Throwing excrement in Cape Town: the DA has reason to feel miffed, but the situation is best explained by the Davies J-curve

It is difficult to avoid an abiding suspicion that the protesters flinging faeces in the general direction of the DA led Cape Town and Western Cape provincial administrations are not always, as they claim, signed up members of the downtrodden masses.

Among the reasons I am suspicious is a good friend told me that when the recent group of 176 protesters carrying bags of shit – let’s call it what it is  -  were offloaded at Esplanade train station in Woodstock she couldn’t help but notice the pitter-patter of Carvella clad feet,  the swish of Gucci handbags (in the hands not carrying the  shit …. hmm, whatever) and the sleekly clad and buxom bodies diagnostic of a certain species of yuppie political activist.

So, yes … it is difficult to separate the reality from the hyperreality , so to speak, when it comes to the semeiotics of the ANC’s clash with the DA, especially in the Western Cape.

A more interesting take, one that doesn’t bother with the relatively minor question of political parties’ attempts to manipulate or ride the underlying grievances of the poorest and most marginalised South Africans, is an excellent article by Gillian Schutte on The South African Civil Society Information Service website (SACSIS describes it’s function as: “A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question: How do we make democracy work for the poor?”)

Schutte writes:

Though ‘shitting’ has to be one of the most taboo subjects around, it is a matter that we all deal with, on average once or twice a day. Defecation, and the rules governing it, undoubtedly comprises the complete gamut of human behaviour yet open discussion around it is deemed distasteful and disgusting. Indeed this is exactly how it played out when protesters dumped the contents of portable toilets on the steps of the Western Cape legislature in a backlash against the sanitation policy of Helen Zille’s administration. This policy offers communal portable flush toilets to shack dwellers at no cost — a system, which they say, is inadequate and often ends up filthy and untended.

Catch Schutte’s article here and I would recommend that you subscribe to the free SACSIS.org.za email service.

That being said, spare a thought for the put-upon DA premier Helen Zille and Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille.

I stumbled across a thorough report from the Presidency (Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation) into the state of sanitation services across the country. The report (download it here) makes a detailed comparison between provinces. I laboriously screen-snipped the graphs for provincial performances in informal housing areas and put them together in a graphic (which is a stretch for me, so I hope someone finds this useful).

This is what the scoreboard looks like:

(When you look at relative performance in formal areas the Western Cape  also performs well, bested only by Gauteng – although, I suppose, it is not useful to run this like it was a competition. The ANC has faced rolling service delivery protests across the country for many years and the tit-for-tat between the DA and the ANC with regard to the toilet issue has almost nothing to do with ‘the facts’ or ‘the truth’.)

However the graphic does confirm that the DA has outperformed in relation to a crucial area of service delivery to informal areas – the very areas from which it is getting flack in Cape Town. And that raises an interesting point about the stability of societies as they move away from authoritarian rule and high levels of absolute and relative poverty.

There is a peculiar fact, confirmed across the world and over a long period of time, that improved service delivery itself is a good predictor of protest and disaffection.

I have an instinctive feeling of why this might be true. The uniformly downtrodden, those with no hope and no expectation of relief from ‘the powers that be’ are less likely to be moved to demand more.

Interestingly this is precisely the situation predicted by US sociologist working in the late 1950′s, James C Davies. His theory is that rising expectations are related to the possibility revolt but only when rising expectations – brought about by, for example, some degree of service delivery – meet an unexpected slowing in that delivery.  His theory became known as the Davies J-curve.

Here is the point expressed graphically:

So the theory is that as a middle-class emerges from previously marginalised groups, as education and social infrastructure improves, the expectation of improvement begins to outstrip the maximum rate, or the sustainable rate, of real improvement. The first thing that happens is that resistance and dissatisfaction intensifies.

This is one of the many reasons transitions like ours can be scary and unstable. The old ways of doing things and the old, essentially stable, structure is abandoned before what is replacing it has moved in and filled the vacuum and the available space.

We are in the moment when ‘the old’ is gone but ‘the new is not yet born’.

That lingering odour …

In the 1980′s I unwittingly employed an apartheid police informer, Mark Behr, to work in the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (of which I was a regional director).

Behr had a serious talent – and zest – for self-promotion. But he was also bright, ambitious and charismatic and I naively believed that all those characteristics together, could be harnessed for the good of the organisation, and ‘the struggle’ … (I know. We really called it that.)

As it turned out he was already in the employ of the Dark Side …  and those who got the benefits of that self-promotion and ambition were the opposition to the anti-apartheid team.

Mark Behr was a lightweight apartheid agent and there is a part of me that wishes I could just put him and the sheer awfulness and banality of the apartheid security state machinery, and his role in it, behind me.

But unfortunately for me, someone pointed out last week that there is a Wikipedia entry on Behr that, when I accessed it on Friday (13/02/2013) said (without any cautionary remarks):

“Undergoing a process of political radicalization himself, he later turned double agent and spied on the South African government on behalf of the African National Congress“

… and further:

“Professor Behr is a well respected and acknowledged international author and experienced double agent that left South Africa for a safer lifestyle in the USA.”

The gradual santisation of Apartheid and the security machine that maintained it is disturbing to me for too many reasons to name here.

But that is less the issue for me in this particular story.

No matter how slow the historical fabrication happens, how tiny the incremental changes made to the record, there is no version of the truth in which Behr underwent “a process of political radicalization” or “turned double agent and spied on the South African government on behalf of the African National Congress” – or any similar heroic, tragic nonsense.

I know this because I was connected to the underground structures that dealt with Behr, heard his original confession and sent him home safely – a neutralised enemy agent; but also a narcissist and fantasist who, precisely for these reasons, could not be trusted to report back to the movement.

(I mean, please … Behr, in an attempt to have his credentials as an anti-apartheid activist improved, used a gun – and instructions – he got from his police handlers to shoot through an outside window into his room at his university home. He then ran back inside, and later, suitably disheveled and shocked, managed to convince the student body and administration that he was the victim of an apartheid hit-squad assassination  attempt … a little story he managed to leave out of his confession that I cover below – probably because of its obvious buffoonery and because thousands of people still remembered how convincing was his feigned shock and ‘injured victim’ status at the time … and by the way – - this as an added afterthought – he also managed to leave out of his 1996 confession – see below – that he had been a “double agent”.)

Why am I bothering with this, all these years later?

Because Behr knows the truth … as do I. I am no longer certain anyone else remembers or cares. Behr could easily have corrected the hagiographic Wikipedia entry – but he has allowed this distorted tale, in which he is the dashing hero, and of which he is undoubtedly the author, to become the official version of a minor – but important to me – slice of our history.

In 1996 Behr made a dramatic and self-aggrandising (and unauthorised by the ANC) public confession at a writers conference in South Africa.

This is what I said at the time (published in the Mail & Guardian here) … I no longer have that condemnatory certainty, but as an antidote to the Wikipedia entry I cut-and-pasted above, I wouldn’t change a word.

