BOOK of columns is a tribute to the power of last-minute writing. Inspiration seldom responds creatively to deadlines but the scramble for a column the night before deadline is saved so often by the unscrupulous politician who, in the nick of time, determines one’s script. Ranging from the inspirational to the analytical, most of my columns are sheer gut responses to a government that has failed to live up to the promises so easily made during election time. And, after fifteen years of democracy, we are once again at the crossroads, frantically seeking solutions to the challenges that face us.
If anything, these columns portray a deep sense of the African National Congress’ (ANC) betrayal of those who overwhelmingly voted it into office in 1994. Today the poor and the marginalised feel particularly aggrieved and as a feminist activist I align myself fully with their cause. Having grown up in District Six and Mowbray (my family being the victim of forced removals) I became involved in the struggle so that my daughter and future generations would live free from the shackle of repressive domination. My feminism was cultivated at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university that openly aligned itself with the mass democratic movement. Campaigning actively for the inclusion of women as full and autonomous citizens in public life and the discourse of democracy, I set up an institution to advance the position of women, the Gender Equity Unit in 1993. It designed policies and programmes intended to transform the institutional culture of UWC. At the time, liberation chauvinism reigned supreme. The going mantra was ‘liberation first, women’s liberation, second’. Often dismissed as a ‘bourgeois, liberal feminist’ for daring to suggest that the abolition of apartheid did not mean black male domination, the challenge was to stay the course in a country where our male comrades frequently claimed that ‘women’s liberation was divisive of the national liberation struggle’.
Feminist voices continued relentlessly into the constitutional negotiations and played a pivotal role in the final design of the Bill of Rights, billed today as one of the most progressive in the world for women. Trained in Women’s Studies and Development and having studied the position of women in post-colonial societies and their continuing oppression after liberation, I was determined to continue my voice post-liberation. During Nelson Mandela’s reign and my stint at the Human Rights Commission there was much opportunity for women to engage in a new political discourse and seek ways to translate our progressive constitution into enabling legislation. This sense of opportunity and freedom was short-lived. Under the subsequent Mbeki reign, the ANC steadily grew intolerant of criticism and divergent views. The president would single out individuals who dared to criticise him and it started with a vicious attack in 2004 on ANC activist Charlene Smith, expert journalist on women’s health and HIV/AIDS. I was astounded at the silence of the sisters, many of whom refused to support Charlene not because they disagreed with her cause, but because she is white. I consequently wrote many columns taking up women’s issues and the failure of women Parliamentarians to prioritise feminist interests above party political interests.
Under President Mbeki’s erratic rule, a time of political unease, many comrades who fought for democracy and freedom shut up in face of those who rewarded the acquiescent with position and patronage. Those of us who refused to be silent became the enemy. The stage was set for politicians who blamed all their misdemeanours on the media and public commentators, but never themselves. Some pundits were even blacklisted by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). I then veered into writing about everything and anything that smacked of political opportunism, government ineptitude, and corruption. All over the place people succumbed to political pressure for silence, urged to be forever grateful to the ANC for ushering in our liberation, no matter how corrupt and self-serving public officials were. With others, I, too, became targeted by former political allies, for simply appropriating the right to criticise government.
Journalist, Evelyn Holtshauzen so presciently commented, early on in our democracy, that: ‘… our adolescent democracy, (sadly) is still under threat by those who fear to speak. But while previously it was fear of the state, today it is fear of not being politically correct that keeps us silent. This is a far more sinister threat to democracy.’ (Cape Times June 5 2001)
The effects of this self-censorship could be felt throughout the body politic of South Africa and played itself out in both the macro- and micro-political spheres in strange ways, captured in the anecdotes below.
For ten years I served as a member of the Board of the Community Law Centre at UWC, an organisation that was very politically active under Dullah Omar’s leadership during the heady days of apartheid. At one of our board meetings as I walked into the room, I was accorded what had become a customary greeting: ‘Here comes the loose cannon!’ It was a reaction to the provocative columns I had been writing to the newspapers the week before, calling on Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, minister of health, to resign. As much as many in that room detested her, not one dared to say so. These epithets – ‘unguided missile’, ‘traitor’, ‘reckless’ – the list was endless – were hurled at me by former colleagues and comrades who found my columns embarrassing, but who were never prepared to debate them in public.
Even editors succumbed to political pressure. In 2002 I phoned John Battersby, then editor of The Sunday Independent, informing him that I should like to have an open letter published in his paper, calling on the minister of health to resign for her mismanagement of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He promised to put it on the front page. Contrary to his promise the letter did not appear that Sunday, but was replaced by a small article informing the readers that I had called on the minister to resign. Readers called to ask where the open letter was. On contacting Battersby, he confided that he had sent my letter to the President’s office for comment and that they ‘blew a fuse about it’ so he decided not to publish it. When I conveyed my annoyance he published it the following Sunday at the bottom of the page as an ordinary letter with some editing.
Nicoli Nattrass, Professor of Economics at UCT, was asked by her funders to present her research – a fiscal analysis of the costs of denying anti-retrovirals to people with HIV/AIDS – to a group of government officials who were attending a workshop dealing with various aspects of fiscal policy. When Nicoli presented her research, which was construed by the ANC participants as anti-government and unpatriotic, she was shouted down to such an extent that her session was brought to an abrupt halt by the organisers. Silenced by the mob, inferring that as a white person her research had no legitimacy, she left in disgust.
Two years ago, when Ebrahim Rasool referred to coloured people who voted for the Democratic Alliance as coconuts, I wrote a column condemning his racism. Cape Talk subsequently invited me to spend an hour at the radio station to respond to questions from listeners. Cape Talk’s journalist called me a few days later, reporting that they were taken out to dinner by some ANC politicians who asked them not to invite me ever to the station again. They invited me the next day to debate with a politician just to show that they would not be beholden to political pressure! Such behaviour evokes Benedict Spinoza’s warning in the 17th century that: ‘once we make crimes of opinions, we are moving towards tyranny’.
Sadly, the free flow of ideas had become bedevilled by a range of pressures that have come to haunt our fragile democracy. The tyranny of political correctness, the tyranny of the majority, the fear of being called racist or disloyal. Embedded journalism and vested interests became standard discursive devices used to stifle independent critical thought. They contributed to the deluge of self-censorship one detected in the media, in public life, and around dinner tables.
Patronage, access to jobs, or a promotion and access to power so easily determined what one said and did not say. The silence of ministers and civil leaders around the HIV/AIDS debacle was a case in point. No-one in the cabinet dared question the president on his stance on the virus and many were prepared to suspend their intellects in defence of the president. The more people submitted to this tyranny the more it became a way of life. These ‘mechanisms’ impeded freedom of expression and association and to some extent had the same effect repressive legal obstacles had on activists denied free speech under the old regime. Slowly but surely George Orwell’s warning became
