice?

The political leaders in this week's election are the most uninspiring bunch ever. Where are the Mandelas, the Sisulus, the Tambos, the Helen Suzmans? It must surely be the most apathy-inducing election in our history. And yet it is very important to get out there and vote. Vote for someone, anyone. I've been informed that floor-crossing has now been abolished, and so one's vote will count again. But how many people know that?

Dion Forster posts A call to prayer and guidance for casting your vote in the South African Elections - 22 April 2009. A Critical Juncture!:

Please could I encourage every South African, and every Christian (and person of all other faiths) in South Africa to take seriously their responsibility to see that our nation makes the right choice at this juncture of our history!

Cori's Blog: Zuma

Cori has some good things to say about the media circus over the National Prosecuting Authority's on-again off-again decisions on whether or not to prosecute Jacob Zuma for corruption.
Cori's Blog: Zuma:

While listening to people phoning in to thw 702 talk radio show today a few things emerged. One was the comment by an American journalist which had a few South Africans on edge. Apparently this journalist said that South Africa is now becoming Africanised and just one more African country. As South African callers stated, what else could we be becoming than Africanised (Europonised??) and are we not another African country? It's time we start being proud to be African!

And Cori goes on to point out that, in effect, having George Bush as US president for eight years made the USA just another American country. And perhaps having Tony Blair as Brit prime minister made Britain what -- just another European country? Though I don't think that when he was first elected anyone thought that Tony Blair would turn out as bad as he did. When he was first elected back in 1997 or thereabouts, he was Britain's Barack Obama, offering "change you can believe in" and all that kind of stuff.

Whether he is prosecuted or not, however, I don't think anyone can have any such illusions about Jacob Zuma (well, ANC members do, apparently). I think the NPA's decision to prosecute him was probably a put up job, and the interlude of the rape trial looked even more like a put up job, but his conduct during the rape trial doesn't give me much confidence in him as a leader either. I don't think he'll be any worse than George Bush, but I'm pretty sure he won't be any better, and if he's elected it will just go to show that South Africans can be as stupid as Americans at times.

So who to vote for in the general election?

At the moment my inclination is to vote for the Independent Democrats at the national level, because I think Patricia de Lille is a good person to have in parliament, even if in her party she is surrounded by mediocrities. And at the provincial level I may vote for the Congress of the People Party (COPE), mainly because I think Mbazima Shilowa did a fairly good job as Premier of Gauteng, and at least has some vision for the province, and wasn't just a jobsworth.

But I'm one of those floating voters, so come April 22nd I might end up voting for someone completely different. But it won't be the African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance, or the African Christian Democratic Party. I'll not vote for the ANC again while Zuma's in charge, though if they get themselves a more inspiring leader I might reconsider. And it doesn't matter who's in charge of the Democratic Alliance -- after their efforts to place themselves as the party of the white right ten years ago, I'm not sure that they've really shed that baggage. And every time I would consider voting for the ACDP, someone there would send me a bunch of literature from Ed Cain, who was on the loony right, and published a newspaper that received slush funds from the infomation scandal 30 years ago, and that cured me of ever considering them again.

Well there, I've nailed my colours to the mast(s), but reserve the right to jump ship and nail them to a different one. Is that a mixed metaphor? Perhaps it's an appropriate one for a crazy mixed up election in a crazy mixed up country. But, to misquote a science fiction author whose name I have forgotten, South Africa's a crazy place. I like it.

The ANC and Desmond Tutu

Tony Jackman echoes the thoughts of many when he says Thought Leader -- Tony Jackman: Who turned JZ into Mr Min?:

Hearing the ANC attack Desmond Tutu rings with bewildering irony for any of us who lived through the eighties and the so many occasions when the same voice who now criticises this government lambasted the National Party and then premier PW Botha when they were in government.

He attacked them here and abroad. He attacked them when newspapers in this country could not report his words, his words nevertheless being reported abroad so that we could hear his ringing condemnation of apartheid and its atrocities despite the best efforts of the Nats to quieten us and block our ears and minds to the truth.

The ANC now dares to round on this great man of peace, one of the world’s greatest 20th century voices for what is right and against what is wrong.

But it should come as no surprise. Speaking the truth to power is never popular with the powerful, whether the powerful be PW Botha's National Party or Jacob Zuma's ANC.