Thus, purely for the record:

The Smell of Rotten Apples

PEOPLE who worked secretly or otherwise to undermine the movement against apartheid should be given every encouragement to say what they did and why. I am all for listening to them and forgiving those who are genuinely contrite.

Unfortunately the sincerity of Mark Behr’s confession is doubtful.

Even before one looks at the text it is difficult to believe that Behr is not engaged in another act of self-promotion. The initial signs are:

• He flew in from Norway, delivered his confession and fled back overseas without facing those on whom he had spied;
•  He addressed himself to a conference of people interested in writing, where he was the star speaker, rather than to the ex-Stellenbosch students he had betrayed and the anti-apartheid activists on whom he had informed;
• He revealed to close friends he was only coming clean because he was going to be named as a spy by a witness at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission;
• He is publishing a book dealing with spying and betrayal early next year. One must assume his high-profile confession is part of an advance publicity campaign.

To grasp just how unlikely is Behr’s sincerity, we need to examine the text of the 4 000-word confession and apology.

A number of things are missing from the text. He never mentions the arm of the state he spied for, who his handler was, how much he was paid or what information he passed on. If Behr really wanted to redress some of the harm he did -—a crucial aspect of confession and forgiveness—- then these were the questions he should have answered. Instead of dealing with the details of what he did and for whom, Behr spends the overwhelming majority of his words worrying about how he will be judged. The repeated lament is: “I have always suspected that the only voice people will hear from that moment on … is the voice that cannot b e trusted, that is incapable of the truth.”

Aside from his exasperating self-absorption the problem with Behr’s words is their totalitarian thoroughness. Behr constructs his defence as a monolith. On reading the document we are left with the impression that there is nothing more to say except to forgive the poor chap, he is suffering enough already. There is no chink in the words for us to enter and engage with him. He has pre-empted any possible criticism by exhaustively criticising himself. He apologises for the betrayals, for his motivation, for his lack of moral courage; he apologises for apologising; and then, in an infinite regress, he apologises for apologising for apologising.

This is called “shutout”. We are left unable to engage with the truth. We can do nothing but acquiesce or reject him outright. If we reject him we place ourselves with those who deny perpetrators the right to change heart; to seek a language to express their grief and regret.

But to what are we being asked to acquiesce? If it was just forgiveness it would be easy. You have to listen to the rhythms of the text, the cadence of Behr ‘s voice to understand the enormity of what he wants from us. “It is with the profoundest imaginable regret …”, “I soon believed in the moral correctness of this struggle I was reporting on …”, “… this might be … yet another reinterpretation geared for justification …”, “I lacked the moral fortitude to face the consequences of my treason …”, “I … would like to capitulate into silence … there is also truth in silence as there might be in ceasing to live.”

Imagine a young version of the Reverend Jim Bakker – remember him? Then listen carefully to Mark Behr and you will hear something akin to the tearful televangelist minister who got caught sleeping with a prostitute – again. He is beating his breast, calling down the wrath of God on his sinner’s head, begging us to join the Lord in forgiving him. The individuals in the congregation are crying with him, wishing they could be the ones to embrace him, to soothe away the contradiction at the heart of this flawed titan of a man. Behr’s confession is a number of things. It is also an audacious attempt at seduction.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has begun bringing the painful stories of victims on to the centre stage of our history. As that process begins to take effect we are presented with Behr claiming to have been the victim: “… one is born into, loved into, violated into discrimination”. Behr claims to be the victim of propaganda, of Christian National Education, of his family, of history, of fate, of his own moral weakness. With all due respect! This is a man who spied for the apartheid police in exchange for money. He apparently didn’t even support apartheid. Ten minutes listening to the truth commission will clear the heads of anyone seduced into believing Behr is the tragic hero at the centre of our national drama.

I do believe there is something fragile and sacred in our process of confession and absolution. We all probably know white men who were, as conscripts, engaged in atrocities in Angola and Mozambique. We have watched them writhe in the terrible privacy of their own fear and shame. These men cannot even imagine words to describe where they have been and what they have done. We have all known someone amongst them who has descended into the hell of drug addiction or suicide.

Behr had the unique combination of talent and opportunity to examine how young whites became culpable. His confession could have begun giving them a voice.

But he misses his one chance at salvation. In an orgy of self-pity and self-promotion he abandons the only people who really needed him to speak with sincerity.

I hear that Behr’s confession was warmly received by many. Behr has consistently traded on his anti-apartheid credentials. I am appalled at the possibility that he will now get away with trading on his credentials as the contrite perpetrator, as the prodigal son.

Behr phrases his confession in the literary context of the limitations of memory and language to describe truth. He has extensive access to platforms that propogate his vision of the truth and a unique ability to manipulate language to do so efficiently. Behr is the fast-food chain in the market of truth. Perhaps in the neighbourhoods where they consume mediocrity three meals a day his version of himself and history will prevail.

Behr could be forgiven for spying on the anti-apartheid movement, even if it was for thrills and extra ready cash. But, quite simply, he would have to be sorry first. Not sorry for himself. Sorry for what he has done.

Nic Borain was secretary general of Nusas in 1985, and established a Nusas branch at Stellenbosch. He was regional director of Idasa Western Cape from 1988 to 1990, and during this time employed Mark Behr

Political risk and the weeklies

Sunday’s newspapers were more interesting from a political risk and investment point of views than normal.

This is what I thought mattered, as far as financial markets were concerned, in last week’s Mail & Guardian, the Sunday Times, Sunday Independent and City Press:

Construction industry – possible prosecution and fines for fraud and racketeering

Government and the national prosecuting authority are reported to be facing a dilemma: managers in at least 20 major constructions firms might be guilty of serious criminal practices relating to may years of in-industry collusion, but a successful prosecution of the guilty parties would rip the whole management level out of up to 20 top companies and thereby sink government’s infrastructure plans – Mail and Guardian.

The stories are covered in the Mail & Guardian and the City Press – both drawing their details from a series of leaked 2011 affidavits apparently produced by individual managers at Sefanutti Stocks when they (Stafanutti) realised that despite co-operating with a Competition Commission investigation, individual managers were likely to be liable for criminal prosecution (by the Hawks and the NPA) and that the punishment could include imprisonment.

Paul Ramaloko, Hawks spokesperson said “This case is bigger than people think. We are going to take our time and do a thorough investigation” (Mail & Guardian), but in City Press he says the investigation was in its “early stages” and that he would only comment once it had “matured”.

So What? Sounds like a political dilemma. The NPA and the Hawks are not (entirely) governed by the political priorities of government (despite apparently decisive co-ordination between the Hawks, SARS and the Public Protector in the Julius Malema fraud, money laundering and tax evasion investigation). However, government is likely to do what it can to make sure the companies survive intact – albeit compliantly chastened and grateful for leniency. Of course, the NPA and the Hawks might, alternatively, feel these managers would make good examples of how ‘old-order’ and ‘untransformed’ individuals and companies are as important sources of corruption as the ANC, its leaders, supports and structures.

