How social networks undermine community and promote extremism

I don't know who coined the term "social media", but in its narrower sense of commercial web sites whose main purpose is to link people with "friends" and "followers", they are becoming increasingly contradictory. 

As Tano Santos and Luigi Zingales point out in their article How Big Tech Undermines Democracy

...social-media platforms purposely seek to undo local communities to maximize profits. The reason is that social-media companies profit from our digital relationships, but not from our “physical” relationships, those that take place in parks, coffee shops, book clubs, and the like. As a result, social media platforms see the physical relationships between people as competing with the digital relations they offer.

The advantage of social media, what makes them "social", is that they have the potential to facilitate communication between people who are separated by physical distance, either through geography or through such things as the Covid19 quarantine. But this potential is often not realised because of the very commercial interests cited in the article. This is like the effect of alcoholic liquor on sex; as Shakespeare notes in Macbeth, in stimulates the desire but takes away the performance.

As for how commercial social network platforms promote extremism, Santos and Zingales explain it thus:

The local nature of physical relationships forces us to compromise. When the pool of potential friends is limited, we can’t be too picky; we must accept what we can find. Being stuck with the locals, our only option is to improve the quality of our relationships. In a digital sphere, where we can instantaneously connect with the entire world, why should we invest energy in making the current match work? By searching a bit longer, we can find a better match. The quality of any specific relationship becomes less important when there is a large pool of readily available alternatives. It is quantity over quality. As a result, digital platforms create shallower relationships among like-minded individuals that are easy to make and easy to drop.

The emphasis on quantity over quality is exacerbated by the gamification embedded in the platform’s design, carefully curated to maximize engagement and the platform’s profits. The number of followers and likes is prominently featured. Thus, users end up maximizing the number of relationships, not their quality. As many others have noted, in a boundless virtual community, the best way to get attention is to be extreme, to radicalize your position, and even to attack others. In a physical community where people constantly interact face-to-face, it is difficult to dehumanize adversaries. Not so in virtual communities. Online people are just avatars like the ones we are used to shooting in video games. Online, we don’t live with the consequences of our actions when we offend others because we do not observe the pain we inflict on them. We only live with the benefits: more retweets, likes, and followers. This is why otherwise calm and lovely people transform into aggressive beasts online.

Commercial social media are also curated to exacerbate the silo effect. Like the concrete grain silos used for holding corn for loading on to trains or ships, users of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now confusingly called X, so I'll continue to refer to it as Twitter), Instagram and TikTok are funnelled into silos insulated from those in other silos. 

One of the things that social media were initially good at was linking people to information. Twitter, for example, started off as a microblogging platform. One could not say much in a microblog, but it was very good for linking to longer articles that said more. A blog, after all, was a web log, a log and commentary on web sites visited that one thought might interest others. So many web sites made it easy to post links to them on social media platforms. If you think others will be interested in this, share it on your Twitter feed, or on Facebook or somewhere else. But what do the people who run those platforms do? They adjust their algorithms to ensure that such posts are shown to fewer people. They stimulate the desire, but take away the performance. They destroy the very thing that attracted people to their site in the first place. They don't want people clicking on links to other sites because they fear it will mean fewer eyeballs on ads. But the links are what keep people coming back to their site.

There are, however, some anomalous hangovers from the past, when the social media platforms were more user-oriented than they are now. Sometimes I retweet a link to an article I see on Twitter, and it asks "Do you want to read the article first?" That is a hangover from a time when they were trying to give the impression of being "socially responsible" and at least make it appear that they were trying to discourage users from retweeting clickbait articles that might be fake news. I quite often retweet articles I haven't read, however, because I don't have time to read them now, and want to read them later. 

One effect of this that I have noticed is that fewer and fewer people respond  to things I post on social media, so they aren't social at all. I have something over 1100 "followers" on Twitter, but if I post something only 10-30 people see it. The more important it is to me, the fewer the people who see it. And in most cases the people who do see it never respond. A post may occasionally get a "like" or two, but at least half these "likes" are from bots with fake names, no profile information, and no followers. If Twitter were a real social medium, then there would be social interaction, but there isn't. It is antisocial.

I'll put links to this article on Facebook and Twitter, and it will be interesting to see how many people see it at all, and, of those, how many interact with it in any way, by "liking", sharing, commenting etc. 

Again, Santos and Zingales explain this thus:

...digital [networks] are designed and regulated by the platform owner: They are centralized. The reason is that digital relationships are built and maintained in a space that is controlled by a platform, and this control confers the platform with the ownership of the relationship. We can’t take our X (formerly Twitter) followers with us to a different platform, nor can we access our followers without X’s permission, which can be withdrawn at any time without cause. In contrast, X can advertise to our followers and connect them with other followers. We don’t own our followers—X does.

Not only are most digital networks centralized, but they also have another motive to create and maintain the network: to monetize it. Their economic motives fuel their interest in undermining physical networks. All else being equal, customers are indifferent between a digital relationship and a physical one, but platforms aren’t. They profit from digital relationships but not physical ones. In their effort to subsidize digital relationships and undermine physical ones, these platforms are even willing to pay us to remain glued a little longer to the smartphone and not go to the bar with our friends.

Facebook is much the same. It is forever offering me new "people you may know", but there is very little interaction with people I already know. It doesn't show me what they post, and it doesn't show my stuff to them. Or perhaps it does, but they don't like it, and they don't like me, and if I knew what they really thought and they acted on what they really thought we would unfriend each other. So far from being a "social" medium, it promotes the feeling of:

Everybody hates me, nobody loves me
I'm going to go and eat worms
Big fat juicy ones, little itty bitty ones
See how the big ones squirm.
First you bite their heads off, then you suck the juice out
Then you throw the skins away
Nobody knows how I can thrive
On worms three times a day.

I recently had a look at some of my Facebook "friends" that I hadn't heard from for a long time. Some had died, and their last posts were usually from other people saying that they had died, but Facebook never showed me those, so I didn't even know they had died. But if they had posted some trivia just before they died, Facebook would probably have been more likely to have shown me that. But posts with news of their death weren't monetised enough. 

Other friends had probably just dropped out because they found that having their relationships and friendships manipulated by the platform socially unrewarding. It increased the desire but took away the performance, and eventually they found the lack of performance unrewarding and left.

Back to the danger to democracy...

Once again, Santos and Zingales indicate that

Without information, political participation dwindles, and vested interests have an easy time capturing local administrations because most people don’t vote or don’t vote in an informed way. A captured democracy functions poorly, reducing incentives to participate and the trust in the democratic process. If, as Tocqueville hypothesized, local communities are the gymnasium of democracy, then these trends do not affect just local administrations but also national ones.

State capture is not something peculiar to South Africa, though the Gupta affair was a good example of how vested interests can manipulate social media to undermine democracy. 

But it can also work the other way, as we have recently seen when the Western "mainstream" media were captured to channel Israeli government agitprop after 7 October 2023 (and probably before that as well), social media platforms were used to keep alternative viewpoints alive. Even though social media platforms are manipulated, it is possible to some extent to find workarounds, though that requires a great deal of time and energy.

