No More Mandelas

I've spent nearly 25 years engaged with South Africa and its extraordinary political and human dramas.

When I first went to the country the white regime still refused to allow blacks to share the same buses, toilets, beaches, schools and neighbourhoods as whites.
The place reeked of injustice and cruelty.

I had some of the most intense experiences of my life while living in that beloved country.

After the birth of the democratic state I would occasionally find myself in arguments with people who told me the whole place was going to go down the tubes. More often than not they were white South Africans who had benefited under apartheid.

I believed some of them would never accept the idea that a black person might rule over them, indeed that a black person might rule just as effectively as any white.
The disillusionment is felt strongly in the townships.
But the need to defend a young democracy from arguments that are sometimes founded on racist assumptions should not blind us to unpalatable realities.

My sense is that many in the international community have taken South Africa's post apartheid stability for granted.

We have failed to observe the politics closely or to analyse the exact nature of the economic stability that has been achieved. Look a little closer and the cracks emerging in society are profoundly worrying.

Unequal society

While the ANC government worked hard to maintain economic stability and growth, precious little of the new wealth has made its way to the poor.

By Fergal Keane
Panorama
More

Z is for...?

Machine guns, marriage, corruption charges - Zuma is the man of the hour. The amazing thing is, even people who don't want him elected are talking about him. This means he is getting the majority focus, and that - if you are not a Zuma supporter - is bad news.

The solution then - if you would prefer another candidate to lead the country - is for the maximum number of people to focus on the candidate they DO want, rather than to focus on why they DON'T want Zuma. After all, what resists persists. So who DO you want to lead the country? Focus on that candidate.

Now, Z is for...who?

Bullard: Out to Lunch TV Talk Show (INTERVIEW PART 3)

Bullard: Somebody wants to do that. I mean they want to do an Out to Lunch show. It’s like radio. I was asked to do a radio show as well. You’re tied down. I don’t want to be tied down. I don’t want to do [GARBLED] Jenny Crwys-Williams; being in the studio every lunch time to do a show between 1 and 4.
RP: Mmm.
Bullard: I mean I go away for four days on car launches because I can.
NVDL: Where do you go?
Bullard: Umm – where ever they go. Spain – a lot of overseas launches – Spain, America, UK…
NVDL: It’s a nice life hey?
Bullard: Well it sounds a nice life, but there are a lot of delays at airports and the security in Europe, and you go and drive a car on the wrong side of the road for a day or two. If Porsche is hosting it’s a fabulous life. You have a bloody good party that night, get very pissed, get up the next morning, drive a Porsche and then fly back, Business Class, in the afternoon.
RP: [Chuckles].
Bullard: But with three connections. So there’s an upside and a downside. You’ve still got to produce the words. But the problem is I couldn’t do that if I was doing a radio show or a television show. I couldn’t do any of this stuff; and I do a lot of MCing.
NVDL: But you could [do the stuff you do] after a few seasons.
Bullard: No. You could but… [Hesitates a moment] For example if I’ve got an evening show I can’t do any MCing. So somebody phones and says, ‘Will you MC an event,” I have to say I can’t, I have the evening show. So evening shows are way out. Can’t do that. Could record something. Possibly could record a few things and stack them up. And that might help. But on a regular live show it’s just…
NVDL: Then you don’t do it live you do it all prerecorded.
Bullard: Could do that.
RP: Yeah. And that way you’re not tied down.