Either way, the reputation and coherency of the companies concerned could be seriously impacted. However it is not clear from the news reports that there is any differentiation between, “winners and losers” … no-one appears more or less guilty than anyone else – which rather suggests the sector as a whole is risky, with no safe havens.

Gupta TV

Key Jacob Zuma allies Atul and Rajesh Gupta (using family vehicle Oakbay Investments) are reported to be on the verge of adding a 24-hour continent-wide news channel to their media portfolio (which includes New Age newspaper) in partnership with Essel Media and an unnamed black empowerment firm. Multichoice will likely be providing the platform but purely on a commercial basis and is not expected to be partner in the venture (Mail & Guardian).

So What?

Well, one of the Guptas’ current empowerment partners is President Zuma’s son Duduzane and the Guptas themselves have become key ANC funders and power players in South African politics.  The Mail & Guardian has a picture of Atul and Rajesh Gupta (who came to the country from India in the early 90’s) ensconced at the ANC’s elective conference in Mangaung in December. Obviously, the more the merrier on the news diversity front – and who says government and the ANC shouldn’t spend more money in the space? South Africa has a free and open media culture – to the point of government and ANC leadership spending a considerable amount of their time denying allegations and defending government policy against feisty attacks. It is unlikely to be harmful if government and the ANC strengthen their ability to put their point of view. Influence trading is always a feature of politics and is no worse or better in South Africa than it is in many countries across the world.

Telecommunications – new political upheavals on the cards

All the weeklies report that Communications Minister Dina Pule is about to be removed from her post in a cabinet reshuffle. At least part of the reason is because she is accused of “routing large sums of money to her alleged lover” – Sunday Independent.  So many individuals are touted as possible replacements, but the one person who comes up time and against is Lindiwe Zulu. This is what the Mail and Guardian has to say about this close Zuma confidant: “Zulu has just been appointed head of the ANC’s communications and her star has been rising under Zuma. A government source said Zuma trusted her opinions. She is his adviser on international relations. ‘He likes her bravery. The way she’s handling the Zimbabwe issue in a fearless manner has impressed him.’ She is one of Zuma’s three envoys on that country.”

So what? Pule will be the third minister to exit this portfolio in four years and instability in the department has raised fears that SA will continue to wander in the policy wilderness as far as migration to digital TV, Telkom’s business plan chaos, spectrum allocation and unbundling of the local loop (to name but a few pressing policy mattings) are concerned.

Mining Indaba – policy confusion as rife as ever

The Business Times has a depressing few pages about the Mining Indaba that implied that if anything the industry is more concerned than ever about policy uncertainty. On the proposed Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill: “The move has again flooded the country’s struggling mining sector with uncertainty” – Loni Prinsloo.

“On the exploration side” said Magnus Ericsson, Chairman of Raw Material Group, in the lead story, “I think it’s a general hesitation … if you find something in South Africa, what will be the BEE requirements? What are the other requirements? For some foreign investors they are seen as difficult”.

The same series of articles argues that the pressure to “quarantine” SA assets is becoming fierce. “A valuation by AngloGold Ashanti’s biggest shareholder, Paulson & Co, indicated that South Africa’s biggest gold miner could boost its share price by as much as 68% if it split out it local assets.” Elsewhere on the front page of the Business Times, the paper argues: “The true investor sentiment will be measured tomorrow (now yesterday– ed) when Sibanye (Gold Fields’ local assets – ed) lists separately.”

So what? To my mind regulatory uncertainty, especially in the minerals sector, remains the key politically driven investment risk in South Africa. The risk is being driven by pressures (felt by the ANC and government) to improve delivery and redistribution. These pressures will increase going forward and the increased regulatory burdens government is placing on private mining companies is unlikely to achieve any of government’s objectives … in fact, the reverse is more likely to be true. This is an unhappy environment for those searching for policy certainty.

Bits and pieces

• The brutal rape, torture and murder of Anene Booysen in Bredasdorp filled many column inches in all four weeklies – hoping to stimulate the kind of outrage against rape that swept India recently. Many of the stories point out that South Africa has the highest incidence of rape in the world.
• Ramphele – will she or wont she? The press is full of speculation about whether Mamphela Ramphele (former anti-apartheid activists and close friend of Steve Biko, a doctor, academic,  successful businesswoman, a former director at the World Bank and former Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town) will set up a political party and that that party will capture a significant percentage of urban black support. I think she might, but I doubt whether the party will make a dent on South Africa’s politics. The most likely scenario, to my mind, is Ramphele ends up in the Democratic Alliance.
• There was much speculation about what President Zuma might say in his State of the Nation address this Thursday – with a generally excited consensus emerging that Zuma is less beholden to special interest groups (post his decisive victory at Mangaung) than he was previously. I am not convinced this will lead to bold new steps.  I am watching for tension between this speech and the National Budget on the 27^th of February.  I expect the political plans in Zuma’s State of the Nation to be at odds with Pravin Gordhan’s plans to balance the books … but I expect that tension to be hidden.
• The Mail & Guardian gave a list of who it thought is in Zuma’s inner circle: (Lakela Kaunda, Lindiwe Zulu, Mac Maharaj, Collins Shabane, Gwede Mantashe, Nathi Mthethwa and Batandwa Siswana), but then spoiled any special insight that might have given us by adding :

“Those privy to Zuma’s kitchen Cabinets say the president also has a high regard for Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel, National Planning Commission Minister Trevor Manuel and Justice and Constitutional Development Min­ister Jeff Radebe. Other key confidants include Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti, Intelligence Minister Siyabonga Cwele, Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and, to some extent, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande. People outside government who are in the president’s good books include businessperson Sandile Zungu, film producer Duma ka Ndlovu and  businessperson Deebo Mzobe, widely considered the man behind the building of “Zumaville”, the town surrounding the president’s homestead.”

… hmmm, must have a pretty big kitchen.

Red Alert – communists unveil non-traditional weapon

I have been interviewed several times this week about the Cosatu strike.

Is this an irreparable breakdown between the ANC and Cosatu?

Does this have implications for Zuma’s bid for re-election at Mangaung?

How stable is the ANC/Cosatu alliance?

What do I think of Jackson Mthembu’s response to Vavi’s claim that the ANC says “Cosatu is exaggerating poverty of workers in South Africa”? (… or whatever … If you can’t follow the subjects and objects in that sentence check out the ANC statement here - or not.)

Where is the SACP in all of this … and is Cosatu split between its president and secretary general?

Where is all this leading … what is going to happen … what does it all mean?

I’ll give those of you who are interested a kind of answer to those questions in a separate post, but I first wanted to say:  it’s a peculiar business this being a ‘talking head’, someone whose views are sought on something as slippery as what’s really happening in our politics, where it’s all leading and why.

This is not (only) an idle existential question to while away a windy Cape Town Saturday morning … it is brought on by a perilous attempt at humour by that leading bastion of irony and satire, the South African Communist Party and their laugh-a-minute, Umsebenzi Online – and more particularly the March 8 “Red Alert” that you can catch here.