And back in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were a lot of non-commercial social media platforms like BBS (Bulletin Board Service) networks, Usenet newsgroups and email mailing lists that were not captured by vested interests. BBS networks, in particular, were run as a kind of private-enterprise socialism, email mailing lists still exist. If any of my friends would like to communicate online without the commercial manipulation, contact me through the OffTopic forum here.

The phony liberators

When Hugo Chávez first became president of Venezuela in 1999, he seemed to be a champion of democracy, and in initial reforms he tried to introduce a more participatory style of democracy.

But that didn't last, and when he publicly sided with political leaders whose main aim was to suppress anything resembling participatory democracy, like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, he showed his true colours. Those who praised him for his initial championing of democracy have now become his fiercest critics, as he has clearly joined the side of the suppressors of democracy.

Noam Chomsky denounces old friend Hugo Chávez for 'assault' on democracy | The Observer:

Hugo Chávez has long considered Noam Chomsky one of his best friends in the west. He has basked in the renowned scholar's praise for Venezuela's socialist revolution and echoed his denunciations of US imperialism...

The president may be about to have second thoughts about that, because his favourite intellectual has now turned his guns on Chávez.

Speaking to the Observer last week, Chomsky has accused the socialist leader of amassing too much power and of making an "assault" on Venezuela's democracy.

Perhaps this is yet another illustration of what was said by the Brazilian educationist Paolo Freire,

The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man, nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion (P. Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed, 1998, p. 29).

Unless the oppressed can get beyond this barrier, then even if they succeed in overthroring their oppressors, they will simply become oppressors in their turn, and hence phony liberators.

And George Orwell said much the same thing in his Animal farm.

There are some pictures of Hugo Chávez in which he seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to the late Eugene Terreblanche. Or Julius Malema.

Zimbabwe: Harare Descends Into Chaos As Ruling Party Militia Loot Shops

What's the difference between Zimbabwe and Egypt?

In Egypt they're protesting for democracy; in Zimbabwe they're rioting against it.

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Harare Descends Into Chaos As Ruling Party Militia Loot Shops:

Harare came to a standstill on Monday when a ZANU PF mob engulfed the city in chaos, destroying property worth thousands of dollars, mainly belonging to foreign owned companies.

Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa told us that dozens of shops were looted when the ZANU PF militia went on a rampage, as police details stood by watching ordinary people and shop owners being abused and brutalised. Shops belonging to Zimbabweans were also caught up in the crossfire.

Christian and liberal?

In a recent comment on this blog Mark Richardson of Australia expressed the view that Christianity and liberalism were incompatible: Notes from underground: Clarissa's Blog: Being Hated by Conservatives vs Being Hated by Liberals:

I'm a little surprised that you are both an orthodox deacon and someone who appears to identify with liberalism.

Liberalism is the replacement philosophy for Christianity. It is founded on the idea that the good in life is to be a self-creating, autonomous individual.

What matters to a liberal is that we are 'liberated' from impediments to choosing as we will. Therefore, the sexual revolution is thought of as a good thing by liberals as it liberated individuals from an older Christian morality.

The liberal concept of freedom, in other words, is incompatible with the Christian concept of freedom.

I recently read the biography of Peter Brown, the former leader of the former Liberal Party of South Africa, and reviewed it on my other blog here.

Reading Peter Brown's biography prompted some reflection on just what it was that made me get off the fence of a theoretical political neutrality and actually become a card-carrying Liberal. Though I had been sympathetic towards the Liberal Party since the age of 12 (when it had been founded) and urged my mother to vote for them when I was too young to vote myself, I thought that it was better, as a Christian, not to actually join a political party, but to maintain a certain critical distance from all of them (as I do now).

I did have a brief flirtation with the Progressive Party soon after it was founded, when a friend invited me to a meeting and I was carried away by the rhetoric of their leader, Jan Steytler. I even attended their founding congress as an observer, where they adopted their policy of a qualified franchise, which basically meant giving votes to the rich and educated, regardless of colour, rather than the current Nationalist policy of votes for whites only. I had some misgivings about that. While I was still at school I had read a novel by Neville Shute, In the wet, in which he had described a system of multiple voting. It made sense to me at the time. It gave everyone a say in running the country, but avoided the main weakness (as it seemed) of democracy -- counting heads with no regard for what is in them. I tried to advocate this idea at the Progressive party congress, but no one was interested, so I lost interest in the Progressives.

When I went to the University of Natal at Pietermaritzburg in 1963 I actually met some real live liberals, and attended some of their meetings (as opposed to just reading their election pamphlets and other literature, which was the only contact I had had previously). The Liberals advocated "one man one vote". I thought it better than the Progressive qualified franchise, but still thought that a multiple voting system would be better.

What finally made me join was a combination of three factors that convinced me that the Liberal Party policy of one-man, one vote was right. The first of these was my theological studies at the university. The second was the people I met at rural branches of the Liberal Party, and the third was attending Evensong at St Alphege’s Anglican Church in Scottsville. Theology, political activism and worship. My theological studies convinced me that since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, no one is qualified to hold political power over another, and certainly neither education nor wealth (the basis of the Progressive qualified franchise) qualified one to do so. Neither did race (the basis of the Nationalist whites-only franchise).

The peasants who belonged to the Liberal Party in the rural areas were, most of them, under threat of ethnic cleansing since they lived in “black spots”, and without votes they were simply political footballs of Nationalist ideology, and most of them would not have qualified to vote under the Progressive Party policy. And those who devised the evil and unjust policy of apartheid would all have qualified to vote, but their wealth and education did nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent them from promulgating evil and unjust laws. Some of the Nat legislators had PhDs. It was the poor and oppressed who had some moral sense, and a better grasp of political reality.

So though I could truthfully say that I had been a Liberal Party sympathiser from the age of 12, when I first saw a banner announcing the formation of the party, it was not until another 12 years had passed, at the age of 24, that I saw the need to become fully committed as a party member.

And the kind of thinking that led me to that conclusion has been very well expressed by G.K. Chesterton, when he said,

I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.

And it was such things that convinced me that the racist elitism of the Nationalists and the economic elitism of the Progressives was not for me, and so I became a Liberal.

Of course not all members of the Liberal Party were Christians. There were Jews, Muslims and Hindus as well. There were atheists and agnostics. They all had their own reasons for joining, and supporting liberal principles and policies like the the rule of law and civil rights and being opposed to authoritarian government and apartheid and ethnic cleansing. I cannot speak for the others, but I can say what led me, as a Christian, to join the Liberal Party.

So I hope that answers Mark Richardson's question.

I also disagree with almost every one of Mark's contentions about the nature of liberalism and what constitutes liberalism. I am a political liberal, not a theological, economic or philosophical liberal. And as a political liberal I see the freedom advocated by liberalism as being quite limited. It is limited to freedom from being oppressed by other men. It has nothing to do with being freed from morality, because part of morality, or at least Christian morality (as I see it) is that we should not oppress others. As our Lord Jesus Christ said "All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them: for this is the law and the prophets" Matt 7:12. Anyone who wants to be freed from that aspect of morality is not a liberal but a fascist. Unless you want to be detained without trial yourself, then, don't detain others without trial -- and that applies equally to John Vorster Square, Lubyanka, and Guantanamo Bay.

For more, see here.