Sponsor Wanted

Bullard: The thing with that – and it’s been as I say mooted a couple of times; and everyone says, the SABC says – ‘who is the sponsor Bring the sponsor?’ Because they’re not prepared to put up the money for it. So you go to them and say right: ‘It’s sponsored by Vodacom; here’s a large portion of money. Mr Bullard’s wardrobe by so and so; his hair by so and so. Dancing girls, full orchestra in the back and that’s great. And they then take all the advertising, because that’s the way they run the business. So if you’ve got a sponsor you can do it.
NVDL: Mmmm.
Bullard: We have one or two people looking… It’s a question of commitment, really. Unless someone’s got to, say, rack in a couple of million for production costs, then it’s not going to happen.
NVDL: We need – you know like you get Oprah in America – we need that sort of personality here.
RP: Yeah.
NVDL: And we’ve got Noleen [making a slight face].
RP: Exactly.
Bullard: Well it gets viewers. People like that sort of thing.
RP: But we need some talk show hosts that thinks in controversial aspects.
NVDL: I also think you express – like in your column – what you say is stuff that is quite urgent actually.
Bullard: Yes.
NVDL: And it’s almost like a form of leadership. And I think more people need to join that conversation. Because what’s happening is: a lot of what you’re saying is needed and people are thinking that, but they’re not expressing it.

Let's Talk About Leadership

Bullard: Couldn’t agree more. Because it is a sort’ve ‘zeitgeist’ – to use that overused word. Because a lot of people are saying: “Gee whiz, we read your column and it’s exactly what we discussed over dinner on Saturday night.” Well it’s very read what we’re going to be talking about this weekend. It’s going to be about Mbeki’s dishonesty. I mean my article this week is about Mbeki’s web of evil. And the editor is happy that it goes through, and I think it is a web of evil. But you know, your point is very well made.

It’s kind’ve like aging: I can go to the mirror in the morning and I can now see visible signs of aging. I can now see eyebrows have grown longer and a few more wrinkles. But I mean it’s happening gradually over time. If I look back at a photograph I can see what I was like. Now put that into the political perspective. We look back at a snapshot of South Africa five years ago and we’re very optimistic. Even two years ago. We’re now gradually losing our freedoms. And it’s not until we wake up with all those wrinkles…
NVDL: Yeah.
Bullard: …And we look in the mirror and say: we’re not allowed to say this. Some journalists – that newspaper disappeared, my mates are in prison.
RP: Yup.
Bullard: Or they’ve run out the country. The judges have all been bought off by the ruling party. They’ve gotten rid of anyone in the National Prosecuting Authority who doesn’t please Mbeki or his guys: bloody dangerous. And so you’re absolutely right-
NVDL: And it’s happening right now.

Wanted: Rallying Call

Bullard: You need a rallying call. Well absolutely right. And a lot of people are feeling helpless because business – apart from FNB, which I think was handled pretty badly-
NVDL: That was a shame.
Bullard: But you know Johan Rupert, in a conversation with me, I mean they were banned under the Nats, because they upset them and basically what the government did was hold back their import licenses for a year and starve the company of profits. And business is very aware of the strength of the politicians who can do whatever they like. Because there’s just no control. We actually need a new struggle. I’ve been reading the black columnists; and I hate to differentiate - they have to differentiate because they were part of the struggle, I wasn’t – reading their comments, and about their depression and Justice Malala particularly I think is very vocala and getting a lot of comment and I agree with pretty well everything he says. Um… You know you need some sort of reaction.

NVDL: Yeah. It’s actually an important thing we need. I’ve heard quite a few comments from black people saying – cautiously – that some things under the previous regime were actually better. There was less of this and less of that. Not to say we want to go back to that, but just to say how bad things are now. And to actually say that is like saying: Wow, things are shit. This can’t carry on. We’re actually going way beyond what’s unacceptable.
Bullard: Yeah that’s encouraging because people are recognizing that. On the other hand you go down to the rural areas where you have nothing, and I mean here the similarity is the tornado story last week.

Irrational Behaviour

People went home, and behaved irrationally, only because they didn’t have information to counter the irrational information they’d been given. The skies were dark; it was a tornado, get on the road, get in a traffic jam and behave stupidly. And then realize afterwards you’d been suckered. Now, put that into an election thing. Go to the rural areas and say:
“Jacob Zuma will save you. He will give you houses; he will give you cars," and you vote for him – because that’s what he said. Only afterwards you realize… I mean we all have this madness and delusion in crowds. And everyone is capable of being lead. And I think the government is working to do that very well. Where there is absolutely no counter-opinions. No opposition.
NVDL: Who would you suggest is a good leader [a possible presidential candidate]?

