The ANC centenary

The African National Congress, which has ruled South Africa for nearly 18 years, is having a big bash in the Free State to celebrate its centenary.

ANC parties in Bloemfontein | News24:

An ANC centenary torch was lit at midnight in Bloemfontein on Saturday, while party leaders, members, heads of state and guests celebrated until early hours on Sunday.

ANC president Jacob Zuma and Archbishop Desmond Tutu lit the torch at the Wesleyan Church in the company of various party elders including former President Thabo Mbeki and guests. The ANC was founded at the church.

Fourteen heads of state, five former heads of state and four heads of governments in Africa and elsewhere were welcomed at the presidential gala dinner at the Vista campus during the night.

Coming home from Vespers last night we heard Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba speaking on the radio. "We didn't know we were making history, but we were making history," he said.

And history was what it was all about.

At that meeting 100 years ago, history was made -- but who realised it at the time?

Therr or four years before an all-white National Convention was held, which hammered out a racist constitution for South Africa. Those blacks in the Cape Colony who had qualified to vote before Union continued to be able to vote, but the new constitution gave all white males the right to vote. And in 1936 the right of blacks to votes was severely reduced, and in 1960 it was abolished altogether.

When the ANC started, as the then South African Native National Congress, its aim was to reverse that process, and to strive for a society with more equal rights. It was a long, hard and uphill struggle. And it was a struggle in which history was made. And it is good to celebrate it.

For 80 years, from Union in 1910 until 1990, freedoms in South Africa were gradually whittled away, and they weren't all that great to start with. Though for a long time the ANC only had black membership, it fought for freedom for all of us. And that is something worth remembering, and worth throwing a party for.

But I also feel ambivalent about it.

President Pohamba said "We didn't know that we were making history, but we were making history."

And the history is there, though there were bad moments as well as good in it.

But there is also a sense in which history is all it is.

The ANC today is not the ANC of Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, and Nelson Mandela, two of whom won international recognition as Nobel Peace Prize winners. And many people who are involved in the celebrations recognise this, realising that the motives of amy who are joining and seeking office in the ANC today are very different from those who led the organisation before 1994. Back then the dangers were many, and the rewards few.

Well, it is still true today that the dangers are many, but the dangers are different from what they were in the glory days of the treason trial. Today the dangers are of being caught with one's fingers in the till, and for those who are not, the rewards are great too.

So perhaps one can hope that in recalling the history, the current crop of leaders, especially those at provincial and municipal level, will be inspired with something of the vision of the leaders of yesteryear. But I'm not counting on it.

As Lord Acton said, "All power tends to corrupt..."

Sunday papers

For a long time now the only newspapers we buy regularly are the Sunday papers, which we get on the way home from church. We've usually bought the Sunday Independent, which bills itself on its web site as "South Africa's quality Sunday newspaper. Coverage of news, opinion, business, marketing and books with a comprehensive sports section and strong focus on ..."

But as we drive down Tsamaya Avenue in Mamelodi every lamppost has a newspaper placard, plugging the latest story. Most of them are of the "sex, soccer and celebs" type, but occasionally there is a story that seems interesting in an offbeat kind of way. The Sun, for example, is big on zombies, and one of its best headlines was "Zombie stole my soap". So sometimes if we see an interesting headline we buy one of the other papers, in addition to the Sunday Independent.

One that we seemed to be buying more and more was City Press.

Finally, yesterday, we just bought the City Press, which from now on will be our default Sunday paper in place of the Sunday Independent. Why? Because City Press seems to have surpassed the Sunday Independent as South Africa's quality paper. The only paper that was better was The Weekendser, which folded several months ago.

Why the switch? What has changed?

I'm sure that part of the reason is that City Press has improved, and has higher standards of journalism. Its articles are well-written and interesting.

But also, the Sunday Independent has got worse. It's joined the "sex, soccer and celebs" brigade, though without the soccer (yes, City Press has better sports pages too). So the Sunday Independent is all sex and celebs, though with one difference. In the other papers in the genre the celebs are usually singers or film stars or models, or football players or coaches, or parasites; people like Brenda Fassie and Paris Hilton. In the Sunday Independent, however, they are politicians. The Sunday Independent is full of stories about politicians and especially who is jumping into bed with whom, literally or metaphorically. And also who is divorcing whom, matrimonially or politically.