(Perhaps only start reading from the “Succession battles at leading newspaper” headline. That way you might still be open to that old Marxist quip: history repeats itself “first as tragedy, then as farce” – here for Wikipedia’s sketch of the source of that quote, Karl Marx’s excellent The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon - something I find it difficult to believe the writers of Umsebenzi Online have actually read or understood … but that is just by the by.)

Anyway …

The SACP’s satire is a teasing poke at … well, at people and institutions that do what I do for a living.

The premise is that Umsebenzi Online has come into possession of “dramatic new evidence” of a deep factional split at 195 Jan Smuts Avenue … which is the address of the Mail & Guardian newspaper.

The premise is that editor Nic Dawes is being challenged by “the ring-leader of the Young Turks” Matuma Letsoalo.

And the issue over which they are divided?

Whether to stick with the fading Julius Malema as the leading character in the soap opera the M&G produces or replace him with “the unions” as the new villain.

Umsebenzi Online then seeks the views of “two well-known, dial-a-quote, soap opera specialists – Aubrey Habib and Eusebius Mashele”* who proceed to pontificate incoherently about the split at the M&G.

There is a whole cast of villains in Umsebenzi Online’s slightly stilted (hardly unexpected that – Ed) attempt at humour.

And all the villains are ‘talking heads’ … people who have come to make their primary living from giving their views on the South African political soap opera.

I think there is a real question to be answered about political analysts – poorly asked and answered in this pinkish satire

Are the views of ‘political analysts’ any more reliable than anyone else’s? It’s not like there is a professional association that erects barriers to entry and puts in a whole lot of quality controls. And anyway such associations are usually just a gang hierarchy that protects the turf from competition.

My own answer – and I have to have one, or my tongue would shrivel up and drop out of my head and my fingers fuse uselessly to this keyboard – is that political analysts are to politics what critics are to art and literature. The critics don’t have to be artists or writers themselves – in fact, that might well be a drawback to them performing their function.

Critics come to be what they are through a market mechanism – their views are sought out and some consumer ends up paying for them. The art consuming public is looking for confirmation, information or rebuttal; they are looking for a view against which they can balance their own view, or learn something from – or just to think about.

The best critics are a mirror for the artist – trusted or hated by the practitioner, it doesn’t necessarily matter.

Rubbish critics can find an oppulent home in rubbish publications and TV stations – because mediocrity does so often rule the mass market mechanism.

Fine critics can quietly go about their business and eke out an interstitial existence of quiet excellence and the small comfort of professional respect.

Or the other way around.

I am all in favour of communists using satire to further their aims – it is so much more desirable than the dystopian bureaucratic terror which appears to be the default instrument – when available – of this vanguard of leading intellectuals.

But I wish this satire had been more … well, funny … and clever – basically, more thoughtful. We are bludgeoned daily by the views of “experts” – and it might not have escaped you that I both bludgeon and am bludgeoned in my turn.

How and why political analysts come to be part of our lives and part of the cultural and public intellectual process is an important question – one we should think about before consuming the sometimes suspicious fruits they offer.

* Those fake names are a melding of the real Professor Adam Habib:

Aubrey Matshiqi:

Prince Mashile:

and Eusebius Mckaiser

(Right you four, you can send donations to The Association of Professional Standards in Political Analysis for the free publicity – Ed)

Game of Thrones in the ANC

A good friend of mine in New York* recently put me on to “A Song of Ice and Fire” – a seemingly endless series of swords and sorcery novels by George R R Martin.

This is the crack cocaine of fantasy fiction but it is also a surprisingly brilliant study of politics and power vacuums.

The fictional edifice of the “Song of Ice and Fire” is built around the consequences of the death of a powerful king. In the aftermath the kingdom collapses into factional chaos, pretenders to the throne contest for power and war rages across the land.

Scheming power-brokers manipulate and assassinate their way through the dysfunctional court as provincial lords and petty “hedge nights” ransack, pillage and rape “the small folk” all across the Seven Kingdoms.

What an excellent metaphor.

The demise of Thabo Mbeki at Polokwane in December 2007 and the political cycle towards Mangaung in December 2012 is our own Song of Ice and Fire and the intrigue and viciousness in the ANC’s internal struggle feels like it is being run by the Lady of Casterly Rock, Cersei Lannister – but you will have to read the books to fully understand how apt and awful that comparison is.

Two weeks ago the increasingly excellent City Press published the following schematic of what it sees as the individuals in the main factions contesting for power at Mangaung (using Malema as the proxy for the broader conflict):

(see at the end of the story for my optional key to that graphic)

One of the problems with factional battles like this one is that it is not always possible for the participants to choose which side they are on – or, in fact, whether to be on any side at all.

As the powerful interests clash in the Ruling Alliance there can be no ‘innocent bystanders’ or anyone above the fray. A factional dispute like this one is a bit like the Cold War used to be. It imposes itself upon the whole structure; every forum, every election and every policy debate gets forced into the dominant paradigm  of the overall contest for power.

One of the dangers – with this analysis and with the more general struggle – is that it is increasingly difficult to work out what each side stands for and how they might differ from each other.

When we use Julius Malema’s friends and foes as the proxy for the broader struggle it is easy to portray the challengers as the most voracious faction, fighting for the right to loot the state and dominate patronage networks. The problem is that the incumbents, certainly Jacob Zuma himself, can hardly be portrayed as the good and brave king to Malema’s dastardly evil knight.

There are shades of grey here that we are going to need to have a more subtle sense of as we get closer to whatever compromises might emerge at Mangaung.

It’s best not to act as a cheerleader for any one faction or part of a faction in a struggle as complex as the one unfolding within the Ruling Alliance. And while today’s heroes can be tomorrows villains and vice versa I would still use Julius Malema’s friends and foes as a rough guide to who the most dangerous enemies of our democracy are. Malema himself is a bit player, just the most visible aspect of a fight that is much deeper and more involved than his personal future. But he’s a useful proxy, nonetheless.

One of the pay-off line from A Song of Ice and Fire is a phrase that is the perfect warning to give the players in the ANC’s internal conflict:

‘In this Game of Thrones you win or you die.”

But George RR Martin has another device that he keeps repeating, threateningly, as the lords and knights struggle and murder each other for the throne.

“Winter is coming”, he keeps warning, constantly reminding the reader and his characters that there are much greater threats than the outcome of their brutal squabbles.

Winter is coming.

* That’s Tony Karon, editor at Time Online and expert on all things Middle East. He tells me he has also, several times, used metaphors from A Song of Ice and Fire, including: “Goldman-Sachs are like the Lannisters — no matter who’s on the throne, they’re always on the Small Council.”)

