but in his own country he is not respected. We are saying enough is enough. We cannot just keep quiet and let them continue doing this.’
That proposal has, so far, been confined to rhetoric. But should it ever be enacted, the result would be an Orwellian South Africa indeed. And the logic to it would be just as absurd because one can no more demand that a person feel a certain way by law than you can regulate love. People feel what they feel. Each emotion is particular to an individual, as are the triggers that elicit it, each arising from a unique set of experiences and beliefs. One cannot will respect into being by force.
Here is a thought experiment designed to illustrate the absurdity inherent in the suggestion that you can force respect onto a person. Imagine a law is passed demanding you respect the colour X. To ensure this, it prescribes you never insult that colour. If you do, you will be punished. Imagine, too, that you deeply dislike the colour X. All that law can do is control your demonstrable behaviour towards that colour by threatening you. Even if you chose to comply with it, it cannot generate inside of you an actual feeling of respect. If anything, it is likely to double your hostility towards it. For now, you are not only required to feign respect for it publicly but your feelings must be suppressed and no one reacts well to that.
The argument often offered up in response to that is that people are different from inanimate objects – they have feelings. That is true. But the moment you elevate one person’s feelings above another, you subvert individual freedom. Many people respect abhorrent ideas or despicable people – that is their right. And while you can make a case that there exists a public duty to educate and inform them otherwise through reason, evidence and argument, you nevertheless cannot deny them the right to feel that way in the first place. In fact, you cannot prevent it at all because outside of brainwashing, human emotions have a life of their own.
The assumption that you can control impulse and private conviction gives the game away. There is a word for that kind of demonstrable obsequiousness: deference. The OED defines deference as ‘polite submission and respect’. And, for many in the ANC, that is the real impetus behind such a law and its collective understanding of the idea – submission. Misused in this way, respect becomes part of the language of victimhood, devoid of agency both on the part of the person to whom it refers (who is no longer required to act in an upstanding fashion) and the person of whom it is demanded (who is required to respond like an archetype, not an individual). Certainly, that is the attitude one might expect from a king, but not an elected president. The inevitable consequence of it is some kind of censorship because at its heart is control and manipulation.
Here is another illustration: how many people out there dislike Brett Murray’s painting yet still respect the president? You can be sure there are many. The ANC seems to be of that persuasion. Likewise, how many like Murray’s painting and still respect the president? Again, no doubt many. The painting itself bears no general relationship to one’s respect for the president.
Even if it did, even if there were a selection of people whose opinion of President Zuma was so fragile that this particular depiction swayed them one way or the other, there is nothing wrong with that. And the fact that it might swing them one way or the other tells you everything.
Every day, everyone is presented with an endless stream of opinions and information, both favourable and unfavourable, and which may or may not influence the degree to which they respect a person or a set of behaviours. That is how an opinion is formed. If one were really concerned about how something disparaging, like The Spear, might influence an individual’s public standing, every damning opinion would have to be censored.
And there is another commonly used South African word, often exploited as a euphemism for censorship and intricately linked to the idea of respect: ‘offence’. To cause offence is a cardinal sin. And, again, its relationship to low self-esteem is essential if we are to understand its power. In the usual sense of the word, to offend someone is to hurt his or her feelings, nothing more. It is to leave them feeling hurt and wounded. But, together with the confused demand for respect it has been elevated to a higher, more sacred plane in South Africa. To offend someone, in practice, is more commonly understood as diminishing his or her sense of self-worth. Just as with respect, the person is seemingly reduced to a victim, unable to dismiss criticism or evaluate its veracity based on evidence. The implication is that to cause offence is to irrevocably destroy someone’s dignity.
The response has been to try to regulate the problem. It is no coincidence that the SACP’s proposed law focuses as much on banning insults as it does demanding deference. Respect and offence share an intimate relationship.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury describes a world without books – where books are sought out, banned and burnt. The reason, he reveals deep into its pages, is offence. At first it started small, he writes. A minority would express outrage at a seemingly offensive opinion and, as a result, that opinion would be suppressed. So, the first pages were torn out of books. But, as soon as it became acceptable to suppress any opinion that caused offence, it quickly became apparent that for every opinion there was a minority outraged at it. And, soon, every page had to be torn from every book and in no time at all there were no books at all – the very idea of a book was revolutionary.
We are in danger of developing a hierarchy of offence in South Africa and, at the top of the pile, are those who cry loudest about their deeply held personal beliefs, regardless of their nature. They have become emboldened by this and cry louder still until no one dare speak up in opposition for fear of the resultant noise.
The truth is that an opinion, even one that is highly critical and damning of another person, is anyone’s right to hold. As with respect, it is true that the best opinions – or at least the ones that are most credible – are those informed by reason and evidence but, even here, they needn’t be. If a person oversteps the mark in their criticism and lies or defames another, the courts are there for protection. Outside of that, argument is one’s best weapon. So, it is of little surprise that societies able to engage in meaningful debate and people confident in the veracity of their own beliefs are often not weighed down by repressive and constant references to offence, in an attempt to circumvent discussion from first principles.
This conflation of the right to be judgemental and the quality of that judgement is the calling card of many the world over who wish to negate critical interrogation in the name of offence. It is a kind of bullying.
A healthy society is one constantly engaged in peer review and self-reflection. It is a static society, not a dynamic one, that outlaws such things and it is one on a sure path to stagnation. When a society loses the ability to reflect, that is fertile ground for oppression to take root.
The value of your judgement, however, and how it is received, depends on its veracity. If it is grounded in reason, based on evidence and has at its heart the desire to progress and advance thought, discussion and behaviour, it should never be dismissed, however critical the conclusion it arrives at.
The moment respect becomes a proxy for negating offence, criticism is delegitimated. Equally, the moment you start demanding respect, it has likewise lost its intended effect, because what you are really talking about is deference – you are demanding obsequiousness, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with respect. Indeed, it is the ambit of bullies and authoritarianism.
If it is respect you are after, you need to earn it. It is an unrewarding business. Ask any politician. Good behaviour does not always engender respect. But that is the only way to obtain it.
It is no coincidence that so much of the political debate around the idea of respect revolves around Jacob Zuma. He has come to embody its confusion with deference.
Zuma is perhaps South Africa’s ultimate political victim. His personal brand has been infused with the idea, from court cases to his negative portrayal in the media. And always he makes the case