City Press however, seems to be more focused on issues than on personalities, and that makes more interesting reading.

A selection of recent headlines from Sunday Independent:

• Zuma's lapses
• Gama plans legal bid to keep his job
• Knight-West shootout row continues
• Ousted youth league leader Masoga heading for the courts

It's all about who's up-and-coming and who's on their way out, and who's fighting tooth-and-nail (and legal injunction) to keep their position. What one does not hear is what their policies are, what their vision for the future is, and what will be lost, if anything, if they lose their jobs.

So I concluded that Sunday Independent was playing with my head. It was creating and reinforcing the perception that our political leaders have no policies and no vision at all, and all they are doing is jockeying for position to get in the front row at the feeding trough, and the best seats on the gravy train.

Now that perception may well have some truth in it, quite a lot of truth, even. But that can't be all there is. Someone must be running the country while they're fighting. After all, the World Cup stadiums got built in time, and were praised, sometimes lavishly, by foreign journalists. Apart from some glitches at Durban, people got to the matches, and there was less soccer hooliganism than there was in Germany four years ago, and better attendance at the matches. In our big cities (unlike many of those in Europe) you can drink water straight from the tap without fearing that you will catch some nasty disease.

Yes, corruption and greed and incompetence have plagued local government in some places and the water reticulation and sewerage has often not been properly maintained and developed. Two years ago we went to do research in the archives in Pietermaritzburg and the building was all over builders' rubble. I've been told that the renovations are still not done -- two contractors have been fired and it has been put out to tender a third time, and the Public Works Department apparently wants the building cleared while the job is done. But at least someone is renovating the archives. I've seen university student residences in Kenya and Albania that have been in far more urgent need of renovation, yet nothing seems to be done.

So I've got tired of reading all about the jockeying for position; I'd rather read more about the positions themselves.

The media have gone on about the spat between Mbazima Shilowa and Terror Lekota of COPE, and the wooing between Patricia de Lille of the Independent Democrats and Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance. Very few seem to mention that it was largely due to Shilowa's initiative, when he was Premier of Gauteng, that we got the Gautrain, now nearing completion. A few years ago it was dubbed by the media the "Shilowa Express", because Shilowa had the vision of an integrated transport system for Gauteng. Of course we have yet to see whether the Gautrain will do any better than the ill-fated Metroblitz of 25 years ago.

So for the time being I'll be reading City Press rather than Sunday Independent,. because I'd rather read about policies than personalities; about visions rather than vendettas; about inspiration rather than in-fighting.

PS: Yes, I know Breda Fassie is dead, but she continued to make headlines from the grave for years afterwards, and if it wasn't her it was her boyfriend Chico (what do you call a widowed boyfriend?)

South Africa - 100 years old

With all the excitement of the football World Cup, which begins next month, something that seems to have been overlooked by many is that South Africa, as a country, will be 100 years old on 31 May 2010. It will be a century since four British colonies -- the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal Colony -- united to form the Union of South Africa.

One writer, however, has not forgotten, and wrote BusinessDay - MESHACK MABOGOANE: Salute the bravery and vision of SA’s founders:

Former colonies, republics and kingdoms were forged into a unitary and variegated state, the first — and still the only modern state — founded by natives on a continent whose other states were created outside by foreigners.

The founders — Louis Botha, Barry Hertzog, and Jan Smuts — were war-seasoned generals, who had led a genuine anti-imperialist struggle in a true people’s war. These great men laid the foundations and frameworks that have enabled the evolution of a complex and dynamic country with a thriving economy and vibrant society.

The article is a paean of praise to Botha, Smuts and Hertzog, South Africa's first three prime ministers, and takes some nasty digs at Oliver Tambo, though it does not mentio0n him by name.

Perhaps we should remember, though, that in the negotiations leading up to Union, Botha, Smuts and Hertzog fought to prevent the Cape Colony's non-racial franchise from being extended to the rest of the country, and in 1936 Hertzog and Smuts conspired to abolish it in the Cape Colony as well. By so doing they entrenched racism in South African society and helped to prepare the way for apartheid.

