It’s that time of the year again. I haven’t even done Christmas shopping yet. For some reason I am just so far removed from the idea of Christmas. It is something that is not even remotely a fixture in my life this year. It will come and go and have little bearing.
I am looking forward to the promises that New Year holds. 2008 will be the year of the rat in Chinese astrology. I am not a believer in that, but I was born in the year of the water rat. Maybe I can have a fuzzy idea of some sort of universal good luck coming my way.
Enjoy your Festive Season and may your new year be a prosperous one.
Over n Out for this year.
PS: I've since just completed my Christmas shopping. Yes, on the very last day before Christmas. So here follows my first New Year's resolution: From 2008 I shall buy gifts whenever I see them throughout the year & store them for Christmas rather than trying desperately to find something worthwhile from the hordes of cheap Chinese imports & junk available during this time of year. Even that most predicatble of gifts, bath cosmetics, are wrapped in giftpacks with a "Made in China" label on it. It did make me think twice before buying it as "filler" presents.
Anyway, may the Spirit of Goodwill grow in all our hearts and find expression in our actions.
24.12.07
Zuma and the Economy
So Zuma has made promises far and wide to all and sundry. He has also announced no major changes in economic policies. Personally I do not know whether that is a good or a bad thing. What commentators have duly pointed out is that Zuma will inherit the same constraints to provide jobs to people that Mbeki faced. It is unlikely that he will come up with a magic formula to create more jobs. This is both a good and a bad thing in my opinion.
It is good because the arm-chair critics - COSATU/SACP alliance partners - will have to eat humble pie. Voters who support them will quickly find COSATU/SACP’s promises vaporised and the latter will have a hard time at it making the sort of sideway criticism we hear coming from them every time there is a rise in the interest rates. I keep on asking myself when the Reserve Bank is going to tell them to shut up or challenge them to justify their remarks, which seem to me to be just opportunism. Surely higher inflation means fewer poor people can afford essential goods as opposed to more indebted and thus employed people being less able to service their debts?
It is a bad thing, because ordinary folk in the streets are increasingly making shocking comments. Just two days ago I spoke to some builders who all expressed their support for Zuma because they hope he will bring more jobs. They pointed out that if Zuma fails to do so, which he is likely to do because he & his SACP buddies have overpromised (and will underdeliver due to the same constraints Mbeki faced and that in a tougher global economic environment), they would have to then look at “letting white people run the country again because then at least there were a lot more jobs”. I was flabbergasted at hearing remarks such as those. They are not new, but to hear it from the horses mouth shocked me.
It is clear that a sizeable number of people vote on the promise of jobs. It is even clearer that when those promises don’t transpire, our democracy may come to be threatened by the type of rhetoric that has kept desperate leaders like Robert Mugabe in power. Zuma’s overpromises will come to haunt him if his graft trial doesn’t do so first. But far from being concerned about what he may or may not do to the country’s economy, I am really more concerned about what his failure to deliver on his promises might do to our democracy. Ironically, for the leftists to be in power may be good for a free market economy, especially if they are seen to fail in an expected tougher global economic environment, which is why I suspect they want Mbeki to stay on as President for now, so that he can take the blame. Mbeki’s good macro-economic policies would also have been over associated with authoritarianism had he won. He was on his way to becoming another Houphouët Boigny and General Pinochet and in doing so, would have associated free market economics with authoritarianism. It has taken us long enough to associate free market economics with a new emerging middle class (one success of Mbeki’s government and the traditional domain of nationalist politics and mixed-market economies in this country) and the last thing we needed was to let it go back to the days of apartheid where communism was associated with freedom and free market economics with political oppression. It is to everyone’s loss that Mbeki wouldn’t open the way for other potential leaders to assume responsibility for that.
On the other hand, letting the bench politicians (COSATU/SACP) fail does come with a built-in price that threatens to bring a lot of destabilisation and disappointment in the democratic process, which in turn threatens to be a beast of a different sort. In the meantime I will not pre-empt myself further in that respect and sit tight and observe what comes next, though I am sure it promises to be exciting if not anxiety spurning.
Already we have seen COSATU saying they will change the country’s macro-economic policies (this despite the fact that they themselves are not the government but only in alliance with it and thus have no mandate to do so). Already we have seen Zuma saying that it is not he who sets the country’s economic policies, but the ANC and already we have seen the ANC saying repeatedly that the macro-economic policies will not change.
Who to believe? There will just be more insider manoeuvring and closed-door decision making, excluding the public from the debate as would occur in an alliance split up into multiple parties, each vying for support. There is no reason to believe a swing to the left will necessarily be bad. It has happened many times in Europe and most recently in Australia and was not accompanied by instability. Sure a number of plutocrats will have a harder time at getting their way, but that is a good thing for democracy and against organised crime and corruption. On the other hand, the capacity constraints, the pressure to deliver and the expected global economic slowdown may just push some bench politicians into the fold of extremism. We’d better ensure it does not come to that and that reason will prevail. At least with Mbeki out of the way reason will have an opportunity to be tested more vigorously in public debates in which the National Executive participates, rather than ignore it as if it does not exist whenever it threatens to embarrass them.
It is good because the arm-chair critics - COSATU/SACP alliance partners - will have to eat humble pie. Voters who support them will quickly find COSATU/SACP’s promises vaporised and the latter will have a hard time at it making the sort of sideway criticism we hear coming from them every time there is a rise in the interest rates. I keep on asking myself when the Reserve Bank is going to tell them to shut up or challenge them to justify their remarks, which seem to me to be just opportunism. Surely higher inflation means fewer poor people can afford essential goods as opposed to more indebted and thus employed people being less able to service their debts?
It is a bad thing, because ordinary folk in the streets are increasingly making shocking comments. Just two days ago I spoke to some builders who all expressed their support for Zuma because they hope he will bring more jobs. They pointed out that if Zuma fails to do so, which he is likely to do because he & his SACP buddies have overpromised (and will underdeliver due to the same constraints Mbeki faced and that in a tougher global economic environment), they would have to then look at “letting white people run the country again because then at least there were a lot more jobs”. I was flabbergasted at hearing remarks such as those. They are not new, but to hear it from the horses mouth shocked me.
It is clear that a sizeable number of people vote on the promise of jobs. It is even clearer that when those promises don’t transpire, our democracy may come to be threatened by the type of rhetoric that has kept desperate leaders like Robert Mugabe in power. Zuma’s overpromises will come to haunt him if his graft trial doesn’t do so first. But far from being concerned about what he may or may not do to the country’s economy, I am really more concerned about what his failure to deliver on his promises might do to our democracy. Ironically, for the leftists to be in power may be good for a free market economy, especially if they are seen to fail in an expected tougher global economic environment, which is why I suspect they want Mbeki to stay on as President for now, so that he can take the blame. Mbeki’s good macro-economic policies would also have been over associated with authoritarianism had he won. He was on his way to becoming another Houphouët Boigny and General Pinochet and in doing so, would have associated free market economics with authoritarianism. It has taken us long enough to associate free market economics with a new emerging middle class (one success of Mbeki’s government and the traditional domain of nationalist politics and mixed-market economies in this country) and the last thing we needed was to let it go back to the days of apartheid where communism was associated with freedom and free market economics with political oppression. It is to everyone’s loss that Mbeki wouldn’t open the way for other potential leaders to assume responsibility for that.
On the other hand, letting the bench politicians (COSATU/SACP) fail does come with a built-in price that threatens to bring a lot of destabilisation and disappointment in the democratic process, which in turn threatens to be a beast of a different sort. In the meantime I will not pre-empt myself further in that respect and sit tight and observe what comes next, though I am sure it promises to be exciting if not anxiety spurning.
Already we have seen COSATU saying they will change the country’s macro-economic policies (this despite the fact that they themselves are not the government but only in alliance with it and thus have no mandate to do so). Already we have seen Zuma saying that it is not he who sets the country’s economic policies, but the ANC and already we have seen the ANC saying repeatedly that the macro-economic policies will not change.
Who to believe? There will just be more insider manoeuvring and closed-door decision making, excluding the public from the debate as would occur in an alliance split up into multiple parties, each vying for support. There is no reason to believe a swing to the left will necessarily be bad. It has happened many times in Europe and most recently in Australia and was not accompanied by instability. Sure a number of plutocrats will have a harder time at getting their way, but that is a good thing for democracy and against organised crime and corruption. On the other hand, the capacity constraints, the pressure to deliver and the expected global economic slowdown may just push some bench politicians into the fold of extremism. We’d better ensure it does not come to that and that reason will prevail. At least with Mbeki out of the way reason will have an opportunity to be tested more vigorously in public debates in which the National Executive participates, rather than ignore it as if it does not exist whenever it threatens to embarrass them.
State of South African Politics
SA’s opposition political parties must be some of the lousiest ones in amy democracy on the planet. Even the opposition parties got involved in the ANC leadership race debate in a way in which they virtually pleaded for Mbeki to be elected without explicitly saying so. How pathetic. Instead of exploiting the situation to increase support for their parties, they just took a fatalistic view conceding that there is nothing they can do other than to just try to hold on to their little power bases. Or was it strategy perhaps? If ANC supporters saw them virtually supporting Mbeki, would they then vote Mbeki and “save the day” or revolt and vote for Zuma, leaving the ANC in disarray. Hard to tell, but I was not convinced it was strategy on their behalf as much as it was unfounded apocalyptic fear. Instead of exploiting the divisions in the ANC to increase their support, the opposition parties were all just content to speak to a certain market – retaining their constituency – rather than expanding upon it. What losers?! These people have no ambition other than to be minority parties. None of them have the vision nor the wit to want to rule.