Recently some people have been blogging about David Bosch and his book Transforming Mission (see here and here). There are a couple of things Bosch (1991:429f) had to say that are worth reading in the light of what we are seeing now

The problem seems to be that Christians tend to sacralize "the sociological forces of history that are dominant at at any particular time, regarding them as inexorable works of providence and even of redemption" (Knapp 1977:151)... Albert Nolan writes in similar vein about the struggle of the South African people against an oppressive system: "The power of the people that is manifested in the struggle is indeed the power of God... What the system is up against now is not 'flesh and blood' but the almighty power of God."

The situation is further compounded when exponents of contextualization claim a special or privileged knowledge about God's will and declare those who do not agree with them as suffering from "false consciousness". Their own clairvoyance, on the other hand, equips them with the ability to know exactly not only what God's will is, but also what will happen in the future. With reference to South Africa, for instance, Nolan (1988:144; cf 184) avers "that we can be quite sure that our future will not be oppressive and alienating". The one thing that south African's need not fear "is the kind of take-over whereby another group of people simply replaces the present rulers and maintainst the same type of system... That possibility is gone forever."

It seems that Albert Nolan (a Dominican priest) had forgotten what a Roman Catholic liberal historian had said a century or more before: All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Or, as the Psalmist says, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them."

Or, as Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway said in their book Up top our steeples in politics: What is wrong with us that can be solved by politics is not all that is wrong with us.

Nolan's comment shows why Orthodox theologians have had reservations about Western liberation theologies -- the reverse typology that they apply to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They see this as a type pointing to a greater liberation in our time, rather than the partial liberation from oppression that we see in the world as being an imperfect reflection of the liberation won by the death and resurrection of Christ (for more on this see Orthodoxy and liberation theology).

Who governs South Africa?

The furore over the refusal of a visa to the Dalai Lama and the subsequent cancellation of a peace conference being held in association with the World Cup raises some other questions.

President Kgalema Motlanthe's fatuous statement that the reason was that they did not want the Dalai Lama upstaging the World Cup must really take the prize for stupidity. If anything was calculated to draw unfavourable attention it was the refusal of a visa. If the Dalai Lama had come, he would have spoken some nice peaceful sentiments at the conference, there would have been a few photo ops, and he would have gone home. Refusing a visa produces ten times the publicity, most of it negative. After all, anyone thinking of organisaing an international conference in South Africa will now think twice about it. If speakers and participants can be arbitrarily refused visas at the last minute for such utterly flimsy reasons, it would be safer to organise conferences somewhere else.

But there's more to it than that, and more than meets the eye.

A little snippet on SAFM radio this morning said that the ANC had nothing to do with the governrment's decision to refuse the visa.

And then, from the horse's mouth, Barbara Hogan, the Minister of Health, said that the government's decision to refuse the visa was a disgrace.

Now isn't the ANC the ruling party? Isn't Barbara Hogan, as Minister of Health, a member of the ANC and a member of the government? It's not as if she's a backbencher in parliament, she's a member of the cabinet.

So if the "government" that took the decision to exclude the Dalai Lama is not the ANC government, and doesn't include members of the cabinet, then just who is the "government"?

Have we been taken over by aliens?

Perhaps aliens from a certain large country in the Far East.

As someone else said on the radio, the traditional informal South African greeting will now become obligatory for all occasions, all protocols observed:

Howzit, my China.

Outcry over Dalai Lama visa refusal

Sowetan - News:

The government has been widely condemned for refusing to allow Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to attend a 2010 World Cup peace conference in Johannesburg on Friday.

Nobel peace laureate and former president FW de Klerk and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu have both said they would boycott the event in solidarity with the Dalai Lama.

The president's excuse that the reason for South Africa refusing the visa was that it did not want 'to remove the world's attention' from the 2010 Soccer World Cup preparations is not merely lame, but a gross abuse of executive power, and is probably unconstitutional.

We are rapidly regressing to the bad old days of the Vorster regime, when, for example, Basil d'Oliveira was refused a visa to play cricket in South Africa with the MCC cricket team in 1968. That led to South Africa being isolated from world cricket for 25 years. Perhaps we need another 25 years of isolation from world soccer, since it seems we still haven't learnt the lesson.

Our constitution is supposed to guarantee freedom of religion, and I hope someone challenges this in the constitutional court.

It is sad to see that the ANC, which fought for 70 years to liberate us from oppression, has now fully internalised the image of the oppressor, as Paolo Freire puts it, and is coming more and more closely to resemble the pigs in George Orwell's Animal farm. Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo must be turning in their graves.