But yes, the formation of the Union of South Africa is something worth remembering, for good or ill. Before 31 May 1910 the term "South Africa" was simply a geographical expression, and referred to a region, like East Africa, West Africa and North Africa. Once "South Africa" became the name of a country, a new name had to be found for the region, and it became known as Southern Africa. That is something worth remembering if you read books published before 1910.

It was in the 1860s that the British government, which ruled the Cape Colony and Natal, came up with the idea of forming a single country in Southern Africa. The confederation of Canada in 1867 was the model, and the Conservative government, led by Disraeli, tried to apply it in South Africa too. Theophilus Shepstone led a band of filibusters from Natal to take over the South African Republic (Transvaal), and a much larger British army invaded the Kingdom of Zululand in 1879. It was initially repulsed at Isandlwana, but later succeeded in taking the capital, Ondini (Ulundi), and King Cetshwayo went into hiding. The Transvaal, led by Paul Kruger and others, then fought back and sought to regain its independence. The Liberal Party came to power in Britain, under Gladstone, and lacking the imperialist ambitions of the Conservatives, ended the First Anglo-Boer War by recognising the Transvaal's independence, and left Zululand to fend for itself, split into 13 principalities that fought among themselves. So the first attempt at union left South (ie Southern) Africa more divided than ever.

Eventually Zululand was incorporated into Natal and in the late 1890s, with a Conservative government back in power in Britain, and the New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa in full swing, Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, and Alfred Lord Milner, the British High Comissioner at the Cape, sought a casus belli with the South African Republic, and the Second Anglo-Boer War broke out in October 1899. The war was ended by the Peace of Vereeniging, signed on 31 May 1902. The South African Republic became the Transvaal Colony, and the Orange Free State Republic (Oranje-Vrijstaat) became the Orange River Colony.

In 1906, the Liberal Party came to power in Britain again, and, as previously, sought to mitigate the imperialist policies of the Conservatives. The Transvaal and ORC were given self-government, and the governments that came to power were led by the generals who had fought against the British in the Second Anglo-Boer War, Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and Barry Hertzog. And they became prime ministers of the Union of South Africa as well, so that some historians have called the period of South Africa's history from 1910 to 1948 the Age of the Generals. It was these generals who fought to keep the Cape nonracial franchise from being applied in the rest of South Africa.

The Cape franchise may have been nonracial, but it was sexist and classist. It allowed adult males who owned or occupied property of a certain value to vote in elections. At the time of Union, most of the voters were white, but a growing number of blacks were able to vote. The Cape politicians valued their nonracial franchise, and seeing the threat to it posed by the Generals and others, only consented to join the Union if it was entrenched in the constitution -- it could not be taken away by a simple parliamentary majority, but only by a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament voting together. In 1936 Hertzog and Smuts united their parties in a fusion government, forming the United Party, and they thus commanded a two-thirds majority, which they used to remove black voters in the Cape from the common roll, and gave them three separate (white) representatives in parliament. In 1960 even those were taken away.

Along the way, there were a few other changes that served to entrench white power. There was agitation for women to be given the vote, and eventually they were -- but only white women. And in the cape, white women were not subject to the same property qualification that male voters had, so the property qualification was removed for white male voters, but not for black voters. Sad to say, feminism helped to consolidate racism.

So no, I don't agree with what Mabogoane says in his article. The Age of the Generals was generally a pretty disastrous one for South Africa, as they assiduously cultivated the racism that led to apartheid. It wasn't an unmitigated disaster, but it was a disaster none the less.

I am old enough to remember the celebrations of 50 years of Union, now 50 years ago (see Tales from Dystopia VI: 1960 was a very bad year | Khanya). A special pennant, with "50" on it was distributed to school children and was as ubiquitous as World Cup logos are now becoming. The actual celebration took place in the middle of the State of Emergency declared after the Sharpeville massacre, and was most appropriately symbolised by a cartoonists drawing of a frightened little man hunkering down in an armoured car, holding the "50" pennant above the rim of the gun turret. That was the path that Botha, Smuts and Hertzog had set us on. It's only 16 years ago that the armoured cars began to disappear from our streets.