Watch this space to find out who David Bullard recommends to lead this country. To read the previous 2 or the following 2 transcripts, click on the label The Bullard Tapes below.

Funny Guys

Funniest Double Speak Ever - Watch the best video clips here

The Politics of God

By MARK LILLA
Published: August 19, 2007
I. “The Will of God Will Prevail”

The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us.

Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

An example: In May of last year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent an open letter to President George W. Bush that was translated and published in newspapers around the world. Its theme was contemporary politics and its language that of divine revelation. After rehearsing a litany of grievances against American foreign policies, real and imagined, Ahmadinejad wrote,

“If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph or Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior?” This was not a rhetorical question. “I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth,” Ahmadinejad continued, reminding his fellow believer that “according to divine verses, we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.”

There follows a kind of altar call, in which the American president is invited to bring his actions into line with these verses. And then comes a threatening prophecy:

“Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today, these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems. . . . Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”

This is the language of political theology, and for millennia it was the only tongue human beings had for expressing their thoughts about political life. It is primordial, but also contemporary: countless millions still pursue the age-old quest to bring the whole of human life under God’s authority, and they have their reasons. To understand them we need only interpret the language of political theology — yet that is what we find hardest to do. Reading a letter like Ahmadinejad’s, we fall mute, like explorers coming upon an ancient inscription written in hieroglyphics.

The problem is ours, not his. A little more than two centuries ago we began to believe that the West was on a one-way track toward modern secular democracy and that other societies, once placed on that track, would inevitably follow. Though this has not happened, we still maintain our implicit faith in a modernizing process and blame delays on extenuating circumstances like poverty or colonialism. This assumption shapes the way we see political theology, especially in its Islamic form — as an atavism requiring psychological or sociological analysis but not serious intellectual engagement. Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more.

We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference.

For the complete article click on the title.

Mark Lilla is professor of the humanities at Columbia University. This essay is adapted from his book “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” which will be published next month.

Thomas Struth

The President vs The People

The President's Us vs Them mentality is no different from an attitude of fighting everyone around us, including ourselves

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki made a cardinal error when he fired his Deputy-Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge. In itself, he might have thought he was entirely justified. On Saturday night’s SABC news he was interviewed saying, quite reasonably, that any person who works in government commits themselves to serve, including, serving within government. Any person who does not do that, must leave. Well said, Mr. President, but how utterly ironic.

A colleague recently echoed Mbeki’s sentiments, saying that any person who slanders the company they work for should be fired, as they ought to be. True. But in this case, the Deputy was unhappy about a government that wasn’t doing its job, and so in a sense, she was speaking ‘for the people’, especially since what she said happened to be true.

What my colleague doesn’t see is the fact that Mbeki’s actions here, while in the microcosm of the actual process they make sense, in the wider context of government efficacy he has been exposed (at least in the eyes of the populace) as a hypocrite.

The irony couldn’t be more acute. At the same time that the Deputy-Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge was fired, the Health Minister (charged with solving an AIDS epidemic that has infected more South Africans than any other country on Earth) was undergoing surgery to replace an alcohol induced cirrhotic liver.

Reports that the Minister (dubbed Dr. Beetroot for her unconventional advice on AIDS treatments)
was abusive to staff in the Clinic where she was treated didn’t help her case. Neither did allegations that she had been drinking alcohol whilst in hospital.

Serious doubt has been cast not only on Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang, but on a President who has firmly supported her (despite obvious failings) thus far. Meanwhile, the president has dismissed Deputy-Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge despite wide ranging reports that she was committed and involved and doing solid service to the community, particularly in the area of AIDS. Her work has been so effective in fact, that AIDS activists were outraged at her dismissal, saying they now felt 'vulernable' and intended to sue the government.

