HOLY
COWS
The Ambiguities of Being
South African
Gareth van Onselen
Tafelberg
For my father
Introduction:
The theatre of the absurd
‘We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd … Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste … ? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?’
– Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, 1966
Here follow three stories from South Africa’s roads, all three from the same six-month period.
In September 2014, a truck hit a hippopotamus on the R529, outside Tzaneen, in Limpopo. When the hippo was discovered word quickly spread to five local villages, the inhabitants of which arrived in large numbers to cut the flesh off the dead animal. It was, unfortunately, night-time and, as they did so, the driver of an oncoming bakkie lost control and crashed into the group, killing eight and, according to paramedics, leaving 12 others severely injured and scattered across the road. Ultimately, 11 people died. Reflecting on the tragedy, Nkakareng Rakgoale, mayor of the Mopani District Municipality, said, ‘We are urging our people that when they find an animal on the road, the least they should do is to pull it out of the road and call safety authorities.’
In January 2015, a double-decker truck and trailer carrying around 100 cattle overturned near the Grasmere toll plaza on the N1 freeway, just outside Johannesburg. It was alleged that rocks had been thrown at the truck from a bridge, causing the driver to lose control. A mob then set about stealing and killing the cattle that had survived. Nineteen cattle were killed and 58 stolen before emergency services arrived on the scene. Many of those cattle that were killed had the meat hacked off their bodies while still alive.
A representative from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said in a statement: ‘With knives and buckets, the mob was chasing cattle that had managed to release themselves from the vehicle, some of which had injuries, including broken legs. Their intention was to hack meat from the living animals.’
In March 2015, ANC Public Service and Administration Minister Collins Chabane, along with two VIP protectors, were killed on the N1 while travelling between Polokwane and Gauteng. A truck driver unexpectedly did a U-turn in front of their car. Chabane’s car, a luxury 4 × 4, was reported to have been travelling at around 200 km/h at the time of the crash. It was later claimed that the minister had been assassinated and that the truck driver had been paid R15 000 to perform the U-turn. The ANC fervently denied the claim, saying in a statement, ‘To us it’s an insult, it’s derogatory.’
There are few countries in the world today, if any, in which you would find three stories that share so much in common – death, for one – and yet which differ so fundamentally in nature and cause. Between them, you have on display many of the ambiguities that define South Africa. A society capable of producing these three different scenarios, all in a matter of months, is a complex one indeed.
Each one is worth exploring in some detail. There is much to learn from them about the country, its people and its condition. That is how the press approached them – as isolated incidents, each to be explained and analysed on its own merits. But what happens when you put all three together and view them as a whole? South Africa’s roads have produced three extraordinary events, as disturbing as they are intriguing. How is it possible that they all coexist?
This book looks to explore these kinds of questions – to look at those situations, people and events where these kinds of everyday contradictions are brought together, and to see how they play out when in direct contact with one another. It is an attempt to view these three stories as one and to ask what can be learnt from that observation, as opposed to the more obvious questions each on their own might suggest.
At the end of the Pink Floyd song ‘Eclipse’, you will find the line, ‘There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.’
On first reading, the sentiment would seem to be the very definition of pessimism: the light you see at night is an illusion, a mere reflection. But on the moon, as it drifts effortlessly through space, there exists only an inky blackness everywhere.
Certainly that is how the pessimist label is generally applied in South Africa. We are a country desperate for hope and positivity and, more often than not, pessimism is uniformly used to refer to the things that run in the opposite direction to the national impulse. Pessimism is therefore inextricably linked to negativity and, with it, the idea that hope is an illusion and despair looms large.
Few things are frowned upon more heavily by the powers of political correctness than a negative disposition. To be a pessimist is to be a pariah, out of sync with the collective dream and shunned. But, as with so much binary thinking, it is an understanding limited in its application.
However, we forget that there is another kind of pessimism, one born not of disdain but of idealism. Here, disappointment is the consequence of a failure to achieve the highest possible standard. One’s frustration is not the result of an inherent belief that anything praiseworthy is impossible. Quite the opposite. It is the result of the conviction that amazing things are indeed possible – only the general standard is so low, so mediocre, that even when the acceptable is accomplished, it falls significantly short of higher aspirations and ideals. Hence the disappointment. Holding the second kind of disposition can be a cruel business. Very rarely in life is an ideal made real; rarer still in South Africa. That outlook lends itself to unrealistic expectation.
The new South Africa makes a perfect case study for this tension between hope and disappointment. It generally has both things in large quantities and as a result they enjoy a hostile relationship. Optimism and pessimism perpetually trade blows and every morning the newspapers present new evidence over which the two sides battle. It is a sign of the times that pessimism often prevails.
It is a conflict that those who wield political power both use and abuse to their advantage. When times are tough, we are told we are ‘nation building’ and that we face ‘challenges’ as we ‘build democracy’. When times are good, we are a ‘nation’, even a ‘rainbow nation’. We are both walking towards our goal and already there.
Yet amid all this fighting, the kind of idealistic pessimism to which I refer seems in short supply. At the end of the day, the average optimist and pessimist seem to be fighting over whether South Africa can be just about good enough – no more and no less. The real victor is mediocrity. It has won from first principles.
Of course, each side feigns idealism in order to keep up pretences. Ideas like ‘patriotism’ and ‘loyalty’ are used to shore up their respective causes, often blindly so. Therefore, regardless of the evidence on display, on any given day you can be sure South Africa is ‘bound to succeed’ or ‘doomed to fail’, depending on whom one talks to or what one reads.
But you never hear South Africa is destined to be a ‘world leader’, to set a ‘global standard of excellence’, ‘redefine expectations’ or ‘break international barriers’. That is not the