We could still laugh about it, though, as Jeremy Taylor did in his song about Hennie von Saracen, who was somewhat unwillingly conscripted into the army:

In my first weeks of training
I nearly went insane
They marched me all around the square
up and back again
They taught me how to kill a man
They said it was no sin
And soon I was the driver
of a five-ton Saracen.

One day, outside Blikkiesdorp
I got out of control
And I ended up in Bree Street
with my tank stuck up a pole.
A traffic cop came up to me
And said, as he scratched his ear,
"Well did you got a licence
to park that blerrie thing here?"

Well I tried to explain
when I got back to the station
that I wasn't cut out to fight against
the Army of Liberation.
The Commandant agreed
and as he put me on the train
said, "You can push off home to Joburg
And don't come back again."

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.

Mugabe, Malema and the future of South Africa

The death of Eugene Terre'blanche stole the news over the weekend and drew public attention away from something far more ominous for the future of South Africa -- Julius Malema's visit to Zimbabwe.



Mugabe, Malema on Terreblanche:

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe and ANC Youth League president Julius Malema have discussed the murder of South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche during talks in Harare.

Mugabe met Malema -- who was concluding a four-day visit to the country as a guest of Zanu PF -- at State House for over two hours on Monday.

With reporters present, Mugabe spoke to Malema at length about Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and what he said was Britain’s failure to honour its obligations to white farmers whose properties were seized for resettlement.

Mugabe also praised South Africa as an unstinting ally against what he said was a global crusade by “imperialists” to remove his government through economic sabotage and propaganda.

Former President Thabo Mbeki was frequently criticised for taking a low profile on Zimbabwe, and refraining from public criticism of the fascist Mugabe regime.

Julius Malema has shown no such restraint, and has shown his true colours by praising the Mugabe regime. And this is a clear indication of one scenario for South Africa's future: Julius Malema becomes president (possibly succeeding Jacob Zuma), and then it's goodbye to our hard-won democracy. Perhaps in another 15 years time there will be South African refugees sleeping in the Methodist Church in Harare.

Look at what has happened.

Malema is welcomed in Zimbabwe, and praises the leadership of the Zanu-PF and Robert Mugabe. In South Africa he has attacked the trade unions and Cosatu, and just a few years ago, far from meeting Mugabe, a Cosatu delegation was turned away at the Zimbabwe border.

The white, Western and capitalist press has concentrated its criticism of the Mugabe regime on its "land reform" policies, which has entailed the seizure of land from white farmers, and its redistribution among relatives and supporters of high-ups in Zanu-PF.

But long before that, Mugabe attacked the trade unions, which was of less interest to the white, Western and capitalist press.

To understand this one must go back to the 1990s, when Mugabe sent Zimbabwean troops to intervene in civil wars in the Congo. In these foreign military adventures he resembles Tony Blair and George Bush, whom he professes to dislike. In reality, they are birds of a feather.

Foreign military adventures are expensive, and depleted Zimbabwe's foreign currency reserves. This in turn led to fuel shortages, which in turn led to an economic recession, particularly in the towns. Businesses were closed, workers were laid off, and the Zimbabwean trade unions were up in arms. Opposition to Mugabe's policies grew, and in a referendum some constitutional amendments that would, among other things, have made Mugabe president for life, were rejected by the electorate.

This was a wake-up call for Mugabe. If he could lose a referendum, he could also lose an election.

But instead of reversing the unpopular economic policies that had caused the problem, he exacerbated it by instituting his land redistribution scheme as an electoral ploy to buy the rural vote. If Mugabe were sincere about land reform, he had had 20 years to do something about it, and had done nothing. It was only the threat of losing an election that made him bring it in hastily, for the purpose of buying votes. And in the way it was implemented exacerbated the economic problems as Zimbabwe's agricultural productivity plummeted. The foreign exchange problems worsened as tobacco, the main export crop, virtually disappeared. In a couple of years Zimbabwe went from being the bread basket of central Africa to basket case, as hyperinflation took hold.