Bad advisors, bad advice

US President Barack Obama based his election campaign on change, and one of the things he promised to change was the detention without trial system introduced by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama managed to create the impression that he would get rid of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year.

But not only is the Guantanamo Bay camp still there, but now Obama's advisors are urging him to make detention without trial a permanent feature of the US polity.

Hat-tip to Obama's liberty problem: A conservative blog for peace

Bill Quigley and Vince Warren: Obama's Liberty Problem:

Advisors in the Obama administration have floated the idea of creating a special new legal system to indefinitely detain people by Executive Order.

Why? To do something with the people wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo. Why not follow the law and try them? The government knows it will not be able to win prosecutions against them because they were tortured by the US.

Guantanamo is coming up on its ninth anniversary – a horrifying stain on the character of the US commitment to justice. President Obama knows well that Guantanamo is the most powerful recruitment tool for those challenging the US. Unfortunately, this proposal for indefinite detention will prolong the corrosive effects of the illegal and immoral detentions at Guantanamo rightly condemned world-wide.

Needless to say, this is thoroughly bad advice, and one can only hope that he will not take it, and also that he will sack these advisors and appoint others who have a better understanding of all those good things like freedom and democracy.

Politics: style and substance

I spent much of yesterday watching the TV, Sky News, most of it on attempts to form a government in Britain. Hung parliament. David Cameron speaks of the need for a "strong and stable" government, while Nick Clegg speaks of a "stable and good" government.

It's a pity there Lib Dems didn't win more seats, so they could negotiate from a position of strength. As it is, whichever way they go will actually be to their long-term detriment. Endless talking heads outside doors, speculating, speculating, speculating. I think of how different the atmosphere is from South Africa, or at least South Africa as it was in the glory days of the 1990s, where there was the African desire for inclusion, not just the Government of National Unity, which was a kind of constitutional mandate, but a real attempt to bring everyone on board, like getting Gatsha Buthelezi as Minister of Home Affairs, even though he made a total cock up of it.

There was a desire for consensus, rather than the British winner-takes-all system, which makes so many Brits uncomfortable with a hung parliament. Here only the Democratic Party refused to come to the party, and insisted on being a British-style opposition, opposing everything the government did, good or bad, as a matter of principle.

It's all different now, of course -- the ANC can't even extend the politics of inclusion to their own party, and there are no longer any issues of principle, it's all personalities and jockeying for position, and the media are only ever full of stories about who's in and who's out with not a hint of what policies they stand for. It's all personality clashes.

In the evening it seemed that a deal between the Tories and the Lib-Dems was in sight, and Gordon Brown knew the game was up, and resigned. He made a rather touching speech outside 10 Downing Street before going to hand his resignation to the Queen. He walked off down the street with his wife and children to the car. I don't recall any other British prime ministers leaving like that. I think most of them left almost surreptitiously, from the back door. But there is another contrast. Five years ago I thought that we in South Africa were fortunate to have Thabo Mbeki as head of government. For all his faults, he seemed preferable to Tony Blair, George Bush, or Robert Mugabe, or most of the other prime ministers or presidents in the world.

But now I think that Gordon Brown was better than Jacob Zuma, and seeing him walk down the road with his family, after saying that he was giving up his second most important job, as prime minister, but would continue the first, as husband and father, seemed to emphasise the contrast. It's PR, of course, staged for the media, but there is some substance to it as well, and a huge contrast to Jacob Zuma's family life.

But I only follow British politics sporadically, and from a distance. British bloggers are closer, and perhaps see more clearly. One British blogger, Tony Grist, remarked Eroticdreambattle: A good man?:

If a good man does bad things is he still a good man?

Or- to narrow things down more specifically to the career of Gordon Brown- can a person claim to be in possession of 'a moral compass' if he never seems to use it.

The defining characteristics of Brown's career have been cowardice, lack of principle, corrosive ambition, sulkiness, disloyalty and double-dealing. He tacitly supported the Iraq war, encouraged the banking free for all, created a culture of paranoia around himself, persistently undermined his colleagues- including Tony Blair- and (behind closed doors) sulked and fumed and bullied. In what way are these the actions of a 'good' man?

I'm asking because I've just been reading this. Gordon Brown has failed in most things, but he's somehow managed to sell us all on the notion that he's a moral person- that whole son of the manse thing. Well, I beg to differ.

and a little later he elaborated

Brown comes from a very moral place- from Scottish Presbyterianism and Christian Socialism- and has betrayed almost everything he was taught and once stood for.

The young Brown would, I think, have been disgusted by the things his older self wound up doing in the pursuit and exercise of power.

But another British blogger takes a different view. Neil Clark: Farewell, Gordon Brown. You weren't that bad:

Neil Clark: Brown should have strung the bankers up from the lamp-posts – it’s what the public wanted

He's been called the worst Prime Minister ever - and that was by a politician from his own party. But was Gordon Brown, who announced that he was stepping down as Labour leader yesterday, really that bad?

And goes on to say Gordon Brown was not the worst prime minister ever | The First Post:

None of the candidates mooted as replacements for Brown have distinct ideological positions. You certainly couldn't say the same about Jim Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Tony Crosland and Denis Healey - the six Labour candidates who set out to replace Harold Wilson when he stepped down in 1976. Back then, the policies the politicians espoused - and not their personalities, or their media image - were decisive.

But in today's neo-liberal, globalist era, where policy parameters are set by international capital and sovereignty-impinging institutions such as the EU and the IMF, politicians have largely been reduced to mere managers. And because the difference between their policies is so small, so the emphasis has shifted on to personality.

That many regard Brown's premiership so negatively has little to do with the man's actual record in office, but owes a lot to the fact that 'Gloomy Gordon', the man famous for having the 'worst smile in the world', was ill-suited to the personality-based politics of today.

True, there were many things he did do wrong: signing the undemocratic Lisbon Treaty, which surrendered even more sovereignty to the EU without a referendum; his failure to renationalise the railways; and his continuation of Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan.

As Clark points out, politics today is certainly becoming a matter of style rather than substance. But on the positive side

He was certainly a better PM than his warmongering predecessor, who took us into military conflicts which will make us a target for Islamic militants for many years to come, and John Major, who destroyed Britain's railways. And he also comes out favourably compared to Sir Anthony Eden, who led us into the Suez fiasco and Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement of Adolf Hitler led to World War 2.

But there is one real issue, which is at the centre of the wheeling and dealing to form a government in Britain, and that is that the Lib-Dems are wedded to the idea of electoral reform, and this determines the extent to which they will support any of the other parties that wish to form a government.

The Liberal-Democrats want a system of proportional representation, which will more fairly represent the wishes of the voters. When South Africa had a constituency system only a minority of the population were allowed to vote, and even some of those who did have the vote were effectively disenfranchised because many constituencies returned unopposed candidates. Now we have proportional representation, and every vote counts.

The disadvantage, however, is that proportional representation with a list system makes members of parliament accountable to their parties rather than to the electorate. If media image counts for a great deal in British politics, it counts for very litte in South African politics. Julius Malema has had a poor media image for some time, but that counts for little. What counts is the party cabal.