The opposition parties of course are as much victims as the result of SA’s past. The ANC is mainly black, the DA mainly white, the ID mainly coloured and the IFP their own brand of Zulu nationalism. SA’s politics is regrettably still driven primarily by the axiom of identity rather than an axiom of the movement of ideas (identity is an idea, yes, but one that has consistently lead to division and war).
South Africa has rather unfortunately always been beset by nationalist politics. As if it weren’t enough for the old Nationalist Party to rule for close to half a century, we now have the dubious honour of having a ruling party that is also likely to rule for just as long. God forbid it will be longer. The ANC as I see it is a different side of the same coin as the old Nats.
I have maintained for some time now that the only way SA’s democracy will begin to be an innovative one that can adequately rise to meet the challenges the country faces, specifically with regards to civil society building, rather than nation building, is when we move away from this identity driven politics to an idea driven one in which ideas compete vigorously in public debate for majority approval. That is also the surest way to keep corruption in check provided there are constant changes or the possibility of regular changes in government.
The ANC is an umbrella organisation housing many diverging policy schools of thought. They all aim for roughly the same outcome, but there are differences in their philosophies and approaches to implementation. In the past the ANC has had to be an umbrella organisation for a good reason. In a way, that has been a blessing which has enabled SA to grow economically for the longest uninterrupted period in its history where there was no real conflict between labour and business. It also had political spin-offs which prevented a predictable African decline into ethnic rivalry and warfare (the unspoken of hot potato in the recent ANC leadership race). The time is overdue though for those diverging movements within the ANC to forge new identities and to put it to the test amongst the population.
The Zuma / Mbeki saga showed clearly how the COSATU & SACP alliance members manipulated politics. They can be seen to be “bench politicians” a corruption of arm-chair politicians. They sit on the benches in parliament which they occupy purely as a result of piggy-back riding on the ANC and from there they influence national policies.
However much I was opposed to Mbeki, there was a faint strand of hope in me that if he were to be re-elected as ANC president, he would be loathed enough to cause the alliance to split. Following the last general election in 2004 it became clear that opposition in the country was more likely to come from within the ANC than from opposition parties, who lack vision, ambition and a will and capacity to rule, sticking to their own little pigeon holes rather than reaching for the sky. We have now seen that opposition within the ruling party and it is little surprise that it was divided along the lines of SACP/COSATU vs. the centrist “Mbeki-ites” (in quotes because of Mbeki’s disastrous strategy to not allow anybody else to lead them, now to his and their and perhaps the country’s loss).
Zuma’s victory means that such a split is now less likely. It is regrettable, because our politics desperately need to mature. It is unlikely to do so for as long as the ANC remains an umbrella organisation in a climate in which there is no longer any collective storm of political oppression to weather. Politicians are more likely to keep the alliance alive from all sides because it is more likely to guarantee them a seat in Parliament and an annual income in excess of R600,000 - a sizable portion of which no doubt goes to the various parties’ coffers.
“Mbeki’s strategy” thus far to keep the SACP/COSATU alliance within the ANC and thereby to ensure cooperation rather than confrontation in economic politics was a good one that has now died a brutal death. If the alliance partners have not hi-jacked the ANC it has certainly overrun it. A split can now only come from those centrists who would have found a natural home in an alliance with the Democratic Alliance and I do not see that happening. Such an alliance would also have given the official opposition DA the opportunity to expand beyond its narrow vision of catering to a select constituency and afforded it the opportunity to become a more representative party.
The politics of inclusion has its benefits, especially in SA’s case as it comes from a deeply divided past. It also has it drawbacks and it is on account of those drawbacks, such as nepotism, corruption, complacency and acquiesment of opposition and effectively, of cross-checks and balances, that the umbrella needs to be closed.
Mbeki and the ANC knows that COSATU is the only movement that could conceivably have formed an alternative governing party – the “Labour Party”, using contributions from trade union members to fund such a party. The SACP is a dead duck that turtle-back rides on the alliance as a whole and they will die a sudden death if they don’t piggyback ride – what plutocrat would possibly want to fund them except those trying to buy influence, which they would be far better off buying elsewhere – I see support for the SACP to be nominal, no more than 12 percent or so of voters if that many (which is of course a lot more than the current opposition parties have). However, if COSATU might appeal to those who already have work (or else they would not be part of a labour union), the SACP might appeal to the real poor people, those with no chance of a job.
Such a division might appal many within the alliance who still identify with the common identity forged in “the struggle”, but it makes sense on every other account. The ANC stands to loose its ground amongst the rising middle-classes in a matter of a decade, unless it differentiates itself from the party of lower earning and poor people. Perhaps the lousy opposition parties are just sitting and biding their time for that to happen, but it would be foolish to take for granted that it will.
Such a division is the only way in which I foresee SA ever moving beyond the racially defined identity politics which has been the country’s making, nearly resulted in its unmaking and still has the potential to do so.
I guess it will be business as usual now. The net effect thereof is that SA is only somewhat as innovative and leading as it could be.
The opposition parties of course are as much victims as the result of SA’s past. The ANC is mainly black, the DA mainly white, the ID mainly coloured and the IFP their own brand of Zulu nationalism. SA’s politics is regrettably still driven primarily by the axiom of identity rather than an axiom of the movement of ideas (identity is an idea, yes, but one that has consistently lead to division and war).
South Africa has rather unfortunately always been beset by nationalist politics. As if it weren’t enough for the old Nationalist Party to rule for close to half a century, we now have the dubious honour of having a ruling party that is also likely to rule for just as long. God forbid it will be longer. The ANC as I see it is a different side of the same coin as the old Nats.
I have maintained for some time now that the only way SA’s democracy will begin to be an innovative one that can adequately rise to meet the challenges the country faces, specifically with regards to civil society building, rather than nation building, is when we move away from this identity driven politics to an idea driven one in which ideas compete vigorously in public debate for majority approval. That is also the surest way to keep corruption in check provided there are constant changes or the possibility of regular changes in government.
The ANC is an umbrella organisation housing many diverging policy schools of thought. They all aim for roughly the same outcome, but there are differences in their philosophies and approaches to implementation. In the past the ANC has had to be an umbrella organisation for a good reason. In a way, that has been a blessing which has enabled SA to grow economically for the longest uninterrupted period in its history where there was no real conflict between labour and business. It also had political spin-offs which prevented a predictable African decline into ethnic rivalry and warfare (the unspoken of hot potato in the recent ANC leadership race). The time is overdue though for those diverging movements within the ANC to forge new identities and to put it to the test amongst the population.
The Zuma / Mbeki saga showed clearly how the COSATU & SACP alliance members manipulated politics. They can be seen to be “bench politicians” a corruption of arm-chair politicians. They sit on the benches in parliament which they occupy purely as a result of piggy-back riding on the ANC and from there they influence national policies.
However much I was opposed to Mbeki, there was a faint strand of hope in me that if he were to be re-elected as ANC president, he would be loathed enough to cause the alliance to split. Following the last general election in 2004 it became clear that opposition in the country was more likely to come from within the ANC than from opposition parties, who lack vision, ambition and a will and capacity to rule, sticking to their own little pigeon holes rather than reaching for the sky. We have now seen that opposition within the ruling party and it is little surprise that it was divided along the lines of SACP/COSATU vs. the centrist “Mbeki-ites” (in quotes because of Mbeki’s disastrous strategy to not allow anybody else to lead them, now to his and their and perhaps the country’s loss).
Zuma’s victory means that such a split is now less likely. It is regrettable, because our politics desperately need to mature. It is unlikely to do so for as long as the ANC remains an umbrella organisation in a climate in which there is no longer any collective storm of political oppression to weather. Politicians are more likely to keep the alliance alive from all sides because it is more likely to guarantee them a seat in Parliament and an annual income in excess of R600,000 - a sizable portion of which no doubt goes to the various parties’ coffers.
“Mbeki’s strategy” thus far to keep the SACP/COSATU alliance within the ANC and thereby to ensure cooperation rather than confrontation in economic politics was a good one that has now died a brutal death. If the alliance partners have not hi-jacked the ANC it has certainly overrun it. A split can now only come from those centrists who would have found a natural home in an alliance with the Democratic Alliance and I do not see that happening. Such an alliance would also have given the official opposition DA the opportunity to expand beyond its narrow vision of catering to a select constituency and afforded it the opportunity to become a more representative party.
The politics of inclusion has its benefits, especially in SA’s case as it comes from a deeply divided past. It also has it drawbacks and it is on account of those drawbacks, such as nepotism, corruption, complacency and acquiesment of opposition and effectively, of cross-checks and balances, that the umbrella needs to be closed.
Mbeki and the ANC knows that COSATU is the only movement that could conceivably have formed an alternative governing party – the “Labour Party”, using contributions from trade union members to fund such a party. The SACP is a dead duck that turtle-back rides on the alliance as a whole and they will die a sudden death if they don’t piggyback ride – what plutocrat would possibly want to fund them except those trying to buy influence, which they would be far better off buying elsewhere – I see support for the SACP to be nominal, no more than 12 percent or so of voters if that many (which is of course a lot more than the current opposition parties have). However, if COSATU might appeal to those who already have work (or else they would not be part of a labour union), the SACP might appeal to the real poor people, those with no chance of a job.