(My schematic key to the graphic – not required reading, and a little bit cobbled together: the friends are Mathews Phosa,  ANC treasurer general and  previous premier of Mpumalanga, one of the ANC’s top six, National Working Committee (NWC) member and a member of the 81 person National Executive Committee (NEC); Fikile Mbalula, previous ANC Youth League president, currently a head of campaigns in the ANC as well as minister of sport in government – highly effective in both positions he is being pushed by this faction to replace Gwede Mantashe as ANC secretary general – on the NWC and NEC;  Tony Yengeni, fraud convict and ex-ANC speaker of parliament (during which time he was caught defrauding parliament by accepting a discount on a luxury car during the tendering process for the arms deal while he was the member of a parliamentary committee reporting on the same deal), ex-member of the ANC underground, tortured by Apartheid police agents in the late 80’s. He is on the ANC National Executive Committee and on the National Working Committee; Winnie Madikizela-Mandela convicted fraudster, wicked step-mother of the nation, she who famously said “with our boxes of matches and necklaces we will free our country”, prime ANC populist who was married to Nelson Mandela and struggled bravely while he was imprisoned, but later accused of several human rights abuses …. and has taken every opportunity to identify herself with Julius Malema and his various calls for nationalisation and expropriation of “white owned” property. On the NEC and generally still influential and symbolically powerful as any member of the ruling party; Siphiwe Nyanda chief of staff of ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe and later head of South African National Defence Force (in which capacity he was regularly accused of being a significant recipient of some of the billions paid in arms deal bribes) and lately minister of telecommunications from which he was fired by Jacob Zuma during an avalanche of accusations that he had illegally enriched himself by getting R55m tenders from Transnet for his security company (GNS or General Nyanda Security) – also eviscerated by the media for his extremely expensive habits and choice of vehicles as a minister – on ANC NEC and NWC; Tokyo Sexwale, has long been thought to be the power behind the Malema challenge, although little evidence had been presented to prove this – and he was recently reported as referring to Malema as “that loud mouthed young man” – he was a popular premier of Gauteng when the fell foul of Thabo Mbeki machinations in the late 90’s, he withdrew from politics and became a successful business man – now reported to be extremely wealthy (through the company he founded, Mvelaphanda Holdings) – he has returned to politics and threw his hat into the ring in the lead-up to Polokwane in 2007 indicating that he would be prepared to take the ANC presidency if he was so nominated and elected. Instead Jacob Zuma became president and ended up appointing Tokyo as Minister of Human Settlements – a difficult position in which he has appeared to perform adequately – his wealth makes his election to the ANC top spot a difficult road …. but his determination and deep pockets make him a serious challenger; Cassel Mathale, premier of Limpopo and the closest of close allies (business and politics) to Julius Malema – the Limpopo province is beset by very high levels of cronyism and tender abuse by senior ANC politicians …..; Nomvula Mokonyane – surprised to see her on the list, premier of Gauteng and former housing minister – she has conflicted with another very powerful player Paul Mashetile (ANC Chair in Gauteng) who I would have thought was closer to Malema that she – she is on the NEC (ex-officio, which means she wasn’t elected there);  Baleka Mbete, ANC Chairperson, NEC and NWC – powerful … conflicted with Zuma and Motlanthe over whether she could keep the Deputy President post she help under Kgalema Mothlathe’s caretaker presidency – which put her in conflict with the Zuma camp at the start of his government in 2008; Sindiso Magaqa Secretary General of ANC YL and powerful Malema henchman.

And foes: Jeremy Cronin; key ANC intellectual and deputy secretary general of South African Communist Party (SACP) – as well as effective deputy minister of Transport – he has been the main intellectual opposition to Malema taking him on around mine nationalisation (accusing him of dishonestly fronting BEE interests and being interested in plunder) and on his general populist politics which Cronin and the SACP characterise as racially chauvinistic and even “proto-Fascist” comparing Malema arc explicitly to Germany in the 1930’s on the ANC NEC; Gwede Mantashe powerful ANC secretary general who also holds the position of SACP Chairman – he is one of the main targets of the Malema fronted faction as a leading voice against cronyism in the ANC – the push from the right is to replace him with Fikile Mbalula who is probably the best organiser of the opposition – Mantashe is gruff and famously speaks his mind, a characteristic that has put him in conflict with the most voracious cronies – in the ANC and the trade union movement – NEC and NWC …; Malusi Gigaba – ex-President of the ANC Youth League, but now adequate minister of Public Enterprises (but not about to shoot the lights out) in Zuma’s cabinet – gradually assumed to role of being a key defender of Zuma and the incumbents against the Malema battering-ram on the NEC; Blade Nzimande – top Secretary General of SACP and (adequate minister of higher education) – came in for a lot of flack from Cosatu for not focussing on building the SACP as well as for his expensive choice of cars as  Minister,  NEC and NWC; Collins Chabane – key intellectual and minister in the presidency (monitoring and evaluation) – respected ally of Zuma, opposed mine nationalisation – ANC NEC and NWC; Angie Motshekga - minister of basic education (shaping up well) and ANC Women’s League president … denies she recently suggested that one of the solutions to current crisis was dissolution of the ANC Youth League – NEC and NWC; Mathole Motshekga – ANC Chief Whip in parliament (always a powerful position) and law lecturer at Unisa in his spare time. ANC NEC … maybe opposition to Malema thrust is a family affair?; David Mabuza; Mpumalanga premier and ANC chairperson recently accused by ANC Youth League of “interfering” in the Youth League politics i.e. backing Lebogang Maile to replace Malema and the recent ANCYL national conference … a challenge that fizzled – he is on the ANC NEC;  Lindiwe Zulu, senior foreign affairs official previous Ambassador to Brazil, close Zuma confidant and powerful behind the scenes player building his image abroad …. she ran into flak from the ANC YL for appearing to back the MDC in Zimbabwe against ZanuPF. She is also close link with Angola for Zuma. ANC NEC.)

‘Economic Freedom’ debate rescued from hijackers

Two brief thoughts – on a rainy Cape Town Sunday:

Firstly – a by-product of Malema’s (possible) retreat

I have a feeling that debates ranging from mine nationalisation, land distribution and continued white economic dominance in the South African economy have just been saved from the gangsters in the ANC Youth League who have been using these as a cover for looting.

It has been difficult not to lump every statement about ongoing race based inequality with the smokescreen slogans used by the ANC Youth League leadership – and many equally corrupt politicians.

The latest Commission of Employment Equity Annual Report says whites still occupy 73.1 percent of top management positions – and blacks 12.7, Indians 6.8 and coloureds 4.6?  Yeah, well they would say that wouldn’t they – after all, that is (one of) Jimmy Manyi’s old outfits and he is the grandmaster of running racial interference for pillaging resources destined for development!

Willing-seller, willing buyer policy of land distribution responsible for only 5 percent of redistribution targets met? Yeah, well, guess who are trying to get themselves a portfolio of farms a la Zanu-PF?

Nationalise the mines? Yeah, so you can rescue your BEE backers and get a piece of the action yourself?

But that was last week.

Those issues are back on the agenda, but this time the discussion might be led by people genuinely looking to harness the country’s resources for development and transformation – not looters, corrupt tenderpreneurs and “demagogic populists” disguising their true intentions.

If anyone thought we could go on with the levels of unemployment, inequality, poverty and racially skewed distribution of ownership and control of this economy I suspect they will find they have been very much mistaken.

One of the consequences of the retreat of the Malema agenda is that we will all have to deal with the issues we have, up until now, been able to dismiss or deflect because they were ‘owned” and propagated by thugs.