As a non-Brit, my main interest in British politics is their foreign policies. The warmongering propensity of the Labour government of the past 13 years has helped to make the world a more dangerous place for all of us. Leftist socialist Brits say that the most important thing was to vote Labour for sake of the British working class, and they care a lot less about the fact that the Labour government has enthusiastically participated in the bombing of the working class in other countries. Working class solidarity and socialism that is no longer internationalist becomes National Socialism. Add to that the denial of civil liberties at home by enthusiasm for such things as 90-day detention manifested by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, with the bulk of the British media calling that "the moral high ground", and Labour's record is not a good one. I'm not sure that the Tories would have been any better on those issues. The Liberal Democrats at least made some effort to oppose those things, and my thought was that a hung parliament would be a good thing if it enabled the Lib-Dems to restrain the worst excesses of Tories and Labour.

But in Britain, as in South Africa, I think it is well to heed G.K. Chesterton's wise words

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments on government at all, its comment must be this -- that the man should rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may say, "I will be king"; but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari." If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this--that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can't.

Politics is getting interesting again, thanks to two fascist clowns

Easter week of 2010 will be remembered as the week when politics in South Africa became interesting again, thanks to two political clowns and the media.

On the left, Eugene Terre'blanche (known as ET), former leader of the AWB (Afrikanner Resistance Movement), and on the right, Julius Malema, leader of the ANC Youth League.

ET made headlines by the manner of his death, and the rumours that circulated around it, and his political buffoonery lay in the past, though his funeral was a circus, if media accounts are to be believed, and some of his supporters appear to believe that Julius Malema's racist rhetoric at least contributed to his death, if it was not directly responsible for it.

But, as the front page of City Press shows, they were actually birds of a feather, both dedicated to overblown fascist and racist rhetoric. But a nation divided? I doubt it. Both these demagogues appealed to small but vocal minorities, and they have been boosted by much media attention.

For ten years or more, politics has been excessively boring. Endless stories of graft and corruption, and fat cats jockeying for position. In the apartheid days we were largely protected from such stories because the press was kept on a tight leash by the National Party regime. The best one could say about the corruption stories was that they showed we now have a free press.

But the antics of ET and Malema and their supporters provide entertainment, and the media are determined to give it to us. Not all of the jounalism is responsible, though. One can expect sensationalism from tabloids like The Sun, but even "responsible" papers like the Sunday Independent could not resist a sensation-mongerring headline like

Was ET gay and bonking darkies?

based on the rumour that a used condom had been found in the room where ET was murdered. The police had categorically denied that a condom had been found, but the Sunday Independent was not about to let the facts get in the way of a good story. They did include the police denial -- in small print, right at the bottom. So the antics of the media are almost as entertaining as those of the protagonists.

But it also reaches the point where it goes beyond a joke.

The last straw was when Julius Malema kicked a BBC journalist, Jason Fisher, out of a press conference, claiming he had been insulted.

Malema apparently castigated the Movement for Democratic Change, the Zimbabwean opposition group, for speaking from their air-conditioned offices in Sandton. And Fisher pointed out that Malema himself lived in Sandton, and Malema blew his top.

Any politician in a democratic society with a sense of proportion would probably have grinned, said "Touché!" or something similar, and moved on.

The fact that Malema perceived that as an insult and lost his cool over it and kicked the journalist out speaks volumes. It doesn't matter what Malema said. The words he used are not important. It his actions that show that he is a fascist, with no sense of democracy, and no sense of proportion.

As another journalist in City Press, Xolela Mangcu, put it, "Il Duce step aside: a fascist fire rages in Malema."

If Malema had any political nous at all he would see that as an insult, and an insult far worse than saying that he lived in Sandton.

As Mangcu says of this incident

Perhaps a little world history could be helpful in opening our eyes to what Malema's reaction could mean for our young democracy and people.

The historical figure I have in mind is Italy's fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. On the eve of Mussolini's reign as prime minister a critic asked him about his party's political programme. Mussolini mocked the critic thus: "The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our programme? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo, and the sooner the better."

Mussolini concluded his tirade thus: "The fist is the synthesis of our theory."

And that statement is a pretty good summary of the political programme and philosophy of ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, which Malema has just visited, and spoken admiringly of ZANU-PF.

This, is of course, an embarrassment to the leadership of the ANC, which is trying to portray itself as a neutral honest broker between ZANU-PF and the MDC, an image which Malema's blatant partisanship has shattered. His outburst to the BBC journalist has shown his true colours. It bodes ill for our democracy if his political career goes any further. Xolela Mangcu is hopeful that it won't

Could Malema be the face of the replacement of politics with violence? I doubt it. Malema will ultimately trip on his own words. Besides, South Africa is too complex and differentiated to fall under the rule of one Il Duce.

I hope he's right.

But if anyone is getting cold feet about coming to South Africa for the World Cup for fear of a bloodbath, don't worry about it. Julius Malema is unlikely to become president this year, or next year, or any time for the next nine years. And a lot can happen in nine years. South Africa has plenty of precedents of politicians who appeared to have a meteoric rise, and had a sputtering fall. Tielman Roos, for example. Anyone remember him? With any luck, Julius Malema will go the same way.

The death of ET and immaturity of our democracy

In today's Sunday Independent there is an interesting article by Mcebisi Ndletyana, which which he offers a defence of the song "Kill the Boer", which a high court judge recently declared was "hate speech".

Unfortunately I (or Google) could not find a version of Ndletyana's article on the web that I could link to, which is a pity, because it it worth reading for the historical background.

Ndletyana points out that the song is not racist in the sense of being anti-white, because the late Joe Slovo, who was white, used to sing it with great gusto. The song was not in my political repertoire, but I used to sing one that had similar references:

Mayibuye, mayibuye,
mayibuy' iAfrika
eyathathwa ngamaBhunu
sisasebumnyameni.

(Let Afrika return, which was taken by the Boers when we were still in darkness)

And, lest I be suspected of "Boerehaat", there was another verse that referred to "amaNgisi" (the English), in the same context.

But I nevertheless agree with the judge, and disagree with Mcebisi Ndletyana, in that I think that singing such songs now is an anachronism, and a sign of political immaturity. But maturity never was the strong point of the likes of Julius Malema.

Back in the bad old days of apartheid "amaBhunu" referred, pretty clearly, to the National Party government, alias the Apartheid Regime. And such songs were directed at encouraging people in the struggle against a hated and oppressive regime.

There are some paranoid people who believe that there is a deliberate campaign of genocide against white farmers in South Africa. Singing such songs at political rallies now tends to fuel such paranoia, and some appear to believe that the recent murder of the notorious white supremacist Eugene Terreblance (ET) is further proof of the exiatence of such a conspiracy.

Malema's political idiocy also extends to attempting to hijack the Sharpeville massacre for the ANC, and to downplay the role of the PAC. His public utterances continually remind us that we no longer have people of the political stature of Robert Sobukwe with us.

The fact is that after 16 years of democracy, struggle songs like "Shoot the Boer" no longer mean what they once did.

But there are other, more serious indications of political immaturity.

That can be seen in the tendency to destroy buildings and damage property in protests over lack of "service delivery". Pretoria station was burnt down by angry commuters because trains were late. In another instance, Soshanguve commuters burnt trains because the trains were late, and then complained that there was no train service, when they themselves had destroyed the trains.