Such a division might appal many within the alliance who still identify with the common identity forged in “the struggle”, but it makes sense on every other account. The ANC stands to loose its ground amongst the rising middle-classes in a matter of a decade, unless it differentiates itself from the party of lower earning and poor people. Perhaps the lousy opposition parties are just sitting and biding their time for that to happen, but it would be foolish to take for granted that it will.
Such a division is the only way in which I foresee SA ever moving beyond the racially defined identity politics which has been the country’s making, nearly resulted in its unmaking and still has the potential to do so.
I guess it will be business as usual now. The net effect thereof is that SA is only somewhat as innovative and leading as it could be.
On Mbeki's loss
Much has been made about the race in the ANC between Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki for the post of party President. Being no fan of Mbeki, I hoped Zuma would win purely for the purpose of getting Mbeki out. Zuma is by no means a suitable candidate, but I always saw him as the lesser threat. Zuma is an emperor without clothes who will have a hard time at being taken seriously. Mbeki on the other hand is a fox of the type that will make himself self sound ever more dignacious and righteous whilst doing the very things he blames others for doing. Like Margaret Thatcher whose economic views he claims to follow, he cannot see mistakes in himself whilst he leaps further and further into extremist authoritarianism.
Mbeki’s desire to cling to (party) power after his constitutional term as president of SA expires in 2009 was worrying. Why was he so adamant to hold on to power? Mbeki was the de-facto prime minister under Nelson Mandela’s government who was more of a figurehead than an executive, which gives Mbeki an effective three terms in power…and still that was not enough for him. The presidential two-term limit built into the South African constitution, copied from the USA, is there for many an important purpose.
For one, a change in leadership, even in the absence of a change in the ruling party, injects new life and direction into what may otherwise become dust settling on itself. There can be no doubt that Mbeki’s attempt to cling to power as the president of the ANC was an attempt to influence, if not direct, the next president of the country. That would have made the next President little more than a puppet of Mbeki and it was likely that, with two centres of power, there eventually would have been a mutiny. No ship can have two captains. It remains to be seen how the present situation will unfold, but as The Beeld newspaper rightly point out, he was the father of this “two centres of power” approach in SA and it has backfired on him, at his own expense, his party’s expense and that of the country.
Africa regrettably has a longer tradition of “Big African Statesmen” who entrench themselves into positions of perpetual power which have seen many a fledging democracy go down the proverbial drain. Mbeki was no doubt one of those big African statesmen in the making and he has been stopped dead in his tracks and that is a good thing.
His refusal to step down at his use-by date furthermore suggested rather bluntly that he trusted no-one else to run the party, let alone that he thinks no-one has any vision to lead. That is intellectually insulting in the extreme and smacks of the arrogance that characterises so many kleptocratic African leaders (erstwhile Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Mobutu Sese Seko, and the long running Muammar Gaddafi and of course the infamous Robert Mugabe, to name but a few).
When Mbeki however began to blur the lines between party and state and began using organs of state to fight his personal battles, he crossed the line in the most severe way which had every alarm bell ringing that this autocrat was about to accept no differences of opinion to his version of reality. Key principles of democracy – the separation of powers and the competition for public attention of divergent ideas - was under threat by the man who had the biggest responsibility to protect it. We have predictably shown ourselves that we are not immune to the same syndromes that have pestered other democracies throughout time, hence the need for cross-checks and balances. Mbeki’s track record shows that he consistently tried to quash those cross-checks and balances whenever it threatened to embarrass His Diganciousness’s esteem. What he never understood was how he himself brought embarrassment upon his government by his stubborn insistence on blacking-out any and all voices of dissent within his party and from without.
It is a fitting symbol that South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation”, is suffering from rolling power cuts as demand for electricity from newly built homes outstrip supply. The good fortunes and growing pains of an expanding economy aside - on a national level, it reflects the national psyche. Rays of light making up the rainbow were selectively being blacked out by Mbeki. Voices of dissent, disagreement and differing opinions were not allowed to compete fairly through public debate, they were being quashed both inside and outside of Parliament. I am referring of course to the debate surrounding Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the dismissal of National Prosecuting Authority boss Vusi Pikoli, Mbeki’s adamant defence of Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, the Intelligence email scandal, not to even begin with AIDS and crime.
IMHO, Mbeki is a bastard and his demise is a blessing for our democracy. Those who supported him recently, did so not necessarily out of any love for him but out of fear for Zuma. The stupid thing about this whole issue is that is was a false dilemma that forced a choice between either Mbeki or Zuma. In this regard, it is another reason to celebrate Mbeki’s demise. Instead of nurturing or promoting new talent, Mbeki only wanted to control it in accordance with his will. The split in the ANC can be placed fairly and squarely on his shoulders and his decision to make himself available for the post of party president instead of opening the floor for other candidates. Back to the false dilemma, South Africans who like neither the idea of Zuma nor Mbeki have the option to vote for a party other than the ANC.
To be honest, The Economist has it right when it practically compares the recent race to a curate’s egg. In theory it was good for democracy as no other post-victory liberation movement in Africa has ever democratically deposed (if at all), let alone contest the position of party leader (the ANC’s previous contests do not count as it occurred prior to their liberation victory). On the other hand though, the competition was between two lousy candidates.
It is regrettable that SA is still racially divided. We are still, as a nation, separate and identify according to race. Ours is an identity driven democracy rather than an idea driven one. Black people principally support the ANC, white people the DA, coloured people the ID and so on. We will not make progress and innovate ourselves to rise above our challenges until we move from identity politics to idea politics. Mbeki, instead of moving away from this, exploited it (“I am an African” at his very first State of the Nation Address at the Opening of Parliament in 1999). Personally, I always thought “well thanks for that enlightening piece of information, now we all know you are not Japanese”.
He was obsessed with distinguishing himself from Mandela and the only way he apparently saw fit to do so was by attributing his vision and intellect to his race (“native intelligence” as he put it). It was a path that thought only of his own “dignacious” esteem, reputation and glory and not of the nation as a whole, so as to be held aloft along the likes of Julius Nyerere. In retrospect, there was no need for him to have to distinguish himself other than through his deeds, which have come to be the yardstick he was now measured against and found wanting, to say the least. In having chosen to stereotype himself, it was a sweet and self-inflicted revenge that Mbeki displayed those traits of other African autocrats and despots which ultimately led to his widespread disapproval. All he had to do was to get on with the job and that alone would have given him credit, but he wanted to turn himself into a cult personality of the African statesman – the Saviour of Africans. The way in which he and his cronies in the ANCBC (a.k.a. SABC) think they speak for the whole of Africa is a joke. Hopefully that will now come to an end but I wouldn’t keep my fingers crossed.
What we need as a society is a leader (and a party) that will look above these divisions of yonder and promote a national identity in which all South Africans can feel at home in to participate freely in public debates. Though public debate itself wasn’t really quietened (yet), what is important is that people are heard and that everyone’s opinion is considered and valued. The constitution does not place a void responsibility upon the government to be responsive to public concerns. Mbeki didn’t fail in that respect to live up to Mandela, he never even tried, in fact, he went in the opposite direction and was responsive only to maintaining his own dignity, which translated to him as not being criticised and being respected by being obeyed without question as the leader and by dousing any attempts to the contrary – a very African way of leading, the evidence of which is visible throughout Africa over more than the past half a century.
Jacob Zuma may be an undesirable candidate but a fortiori it was more important to get rid of Mbeki’s authoritarian paranoia and ways of humiliating and blacking-out disagreeing voices. Everybody knows that we will have to deal with Zuma and that will no doubt come to pass and I have some anxiety in that regard, specifically as a gay person, that we will go backwards rather than forward, but it remains to be seen.
In the meantime, go to sleep Mbeki and take your “native intelligence” (or stupidity, whichever way you look at it) along with you. Know that you, as a leader (an “African” one) who expect to be listened to (no doubt due to your “native African intelligence”) rather than listening to all South Africans is unlikely to be missed. And for goodnes sake, cut your eyebrows.
Mbeki’s desire to cling to (party) power after his constitutional term as president of SA expires in 2009 was worrying. Why was he so adamant to hold on to power? Mbeki was the de-facto prime minister under Nelson Mandela’s government who was more of a figurehead than an executive, which gives Mbeki an effective three terms in power…and still that was not enough for him. The presidential two-term limit built into the South African constitution, copied from the USA, is there for many an important purpose.
For one, a change in leadership, even in the absence of a change in the ruling party, injects new life and direction into what may otherwise become dust settling on itself. There can be no doubt that Mbeki’s attempt to cling to power as the president of the ANC was an attempt to influence, if not direct, the next president of the country. That would have made the next President little more than a puppet of Mbeki and it was likely that, with two centres of power, there eventually would have been a mutiny. No ship can have two captains. It remains to be seen how the present situation will unfold, but as The Beeld newspaper rightly point out, he was the father of this “two centres of power” approach in SA and it has backfired on him, at his own expense, his party’s expense and that of the country.
Africa regrettably has a longer tradition of “Big African Statesmen” who entrench themselves into positions of perpetual power which have seen many a fledging democracy go down the proverbial drain. Mbeki was no doubt one of those big African statesmen in the making and he has been stopped dead in his tracks and that is a good thing.