What's wrong with power sharing in Zimbabwe?

Ever since the disputed results of the last Zimbabwean elections, South Africa and other countries have been trying to broker a power-sharing agreement between the major parties, ZANU-PF and the MDC. The impasse has been caused because ex-President Robert Mugabe refuses to become ex, and has become El Caudillo; Der Führer of Zimbabwe.

Why is it that the South African government, and other concerned countries in the region, think that the solution to the problems caused by this putsch is a power-sharing agreement between winners and losers of the election?

In one way, it can seem a very African solution to the problem. In the idealised African worldview of ubuntu, consensus is deemed better than competion. Politics should not be a zero-sum game, with winners and losers, but rather a win-win solution should be sought, in which everyone can be kept happy.

One of the best examples of this is South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. Though the ANC won a majority in the election, it did not rule alone, but formed a government of national unity with its most bitter rivals, the National Party and the IFP. The Democratic Party, though it would have been welcome to join, preferred to stay out, partly because it had no sympathy with the African idea of consensus, and preferred to be self-consciously Western, and espouse confrontation to cooperation. It saw itself as the Opposition with a capital O, and saw its task as to Oppose everything the government did, good or bad.

Under National Party rule, South African government had been as authoritarian as that of Zimbabwe under Mugabe, yet the ANC still agreed to form a Government of National Unity with their former enemies, so why should a similar solution not work in Zimbabwe today?

The difference is that in the 1990s the National Party leaders were becoming increasingly aware that their policies had failed and were politically bankrupt. Though a former foreign minister, Eric Louw, had declared that they would fight to retain power till the blood rose to the horses' bits, his successor, Pik Botha, said he wasn't prepared to die to keep "whites only" signs in the lifts. Mugabe's mindset is far closer to that of Eric Louw than to that of Pik Botha. Under F.W. de Klerk the National Party thought it would be better to lose power than to destroy the country in trying to retain it. Mugabe's thinking is precisely the opposite.

The irony is that the ANC government in South Africa is not all that wedded to the African idea of consensus leadership and power sharing. The ANC conference at Polokwane a year ago was definitely a winner-takes-all affair.

A question that is often asked is what could the South African government do about the situation in Zimbabwe. And one answer is that it could do what the ANC, when it was in opposition, often asked other countries to do about the National Party regime in South Africa: at the very least, recognise the human rights abuses for what they are and denounce them as such. Instead, it instructed South African election observers in Zimbabwe to declare elections free and fair when they weren't.[1]

At the government level, those who have been most vigorous in denouncing human rights abuses in Zimbabwe have been western countries, like the US and the UK. Mugabe has dismissed such criticisms as imperialist fabrications. He would not be able to dismiss such criticisms so easily if they came from neighbouring countries in Africa, but it is those countries that have been reluctant to criticise except in the mildest possible way.

The fact is that the longer Mugabe stays in power, the less there will be to salvage from the wreckage when he finally does go.
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[1] On 1 March 2004 the South African Council of Churches arranged a meeting of South African church leaders to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe. Three church leaders from Zimbabwe gave a briefing on what was happening in that country. The questions they were asked were all to the point as was the discussion that followed. Among those who attended the meeting were some who had been observers at the previous elections in Zimbabwe, and they said that with hindsight they regretted that they had been persuaded, against their better judgement, to sign a statement declaring that those elections were free and fair.

Tutu says he might not vote

Desmond Tutu, the retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has said he might not vote in next year's general election, because of infighting in the ANC.

Tutu says he might not vote: South Africa: Politics: News24:

Johannesburg - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said he would welcome the creation of a viable opposition in South Africa, after ruling party infighting forced former president Thabo Mbeki to resign, in remarks published on Sunday.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who turns 77 on Tuesday, told the Sunday Times newspaper he was dismayed by the turmoil in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the party that brought Nelson Mandela to power after the end of apartheid.

One of the problems with this is that South Africa, unlike some other countries, has a pretty wide choice in elections.

In the USA, for example, if you don't support one of the two main parties, there's little alternative. There's little to choose between the two, because there's very little difference between the two main parties when the gain power. The more vituperatively and viciously the "campaigns" attack each other, the smaller the differences between them appear to be.

In South Africa, on the other hand, we are spoilt for choice. In one election we had the Soccer Party. It didn't get much support, but there were about 30 others to choose from. The problem with not voting is that it doesn't send a message to the government. Voter apathy can have any of a number of causes. But voting for an opposition party -- any opposition party -- sends a message, because in proportional representation every vote counts, while non votes count for nothing.