The opposition grew stronger and reorganised, and coalesced around the trade unions, to form the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). And they have a natural affinity for Cosatu in South Africa, which is why the Cosatu delegation was turned away at the Zimbabwe border.

But who is Malema talking to?

News - Politics: Malema upsets MDC:

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has upset the Zimbabwean political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, by meeting only Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF on a visit to Harare.

'Is Mr Malema saying that the ANC does not respect democracy and is willing to ignore the millions of Zimbabweans who sent Zanu-PF packing in the corridors of power?' asked Austin Moyo, chairman of the MDC in South Africa, at a media briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday.

'Does Malema understand that there are millions of liberation heroes in the MDC?'

Moyo said Malema made it clear that he would be visiting the Zanu-PF because it was 'a revolutionary party'.

At the moment Cosatu is still allied to the ANC in the tripartite alliance, but if Malema should ever become president Cosatu will have the choice -- become a lapdog, or follow the Zimbabwe trade unions into the political wilderness, and form an equivalent of the MDC.

allAfrica.com: South Africa: Vavi to Tackle ANC Over Malema's 'Disdain':

CONGRESS of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi yesterday said the bilateral meeting with the African National Congress (ANC) next week would be an opportunity to deal with how the ANC's actions had threatened Cosatu's functionality within the tripartite alliance.

ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema's public mudslinging against Cosatu, the ANC's unilateral decision banning municipal workers from taking up leadership positions in political parties, and a 'general lack of commitment by the ANC to make the federation one of its political centres', had left the alliance in a crisis, Vavi said at the National Union of Metalworkers' National Bargaining Conference yesterday.

'The oppression and super- exploitation of workers remains widespread - despite government and union efforts.

What South Africa lacks, and probably needs, is a strong and coherent left opposition, preferably before a fascist takeover. Is Zwelinzima Vavi up to it? The tragedy of the assassination of Chris Hani continues to haunt us.

And perhaps Thabo Mbeki kept quiet because he saw how easily what was happening in Zimbabwe could happen in South Africa, and lead to the break-up of the tripartite alliance. He preferred the Ronald Reagan approach of "constructive engagement".

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.

Stop selling military aircraft to South Africa, Anglican archbishops urge

Thabo Makgoba, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, and Desmond Tutu, his Nobel Peace Prize winning predecessor, have urged that Sweden stop selling military aircraft to South Africa.

In a move reminiscent of the days when he was vilified by the government-supporting press for proposing economic sanctions and an arms embargo against the apartheid regime, former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu signed a document asking that Swedish Gripen miliary aircraft not be sold to South Africa.

"Stop the sell of military aircrafs to South Africa" - Stockholm News:

KG Hammar, former Swedish archbishop, Karin Wiborn, chairman of the Swedish Christian Council, Desmond Tutu and Thabo Makgoba, South African archbishops have signed the article. They claim that the deal has released a wave of corruption that threatens the transition from Apartheid to democracy in South Africa.

The authors write that the cost for South Africa’s deal with several European countries to buy military equipment is around SEK 42 billion (about 4.2 billion euro). Half of that sum is spent on JAS 39 Gripen. They write that it is hard to gain acceptance in the South African society for the fact that resources are being allocated to military investments instead of fighting the legacy from the Apartheid era.

The four authors demand that the South African and Swedish governments investigate the accusations about corruption and put the whole deal on hold until the investigation is finished.

Julius Malema -- South Africa's answer to Shane Warne?

It seems that at last South Africa has a fat buffoon to match, and even surpass Australia's Shane Warne: Julius Malema, the president of the ANC Youth League.

The media love him; he gives them soundbites galore. Every time he opens his mouth he seems to put his foot in it. He seems as arrogant as Shane Warne, and like Warne, he is revered by many.

But, as someone once said, the trouble with most political jokes is that they get elected.

Professor Tinyiko Maluleke of Unisa warns that it would be a mistake to dismiss Malema as a lightweight political clown. If there is a joke involved, the joke is on us, and on the poor.