His refusal to step down at his use-by date furthermore suggested rather bluntly that he trusted no-one else to run the party, let alone that he thinks no-one has any vision to lead. That is intellectually insulting in the extreme and smacks of the arrogance that characterises so many kleptocratic African leaders (erstwhile Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Mobutu Sese Seko, and the long running Muammar Gaddafi and of course the infamous Robert Mugabe, to name but a few).
When Mbeki however began to blur the lines between party and state and began using organs of state to fight his personal battles, he crossed the line in the most severe way which had every alarm bell ringing that this autocrat was about to accept no differences of opinion to his version of reality. Key principles of democracy – the separation of powers and the competition for public attention of divergent ideas - was under threat by the man who had the biggest responsibility to protect it. We have predictably shown ourselves that we are not immune to the same syndromes that have pestered other democracies throughout time, hence the need for cross-checks and balances. Mbeki’s track record shows that he consistently tried to quash those cross-checks and balances whenever it threatened to embarrass His Diganciousness’s
It is a fitting symbol that South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation”, is suffering from rolling power cuts as demand for electricity from newly built homes outstrip supply. The good fortunes and growing pains of an expanding economy aside - on a national level, it reflects the national psyche. Rays of light making up the rainbow were selectively being blacked out by Mbeki. Voices of dissent, disagreement and differing opinions were not allowed to compete fairly through public debate, they were being quashed both inside and outside of Parliament. I am referring of course to the debate surrounding Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the dismissal of National Prosecuting Authority boss Vusi Pikoli, Mbeki’s adamant defence of Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, the Intelligence email scandal, not to even begin with AIDS and crime.
IMHO, Mbeki is a bastard and his demise is a blessing for our democracy. Those who supported him recently, did so not necessarily out of any love for him but out of fear for Zuma. The stupid thing about this whole issue is that is was a false dilemma that forced a choice between either Mbeki or Zuma. In this regard, it is another reason to celebrate Mbeki’s demise. Instead of nurturing or promoting new talent, Mbeki only wanted to control it in accordance with his will. The split in the ANC can be placed fairly and squarely on his shoulders and his decision to make himself available for the post of party president instead of opening the floor for other candidates. Back to the false dilemma, South Africans who like neither the idea of Zuma nor Mbeki have the option to vote for a party other than the ANC.
To be honest, The Economist has it right when it practically compares the recent race to a curate’s egg. In theory it was good for democracy as no other post-victory liberation movement in Africa has ever democratically deposed (if at all), let alone contest the position of party leader (the ANC’s previous contests do not count as it occurred prior to their liberation victory). On the other hand though, the competition was between two lousy candidates.
It is regrettable that SA is still racially divided. We are still, as a nation, separate and identify according to race. Ours is an identity driven democracy rather than an idea driven one. Black people principally support the ANC, white people the DA, coloured people the ID and so on. We will not make progress and innovate ourselves to rise above our challenges until we move from identity politics to idea politics. Mbeki, instead of moving away from this, exploited it (“I am an African” at his very first State of the Nation Address at the Opening of Parliament in 1999). Personally, I always thought “well thanks for that enlightening piece of information, now we all know you are not Japanese”.
He was obsessed with distinguishing himself from Mandela and the only way he apparently saw fit to do so was by attributing his vision and intellect to his race (“native intelligence” as he put it). It was a path that thought only of his own “dignacious”
What we need as a society is a leader (and a party) that will look above these divisions of yonder and promote a national identity in which all South Africans can feel at home in to participate freely in public debates. Though public debate itself wasn’t really quietened (yet), what is important is that people are heard and that everyone’s opinion is considered and valued. The constitution does not place a void responsibility upon the government to be responsive to public concerns. Mbeki didn’t fail in that respect to live up to Mandela, he never even tried, in fact, he went in the opposite direction and was responsive only to maintaining his own dignity, which translated to him as not being criticised and being respected by being obeyed without question as the leader and by dousing any attempts to the contrary – a very African way of leading, the evidence of which is visible throughout Africa over more than the past half a century.
Jacob Zuma may be an undesirable candidate but a fortiori it was more important to get rid of Mbeki’s authoritarian paranoia and ways of humiliating and blacking-out disagreeing voices. Everybody knows that we will have to deal with Zuma and that will no doubt come to pass and I have some anxiety in that regard, specifically as a gay person, that we will go backwards rather than forward, but it remains to be seen.
In the meantime, go to sleep Mbeki and take your “native intelligence” (or stupidity, whichever way you look at it) along with you. Know that you, as a leader (an “African” one) who expect to be listened to (no doubt due to your “native African intelligence”) rather than listening to all South Africans is unlikely to be missed. And for goodnes sake, cut your eyebrows.
Mbeki - some perspectives
The recent ANC leadership race made news worldwide. I am sure that those pieces of serialised newsclips hardly cared to describe a feeling that is prevalent amongst South Africans. Mbeki is such a spindoctor that Zuma is seen as some demon that will destroy South Africa. Zuma is by no means a demon, but he is certainly a poor candidate. Despite that, the Polokwane vote was a vote against Mbeki rather than necessarily being one for Zuma per se. It just so happens that Zuma is the pivotal figure to lead the mutiny aginst the demon Mbeki (Yes! In answer to your question Mbeki, you do have horns.
Some very interesting blog pieces shed a little bit of light of the same shade I am standing in.
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/media-flaws/2007/12/19/irresistable-satire
and perhaps a favourite one:
http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=429 to which i also added a comment before I wrote for this long neglected blog again.
Some very interesting blog pieces shed a little bit of light of the same shade I am standing in.
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/media-flaws/2007/12/19/irresistable-satire
and perhaps a favourite one:
http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=429 to which i also added a comment before I wrote for this long neglected blog again.
15.6.07
Pet Hate
It seems there is a trend blowing amongst webdesigners of South African public sector websites like a storm. Some idiots have taken it upon themselves to make every link open up in a new browser - and I'm not talking about opening links leading to new sites only but even those within the same site.
Apart from being really, really annoying, it is not necessarily good practice. The whole idea of surfing on the web means users go from one site to another, hence the name, LINK.
It is rude and it is really beginning to piss me off big time. If I want a new window to open, I'll do it myself, so if you are a web designer and happen to stumble over this post, STOP FUCKING WITH MY BROWSER!
Apart from being really, really annoying, it is not necessarily good practice. The whole idea of surfing on the web means users go from one site to another, hence the name, LINK.
It is rude and it is really beginning to piss me off big time. If I want a new window to open, I'll do it myself, so if you are a web designer and happen to stumble over this post, STOP FUCKING WITH MY BROWSER!
29.3.07
Stopping Theocracies
I was searching for the website of the African Union and came upon this site, which rather took me by surprise...
Americans United (AU !) is an organisation that promotes and protects the seperation of the Church and the State. Considering what an appaling theocracy that country has become, whereby a President can virtually no longer be elected unless HE goes to church and believes in a god, it was refreshing to stumble upon this site.
I am glad to see there are those amongst Americans who stand up for the right to Freedom of Conscience. I have seen the site before but had forgotten about it, so I am documenting it here for future reference.
Americans United (AU !) is an organisation that promotes and protects the seperation of the Church and the State. Considering what an appaling theocracy that country has become, whereby a President can virtually no longer be elected unless HE goes to church and believes in a god, it was refreshing to stumble upon this site.
I am glad to see there are those amongst Americans who stand up for the right to Freedom of Conscience. I have seen the site before but had forgotten about it, so I am documenting it here for future reference.
19.3.07
Mbeki's fallacies.
I originally wrote it for commentary.co.za in response to the whole Zimbabwean thing but then it became so long I decided to post it here instead.
I’ll stray a bit from the topic at hand but it goes to set a greater and consistent contextual description of perception.
Yesterday I read in Saudi Babylon how a British diplomat succinctly described what amounts to quiet diplomacy, although that term is not explicitly used. To paraphrase, he said that if a government does not speak out publicly about an issue regarding a host country (in this case torture of British nationals by the Sauds), that it will not speak out at all. Even if it does speak out to the host country but does not follow that up by making a public statement, the host country will take it to be inconsequential, since the [British] government is unwilling to back the stance up in public, meaning that they don’t mean business.
Reading this from the horse’s mouth - a diplomat with more than twenty years experience - places Mbeki’s “Quiet Diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe in a greater context of his legacy aka The Big Denial. If one strips the ANCBC’s (aka SABC) glorification of his legacy as dignified away, one is left with dramatic failures of both his leadership and his responsibilities. If not in denial about AIDS (the legacy of his policies are an estimated 2.2 million Aids orphans in SA), it is denialism (or dismissal of) crime, his responsibilities as an executive to dump incompetent executives from his Cabinet and the civil service or “quiet diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe.