Back in the 1980s the apartheid regime erected the showpiece township of Ekangala, north of Bronkhorstspruit. Half of it was run by the KwaNdebele government, and half by the East Rand Administration Board, and which half one lived in made a big difference to one's right to live and work in urban areas. Residents burnt down the administration offices, which destroyed the records of who lived where. It was a direct attack on the system, and made political sense at the time, because the people concerned had no vote.

But now people do have a vote, and so it makes no sense to burn trains and public libraries and other public or private property. Local government elections are coming up, and if people are dissatisfied with service delivery, or with the performance of their municipal councillors, they now have a democratic remedy -- to organise people to vote them out. That is the way democracy works -- not by burning down libraries and stations.

Burning buildings and singing provocative songs made sense when there was a government did not have to listen because most of those it was oppressing had no vote. In fact part of the struggle was to ensure that everyone had the vote, and the political freedom to organise to toss self-serving politicians out. We've had that freedom for 16 years now, and it's time we began to use it.

Twenty years old today: the new South Africa

Twenty years ago today Preisdent F.W. de Klerk announced a new South Africa. He announced his intention of unbanning opposition political parties, and releasing political prisoners, and opening up political debate.

It was the light at the end of the tunnel. We still had a way to go before we emerged into daylight, but at least there was an end in sight, and we could hope for the freedom we had not dared to hope for.

There had been a scent of freedom in the air for a while -- the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of Ceaucescu in Romania and other events over the previous few months. But F.W. de Klerk's announcement brought it home. Those things were "over there", this was here!

I wrote in my diary 2-Feb-1990, Friday:

Sam came in this morning with the announcement that F.W. de Klerk had finally made it across the Rubicon, and was unbanning all political organisations. Well, we're back to 1950. Perhaps we'll soon get back to where we took the wrong turning and we can begin to go forward again. In the mean time, let's drink to glasnost and Pretoriastroika...

Watched all the TV news, most of which was devoted to F.W. de Klerk's speech in parliament. Amazing how everyone is claiming that their policy/actions were responsible for it. Someone said that sanctions brought it about, Maggie Thatcher said it was their refusal to impose sanctions ... and so it goes on. Not that it matters much now. Best to get on with the rest of the journey, from the Rubicon to Rome.

The "Rubicon" reference was to a speech by the previous President, P.W. Botha, five years earlier, which the media hyped up beforehad. It was going to be a major policy shift, they said, it was going to be a crossing of the Rubicon. They had been speculating for years that P.W. Botha was going to announce his "reform programme", and it finally became clear to the media optimists that he didn't have one. It sank like a stone to the bottom of the Rubicon.

But finally F.W. de Klerk came up with the real thing.

It was on a Friday, and the following Sunday was we drove to church in Johannesburg we saw that a graffiti artist had painted on one of the bridges over the freeway: FW - top man.

And twenty years later I am reminded of a song that was quite popular back in 1973, sung by a group called Parchment.

Yesterdays dream didn't quite come true
We fought for our freedom, and what did it do?
Now no one can see where they stand.
Let there be light in the land!
Let there be light in the people!
Let there be God in our lives from now on.

Fifteen years ago, just a year after our first democratic elections, I visited Kenya for the first time. I was a little surprised that there was only one thing about South Africa that interested Kenyans. They were not interested in our transition to democracy. They weren't interested in how we were going to build a better future. No, the only thing that interested them was the Mandela divorce, and who would get the money. I tried in vain to explain that it wasn't really like that. Mandela had given his Nobel prize money to establish a children's fund. He wasn't in it for the money. And Kenyans found that impossible to believe.

And then I realised that I was learning a lesson about Kenyan politics, and what the average Kenyan thought of their politicians. And I was thankful that South Africa wasn't like that, yet...

But now?

Yesterday's dream didn't quite come true.

And we're just the same as Kenya, and the UK, with their MPs' expenses scandal, and all the rest of them.

But at least we're still free.

Haiti: earthquakes, democracy and imperialism

The media and the blogosphere have been buzzing with reports of some American politico saying that Haitians deserved to die in an earthquake because there was a rumour that some of their ancestors may possibly have made a pact with the devil. But it seems that the ancestors of the US population are just as open to the accusation.

Morehead's Musings: Interview at Sacred Tribes Journal: Miguel De La Torre on Haiti, It's People and Religion:

We need to be aware that America from very early on never really wanted to see Haiti succeed. When the Haitian slaves overthrew their slave owner masters, this was really the first democracy in the Caribbean that was established. The democracy in the United States was leery of having a Haitian democracy. People like Thomas Jefferson were very concerned that a nation of free black people, run by free black people might be a bad inspiration for his personal black slaves and those in the South. There has always been this desire to make sure the Haitian people did not succeed because if they were to succeed as a country then that would begin to undermine the mythology of white supremacy. This was active in the time of Jefferson, up to the Civil War, and after the Civil War. So there has always been this relationship with Haiti where we did not want to see it be successful.

Interesting stuff there, in John Morehead's blog.

And US and Canadian opposition to Haitian democracy continues into the 21st century. As Fr Michael Graves, an Orthodox missionary in Haiti (since reposed in the Lord), wrote five years ago

Greetings from Haiti, where we experience FIRST-HAND the terrible results of the Feb. 2004 intervention and toppling of the Aristide government. The following is one of the best articles describing our situation. Since the majority of the public media all over this area appears to be controlled by the imperialist powers that be, I am circulating this article which tells the truth about our situation. Please circulate it far-and-wide if you are able.

And please pray for us because we are living under an evil and frightening regime.

God bless,

Father Michael in Haiti

Seven Oaks Magazine August 24, 2004

Blood on the hands: A survey of Canada's role in Haiti

Roger Annis

Five hundred Canadian soldiers are returning from Haiti this month. Together with the armed forces of France and the United States, they took part in the violent overthrow of the elected government of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February/March of this year. Since then, occupying troops have provided backing for rightist gangs who will form the core of the police and government authority the occupying forces are cobbling together to replace the Aristide government.

Troops from the three countries began occupying Haiti on February 29, hours after the United Nations Security Council gave its blessing. Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces later that day and flown out of the country. He now lives in asylum.

The capitalist media in Canada presented the coup as a popular uprising against an unpopular regime. Since then, they have kept a discreet censure about conditions in Haiti under imperialist occupation. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton spoke not a word about the ongoing tragedy in Haiti during the federal election campaign in May and June. Trade union leaders have also been silent.

The truth urgently needs to be told about Ottawa's crime against the Haitian people.

A disaster for the Haitian people

Constitutional government in Haiti, won through many years of tenacious struggle, has been overthrown. Killings by rightist gangs were widespread leading up to the coup and they have continued during the occupation regime. Several thousand have died. The rightists target supporters of the Aristide government and anyone striving to improve social conditions in the country. Rightists convicted of crimes and human rights violations during previous regimes have been released from prison and are involved in the killings.

U.S. troops have taken part in the attacks on the Haitian people. An Associated Press reporter witnessed U.S. marines joining police in firing on a demonstration of tens of thousands of Haitians on May 18 in Port au Prince. A dozen people were killed and many more injured. Demonstrators were demanding the return of Aristide on the occasion of a holiday marking Haitian independence.