Tinyiko Sam Maluleke's Blog: The Julius Malema Strategy of Distraction and Diversion:

What Chumani Maxwele, the jogger arrested and detained for allegedly showing the middle finger to Zuma’s blue-light brigade, is said to have done, is done daily by Malemaists. They do it to the poor. In their arrogant press conferences, in VIP events for celebrities and through the fat parties they host in their tall houses, as they drink, chatter and clutter; they stick their middle finger to the poor. As they wheel and deal in the air-conditioned corridors of public and private sector offices, it is the poor they are offending. As their luxury ministerial cars speed through the squatter camps; as their 4x4s spray the playing children with the sewage that is flowing in the streets, the Malemaists are saying voetsek! to the poor.

Political honeymoon is over for Jacob Zuma

Letter from Africa: Political honeymoon is over for Jacob Zuma | World news | guardian.co.uk:

Whereas the former president Thabo Mbeki was an aloof, out-of-touch philosopher king, we were told, Zuma was a massive presence in every sense, a Zulu warrior king so in touch with the people he had already married four of them.

Well, that's a nice pithy summing up.

But the article goes on to say:

But the political honeymoon has rapidly slipped into a winter of discontent. Doctors, miners, train drivers and workers in the chemical, construction, energy, paper, printing, retail and state broadcasting sectors have downed tools. More than half a million working days were lost due to strikes in the first half of this year, more than twice that in the same period in 2008. Residents have been warned to expect power cuts at home, no buses or trains to get to work and streets piled high with rubbish.

That really makes it sound as though we're getting more like Europe every day. Last time I visited Greece hardly a day went by without some or other group of striking workers marching to or from Syntagma Square in Athens.

I wondered what Cosatu thought they were doing, throwing their support behind Jacob Zuma in the general election three months ago. I wonder if they are beginning to wonder themselves.

Sarah Palin is so 2008

John Smulo said on Facebook:

I'm trying to deal with Facebook suggesting I become a fan of Sarah Palin.

But John, Sarah Palin is so 2008.

She isn't a patch on our Lynda Odendaal!

As one political commentator, The Wild Frontier at The Times -- Lynda Odendaal puts it:

THE departure of Lynda Odendaal from the position of second deputy president of Cope is not a seismic event in South African politics. The party’s first deputy president is Mbhazima Shilowa. It’s president is Mosiuoa Lekota. It’s Parliamentary leader is Mvume Dandala. So there is no shortage of leadership to fill the vacuum left by Odendaal. But her departure is yet another signal that Cope is yet to plot a course that inspires the electorate.

And probably the same could be said of Sarah Palin in the USA -- not a seismic event. Is there a Lynda Odendaal fan group on Facebook? Is there a fan group for every political drop-out?

The Times - UK ‘more violent than South Africa’

We South Africans have got used to foreign journalists like PETER HITCHENS rubbishing South Africa in their columns, but now one of the papers he writes for has had to admit that violent crime in Britain is worse than in South Africa.

The Times - UK ‘more violent than South Africa’:

The United Kingdom has overtaken South Africa as the world’s most violent country.

# UK violent crime “worse than SA” - Daily Mail

# Britain’s crime wave is nothing to be smug about (editorial)

The UK has been left with some soul searching to do after findings that Britons experienced more incidents of violent crime per 100,000 citizens than South Africa, which is often depicted as the world capital of violent crime.

Commenting on a report in UK tabloid the Daily Mail, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, Dr Johan Burger, said: “Maybe now those who have been pointing fingers at us will get their own house in order.”

The Daily Mail reported yesterday that the UK has a higher rate of violent crime than any other country, “beating” the likes of the US and South Africa.

Hat tip to Contact Online Weblog: UK ‘more violent than South Africa’.

Of course the problems that people like Hitchens writes about are here. We had a lot of electricity blackouts in January 2008, as he writes. But they have not continued. A long-term solution needs to be found, and people are whinging because they will have to pay for it (just as they do in Britain).

There was xenophobic violence between February and June 2008 -- 2008 seems to have been a bad year -- in which more than 60 people died -- about the same number as in the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. And though the violence has dropped off, there is still racism and xenophobia. But the Brits elected two MEPs from the xenophobic BNP to the European parliament this year, so South Africa doesn't have a monopoly on xenophobia either.

And yes, we have corrupt politicians, and we had the Travelgate scandal, but that was small beer compared with what has recently been revealed about British MPs fiddling their expense claims.