On Friday Mbeki debated perceptions of crime in South Africa as influenced from a racist point of view. (Trust the ANCBC aka SABC to bring that to my attention). I agree with a lot of what he has said. However I think it mistaken of him to cast the issue of crime in a racist context of “the kaffirs are coming” at the expense of the greater picture in which he is responsible for preventing crime and his government is not doing enough to do so in an environment in which he admits crime in SA is higher than it should be. At the end of the day that debate served to explain why the Government has nopt done enough to curb crime sooner – it clearly demonstrates the belief in the upper-most echelons of our government that crime is (or was rather) an issue blown out of proportion, driven by racist intention to derail the majority government from its objectives and most importantly, that it just was not as important as it was made out to be because the loudest protesters were whites – a minority. I do not dispute for one minute that there are those “whites” (god I hate that word but I still won’t drink SAB’s pilsners) who do indeed think like that. But having chosen an issue that was forced on to Mbeki’s government administration from “down below” (or even midway up through the media) as a topic for Human Right’s Day in the present light of what’s going on in Zimbabwe, right on our doorstep, makes for yet again another affirmation of his inclination to avoid having to deal with unpleasantries.
Mbeki’s style and the imbalance in leadership within the ruling ANC-party
I have always perceived Mbeki to be a “top down” leader. The whole strife within the ANC demonstrates this very clearly. When Mbeki was elected for ANC presidency, media articles were rife about “Who is this pipe smoking man?” and the “African philosopher” had to be introduced to the public. Not only that, but he had to step down from his podium and engage with people at the grassroots level through a series of public imbizos, only to step back up on to his podium. Recall Mandela’s inauguration, where children took the place of soldiers in the procession through the streets. When Mbeki was inaugurated, the children were nowhere to be seen, the soldiers were back. During the dark days of Apartheid, the amphitheatre of the Union Buildings were open – I roamed there freely. Since the advent of democracy, it is closed. Mbeki needs to isolate himself from the common crowds so that he can dignify his pseudo-intellectual aloofness as a leader. In his article he consistently talks about fear but it seems he is the one who is scared of the public’s opinion when it does not compare favourably to his, or at any rate dismissive of it when it doesn’t fit into one of his grand African philosophies.
Zuma on the other hand is an out and out populist – so much so that one can argue he is a coward who has no stance to take or to offer other than what he is told to by “his” ANC, i.e. he has no leadership traits. The two represent opposite sides of the same pole and neither of them offers a balanced choice between leading and listening. It is natural for Mbeki to choose crime – an issue that was unpopularly shoved onto him through massive public response because of his willful ignorance to not only address public concern but to be seen to do it. Mbeki seemed humiliated by the whole issue in his State of the Nation 2007 address. I am sure he resented it and the publication of his article on Friday goes a long way to justify his disapproval for me. What better can you expect from someone who isolates himself from the public in a grand and self righteous pompously self dignifying ivory tower called “The Presidency” – his creation in a country where the President is not directly elected by the people as in the USA, but elected through the Westminster system?
Mbeki’s debate on crime and race
Mbeki’s government has on numerous occasions maintained that the high rate of crime is a perception created and oversensationalised by the media – and again I agree but it has its basis in reality. If public perception is the enemy and if he wants to change that perception, he goes about it in all the wrong ways by trying to downplay it instead of offering people a visible antidote in a world in which perceptions are reinforced by concretely visible ideas. As the highest paid and highest executive civil servant in the country, he has more power than anyone to give visible evidence to those who shout “the kaffirs are coming” that they are wrong and he HAS WHOLEHEARTEDLY FAILED TO NOT GIVE THEM THIS REASON until his recent climbdown during the State of the Nation Address 2007. As could be expected, on Friday he defered responsibility for the issue into another context, one not entirely invalid but potentially misleading in the typical media sensationalist manner that he criticizes, rather than just making himself be seen to be accountable AND RESPONSIVE. That however would be too damaging for his haughty pride – the Statesman, the President, the man who lives in la-la land on his podium in an Ivory Towercalled the Presidency far removed from the people in an imaginary city of Tshwane, being told by his countrymen how to lead.
[irrelevant to discussion] Enter weak and populist Zuma. Never in the history of this country has a public figure so embodied Humpty Dumpty and none of the SACP’s horses and the ANC Youth League’s men will ever be able to put that broken egg back together again. It has failed to hatch into anything promising in public life for good other than good riddance. [/irrelevant].
If Mbeki wants to raise racism (and I endorse that move) as an influencing factor in public perceptions about crime, then he must recognize that racism works both ways and the one point that he does not highlight, is that just as there are those elements amongst the country’s white population who shout “here come the kaffirs”, so too are there those elements amongst criminals who shout “one settler one bullet” and who then kill white farmers and motorists and civilians to advance theft, thuggery, rape and criminality. The ANC and Mbeki himself inadvertantly supports this IMHO tacitly, since when you measure their public condemnation of crime vis-à-vis their explanation that crime is the result of poverty and that poverty must be reduced to reduce crime, they are inadvertently sending a message that poverty is an excuse to kill, murder, rape and violate, instead of sending a loud and clear message that POVERTY IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO ROB, MURDER AND RAPE. Instead of verbosely speaking out against that and distinguishing between situational crimes (crimes of poverty) and crimes of conscious intent, the ANC and Mbeki sends subliminal messages to people who have a morality that is far different to theirs (the ANC’s) and who only need a little push to do a lot of harm. There are millions of poor people in the world who are poor and if poverty were an excuse to commit violent crime, the world would look like a place ripe for Armageddon (it does not). Race cannot be used as an excuse to divert attention away from poor leadership and irresponsiveness by the Cabinet to practically enforce the rule of law - a root principle of a democracy based on human rights – and that has been what the public outcry against crime has been about.
Mbeki’s Inconsistent Foreign Policies
Regarding Foreign Policy, this blog has commented a plenty on Mbeki’s government’s apparent siding with brutal regimes, terrorist regimes etc. Here Mbeki’s inconsistencies and flaws show clearly for those who care to look. South Africa’s so called historic first vote on the UN Security Council was one that will forever serve as a reminder to future governments of the shameful letdown of other struggling people our leaders can be responsible for, when SA voted against the resolution re: Human Right’s abuses in Myanmar. Mbeki went on TV in his post State of the Nation Address 2007 on the ANCBC (aka the SABC) to call it “the correct decision” [paraphrasing] “…that you can’t expect the UN to represent international law when it is the very first institution to break it…” Forgetting for a moment that the best decision is not necessarily the technically correct one, but the right one that will reduce suffering for the greatest number of people, the Apartheid Regime consistently regarded UN sanctions against SA as a violation of international law, considering it an issue of domestic policy. Is Mbeki then suggesting that the wave of international actions that brought the Apartheid Regime to its knees and him to power was unlawful? It would appear to be so. He said in that same interview that [paraphrasing] “we have always maintained that the people of Zimbabwe must find their own solutions to problems as we in SA have done”. The thing is that the SA solution was forced onto the Apartheid Oligarchy through international sanctions from its most important trading partners through inter alia the UN Security Council arms embargo etc. How does Mbeki in all his self-glorified and righteous wisdom think the people of Zimbabwe are able to bring about their own internal solution when the SA government is tacitly supporting an authoritarian ruler who uses the organs of state against the Zimbabwean people to demolish their homes Apartheid government style and who has the police torture the government’s critics?
The issue re: Foreign policy at hand here is greater than a mere condemnation against Harare. At stake is a perception that the West uses the UN to further imperialist ambitions – which it does. Nowadays this comes not in the form of overt political oppression but in the form of covert economic policies and so forth, backed up by political intervention when multi-national corporate profits or those of the military industrial complex are at stake. Just like it is expecting too much of the ANC to speak out against human rights abuses by those regimes that supported it in the struggle against Apartheid, which was the legacy of Western Imperialism, so too is it asking too much of the ANC to behave in the only effective manner that can bring about the right type of change in foreign countries, i.e. “foreign intervention in another country” – or put another way, it is too much to ask the ANC to support actions that will make them guilty of the perception of imperialist interventionist and prescriptive behaviour. Mugabe knows this and uses it in a potent manner against his adversaries and critics in a way that silences the ANC. Mugabe successfully paints it such that a decision by the ANC opposing him would potentially ruin the ANC’s reputation in Africa as an organization in support of African Unity, instead making them one in support of imperialist and prescriptive behaviour. The ANC government has always taken great care to be seen to respect the equality of SA’s neighbours and to work with them in partnership – yet that did not stop them from invading Lesotho. With the ANC led government already having their fingers in the pies of several African countries (Comores, Burundi, DRC), Western-like intervention could be very harmful for Mbeki’s pet project, NEPAD. South Africa is the best hope for foreign intervention in Zimbabwe’s de-escalation into authoritarian / dictatorial rule, but as long as SA is silenced, Mugabe can continue to do whatever pleases his pocket. The other factor of course is that the reputation of the sub-continent will suffer and investors will run away if things go potty in Zimbabwe, leaving SA with literally millions of refugees, whilst being detrimental for the Government’s job creation and growth and investment plans. The whole fiasco re: the South African mercenaries who were arrested for attempted coup-d’etats plots in Equatorial Guinea is another example of how this holy cow (of foreign policy vs. or supports imperialist like intervention) is making Mbeki make the correct decisions, but not the right ones. It is also in my opinion why the ANC gives such support to dictatorial regimes like Castro’s Cuba, Ghaddafi’s Libya (Mandela: We won’t be told who are our friends), Iran’s Ahmadinjad etc. as they are all examples of those who have withstood US imperialism. The West on the other hand uses Human Right’s issues as well as Mugabe uses imperialism to advance their own interests, yet, it is the better of the two evils, since the first ultimately protects the greatest number of people where there are human right’s abuses. Instead however of the ANC ceasing the opportunity to claim human rights for Africa and to take it out from the shadow of Western interference, thereby meaningfully setting an example for other needy African countries to follow without being made to feel that they are pussyfooting around the will of the West, Mbeki let’s down the people of the continent in the most powerful way whilst he tries to “save” them from their own tyranny through NEPAD.