Following the coup, living conditions in Haiti have gone from bad to worse. Prices for basic foodstuffs have risen sharply, the minimum wage has been cut by the new governing authority, and civic services have declined. Flooding this past May on the east- ern part of the island devastated many villages and killed several thousand. In the countryside, drought conditions are devastating the livelihood of farmers and
threatening the vital food harvest. Precious little international aid is being delivered to meet emergency needs.

In a letter to the Toronto Star on July 30, a reader described her dismay with the head of the Canadian military in Haiti when he described the occupation as a "success." The letter recounted a recent telephone conversation with a Canadian aid worker living in Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti. "Things are so much worse than they were last October, prior to the revolt in February," reported the worker.

"Supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide are still being hunted down by those who support a new regime. Food supplies are low, electricity is only on for one to three hours daily, garbage is piled up along the roads, as there has been no collection for many months now, and people everywhere are sick."

Why imperialism opposed Aristide

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Average annual income is a few hundred dollars. Average life expectancy is 49 years for men and 50 for women. An AIDS epidemic is ravaging the country. Forty-seven percent of the adult population is illiterate and unemployment is 60% to 70%. The country is burdened by a crushing debt to imperialist governments and lending agencies. Gross domestic product in Haiti has declined from US$4 billion in 1999 to $2.9 billion in 2003.

Aristide rose to prominence in the 1980s during the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Duvalier dictatorship in 1990. He was first elected president that year with the overwhelming support of Haiti's working people on a platform of radical social reform. Nine months later he was overthrown by a military coup. He was elected again in May of 2000.

The masses in Haiti had big expectations in the governments headed by Aristide, and despite many disappointments with his performance, they continued to place enormous pressure on his government to stand up to the imperialists and improve their lot. Aristide established diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1996, and he welcomed hundreds of Cuban doctors and health workers to provide health care in remote parts of the country.

The post-2000 government built new schools and refused imperialist demands to privatize state-owned services such as electricity, telephones, and ports.

Aristide angered the French government in April 2003 when he demanded that it pay $21 billion in reparations to Haiti. France, the island's former colonial power, had extorted millions of dol- lars in payments from Haitian governments during the 19th and 20th centuries as punishment for the successful anti-slave revolt that led to Haiti's independence from France in 1804.

Aristide's governments brought few improvements in living conditions for the masses. It implemented measures demanded by the imperialists, including lowering of tariffs that protected local food production, emptying of the national treasury in order to pay off international lending institutions, and privatizing some state-owned industries.

Nevertheless, the imperialist powers feared a revival of the mass movement that had toppled the Duvalier dictatorship, and they were not confident that Aristide would keep the island safe for continued exploitation.

Canadian imperialists in Haiti

The imperialist intervention in Haiti was a joint venture with rightist forces that launched an armed rebellion in early February. The rightists were armed and financed by wealthy Haitians and their backers in the U.S., France, Canada, and neighbouring Dominican Republic. They were few in number and weak in the capital city Port au Prince. But pro-government defense forces were poorly organized and armed, and were politically disoriented by the record of the Aristide government in bowing to imperialist dictates.

In January 2003, Canada's foreign affairs department was one of the sponsors of an international conference in Ottawa that discussed and laid plans for the overthrow of Aristide's government. Thirteen months later, according to a report on the French-language television news network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the elite service of the Canadian armed forces was among the imperialist troops that helped capture and secure the airport in Port au Prince in the early hours of February 29.

On July 6, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced that Canada would send 100 RCMP to replace the returning soldiers. Police and soldiers from the U.S., France, Chile, Brazil, and other countries will remain in Haiti, under UN Security Council approval. A press release from the Canadian government described the role of the occupation as being a form of assistance to "the transitional Haitian government in establishing a secure and stable environment, restoring law and order, and reforming the Haitian National Police."

Canada's troops provide security for the post-coup regime, and the killings continue. One of the tasks the occupation forces have set for themselves is to disarm the civilian population.

The Canadian government has convinced many at home and abroad that it is a friend of peace and democracy and that its armed forces abroad are "peacekeepers." This is a lie. Indignation against the crimes of Washington in Iraq and elsewhere will ring hollow if not accompanied by equal indignation at Ottawa's participation in the pillage and oppression of the semi-colonial world.

Those concerned with human rights, poverty and the oppression of the Third World peoples have a responsibility to speak out about the situation in Haiti. We should demand of the Canadian government that it withdraw police and military forces from that country and halt any form of assistance to the post-coup authority. Working-class and progressive organizations in Canada need to support the people of Haiti in opposing the coup-imposed regime and fighting for the return of the democratically elected government.

Roger Annis is an editor of www.SocialistVoice.com , where this article
originally appeared.

I am not sure that Fr Michael would have sympathised with all the "Marxist perspectives" in Socialist Voice. What is clear is that from his perspective, inside Haiti at the time of the 2004 coup, is that that article was telling the truth about what was happening in Haiti.

As the Kingston Trio sang 50 years ago:

They're rioting in Africa
There's strikes in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.

For more background information see In Case You Missed It: A Pact With Which Devil?

Voter apathy -- Has floor-crossing been abolished?

Today I passed a poster of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) urging people to register to vote, and that made me wonder about floor crossing.

Floor crossing has been a significant factor in voter apathy, and I know many people who saw no point in voting or even registering to vote because one's vote could be nullified within 18 months by members of parliament and other legislative bodies crossing the floor to join other parties.

I have heard rumours that floor-crossing had been or was about to be abolished, and wanted to find out more about it, to see if it was worth registering to vote. I did a Google search, but it was not particularly informative, and the most positive thing it turned up was this:

Floor-crossing to be abolished - South Africa - The Good News:

Floor-crossing to be abolished Monday, 21 April 2008

The government has approved constitutional amendments to ban the floor-crossing of Members of Parliament and Ward Councillors, reports The Times.

The Bills containing the amendments were passed by the Cabinet on Wednesday and are due for publication for public comment before they are tabled in Parliament.

The two Bills are intended to abolish floor-crossing in the national assembly, provincial legislatures and municipal councils, Justice Ministry spokesman Zolile Nqayi told The Times.

It seems there was an intention to abolish floor crossing, but it is not clear whether these bills were actually brought before parliament, and if so, whether they were voted on and passed.

If the bills were indeed passed, and floor crossing has been abolished, and there will be no more crosstitutes, that is indeed good news, but I suspect that the public is largely unaware of it. If the IEC want to encourage people to register as voters, then that is something they need to give more publicity to, otherwise many people just won't bother because that they believe that floor-crossing is still possible, and that their vote is therefore worthless.

So why not mount a publicity campaign to inform the public that crosstitution is a thing of the past (if indeed it is). That might go some way towards restoring faith in our democracy.

Zimbabwe's descent into chaos

One of the things that held up a power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe was Mugabe's insistence that he alone control the police and the army -- he wasn't sharing that power with anyone.

But as the situation deteriorates, one wonders just how much control he has. When there is no longer any money to pay the police and the army, will they resort to using their weapons to earn their living as marauding bands, stealing from the civilian population at gunpoint?

The Times - Zimbabwe military has become a brigand army for hire:

According to the Guardian newspaper: “Zimbabwean air force helicopters swept over the hundreds of fleeing illegal diamond miners and mowed down dozens with machine-gun fire.