Itumeleng Mahabane says it like it is

In a similar vein – and my favourite read of the week – was Itumeleng Mahabane’s column in Friday’s Business Day.

He deals with a variety of aspects of the country’s debates about development and transformation.

In tones that have been tightly stripped – of anger, I suspect – Mahabane appeals for the debate to lose the “prejudicial invectives” and that participants should “desist from creating cardboard villains”.

He makes 4 main points (actually he makes a whole lot more, and it is not impossible that I misinterpret him here – and he is certainly more subtle and nuanced than my summary below – so read the original column – the link again.)

Firstly he suggests (although in the form of a question, not the statement as I have it here) that we have to acknowledge the damage our Apartheid past has done our country, leaving “the inequity of our income distribution and the historic systematic destruction of black capability”.

Secondly he hints that the state cannot assume more economic responsibility before we have fixed accountability – and thereby arrested corruption.

Thirdly he appeals for a sophistication of our views on the labour market – I think by suggesting that a degree of duality is crucial.

But, he warns:

I do not subscribe to the simplistic and questionable idea that the inability to hire and fire people is the core cause of structural unemployment. The balanced high growth would create demand for labour, regardless of labour rigidity.

Fourthly he asked us analysts why:

we casually, without considering the social implications, vilify workers and the working class, making them useful villains for complex economic challenges? We almost never give view to the body of evidence that shows that market rigidity and anticompetitive behaviour is a significant factor in deterring investment and output and that, in fact, it contributes to SA’s excessive business and skilled-labour rents.

Those are important views – and an important corrective to aspects of our debate about development.

Pravin Gordhan and the Labour Market

You might have picked up from warm and welcoming statements by the Democratic Alliance and a flood of beaming news stories that our Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan said something slightly more exciting about economic policy than the bland pap from the policy kitchen of the increasingly awkward compromise which is the Ruling Alliance.

But before anyone gets too excited we should look at exactly what he said.

First up, in the main body of his speech to the 14th annual conference of the Board of the Institute of Internal Auditors – a body I suspect has hitherto not been allowed to bask at the centre of an important breaking news story – he suggested as part of his list of things that need to be done to “energetically reposition, restructure and reform our economy” :

Lower the cost of young, inexperienced low-skilled workers for firms to stimulate the demand for labour

That is from the paper as published on the the Treasury’s website – catch that here – it is well worth a read.

Then press stories – this from the New Age – seem to imply that he took things a little further in discussion. I give you the full text below, especially as the journalist has left off quotation marks on the key sentence, making me wonder if this is more a case of hearing what you want to hear than it is an accurate reflection of exactly what the minister said:

The New Growth Path envisages the creation of five million jobs by 2020. Gordhan suggested that South Africa might have to relax its labour laws in certain cases to grow jobs. “We may have to change the way we see the labour dispensation in South Africa,” he said.

For example, a balance needed to be found to retain the jobs of the 10,000 people working at clothing factories in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, while still allowing them to earn a reasonable wage and keeping the factories open.

There is no doubt in my mind that the inflexibility of our labour market is partly responsible for the high levels of unemployment in this country.

I have tired of pointing out that as the representative of the ‘already employed’ Cosatu is not to be trusted to talk on behalf of the ‘unemployed’ – with whom its interests often conflict (see here, but a number of other places as well).

The Minister of Finance’s job is to find an economic policy that somehow reflects the national interest – and not the sectional interest of organised labour.

The most important government priority is to find ways to grow the economy in a manner that helps create the greatest number of jobs.

With a government gone soft in the middle, led by a compromised and beholden president, it is a relief to hear someone in power, however tentatively, at least name the nettle if not actually grasp it.

The communists have got this right

Here’s something important to read and understand.

From a South African Communist Party Central Committee statement  released today – I just caught it on Politicsweb here.

You can disagree with the communists about a range of points of strategy and of principle, but they accurately and urgently identify populism as exemplified by the ANC Youth League ruling faction (and be clear, this is what they are talking about) as the greatest threat to the ruling alliance and, more importantly, to the South African democracy.

This is their call to arms:

We are dealing with an anti-worker, anti-left, anti-communist, pseudo-militant demagogy that betrays all of our long-held ANC-alliance traditions of internal organizational democracy, mutual respect for comrades, non-racialism, and service to our people. It has created substantial space for an anti-majoritarian, conservative reactive groundswell that seeks to tarnish the whole movement, portraying us all as anti-constitutionalist and as narrow nationalist chauvinists.

It was only a matter of time before a rescue attempt of the sliding democratic project was launched from within the alliance. It was always going to come either from Cosatu or the SACP – and despite its lack of a mass base, the SACP is more venerable and respected within the ANC

The communist leadership has dissipate into government and its voice has been softer and more defensive as a result. It remains to be seen if the party is still able to crack the whip loud enough to drive our domestic version of Zanu-PF back into its cage.

Jacob Zuma versus the ANC Youth League

Yesterday President Jacob Zuma met white farmers in the KwaZulu Natal Midlands and reassured them about nationalisation of mines and about land seizures.

He said: “What Malema said is neither the ANC’s nor the government’s policy … the farming community must not be shaken by his comments.”

A few moments ago the ANC Youth League responded – and I put the full statement below.

This morning I argued to my paying clients – mostly asset managers and pensions funds who are concerned about these issues:

The noise about uncompensated land seizures and mine nationalisation will continue up until the ANC’s Centenary Conference in Bloemfontein mid-year 2012 but current investor friendly policies are likely, in broad terms, to be reaffirmed at that conference.

This ANC Youth League statement does not change my view, but I am sure the financial markets can feel the heat:

ANC YOUTH LEAGUE NATIONAL WORKING COMMITTEE STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA’S COMMENTS ABOUT LAND REFORM AND NATIONALISATION OF MINES.

12 May 2011

The ANC Youth League National Working Committee met on the Thursday, the 12^th of May 2011. Amongst other issues, the NWC noted the comments of ANC President Jacob Zuma on Land Reform and Nationalisation of Mines in response to the questions by the people he addressed in KwaZulu Natal. In response to the fears and insecurities expressed by those people, particularly in relation to land reform, the President is reported to have amongst other things said, “Malema is on a learning curve and the farming community must not be shaken by his comments. What he says are simply his views”.

The ANC Youth League is concerned by the manner in which President Jacob Zuma addresses policy issues contained in the discussion documents of the ANC Youth League towards the 24^th National Congress. The question of expropriation of land without compensation is a policy proposal contained in ANC Youth League discussion documents for the 24^th National Congress, and not “simply his [President Julius Malema] views”. Attributing the views expressed in the discussion document to ANC Youth League President Julius Malema is not helpful and can only serve to isolate him from the organisation. The views expressed in the 24^th National Congress discussion documents have gone through the processes of the ANC National Working and Executive Committees and never personal views of ANC Youth League President.