The cost of this foreign policy for people who are victims of the abuse of organs of state against civilians throughout Africa and other parts of the world is bigger than it can be because if Mbeki’s weak leadership. The ANC is an organization whose intent is very much one of Human Rights. Human Rights against imperialism as much as Human Rights against the abuse of organs of state against civilians, yet it is ignoring the latter within Mbeki’s inconsistencies. Mbeki it seems is finally beginning to realize that his hope that Africans will rise and improve their living conditions and dignity all by themselves is naive. There have always been those Africans who rise but they do not do it for the greater good, they do it for their own good. If Mbeki can recognize that the Sudanese government is using national sovereignity to endorse continued human right’s abuses in Darfur and if it is willing to send the SANDF into Lesotho to restore democracy and if it recognizes that China is using the holy cow of imperialism to gain a foothold in Africa and publicly (note: publicly, no quiet diplomacy in something of far greater importance to the ANC, i.e. economic trade relations), it must be willing to take a far stronger stand against Mugabe than Dep. Min. of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahads’ expression of concern. There will be no inconsistencies, as the ANC formerly used foreign intervention (through sanctions) to achieve the objectives of democracy and human rights in SA – again, the objectives of democracy and Human Rights are its very own objectives. If the Mbeki government was previously reluctant to speak out against the killing of white farmers in Zimbabwe because those farmers were the legacy of the imperialism which disowned Africans from their land and because it was “justifiable” that the land be repossessed for its “rightful” owners (nevermind that the land was given to Mugabe’s cronies and military commanders who keep him in power and not the rightful communities and nevermind that in a drought probable region productivity should be the yardstick of land ownership not legitimacy), then the ANC must now recognize that Mugabe’s fight against imperialism and Mbeki’s support thereof is flawed in as far as it is only being used as a legitimate issue to advance illegitimate dictatorships and human right’s abuses – the same way that Mbeki is now using the legitimate issue of racist perceptions as a motive for criminal activity in an inappropriate reply to criticism of his government’s responsiveness to public perceptions regarding crime – one that ultimately makes him an inconsistent loser in advancing the cause of Human Rights as argued above. Mbeki is a weak leader. Good as he has been for the country, it is time for him to pack his briefcase. We need better than what he is willing and able to give us.
Just an aside. This gloryfying of Mbeki as a demi-god of stature, Presdient Mbeki this and President Mbeki that is no good. It is time to take him on. In as far as the pre-State of the Nation 2007 Address public outcry called on and caaled on and caaled on President Mbeki this and President Mbeki that to do something about crime, it was pathetic. This is a democracy. Stop glorifying a man that does not deliver. Replace him with someone who does.
I’ll stray a bit from the topic at hand but it goes to set a greater and consistent contextual description of perception.
Yesterday I read in Saudi Babylon how a British diplomat succinctly described what amounts to quiet diplomacy, although that term is not explicitly used. To paraphrase, he said that if a government does not speak out publicly about an issue regarding a host country (in this case torture of British nationals by the Sauds), that it will not speak out at all. Even if it does speak out to the host country but does not follow that up by making a public statement, the host country will take it to be inconsequential, since the [British] government is unwilling to back the stance up in public, meaning that they don’t mean business.
Reading this from the horse’s mouth - a diplomat with more than twenty years experience - places Mbeki’s “Quiet Diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe in a greater context of his legacy aka The Big Denial. If one strips the ANCBC’s (aka SABC) glorification of his legacy as dignified away, one is left with dramatic failures of both his leadership and his responsibilities. If not in denial about AIDS (the legacy of his policies are an estimated 2.2 million Aids orphans in SA), it is denialism (or dismissal of) crime, his responsibilities as an executive to dump incompetent executives from his Cabinet and the civil service or “quiet diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe.
On Friday Mbeki debated perceptions of crime in South Africa as influenced from a racist point of view. (Trust the ANCBC aka SABC to bring that to my attention). I agree with a lot of what he has said. However I think it mistaken of him to cast the issue of crime in a racist context of “the kaffirs are coming” at the expense of the greater picture in which he is responsible for preventing crime and his government is not doing enough to do so in an environment in which he admits crime in SA is higher than it should be. At the end of the day that debate served to explain why the Government has nopt done enough to curb crime sooner – it clearly demonstrates the belief in the upper-most echelons of our government that crime is (or was rather) an issue blown out of proportion, driven by racist intention to derail the majority government from its objectives and most importantly, that it just was not as important as it was made out to be because the loudest protesters were whites – a minority. I do not dispute for one minute that there are those “whites” (god I hate that word but I still won’t drink SAB’s pilsners) who do indeed think like that. But having chosen an issue that was forced on to Mbeki’s government administration from “down below” (or even midway up through the media) as a topic for Human Right’s Day in the present light of what’s going on in Zimbabwe, right on our doorstep, makes for yet again another affirmation of his inclination to avoid having to deal with unpleasantries.
Mbeki’s style and the imbalance in leadership within the ruling ANC-party
I have always perceived Mbeki to be a “top down” leader. The whole strife within the ANC demonstrates this very clearly. When Mbeki was elected for ANC presidency, media articles were rife about “Who is this pipe smoking man?” and the “African philosopher” had to be introduced to the public. Not only that, but he had to step down from his podium and engage with people at the grassroots level through a series of public imbizos
Zuma on the other hand is an out and out populist – so much so that one can argue he is a coward who has no stance to take or to offer other than what he is told to by “his” ANC, i.e. he has no leadership traits. The two represent opposite sides of the same pole and neither of them offers a balanced choice between leading and listening. It is natural for Mbeki to choose crime – an issue that was unpopularly shoved onto him through massive public response because of his willful ignorance to not only address public concern but to be seen to do it. Mbeki seemed humiliated by the whole issue in his State of the Nation 2007 address. I am sure he resented it and the publication of his article on Friday goes a long way to justify his disapproval for me. What better can you expect from someone who isolates himself from the public in a grand and self righteous pompously self dignifying ivory tower called “The Presidency” – his creation in a country where the President is not directly elected by the people as in the USA, but elected through the Westminster system?
Mbeki’s debate on crime and race
Mbeki’s government has on numerous occasions maintained that the high rate of crime is a perception created and oversensationalised by the media – and again I agree but it has its basis in reality. If public perception is the enemy and if he wants to change that perception, he goes about it in all the wrong ways by trying to downplay it instead of offering people a visible antidote in a world in which perceptions are reinforced by concretely visible ideas. As the highest paid and highest executive civil servant in the country, he has more power than anyone to give visible evidence to those who shout “the kaffirs are coming” that they are wrong and he HAS WHOLEHEARTEDLY FAILED TO NOT GIVE THEM THIS REASON until his recent climbdown during the State of the Nation Address 2007. As could be expected, on Friday he defered responsibility for the issue into another context, one not entirely invalid but potentially misleading in the typical media sensationalist manner that he criticizes, rather than just making himself be seen to be accountable AND RESPONSIVE. That however would be too damaging for his haughty pride – the Statesman, the President, the man who lives in la-la land on his podium in an Ivory Towercalled the Presidency far removed from the people in an imaginary city of Tshwane, being told by his countrymen how to lead.
[irrelevant to discussion] Enter weak and populist Zuma. Never in the history of this country has a public figure so embodied Humpty Dumpty and none of the SACP’s horses and the ANC Youth League’s men will ever be able to put that broken egg back together again. It has failed to hatch into anything promising in public life for good other than good riddance. [/irrelevant].
If Mbeki wants to raise racism (and I endorse that move) as an influencing factor in public perceptions about crime, then he must recognize that racism works both ways and the one point that he does not highlight, is that just as there are those elements amongst the country’s white population who shout “here come the kaffirs”, so too are there those elements amongst criminals who shout “one settler one bullet” and who then kill white farmers and motorists and civilians to advance theft, thuggery, rape and criminality. The ANC and Mbeki himself inadvertantly supports this IMHO tacitly, since when you measure their public condemnation of crime vis-à-vis their explanation that crime is the result of poverty and that poverty must be reduced to reduce crime, they are inadvertently sending a message that poverty is an excuse to kill, murder, rape and violate, instead of sending a loud and clear message that POVERTY IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO ROB, MURDER AND RAPE. Instead of verbosely speaking out against that and distinguishing between situational crimes (crimes of poverty) and crimes of conscious intent, the ANC and Mbeki sends subliminal messages to people who have a morality that is far different to theirs (the ANC’s) and who only need a little push to do a lot of harm. There are millions of poor people in the world who are poor and if poverty were an excuse to commit violent crime, the world would look like a place ripe for Armageddon (it does not). Race cannot be used as an excuse to divert attention away from poor leadership and irresponsiveness by the Cabinet to practically enforce the rule of law - a root principle of a democracy based on human rights – and that has been what the public outcry against crime has been about.