The only valid reason I can think of for not voting is floor-crossing. My children did not vote in the last election for that reason. They saw no point in voting because the whole process was meaningless. I think that is one reason for political apathy among the youth.

I have been told by someone that there will be no more floor crossing, and that it has been abolished. If that is so it is good news. But it has been very muted news. I haven't seen much publicity given to it, and if voters are to be roused from their apathy, it is quite important that they should know that, if it is true. If the people you vote for are likely to become crosstitutes within 18 months, there's really little point in voting at all.

Bishop Desmond has for many years had the knack of drawing attention to the ills of our country. At one time one of those ills was that the majority of people in our country did not have the right to vote. We do have that right today -- let's not throw it away.

Mbeki: ‘Thank you and goodbye’

The Prez has gone.

President Thabo Mbeki resigned under pressure from his own party, after hanging on for nine months after he was replaced as ANC president at its conference at Polokwane last summer.

The Times - Mbeki: ‘Thank you and goodbye’:

Announcing his resignation as president last night, Mbeki defended his legacy, which suffered a major blow when a Pietermaritzburg High Court judge ruled that he and his cabinet had interfered with the work of the independent prosecuting authority.

'We have never done this and therefore never compromised the right of the NPA to decide whom it wished to prosecute or not to prosecute. This applies equally to the painful matter relating to the court proceedings against the president of the ANC, comrade Jacob Zuma,' Mbeki said.

Other bloggers have commented ad nauseam, so why am I adding my chirp? I suppose it's because of the reference to his legacy, and because the manner of his going is reminiscent of the departure of Tony Blair last year, which invites comparisons.

Thabo Mbeki and Tony Blair were pretty much political contemporaries, though in character they were very different. Tony Blair was more extrovert, Thabo Mbeki was always more taciturn. But they both dominated the politics of their countries from 1997-2007 -- though Mbeki only became president in 1999 he was nevertheless taking a more active role in the couple of years before that as Nelson Mandela neared retirement.

Both made an impact on foreign affairs, though in different ways. Tony Blair was a belligerent warmonger, and led his country into three foreign wars -- in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Thabo Mbeki was more of a peacemaker, trying to bring peace to troubled areas of the continent, though his extraordinary patience with dictators like Robert Mugabe did not seem to produce much fruit.

When I looked at the leaders of other countries, like George Bush and Tony Blair, I was glad we had Thabo Mbeki.

At home, however, he was far more ruthless, and just how ruthless is only now beginning to be revealed. He was ruthless in eliminating potential rivals -- like Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa and Jacob Zuma. When Sexwale and Ramaphosa abandoned politics for business I at first thought they were selling out, and showing that they were more concerned with making money than nation-building. But it now seems that they were keeping quiet out of loyalty to their ANC struggle comrades, and preferred not to cause a split. Only now has it been revealed to those outside the inner circle how they were forced out of politics.

One day historians will have to add up the pros and cons of Thabo Mbeki's legacy, but on the whole I'm inclined to be sympathetic.

For me the most memorable moment of his career, and perhaps symbolic of the positive aspect of it, was when he acted out of character, threw aside his usual taciturnity, and joined in the celebrations of South Africa's victory in the rugby world cup last year. The team hoisted him on their shoulders and that moment captured the best of his presidency and the best of South Africa and South Africa's hopes. I can't imagine the English team doing that to Gordon Brown if they had won.

It didn't last, of course. The rugby team came home to acrimonious in-fighting and the dismissal of the successful coach, and Thabo Mbeki came back to much the same thing. But whatever his faults, and they are many, history can't take that away from his legacy. It was a glimpse of what might have been, and in some sense still is.

A plea bargain for Zuma?

Yesterday the media were reporting that Jacob Zuma's legal representatives and supporters were looking at the possibility of a plea bargain in his impending corruption trial. They spoke of this as a way of going forward.

It seems to me that that would be the worst possible outcome. As I understand it, a plea bargain means making a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced sentence. Far from being a way of going forward, it is a way of moving rapidly backwards. We then have the opportunity to vote for a party whose leader is not merely suspected of being corrupt, but one we know is corrupt because he himself would have admitted it.