The ANC Youth League is concerned because we believe it is appropriate for all members of the Movement to engage the ANC Youth League on its policy positions and not isolate any of its leaders. This assists all communities the ANC engages to appropriately understand the policy making processes of the ANC, which the ANC Youth League participates in. We believe that the manner in which the issue of land reform was responded to is not consistent with this principle. The President of the ANC Youth League is expressing views contained in the ANC Youth League discussion document, which is inspired by the ANC 52^nd National Conference’s observation which says “We have only succeeded in redistributing 4% of agricultural land since 1994, while more than 80% of agricultural land remains in the hands of fewer than 50,000 white farmers and agribusinesses. The willing-seller, willing-buyer approach to land acquisition has constrained the pace and efficacy of land reform. It is clear from our experience, that the market is unable to effectively alter the patterns of land ownership in favour of an equitable and efficient distribution of land”.

The ANC Youth League on further concerned on how the question of Nationalisation of Mines is responded to because the ANC has a resolution on how the question of Nationalisation of Mines should be approached, in line with the ANC National General Council’s “greater consensus on nationalisation of Mines and other strategic sectors of the economy” and the Freedom Charter. The ANC has put in place a process on how best the issue of Nationalisation of Mines and other strategic sectors of the economy should be approached. The ANC Youth League is of the view that the response by ANC President to the farmers is not consistent with the resolution of the ANC National General Council and what the National Executive Committee instructed should happen.

Once again, the ANC Youth League calls on all South Africans—black and white, members and leaders of all ANC led alliance structures, all leaders of the ANC and all people concerned about the future of South Africa to read ANC Youth League discussion documents and ANC 52^nd National Conference resolutions and engage the issues raised there. This will benefit those who want to engage us and sharpen the perspectives of the ANC Youth League towards the ANC YL 24^th National Congress and ANC 53^rd National Conference.

Issued by the ANC Youth League National Working Committee

Slightly cynical quotations about elections and democracy

From one of my favourite books of all time: Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations (John Green – Cassel, 1994) with a few comments from the peanut gallery.

The first few are new here, but I then attend append – not sure what I was thinking – to the end of the post “Some light weekend contempt” (August 21 2009) and “Some (more) light weekend contempt” (October 25 2009) – because those quotes are mostly excellent, funny and timeless and I have good reason to believe you haven’t seen them before and I hope they delight you as much as they do me.

On the lead-up to May 18

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

Otto von Bismarck

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

George Jean Nathan

In general, we elect men of the type that subscribes to only one principle – to get re-elected.

Terry M. Townshend, speech 1940

Whatever politicians, activists and manipulators propose, it is the phlegmatic, indifferent, ingrained electorate which disposes.

Don Aitkin, quoted, 1969

On why I don’t trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall

What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition – which despises small interests to gain great ones.

Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims 1665

There are hardly two Creatures of a more differing Species than the same Man, when he is pretending to a Place, and when he is in possession of it.

George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflexions, c.1694

The higher a monkey climbs, the more you can see of his behind.

General ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell

On democracy’s ability to hide underlying power dynamics – and how it is invariably abused by the powerful

A democracy is a state which recognises the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organisation for the systematic use of violence by one class against another, by one part of the population against another.

V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917

Democracy is the name we give to the people each time we need them.

Robert, Marquis de Flers and Arman de Cavaillet, L’habit vert, 1912

Parliaments are the great lie of our times.

Konstantine Pobedonostsev, 1896

(Hmm, this reminds of something):

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

Woodrow Wilson, 1917

On whose fault it is, anyway

Democracy is a device which ensures that we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

H. L. Mencken, Sententiae, 1916

On the (slightly fascist) idea that in as far as democracy allows the views of ‘the average man and women’ to be the dominant view, it is an awful system of government

Now majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But like other precious, sacred things …. it’s not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza.

P. J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores, 1991

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

E. M. Cioran

The democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything to the level of the herd.

Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941

A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles, but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking, shirt-changing lover of fresh air, he will have to overcome certain physical repugnances before he can bring himself to put these principles into practice.

Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate, 1926

An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid … because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.

Bertrand Russel, Presidential Address to LSE students, 1923

Some light weekend contempt

Our Democracy?

 Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

James Russel Lowell

 

Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1909 – 14

 

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H.L. Mencken, 1916

Jacob Zuma?

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Simon Cameron, 1860

 

Cosatu?

It is a general error to suppose the loudest complainer for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

Edmund Burke – 1769

Hlope?

A judge is a lawyer who once knew a politician.

Anonymous

Steve Tswete?

A horrible voice, bad breath, and a vulgar manner – the characteristics of a popular politician.

Aristophanes

Obama?

Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he’ll spend two years organising and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.

David Broder, in the Washington Post, 1973

Polokwane?

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

The SACP?

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1955

The DA?

What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.

Stokeley Carmichael

Some (more) light weekend contempt

On the drift to the left in South African policy making:

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

- P. J. O’Rourke

On certain young leaders in South African politics:

Fame is but the breath of the people, that is often unwholesome.

- Thomas Fuller 1732

On the much revered family of North American mythology – and a metaphor for the Ruling Alliance:

Sacred family! …. The supposed home of all the virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehoods, where wills are broken by parental tyranny, and self-respect smothered by crowded, jostling egos.

- August Strindberg 1886

On love – and the current state of the ANC/SACP/Cosatu alliance:

The voyage of love is all the sweeter for an outside stateroom and a seat at the Captain’s table.

- Henry Haskins 1940

On the global debt crisis and the Great Recession?

What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?

- Bertolt Brecht 1928

or:

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

- Robert Frost

Hellen Zille?:

A woman can look both moral and exciting – if she looks as if it were quite a struggle.

- Edna Ferber 1954

Blade Nzimande:

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.

- H.L. Mencken 1956

Because I thought it might brighten your day

Our leaders dancing for our votes reminds me of a poem Michael Ondaatje wrote called The Elimination Dance. A version of this dance appears in cultures and countries around the world.

The rules are that a caller shouts out particular categories of people or people who have undergone a particular experience. When you are called  you must leave the dance floor immediately.

There is no hidden political message – apart from the last line … and the silly part of myself that wishes they would all get off the stage -  it was just an excuse to use the composite picture I just made and because I thought the poem might charm and delight some of you.

The quotes in the beginning are placed by Ondaatje himself in the original poem:

Elimination Dance (an intermission) by Michael Ondaatje

‘Nothing I’d read prepared me for a body this unfair’
JOHN NEWLOVE

‘Toll we be roten, kan we not rypen’
GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Those who are allergic to the sea

Those who have resisted depravity

Men who shave off beards in stages, pausing to take photographs

American rock stars who wear Toronto Maple Leaf hockey sweaters

Those who (while visiting a foreign country) have lost the end of a Q-tip in their ear and have been unable to explain their problem

Gentlemen who have placed a microphone beside a naked woman’s stomach after lunch and later, after slowing down the sound considerably, have sold these noises on the open market as whale songs

All actors and poets who spit into the first row while they perform

Men who fear to use an electric lawn-mower feeling they could drowse off and be dragged by it into a swimming pool

Any dinner guest who has consumed the host’s missing contact lens along with the dessert

Any person who has had the following dream. You are in a subway station of a major city. At the far end you see a coffee machine. You put in two coins. The Holy Grail drops down. Then blood pours into the chalice.