Mbeki’s Inconsistent Foreign Policies
Regarding Foreign Policy, this blog has commented a plenty on Mbeki’s government’s apparent siding with brutal regimes, terrorist regimes etc. Here Mbeki’s inconsistencies and flaws show clearly for those who care to look. South Africa’s so called historic first vote on the UN Security Council was one that will forever serve as a reminder to future governments of the shameful letdown of other struggling people our leaders can be responsible for, when SA voted against the resolution re: Human Right’s abuses in Myanmar. Mbeki went on TV in his post State of the Nation Address 2007 on the ANCBC (aka the SABC) to call it “the correct decision” [paraphrasing] “…that you can’t expect the UN to represent international law when it is the very first institution to break it…” Forgetting for a moment that the best decision is not necessarily the technically correct one, but the right one that will reduce suffering for the greatest number of people, the Apartheid Regime consistently regarded UN sanctions against SA as a violation of international law, considering it an issue of domestic policy. Is Mbeki then suggesting that the wave of international actions that brought the Apartheid Regime to its knees and him to power was unlawful? It would appear to be so. He said in that same interview that [paraphrasing] “we have always maintained that the people of Zimbabwe must find their own solutions to problems as we in SA have done”. The thing is that the SA solution was forced onto the Apartheid Oligarchy through international sanctions from its most important trading partners through inter alia the UN Security Council arms embargo etc. How does Mbeki in all his self-glorified and righteous wisdom think the people of Zimbabwe are able to bring about their own internal solution when the SA government is tacitly supporting an authoritarian ruler who uses the organs of state against the Zimbabwean people to demolish their homes Apartheid government style and who has the police torture the government’s critics?
The issue re: Foreign policy at hand here is greater than a mere condemnation against Harare. At stake is a perception that the West uses the UN to further imperialist ambitions – which it does. Nowadays this comes not in the form of overt political oppression but in the form of covert economic policies and so forth, backed up by political intervention when multi-national corporate profits or those of the military industrial complex are at stake. Just like it is expecting too much of the ANC to speak out against human rights abuses by those regimes that supported it in the struggle against Apartheid, which was the legacy of Western Imperialism, so too is it asking too much of the ANC to behave in the only effective manner that can bring about the right type of change in foreign countries, i.e. “foreign intervention in another country” – or put another way, it is too much to ask the ANC to support actions that will make them guilty of the perception of imperialist interventionist and prescriptive behaviour. Mugabe knows this and uses it in a potent manner against his adversaries and critics in a way that silences the ANC. Mugabe successfully paints it such that a decision by the ANC opposing him would potentially ruin the ANC’s reputation in Africa as an organization in support of African Unity, instead making them one in support of imperialist and prescriptive behaviour. The ANC government has always taken great care to be seen to respect the equality of SA’s neighbours and to work with them in partnership – yet that did not stop them from invading Lesotho. With the ANC led government already having their fingers in the pies of several African countries (Comores, Burundi, DRC), Western-like intervention could be very harmful for Mbeki’s pet project, NEPAD. South Africa is the best hope for foreign intervention in Zimbabwe’s de-escalation into authoritarian / dictatorial rule, but as long as SA is silenced, Mugabe can continue to do whatever pleases his pocket. The other factor of course is that the reputation of the sub-continent will suffer and investors will run away if things go potty in Zimbabwe, leaving SA with literally millions of refugees, whilst being detrimental for the Government’s job creation and growth and investment plans. The whole fiasco re: the South African mercenaries who were arrested for attempted coup-d’etats plots in Equatorial Guinea is another example of how this holy cow (of foreign policy vs. or supports imperialist like intervention) is making Mbeki make the correct decisions, but not the right ones. It is also in my opinion why the ANC gives such support to dictatorial regimes like Castro’s Cuba, Ghaddafi’s Libya (Mandela: We won’t be told who are our friends), Iran’s Ahmadinjad etc. as they are all examples of those who have withstood US imperialism. The West on the other hand uses Human Right’s issues as well as Mugabe uses imperialism to advance their own interests, yet, it is the better of the two evils, since the first ultimately protects the greatest number of people where there are human right’s abuses. Instead however of the ANC ceasing the opportunity to claim human rights for Africa and to take it out from the shadow of Western interference, thereby meaningfully setting an example for other needy African countries to follow without being made to feel that they are pussyfooting around the will of the West, Mbeki let’s down the people of the continent in the most powerful way whilst he tries to “save” them from their own tyranny through NEPAD.
The cost of this foreign policy for people who are victims of the abuse of organs of state against civilians throughout Africa and other parts of the world is bigger than it can be because if Mbeki’s weak leadership. The ANC is an organization whose intent is very much one of Human Rights. Human Rights against imperialism as much as Human Rights against the abuse of organs of state against civilians, yet it is ignoring the latter within Mbeki’s inconsistencies. Mbeki it seems is finally beginning to realize that his hope that Africans will rise and improve their living conditions and dignity all by themselves is naive. There have always been those Africans who rise but they do not do it for the greater good, they do it for their own good. If Mbeki can recognize that the Sudanese government is using national sovereignity to endorse continued human right’s abuses in Darfur and if it is willing to send the SANDF into Lesotho to restore democracy and if it recognizes that China is using the holy cow of imperialism to gain a foothold in Africa and publicly (note: publicly, no quiet diplomacy in something of far greater importance to the ANC, i.e. economic trade relations), it must be willing to take a far stronger stand against Mugabe than Dep. Min. of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahads’ expression of concern. There will be no inconsistencies, as the ANC formerly used foreign intervention (through sanctions) to achieve the objectives of democracy and human rights in SA – again, the objectives of democracy and Human Rights are its very own objectives. If the Mbeki government was previously reluctant to speak out against the killing of white farmers in Zimbabwe because those farmers were the legacy of the imperialism which disowned Africans from their land and because it was “justifiable” that the land be repossessed for its “rightful” owners (nevermind that the land was given to Mugabe’s cronies and military commanders who keep him in power and not the rightful communities and nevermind that in a drought probable region productivity should be the yardstick of land ownership not legitimacy), then the ANC must now recognize that Mugabe’s fight against imperialism and Mbeki’s support thereof is flawed in as far as it is only being used as a legitimate issue to advance illegitimate dictatorships and human right’s abuses – the same way that Mbeki is now using the legitimate issue of racist perceptions as a motive for criminal activity in an inappropriate reply to criticism of his government’s responsiveness to public perceptions regarding crime – one that ultimately makes him an inconsistent loser in advancing the cause of Human Rights as argued above. Mbeki is a weak leader. Good as he has been for the country, it is time for him to pack his briefcase. We need better than what he is willing and able to give us.
Just an aside. This gloryfying of Mbeki as a demi-god of stature, Presdient Mbeki this and President Mbeki that is no good. It is time to take him on. In as far as the pre-State of the Nation 2007 Address public outcry called on and caaled on and caaled on President Mbeki this and President Mbeki that to do something about crime, it was pathetic. This is a democracy. Stop glorifying a man that does not deliver. Replace him with someone who does.
7.3.07
When spitting into the bucket turns into kicking it.
Alot of well-known, reletavely famous and some obscure people have died in the past few months. For the greater part, their deaths have come and gone and I think it over-rated to make a fuss about it. But today I saw that Ernest Gallio passed away at the ripe old age of 97. I'm not a wine fundie, but I do like a bottle with dinner. One of the brands I have always found easy to drink and likeable, over and above all the snob-shit out there, was thanks to him.
Ernst Gallio, one half of the Ernst & Julio Gallio California based winery, had quite a remarkable life story. He seemed to have embodied the "American Dream", something that appears to be well dead. He came from nowhere following quite a devastating family history and died a billionaire. It is remarkable to me to have tanbgibly savoured in such an against the odds story.
Ernst Gallio, one half of the Ernst & Julio Gallio California based winery, had quite a remarkable life story. He seemed to have embodied the "American Dream", something that appears to be well dead. He came from nowhere following quite a devastating family history and died a billionaire. It is remarkable to me to have tanbgibly savoured in such an against the odds story.
12.1.07
The Next US President?
www.politics1.com reports Michael Jesus Archangel as a candidate for the US Presidential elections of 2008. He might be the most representative idiot of that country.
His website is definately worth a look, but you will have to do your best to hold on to your sanity.
10.1.07
Victoria Falls
For anyone interested in travelling to the Victoria Falls, I went some time ago & thought I'd share some traveller's advice with you.
I found the locals to be very warm and friendly and it made me realise the importance between distinguishing between a country's people and its politics, esp. as we are spoonfed perceptions by the world's serialised media. A max. of 4 day / 3 nights visit is all you need - more & you'll be bored. Of that you only have 3 full days due to the timing of the flight arrivals & departures making up the 4th day. If you're not into the adventures below, shave off a day, but give yourself at least 2 full days - one to explore from Zim side & the other from Zambia side. You can also combine it with a visit to Chobe in Botswana for some excellent game viewing (one hour), or Lake Kariba (2 - 3 or so hrs) in Zim, or the Okavango Delta and the Caprivi in Namibia. It is all an interrelated ecosystem spanning across 4 countries.