If, on the other hand, Zuma is tried and acquitted, we can go forward into the next election, knowing that his record has been cleared. If he is tried and found guilty, and the court determines the degree of his guilt, then voters can weigh that up with other factors in deciding whether or not to vote for the ANC. But with a plea bargain, one cannot escape the suspicion that the corruption goes far deeper than anything that has been revealed up till now.

But the biggest problem is not Jacob Zuma and the unresolved accusations of corruption. Corrupt politicians are a universal problem. Most countries have them. One almost expects them to be corrupt, and encountering a politician with a degree of integrity is a pleasant surprise.

No, what threatens our infant democracy is not Jacob Zuma and the suspicion of corruption. It is rather the attitude of some of his supporters. As one columnist has put it:

The Times - If Vavi is so concerned about SA he should allow us justice:

CONGRESS of SA Trade Unions secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi has me confused.

Last week he told us that the union federation is deeply concerned that if ANC president Jacob Zuma is brought to trial, then workers would plunge the country into chaos.

The only way to prevent this chaos, he told us, would be to dump the looming trial against Zuma.

He said: “We fear what could happen should something happen to him [Zuma]. The belief among workers and South Africans — that the ANC president is a target of machinations, runs very deep."

This is shocking and preposterous blackmail by Vavi.

There is zero evidence that “workers” are angry that Zuma is facing the music, as any ordinary citizens would do, if there were such serious allegations against them.

Protests held to drum up support for Zuma (such as the marches on KwaZulu-Natal courts on Friday), draw pathetic responses.

The two persons who have threatened violence if Zuma is not let off are Vavi himself and the ANC Youth League president Julius Malema.

So one is left wondering what revelations Cosatu has to fear from a Zuma trial that makes them so anxious to prevent it.

One of the problems in South African politics over the last few years is that there is so little choice. That may seem a strange thing to say when our elections have been contested by upwards of 20 parties, and we have a system of proportional representation, so that for the first year or two after the election we have a parliament that generally reflects the will of the people (that is, until the crosstitutes start their floor crossing, after which parliament represents no one but the politcians themselves -- that is a corruption that has to be weighed against any possible corruption of Zuma).

But the fact is that Cosatu represents one political force that is not represented in parliament. If it were not part of the tripartite alliance with the ANC and the Communist Party, Cosatu could serve as a counterbalance to the Thatcherism of the ANC and its policies of Black Elite Enrichment (BEE), on the one hand, and the white racism of the Democratic Alliance on the other. Cosatu could be the voice of the working class and the poor.

But now that Jacob Zuma has become president of the ANC, in part with the support of Cosatu, one is not quite sure whether Cosatu thinks it has bought Zuma, or whether it has sold out to him. Before last December, if Cosatu had stood on a separate ticket I might have voted for them, but Vavi's utterances since then have shown that that would have been a mistake.

I think I'll stick with Patricia de Lille and the Independent Democrats.

It's payback time, says Cosatu

The Congress of South African Trade Unions wants a quid pro quo for its support of Jacob Zuma at the ANC conference last December.

clipped from www.thetimes.co.za The past week has been marked by high drama for the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Not only did it fire its president, Willy Madisha, it had to fight openly with ANC president Jacob Zuma and agitate loudly for additional seats on the new ANC national executive committee. Vavi declared the Zuma-Cosatu honeymoon over: “The campaign to save the ANC from the clutches of the technocrats who sought to bureaucratise the liberation movement is far from being over. The ‘rescue mission’ post-Polokwane is on.” Zuma’s trilogy of sins included business-friendly statements at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, clear support for the Budget tabled by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel despite Vavi’s concerns, and a business- friendly interview with the Financial Mail post-Budget. These were seen as cardinal sins given the unconditional support the trade union movement gave Zuma in the mighty succession struggle .

Raenette Taljaard thinks that this will be bad for South Africa and concludes by saying in The Times - Article:

This week at least Cosatu loudly proclaimed what it wanted — which it has a right to do. But what all South Africans undoubtedly want is a leader who is not fundamentally weak and beholden to group interests, a leader who can truly lead without having to weigh every word to assess its “payback” consequences, a leader who can adjudicate a multitude of competing interests in a complex society, not one who simply makes decisions based on loyalties.

Which is true, of course, and was obvious right from the moment that Jacob Zuma was elected ANC president at Polokwane in December. It was clear that Zuma's primary merit was not that he would be a good leader, but that he would be an electable one. Cosatu could have found lots of more capable candidates who could promote its interests, and perhaps do so out of conviction rather than out of a sense of obligation. But it is doubtful whether enough support could be garnered from other groups for such a person to be elected.