The President’s response has been to point out legalistic details and brand Madlala-Routledge a liar on his website, meanwhile Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang is taking to court the newspaper that published her escapades in hospital.

Recently the Sunday Times published an article indicating Tshabalala-Msimang, while working at a hospital in Botswana in the 70’s, had stolen personal items from patients (including a watch, shoes, linen etc).

Opposition Party leader (and mayor of Cape Town) Helen Zille has said: "In any properly functioning democracy... Dr Tshabalala-Msimang would have been removed from her position a long time ago. That she has not been, says more about our President than about the health minister."*

The cardinal error the President has made is in underestimating the public’s resentment to almost perpetual government intransigence on a host of issues in South Africa, from AIDS to Zimbabwe. At the recent SADC conference, the leaders who gathered there decided the best course of action on Zimbabwe was ‘to do nothing’ and to ‘wait for the election’ to allow the problem to sort itself out.

The question must then be asked: what is a government actually for? The answer is usually something like this: to serve the people. What happens is citizens elect leaders, and then leaders effectively isolate themselves from the voters, and attempt to fortify or defend their positions. To actually answer to the electorate is so far beneath our leaders to be laughable. This is obvious across the board, from Mugabe to Bush.

The result of this arrogant and narcissistic attitude towards the nation of voters, is a schism between citizens and those ostensibly in place to govern them. The average citizen knows that officials riding around in expensive cars, living on inflated salaries (taxpayers money) etc. couldn’t care less about sorting out important civil problems, for example in less affluent suburbs (or rural areas) because effectively, this is a world away from where they live their lives in hardhearted comfort.

Our president's Us vs Them mentality is evidenced elsewhere in the world. The dangerous result is a slow growth of subversion in communities. At first it is harmless. A mass of people who simply doesn’t trust its own government, but tolerates it because it feels it is ‘stuck’ with it.

Populaces everywhere are free to enter the streets and as a form of popular protest, vote their feelings. We don’t do this probably because we have better things to do, and anyway, how does a President influence us anyway? We’re not necessarily any better or worse off whatever we do.

But there are those who are less inclined to roll over. We call them terrorists. Terrorists are also people who feel strongly about not wanting to be ruled by people who ruthlessly impose their rule, despite having lost the popular mandate to do so. So an attitude of disconnectedness from government can inculcate a similar attitude from the most destitute, from the most extreme segments of a community.

In that sense our leaders have a far greater responsibility towards us than they imagine.


*Quote from ‘Give evidence about Manto: Presidency’, an article compiled by Sapa

Schizm

Take a careful look at this picture. It shows a soldier using a lever to pry open a crack. Not sure what the sign in the background says, but I'd guess it's Iran.

I was one of the few writers/bloggers/commentators, who decried the war in Iraq before it even started. I didn't support it from beginning, to middle, to now.

So let me be one of the first to say, I don't support the war in Iran. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: but there isn't a war in Iran.

We'll see. Russia has already pulled out its technicians. The drum beat has already started. I guess it's hard to understand or believe or imagine the inevitability of it if you don't understand the Vonnegut Imperative. That the future will be one where only some countries have petroleum.

I think only a handful of people know this. Meanwhile in South Africa oil has recently risen by the highest margin ever, and is set to rise again, by 30 cents.

When I mentioned this to my father, he mentioned the exchange rate. Ah, but it's not R7.70 to the $, it's R7.07. It's actually strengthened a little.

I've given my father books and articles to read, but he prefers not to read them. It's a common reaction. Because once we know where we stand, we realise there really is very little we can do, except expect things to get a lot worse in our lifetimes. Not a nice thought.

But perhaps, I hope, we can look forward to a world, at the very least, with more bicycles in it.

For more information on the War On Iran, click on the title of this Post.

Or follow this link: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20070405.htm