The mighty Zambezi River which feed the Falls, and the Falls themselves, seperate Zimbabwe and Zambia. It offers great adventure for those seeking thrills - it has grade 5 rating (most difficult) white water rafting rapids, but when we went during the wet ( Apr - May) season the river was too high for rafting, so it is advisable to go when the river flow recedes during the dry season if you go for that. You can still kayak and canoe and have to make the climb down the enormous gorge with your canoe. That is OK, but afterwards when you are perhaps short on energy, you have to carry it all the way back up as well! It is a steep descent. Bungi jumpers jump from the rail bridge crossing the gorge. It is AFAIK the only bungi jump in a zone belonging to no country (or two) as it's slap bang on the borderline of Zambia/Zim. We took a helicopter ride over the Falls, which I would have liked to be longer & I would have liked the pilot to fly so that we could have gotten a better view (sit on the side opposite to him), but we still got a great aerial view! If I had to do it again I'd take the microlight option. Both are pricy and it is better to take it as a package with which you can also choose two other activities. We chose a booze cruise, which is a sunset cruise on the Zambezi with as much booze as you can drink and an elephant ride. The elephant ride streches your inner thights quite alot, so warming up with some leg streches before you leave your hotel is advisable. African elephants are wilder than their Asian counterparts and are very difficult to train for this purpose. They only bond with one elephant trainer / guide for life and all of the elephants were taken in after they were abandoned by their tribe as calves during droughts or after their tribe was slaughtered by poachers, leaving them as helpless calves. So whatever ethical environmental doubts I had, I could appease it – the money goes towards taking care of them. There is also another option to go walking with "rather largish" (a bit like a toddler who is about to become a child) lion cubs who were also abandoned and saved. From what I could ascertain, the lion cubs are being reared to be released back into the wild, but in the local parks. Booze...lions...it was a difficult choice. There are two companies who sell these adventure packages. One is Shearwater Adventures and the other Victoria Falls Safaris. Shearwater's elephant ride is in an enclosed camp, Vic Falls Safaris in a game reserve. The packages are not cheap, but have a look at buying it yourself rather than through your tour operator - you may save a minor amount. Just be sure to do it before you arrive, as there are a limited number of places for some of the more popular events.
The Falls itself – the largest continuous falls in the world dropping for more than 90m, are tuly magnificent and awe inspiring. It is so huge that there is a rainforest on the other side of it sustained from the spray alone, which can reach 500m up into the air at times - this all in the middle of African savannah & bushveld. We were lucky to be there at the time when it was at its fullest (Apr-May), although going just a bit earllier might get you better views with less spray on the Zim side. We were told that the Zambezi's water levels fluctuate according to the rainy season. The river is so huge it takes about 3 months for the water to reach the falls following the first upstream rain as far back as its source in Angola. During the dry season (November - Jan) the falls do not run all along its escarpment (is that the right word?) and you can literally walk to one of the many islands like the Livingstone island in the middle of the riverbed, where game sometimes get trapped after the river fills up. You then also get to see all the rocks which are not visible during the wet season. You can access the falls from both the Zim & Zambia side. The rainforest is on the Zim side (USD10). Here we got pisswet underneath our raincoats and hosed ourselves laughing as we tried to take pictures before the next wave of water spray poured down on us. Wear non slippery walking shoes, pref. open as it will get soaked & your bathing suit (wear it under your clothing & take a plastic bag to wrap it & a handtowel in) instead of the raincoats they rent out there. The Zambia side was more "wow" with better photo opportunities given all the spray at the Zim side. You walk across the river on the railbridge & cross the border. Bridge lovers can take a guided tour of it - it was built in England in some pissweather colonial era and shipped lock, stock & b to be erected on the spot. There is also a small bridge called Knife's Edge, on the Zambian side that we crossed, across from the nearby mealstorm known as the Devil's Boiling Pot below. Here it was a total rainstorm, great fun and a bit dangerous (slipperywise - I took off my soaking shoes for the crossing) but you get the most fabulous views & shots. A Chinese family was there in full force with their underwater scuba diving cameras. Go figure (and secret envy for not having thought of it myself).
As far as the security situation is concerned, we had no reason to be worried. I was surprised by the number of foreign tourists given the bad media Zim's been receiving, mostly elderly but adventurous American & Chinese tour groups, some Ozzies, Kiwis, a trickle of Brits and a handful of Germans. In comparison there is a steady stream of South Africans who get hotel discounts, discounts to enter the park (passports required) etc. in a desperate attempt to draw more tourists. The only thing I should note is that it is not recommended to walk at night or to the big baobab tree in Vic Falls. There are a lot of hawkers who don’t understand the meaning of the word NO and who are so desperate for business that they offer to give you their goods (of stone or wood – too big & heavy for the plane) in exchange for USD 10 plus your hat or your shoes – so if you go take old clothing along, it will be much appreciated. If you’ve ever visited another African or Middle Eastern country, you may not initially flinch at it, but their desperation and determination does get annoying and sometimes even intimidating, so walk in groups with other tourists at all times. We were told that they are mostly harmless but sometimes pick pockets. I fell in love with Zimbabwean tea, grown on the Eastern Highlands and arranged with the hotel staff to buy me some. (The type of thing to hide from local customs & excise on your return or it will be confiscated).
On the Zim side, the small little tourist village of Victoria Falls has several good hotels (incl. the colonial Victoria Falls Hotel, a member of the "Leading Hotels of the World" group), a small arts & craft market and a few blocks making up the town centre. Victoria Falls Town is generally in a good condition and clearly there only to cater to tourists. The nearest hotel to the Falls is the Kingdom Hotel, a theme styled hotel / casino. Barely no-one uses the casino as you cannot convert Zim dollars to foreign currency. It is a fly trap designed only to collect desperately needed foreign currency. The hotel though is of a very good standard. It has a private footpath to the gate of the Falls. There is a security guard that walks with people on the footpath, as sometimes wild animals roam there (along with the street vendors variety) and there was a buffalo and an elephant when we went. We saw the elephant but not the buffalo, just as well because they are apparently the most dangerous of wild animals who will just storm at you without mock warnings (like lions). The Victoria Falls hotel and Ilala Lodge are also within walking distance of the falls. Everything else is too far, however luxurious it may look. You’ll need an over-priced taxi & they don’t give small change back in forex, leaving you with worthless Zim $. We had dinner one night in the legendary Vic Falls hotel (once a black-tie venue, now only smart-casual clothing is required). It was very good but very pricy. There were only an Italian family, a birthday party and some Americans in this great posh dining hall, most prefering to dine by candle light outside (take ample insect repellent). The South African wine was marked up about 5 times from what it costs in SA and so on, all reflecting the general malaise of the situation in Zimbabwe.
The village of Livingstone is on the Zambian side & has been drawing the lion’s share of tourists following all the drama across the border. In comparison to Victoria Falls though, it is in a dilapidated state and does not compare well with Victoria Falls. It does however offer two new & modern hotels right on the Zambezi next to the Falls which I will choose if I ever go again, namely the affordable, family style Livingstone Sun with great mosaic tile work in the pool / restaurant area and the Royal Livingstone (another "Leading Hotels of the World" member) where zebras mow the lawn (literally). After our outing on the Zambian side, we went to the Royal Livingstone for some drinks and had G&T on the quiet, serene jetty – it was all very posh in a colonial way.
Foreigners have to pay for their hotel stays in forex. Visas are required by most travellers, but not by South Africans. Make sure you get the multiple entry type to cross the border to the other side of the falls. It is of course a rip-off business to get / exchnage forex there, so purchase giids in USD or ZAR. For that, take as much USD or South African Rand in SMALL denominations as possible (USD 1 / 2 / 5 or ZAR 10 / 20). Beware that some forex outlets in South Africa will sell but not buy back dollar denominations printed after a certain year…if I remember correctly it was USD 2 or 20 bills printed before 2001, but there I saw nothing on the US Treasury Dep. website saying it is not legal tender. Food is expensive. In restaurants count on a min. of USD 40 pp for a basic meal and in some of the smaller South African franchisees like Spur, Panarotti's Pizza located inside the casino at the Kingdom Hotel, Vic Falls, about USD 25.
We flew to Livingston from Johannesburg, as all the return flights from Victoria Falls were sold out. From Livingstone you can get transfers to Vic Falls & vica-versa, but arrange this with your tour operator before you go (!). South African Airways, British Airways franchisee Comair and Nationwide, all South African airlines, serve the routes daily. I think Nambian Airlines also serve the route from Windhoek. I wouldn't fly with Zimbabwean Airlines if they gave me the ticket for free. They use unknown Chinese built aircraft and may stop operations at time due to financial difficulties.
7.1.07
May my 2007 be fulfilling
Phew! Well the New Year has come & gone already & I've been otherwise occupied. The Pagan lights and decorations have been removed, the Child Within's gifts put to use, eaten and packed away... This is the first time in a very, very long time that the New Year coincides with what really feels like a new beginning to me. It is more of a going on, but in going on it feels like a new continuation [sic]. I haven't had much time to think of what it is I am starting with because I've been too busy doing it, but I have started with it in earnest and I do feel like I can now begin to see the effects of the going-ons as entering a new plateau of prosperity :-) If that sounds confusing, it isn't - I just don't want to divulge details here. Perhaps I am just more aligned with the mass consciousness now than I have been in the past number of years. It is a time for moving on, closing old contracts with myself and others and staring new ones with old friends and with new alike and I very much look forward to it. I know that it is I who make of this year what it will come to be for me and I do expect progress in issues of prosperity and opportunity - especially creative & financially rewarding ones. What I want most from this year is simply fulfillment and enjoyment. So here's to my New Year...and here's to Your New Year. May 2007 be a healthy, prosperous and [Magick Card placed here for us all] year ahead (both in and out of time! ;-) to all the quantum physicists).
Blessings of Goodwill to All & Yonder.
Blessings of Goodwill to All & Yonder.
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