“After that the police arrived and unleashed the dogs that tore into the diggers, killing some and mutilating others.

“The police fired tear gas to drive the miners out of their shallow tunnels and shot them down as they emerged.”

This is a description of one incident and there have been several similar shootings over the past month.

And one wonders what kind of democracy it is when the loser of an election gets to share power with the winner, with the loser determining what share the winner gets. As Chairman Mao is reputed to have said, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. That may be true, especially in places like Zimbabwe, but it is not democracy.

Greece, Zimbabwe and South Africa

On 6 December 2008 a Greek policeman shot a teenager in Athens.

A subsequent demonstration turned violent, and cars and shops were burnt.

There's a good summary of events on Wikipedia.

I can't help wondering what might happen if Zimbabwean youth responded like Greek youth -- or like South African youth in 1976.

In Greece, similar action by youth in 1974 resulted in the restoration of democracy. Two years alter, South African youth responded in a similar fashion, but it took nearly 20 years, and many more deaths, before democracy was established.

One result of the Greek action in 1974 was that the youth were honoured. There is a public holiday, Polytechniou, to commemorate the Polytechnic students who died, just as we have Youth Day in South Africa to commemorate the young people who died in June 16 1976 and the following weeks.

Another result, according to my daughter, who is a student in Athens, is that since 1974 the police have not been allowed to enter universities. This makes it easier for students to manufacture Molotov cocktails and the like, and it's quite common to see burnt-out vehicles on campus.

I suspect, however, that if Zimbabwean youth tried the same thing, the police would not arrest the policemen who killed young people, but would reward them, and there would be many more deaths.

After 1976, many South African young people went abroad for military training, and returned to fight back.

Many Zimbabwean youth, faced with a similar situation of police repression and brutality, also leave the country, but I'm not aware of any of them forming a liberation army to go home and fight back. That's probably just as well -- the Democratic Republic of Congo as dozens of "liberation" armies, most of which are fighting to be in a position to oppress others. A lot of Zimbabwe's present troubles stem from the misguided attempt of the Zimbabwean government to support one of them by sending troops to the Congo to support one of the factions there.

Are there any lessons in all this for Zimbabwean youth?

A liberal underground in South Africa

A recent comment on South African history by Paul Trewhela suggests that if the Liberal Party had gone underground 40 years ago, instead of disbanding under government pressure, it could have strengthened the liberal democratic tradition in South Africa today.

Politicsweb - FEATURES - The battle of ideas in South Africa:

The prime opponent in South Africa of both the European tradition of racist rule, embodied principally but not exclusively in the government of over forty years of the National Party, but also of totalitarian state despotism of the Soviet type (represented by the SACP), was the Liberal Party of South Africa. During the apartheid period, members of this party showed great courage and gave outstanding moral witness. But the Liberal Party existed for only 15 years, between 1953 and 1968, when it dissolved itself.

By that act of self-extinction, in that most bleak period of despotic rule under the heavy hand of Prime Minister Balthasar John Vorster (former paramilitary leader of the Ossewabrandwag), the Liberal Party discounted itself as a serious contender for the allegiance of black people, deprived of a vote, and handed primacy of position in the argument for the criterion of non-racialism in politics to its rival and enemy, the SACP.

In another article, Gus Gosling asks whether it would have been possible for the Liberal Party to have gone underground, and gives some reasons why he thought it could not.

Politicsweb - FEATURES - Why was there no liberal underground?:

In effect the NCL-ARM was the (premature) act of underground resistance from the Liberal Party. The final, aberrant, tragic act of the NCL-ARM on 24 July 1964, an expanded increasingly paranoid state security apparatus, combined finally with Liberal openness ensured the near impossibility for any second act of underground resistance from Liberals.

So why, despite all this, do I still think that Paul Trewhela has a point? The Liberal Party's real failure was that, outside Natal, it was perceived and received as a party of white privilege. (In Natal the Liberal Party had support among rural blacks facing eviction from 'blackspots'.)

I think that Gus Gosling has got it right there. As I've noted elsewhere (Notes from underground: A new history of the Liberal Party?), I have little first-hand knowledge of the Liberal Party outside Natal, but within Natal, I can see no way that the party could have gone underground. The party had operated openly and publicly. Its members and leaders were well-known to the Security Police, who would not have had to be very bright to have noticed underground activity. Their izimpimpi were still active, and long after the Liberal Party had disbanded they continued to report contact between former members of the party to the Security Police.

It was easier for the South African Communist Party to operate underground for reasons noted by Gosling and Trewhela, and also because it saw itself as a vanguard organisation, which the Liberal Party did not. The Liberal Party tried not only to talk about democracy, but to practise it in its own organisation, which meant meeting not as secret cells, but publicly as party branches, and having regional, provincial and national congresses.

So I believe it would have been pretty unrealistic to expect the Liberal Party to go underground.

But there is a related question that is worth asking.

While it would have been almost impossible for the Liberal Party to operate underground, some of its members, including me, were quite interested in the history of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, and we did see the possibility of a confessing church in South Africa. So the question to ask is why nothing came of the idea of a confessing church.

When the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer were published in English in the 1960s, they struck a chord with South African readers, who could see many parallels between South Africa in the 1960s and Germany in the 1930s. In 1963 the Christian Institute was formed, and its associated journal Pro Veritate published articles asking if the time had come for a confessing church in South Africa.

I and others have covered this in some detail in a collection of essays Oom Bey for the future: engaging the witness of Beyers Naude edited by Len Hansen and Robert Vosloo (Stellenbosch, SUN Press, 2006: ISBN 1-920109-29-3). One of the things that I was concerned with was that the Christian Institute should try to recruit former members of the Liberal Party (most of whom were Christians belonging to various African independent churches), and, as an interdenominational organisation, provide the basic structure for them to continue to work together.

In the end, for various reasons, this did not happen.

Nevertheless, a Christian "underground" was a far more feasible project than a Liberal Party one, and if it had come off, it could have performed at least some of the functions that Trewhela and Gosling think an underground Liberal Party could have done.

Tibet -- mixed messages

I've been getting mixed messages about Tibet.

On the one hand there have been pro-democracy organisations like Avaaz trying to drum up support for Tibetan rebels:

On Monday, thousands of people in 84 cities worldwide marched for justice for Tibet--and delivered the 1.5 million-signature Avaaz petition to Chinese embassies and consulates around the globe. (Click for photos.) Avaaz staff have engaged with Chinese diplomats in New York and London, delivering the petition and urging action. And a growing chorus of world leaders is joining the call...

Together, we've built an unprecedented wave of global pressure. The Avaaz petition is one of the biggest and fastest-growing global online petitions on any topic in history; since it launched on March 18, it has been signed by 100,000 people per day--an average of more than 4,000 per hour, day and night.

Politicians understand that there is power in numbers. We need to show them that they have more to gain by listening to their own people--and heeding the cry for help from Tibet--than by giving China a pass in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. Take action now

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_report_back/5.php/?cl=69533376

And then I read blog posts like this:

The Dalai Lama � Steph’s blog:

You don’t win a Nobel Peace Prize without having blood on your hands and the Dalai Lama is no different, it might suit his followers (the Gelug sect) and the Americans to pretend that the ”God-King” is a wise, benign, pacifist and has some sort of democratic mandate to rule Tibet, but that’s plainly not true.