The problem is that for the last 14 years Cosatu has been neglected by the ANC leadership, except at election time when its support is needed. Though Cosatu was part of the tripartite alliance, its voice has been ignored, especially when it comes to issues such as the ANC's Thatcherist privatisation policies.

I don't know how many courses of action were open to Cosatu, but I can see at least two. One would be to break from the Tripartite alliance and form a new left opposition party. The advantage of that would be that it would bring a touch of reality to South African politics, with a real political alternative. If Cosatu had done that, I might have voted for them.

The disadvantage is that it could drive South Africa down the same road as Zimbabwe, driving the ANC even further to the right, so that it might, if the worst came to the worst, resemble Mugabe's ZANU-PF. One should always remember that Cosatu represents the same constituency in South Africa that the MDC represents in Zimbabwe -- the urban workers.

So I'm not very surprised that Cosatu did not opt for that course. Politics is the art of the possible, and if the possible is a broad coalition of interests backing a candidate who needs to repay favours, then that's the way it must be. That's the way it works in most democratic countries anyway.

Style and substance

Apart from the paragraph quoted below, there is very little in this article that I agree with.

But this paragraph captures my disquiet about Barack Obama.

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Attempting to discern true meaning from Obama's speeches gives one the feeling of having been trapped in a sort of verbal quicksand. Hair-pulling levels of frustration await any effort to find any specific meaning. A sensation of lethargic sinking into an abyss of abstract gibberish awaits the mind looking for specifics..

A couple of months ago a British commentator remarked that if Obama became US president, it would be a presidency of style rather than substance.

A British commentator (I can't remember if it was the same one) said exactly the same about Jacob Zuma.

Zuma attracted support from a conglomeration of disparate interests who were dissatisfied with the status quo, and that made Zuma "electable". And the same thing seems to be happening with Obama.

But if either becomes president, which of their supporters' interests will prevail. Change can be for the better, or for the worse, but which way will it go?

All one sees on TV are soundbites with empty slogans.

Cosatu supported Jacob Zuma, but will Jacob Zuma support Cosatu?

Hat-tip to Small Dead Animals.

Dealing with the electricity crisis "proactively"

Politicians really need to be more careful what they say.

Gwede Mantashe, the secretary-general of the ANC is reported as saying that we need to deal with the electricity crisis "proactively". It is far too late for that. It should have been dealt with proactively 10 years ago. Any action taken now is simply reactive.

The Times - Article

South Africa’s electricity crisis was debated at length at the African National Congress’s three-day lekgotla which closed in Midrand on Sunday, said the party’s secretary-general Gwede Mantashe.

The ANC would be looking into a number of interventions, he said.

'Rather than being in a state of panic [we should] deal with the issue proactively because it is actually positive that the country is growing to the extent that we actually exhaust the energy capacity,' he said.

Instead of viewing the problem as an energy crisis, it should be seen as an indication that more efficient energy consumption was needed.

To be proactive means to anticipate, and the crisis we face now is the result of a failure to anticipate.

For more than 10 years Eskom has channelled its infrastructure development into expanding the distribution network. That in itself should have led planners to anticipate increased demand by planning to build new power stations or at least bring mothballed ones back on line. Johannesburg City Council used to sell power to Eskom from its Kelvin power station.

Whether the problem was caused by the failure of Eskom to plan, or by political pressure from the government (as Cosatu claims), the fact remains that the problem is already here and it is much too late to be proactive about it, and the use of weasel words by politicians won't solve the problem.

The only way we can deal with the crisis at this late stage is reactively, not proactively.

But there are different ways of dealing with problems reactively too.

One of the dangers of reacting to problems after they have occurred is that it is easier to look for a scapegoat than a solution.

An extreme example of that is the reaction of the commuters who set fire to trains, and now face a non-existent train service because the trains are ashes.

Such reactions are counter-productive.

But the same attitude is apparent in many comments in blogs on the topic, where some have demanded that Eskom planners be flogged and similar things.

Some have suggested that Eskom be sued for losses suffered as a result of the power cuts, and that would be about as effective in solving the problem as burning trains. It would mean that instead of spending money on increasing generating capacity, Eskom would be paying lawyers to defend lawsuits. And the people who would pay for that would be consumers who would have to pay higher prices.

Burning trains and suing Eskom show the futility of looking for a scapegoat rather than a solution.