And so like sheep, we feared being called ‘racist’, ‘right-wing’, ‘a sellout’, ‘disloyal’, ‘a traitor’ and ‘unpatriotic’. These epithets were so powerful that many were prepared to sacrifice the truth. Even academics feared to ply their trade in public, lest they be construed as reactionary. ‘One gets branded so easily’ was the stock answer from former colleagues who were the most vocal during the struggle. It was so bad that one of the authors of the Medical Research Council (MRC) AIDS Report confided at a private briefing that the AIDS situation was so terrifying that he would not contest the statistical findings of government commissioned research, even if flawed, since the AIDS crisis demanded such urgent attention of government that quibbling would just further delay treatment to dying patients.
Whereas my feminist voice had been nurtured and cultivated during the struggle and by the struggle, I was suddenly expected to shut up after 1999. One is often silenced in the name of guarding the national interest (increasingly a euphemism for consensus and conformity). But who determines what is in the national interest? Is it not in the national interest to admit that HIV causes AIDS? Because a president chooses not to do so, does it therefore cease to be a national priority? By the same token, does the president’s prioritisation of race make it an issue of national interest? Does that mean that racism is a priority to the nation when people rank unemployment and poverty as more important?
JF Kennedy’s words ring true more than ever: ‘Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.’ Politicians know that whoever controls the media controls the mind. Inspired by Stalin that, ‘ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas,’ government has made the public broadcaster its prime target. The ANC conference at Polokwane was a watershed event in the ANC’s political history and hopefully the control of the SABC will be reviewed. Mbeki’s demise came sooner than expected, and similarly the ANC split caught the pundits off guard.
This selection of columns mostly records events during Mbeki’s reign and the effects his erratic rule has had on state institutions, the media, and the public in general. For example, through board and senior appointments he controlled the SABC. His attempts at political and economic transformation often backfired because they were so firmly embedded within a nationalist framework cloaked in language of the African Renaissance and Black Economic Empowerment. Billed as the gender-sensitive president, in reality, Mbeki failed women in his policies on crime, women’s health, sexual violence, and HIV/AIDS. He also failed the poor. High rates of unemployment, unmitigated poverty, and the chronic failure to deliver basic services to the poor, were underscored by the thousands of protests against service delivery recorded around the country.
The political trajectory of that era is captured under specific headings that cover the wide range of issues addressed. ‘Heroes and humorists’ deals with prominent South African personalities: some inspiring, some who transcend challenges with humour, and others who had greatness thrust upon them. ‘Troubled Transformation’ includes a collection of columns exposing the belly of the beast of under-development despite the rhetoric of transformation and social justice. ‘Abandoned Sisters’ focuses on how powerful women betrayed their sisters once they tasted power. ‘Party Poopers’ focuses on how the ANC failed to deliver on the various mandates of the Freedom Charter to the poor. Moving from the general to the particular, ‘Flat Cape’ looks at local politics in the Western Cape, and the next chapter isolates specific incidents of how the corrupt state ruined major institutions and reduced whistle-blowers to helpless victims of state power. Centralised control required the manipulation of the public broadcaster and the chapter on the media, ‘Media Meekness’, regales readers with vignettes of how the SABC became a sorry casualty of both the paranoia of absolute control and the suppression of opposing voices. The final chapter, ‘Foreign Fumbles’, gives examples of how the obsession with centralised control steadily spread its wings in wooing like-minded rogues and pariah states to bolster Mbeki’s attempts at continental control through Nepad and the African Renaissance.
In Your Face – Passionate Conversations about People and Politics ends with readers’ responses to my columns and includes both fan and hate mail and confirms Orwell’s dictum: ‘In times of universal deceit telling the truth (is) a revolutionary act’. The question now is: what will happen under President Motlanthe’s interim presidency and after the election in 2009? Will a swing to the left mean a curb on freedom of speech and expression so typical of leftist governments and dictatorships, or will we enjoy the greater freedom that goes hand in hand with being anti-Mbeki, anti-autocratic and pro-democracy? I wait with great expectations for something better. Jacob Zuma dares not disappoint because my pen is ever ready to strike back.
Rhoda Kadalie
Thoughts on South Africans
(Heroes and humorists)
Business Day April 29 2004
I was agonising over what to write for today’s column while watching Freedom Day celebrations on television, when a poster leapt out from among the masses: The ANC will rule until Jesus Come.
Amused, I wondered how long the fruits of Liberation before Education will be with us. On this slogan, the movement was divided. Some argued liberation first, others insisted education is liberation. Some followed their hearts, the results of which are clear!
We are now free, and the need for the African National Congress (ANC) to educate the masses is more urgent than ever. No doubt, with education, our language too will be liberated. Politicians should never underestimate the indelible prints their slogans leave on the masses.
So, grammatical or not, our slogans either enrage or engage.
Even through the pain of struggle, South Africans never lost their penchant for witty and humorous slogans, no matter how bad the grammar.
I am reminded of the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983. The meeting was delayed by serious overcrowding. Some people were even hanging from rafters. After many appeals from security guards for people to descend from the rafters, a typical Cape Flats voice shouted impatiently: ‘Manne, manne, klim nou van die beams af, ons wil beginne history maak.’
And so we made history, marching and protesting against the laws that determined where we lived, where we worked, whom we married, where we swam, where we ate and even where we worshipped.
From the masses emerged Dr Allan Boesak, leader of the UDF, hero-worshipped for his bravery, oratory, and charisma, until he fell. Accused of having an affair while hosting Ted Kennedy, the UDF called on him to rebut the allegations, convinced the security police were framing him. A mass meeting was called to a hall in Mitchells Plain where Boesak would repudiate the allegations.
Needless to say, the hall was chock-a-block, filled with comrades and voyeurs alike. Unable to find a seat, I remained outside with the proletariat. As was customary, Boesak, draped in a red cloak, made his dramatic entry, at which point the crowd broke into a spontaneous chant: ‘Boesak, Boesak, Boesak’. The vagrant next to me, all fired up, joined the chorus: ‘Dit is van laat jou Broeksak, Broeksak, Broeksak!’ My day was made because for once I did not doubt the allegations.
In the 1980s when the reproductive and gay rights debate was raging in the liberation movement, a graffito appeared on the walls of Observatory, a leftie Cape Town suburb: ‘Lesbians unite in armed snuggle!’ next to ‘Comrade unite in armed struggle’.
Even in our saddest moments, humour kept us going. As when Albie Sachs lost his arm in a bomb blast in Maputo,