He’s a murderous, racist, charlatan and Western stooge. When he was in power he was a brutal, merciless, theocratic despot, who lived in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace, and his followers were eye-gouging, child-buggering, corrupt, religious fanatics, (see Michael Parenti: Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth). Although, that doesn’t stop the murderous old fraud and his “Free Tibet Movement” from being a cause celeb for liberal imperialists and gerbil lovers, under the pretext of human rights.

(Gerbils? What do they have to do with it? Are they native to Tibet?)

And then there are fellow South African bloggers like Reggie Nel saying things like Reggie: Stand with Tibet - Support the Dalai Lama: "After decades of repression, Tibetans are crying out to the world for change. China's leaders are right now making a crucial choice between escalating repression or dialogue that could determine the future of Tibet, and China."

But then again, on the other hand there is this: servethepeople: Tibet:

For his part, the Dalai Lama has successfully cultivated an image of gentleness, peace and simplicity which ahs an undeniable appeal to Westerners sickened by their own countries’ involvement in or support for exploitative and oppressive relations with the Third World, or alienated by the dehumanising nature of technological change and the general rat race of urban living. The Dalai is a “living Buddha” who has won acclaim, including a Nobel Peace Prize, for his rejection of violence.

The Dalai is also a clever and sophisticated politician, a wily manipulator of media opportunity and celebrity support.

However, he is not so clever that he cannot conceal his splittist intentions as regards China, nor his sham “patriotism” and “independence”.

These sound like harsh words, but they can be substantiated through the Dalai’s own materials.

So who is one to believe?

I think I go with Grant Walliser when he says Thought Leader � Grant Walliser � Free Tibet like you freed Kosovo:

Bottom line: China is a big pimp on the street and Serbia is not. That means you can gang up on Serbia, garner support in Kosovo and build US military bases in nice strategic positions. It means you can run detention centres like Guant�namo Bay in Kosovo and it means you can kick your old enemy Russia and your new one Iran smugly in the balls. And should Russian diplomacy make inroads with Poland and the Czech Republic when you need to put up your missile defence system at the confluence of Russia and Middle East, what a great alternative your new best buddy Kosovo would make. The clues to otherwise indefensible and incomprehensible behaviour are all in the timing and the agendas playing out behind the scenes (emphasis mine).

Come to think of it, what did Avaaz say about Kosovo?

CIA overthrowing democracy in Venezuela?

hope the CIA keep their sticky beaks out of Venezuela's business.

I'd sympathise with Chavez but for one thing -- he publicly supported Mugabe, and many of his sympathizers also publicly support Mugabe. And anyone who knows what is going on in Zimbabwe and supports Mugabe is no friend of democracy.

clipped from www.democracynow.org In Venezuela, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Caracas Thursday to oppose constitutional changes proposed by President Chavez that come to a vote on Sunday. Citing a confidential memo, the Venezuelan government is claiming the CIA is fomenting unrest to challenge the referendum. It actually mentions the fact that the US strategy is what they call a “pincer operation.” to try to undermine the electoral process, the vote itself, and then secondly, once the vote goes through, if they are not able to stop the vote, is to engage in a massive campaign calling fraud and rejecting the outcome that comes from the election what they seem to have on their agenda is to try to seize either a territorial base or an institutional base around which to rally discontented citizens and call on the military—and it particularly mentions the National Guard—to rally in overthrowing the referendum outcome and the government. So this does include a section on a military uprising.

Blog for Burma!

Blog for Burma on 4 October!

International bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in Burma. We want to set a sign for freedom and show our sympathy for these people who are fighting their cruel regime without weapons. These Bloggers are planning to refrain from posting to their blogs on October 4 and just put up one Banner then, underlined with the words „Free Burma!“.





Hat-tip to: The Uninhabited Man: Free Burma!

The crosstitutes are at it again

It's floor-crossing season again, when South Africa abandons democracy and is ruled by a self-elected, self-serving bunch of politicians.

The worst thing about it is not the behaviour of the politicians. Politicians can be expected to be self-serving. The worst thing about it is the behaviour of our constitutional court, which has utterly failed in its duty to protect our democracy by allowing it to be destroyed in this fashion. One must seriously question the integrity of the judges of the Constiutional Court.

The Constitutional Court is supposed to evaluate legislation in the spirit of the constitution, and its fundamental principles. And one of the principles of the Constitution, one of the principles that the liberation struggle was fought for, was "the people shall govern".

While that may be true for the first 18 months after an election, for the rest of the time the people do not govern, and South Africa is ruled by an unelected oligarchy.

As The Weekender reported, even before it began the floor-crossing window was stained with "allegations of bribery, threats of violence, and offers of sexual favours".

The crosstitutes bring South Africa into disrepute. The Constitutional Court, by allowing crosstitution, brings South Africa into even more disrepute. Is the Constitutional Court there to protect our democracy, or to preside over a political brothel?

In a constituency system, where candidates are elected in their personal capacity, and their names appear on the ballot paper, floor-crossing is permissible, and may be judged good or bad according to circumstances. In a proportional representation system, however, where the names of candidates do not appear on the ballot paper, but are nominated on party lists, the politicians cease to represent the electorate the moment they leave the party that put them on its list.

What makes it so difficult for our Constiutional Court judges to understand this?

Racism and sexism rule OK

I'm glad I'm not the only one to have noticed that in all the media hoopla about potential US presidential candidates Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, practically nothing has said about their policies. It's all about race and sex. The Gaelic Starover and Priestly Goth Blog: Barack Obama have also noticed this phenomenon, so I'm not alone.

It seems that the media are playing the race and sex cards for all they are worth. There was a thing on SAFM radio yesterday: Will the American voters accept someone of Barak Obama's race or Hillary Clinton's sex? What do black American voters think of Barak Obama (he's a real African-American, with an African father and an American mother)?

This shows how racist and sexist the media still are. In a really nonracist and nonsexist society, the focus would be on their policies.

If whichever one wins withdraws all American soldiers from Iraq by the end of January 2009, then we'll know that they will have at least cleaned up George Bush's mess. The smell will linger long afterwards, of course, but they will have done what they could and can spend the rest of their presidency, one hopes, getting on with more positive things. But race and sex are far more glamourous than cleaning cat crap off the carpet.

But not a word about ending the warmongering that has made America the polecat of the world. It's all race and sex. Not only do the media expect us all to be racist and sexist, the encourage us to be racist and sexist, and to evaluate politicians on the basis of their race and sex, and not on their policies.

Gerald Ford, the unelected US president

Hearing all the eulogies for Gerald Ford, the only unelected president of the USA, reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton said:

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen.

If our faith comments on government at all, its comment must be this -- that the man should rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may say, "I will be king"; but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari." If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this -- that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can't.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of democracy is elections. because all the wrong people put themselves forward for election. Maybe what we need is for the leaders of a country to be chosen by lot. Let parliament be drafted by ballot. They would be just as representative of the country as elected politicans, and they would be replaced when their term of office ends, so they wouldn't be around long enough to establish a bribe-taking system. If Gerald Ford was as good as they are now saying, this would probably be a better system.