Britain swings to the rift... er... leght

The election of two members of the fascist British National Party (BNP) to the European parliament has been the cause of some concern to British church leaders.

Bishop Alan’s Blog: BNP MEP’s: bring on the clowns?:

The disconnection of the Labour party from its own roots under Blair, Sun style pop Xenophobia, and disillusionment with parliamentarians, produced this result. Politicians must listen, not only pragmatically, but in a way that reconnects with this country’s historic Christian value base, or things can only get worse.

I wonder if the UK Sun is owned by the same people as own the South African Sun, because the latter's pop xenophobia certainly played a part in inciting the xenophobic violence that erupted at the beginning of last year, in which over 60 people were killed, and which was discussed at the Amahoro Conference this week. Part of the problem in South Africa, as noted at Amahoro, is that apartheid deliberately disconnected the country from a historic Christian value base (while claiming to be protecting "Western Christian civilization" -- whatever that means).

The xenophobic violence that lasted most of the first half of last year shows that we have not yet exorcised the demons of apartheid. And the demons that have been expelled seem to have emigrated to Europe, where they found the house swept and garnished, first in the wars of the Yugoslav succession, and now in the growing xenophobia in places like the UK.

But perhaps part of the problem in the UK could be remedied by voter education, which is very much needed, if the following example is anything to go by: Cranmer: Could the BNP now be sued for discrimination?:

The far-Left BNP may have won two seats on the Elections to the European Parliament, but, while this success undoubtedly constitutes something of a political and propaganda coup, Cranmer is not so sure that Nick Griffin will consider it much of a blessing when the lawsuits start being delivered.

"Far-Left BNP"? Perhaps that is the result of a misinterpretation of our Lord Jesus Christ's injunction not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, but it seems more likely that it is caused by not being able to tell one's left from one's right. What does one call that? Political dyslexia, perhaps? So if the blogger Cranmer's view is widespread, perhaps a lot of Brit voters simply voted for the wrong party, and thought that the "HITLER" tattooed on the chest of the gentleman in the picture spells "T-R-O-T-S-K-Y".

South Africa's Presidents

This just about sums it up completely.

Hat-tip to Colin Seymour.

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.

General Election 2009

We just got back from voting at the Nellie Swart Laerskool in Queenswood, Pretoria, and we were in the queue for nearly 2 hours, from 8:15 till about 11:10. The queue was much longer than last time around, and by the time we left it was just as long as when we went in, indicating that there is more interest in the election than in 2004.



In part that may be because of the rumours that floor-crossing has been dropped. In 2004 neither of our sons bothered to vote, and gave floor crossing as the reason. They saw no point in voting for a party if its MPs were able to switch to another party 18 months after the election. Generally in 2004 the youth seemed fairly apathetic. One of our sons, who works in a bookshop, says that in 2004 only one of his colleagues was thinking of voting, whereas this time only one was thinking of not voting.

As we edged slowly forward we chatted to people before and behind us in the queue. A woman in front of us said she was planning to buy, not bake, a cake to celebrate voting. A man behind us said he was glad it was not too hot, so we did not have to queue in the hot sun. It was in fact a very pl;easant cool autumn day.

It was also quite something to reflect that this was our fourth democratic election. For most of my life i wondered whether I would ever see the day when we had a democratic election, and now I've seen four of them. Of course a bunch of idiots can be, and usually are elected. But they are our idiots We voted for them.

Politics: the middle-class vote

Here's an interesting web site showing which political parties people support in tomorrow's election. In order to register one needs to have either web access or a cell phone, and probably to be a reader of the Sunday Times.

It's probably a good indication of the middle-class vote, and it will be interesting to see how the proportions differ in the actual voting tomorrow.

I expect that the proportion for COPE and the Democratic Alliance will remain much the same, and that therefore COPE may be expected to replace the DA as the official opposition, since both are primarily middle class parties, and so the figures in the poll probably reflect the proportion of their support.

I expect the proportion of votes for the ANC and the Independent Democrats to be higher than indicated in these figures, since they probably have more support among the poor and marginalised.

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.

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.