Any person who has lost a urine sample in the mail

All those belle-lettrists who feel that should have been ‘an urine sample’

Anyone who has had to step into an elevator with all of the Irish Rovers

Those who have filled in a bilingual and confidential pig survey from Statistics Canada. (Une enquệte sur les porcs, strictement confidentielle)

Those who have written to the age old brotherhood of Rosicrucians for a free copy of their book ‘The Mastery of Life’ in order to release the inner consciousness and to experience (in the privacy of the home) momentary flights of consciousness

Those who have accidentally stapled themselves

Anyone who has been penetrated by a mountie

Any university professor who has danced with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Jean Genet

Those who have unintentionally locked themselves within a sleeping bag at a camping goods store

Any woman whose i.u.d. has set off an alarm system at the airport

Those who, after a swim, find the sensation of water dribbling out of their ears erotic

Men who have never touched a whippet

Women who gave up the accordian because of pinched breasts

Those who have pissed out of the back of moving trucks

Those who have woken to find the wet footprints of a peacock across their kitchen floor

Anyone whose knees have been ruined as a result of performing sexual acts in elevators

Those who have so much as contemplated the possibility of creeping up to one’s enemy with two Bic lighters, pressing simultaneously the butane switches— one into each nostril— and so gassing him to death

Literary critics who have swum the Hellespont

Anyone who has been hired as a ‘professional beater’ and frightened grouse in the direction of the Queen Mother

Any lover who has gone into a flower shop on Valentine’s Day and asked for clitoris when he meant clematis

Those who have come across their own telephone numbers underneath terse insults or compliments in the washroom of the Bay Street Bus Terminal

Those who have used the following techniques of seduction:
-small talk at a falconry convention
-entering a spa town disguised as Ford Madox Ford
-making erotic rotations of the pelvis, backstage, during the storm scene of King Lear
-underlining suggestive phrases in the prefaces of Joseph Conrad

Anyone who has testified as a character witness for a dog in a court of law

Any writer who has been photographed for the jacket of a book in one of the following poses: sitting in the back of a 1956 Dodge with two roosters; in a tuxedo with the Sydney Opera House in the distance; studying the vanishing point on a jar of Dutch Cleanser; against a gravestone with dramatic back lighting; with a false nose on; in the vicinity of Macchu Pichu; or sitting in a study and looking intensely at one’s own book

The person who borrowed my Martin Beck thriller, read it in a sauna which melted the glue off the spine so the pages drifted to the floor, stapled them together and returned the book, thinking I wouldn’t notice

Any person who has burst into tears at the Liquor Control Board

Anyone with pain

Race you to the bottom

Two startling contributions to the raging race debate – from below and slightly behind, so to speak.

White (male) drivers

The first is a letter to the editor of the increasingly excellent Business Day from one Oscar Mosito in Rosslyn

His issue is with white male drivers.

What is most endearing about Mr Mosito’s letter is his calm restraint that profoundly fails to hide his seething stew of road rage with a racial twist (or perhaps race rage on the twisted road – or twisted rage in the race … no, that’s enough … sorry.)

“For years since the dawn of democracy,” Oscar calmly begins “I have observed the behaviour of white (male) drivers on our roads, particularly on the freeway.”

“I am not sure if I should call it frustration by white people and their difficulty in accepting that black people are in power,” he continues “… or whether it is caused by the fact the Democratic Alliance is not opposition enough to defeat the African National Congress in elections, but there is a lot of frustration in most white male drivers. It is directed towards taxi drivers or our leaders …”

There follows a delightfully unconscious diatribe against white male (drivers) not respecting black political leadership, driving in the yellow line to prevent noble taxi drivers getting past on the inside lane (?) and continuously showing disrespect to “ministers, MECs, the deputy president or the president himself.”

Heaven forbid!

I have even noticed that every time they see a black person driving a luxury car, they give him a certain kind of look, but when the same black person is in a taxi, they hardly look. So, it is my plea for all white drivers who do not want to accept change to respect our leaders, whether on the road, boardroom or in sports. It’s time you accepted change … I just hope that next time you see a convoy of BMWs, you give way and know that those are your leaders …  Please set a good example for your innocent children.

Oh Joy!

It is so perfect I fear to say anything more in case I break its spell. Let’s just point out the innocence of the “convoy of BMWs” … which made me think for a while that it was a DA hoax, but then the rest convinced me otherwise … but maybe it’s still a hoax … I dunno? Maybe I am naive, maybe I am too hopeful …

In the hope that this is not a hoax (and that Oscar is a real black man and not a clever white racist trying to cause trouble) I would just like to take this opportunity to agree with him.

The white male drivers that I encounter on the roads of Cape Town are ignorant, unreasonable, arrogant, entitled oafs that I feel deeply homicidal towards.

But then so are the white women.

And the coloured men? Don’t even start me.

Oh, yeah and the black men and the coloured women and the black women … I told you, don’t get me started!

And the occasional Indians – of all genders – that mistakenly find their way here … where did they buy their licences, I ask you?

Okay, there – I feel better now.

Cape Town drivers are enough to get the blood pumping. They are a wonderful example of multi-ethnic unity – they all drive like Oscar’s very own vision of white males.

Catch the full text of Oscar’s spirited letter here.

The other example is even more delightful.

“Do not be friends with white people – they will Satinise you”

(My spell check keeps trying to change that to “Sanitise” – which is a racist little wordplay joke in itself.)

But anyway …

Stalwart Sadtu (South African Democratic Teachers Union) Chairperson Moss Senye who is also the principal of Meadowlands High, addressing 1000 teachers in Soweto in the lead-up to his trial for assaulting a 17 year old pupil said (and I pull it all out of this Sowetan article but I indicate how I have stitched it together with the dot … dot … dot):

Whether Barbara (Creecy) likes it or not, we will have our meetings. Despite Barbara, we will vote for the ANC during the elections and they will remove her. Let us not embrace satanic people. Down with Satanism. You cannot be friends with white people, they will Satanise you …The bank called and asked when I would pay for my car. I cannot pay and I do not care. They can repossess it. We must show strength as a region. Barbara is trying to destroy us. Angie (Motshekga tried and now she is gone. Mary (Metcalfe) tried and now she has vanished. People have tried to destroy the union and failed. At no stage should you be friends with white people, they will satanise you … Our region has 10,000 members and only 75 of them are white. This is a non-racial union. We welcome everyone. We have never had a problem with Indian teachers. They have always been our members. There are two white learners at Meadowlands High. Barbara is not happy about this. She wants them to go to Parktown and other schools in the suburbs.

Again, what could I add to that that would make it any more hilarious and horrifying than it already is?

Complex, unstable and unpredictable

We are the ape with the pattern recognition dial cranked up high and this has served us well over our evolutionary history.

But when we assess risk in systems as complex as the global economy our instinctive wariness at the sudden silence in the Palaeolithic forest is not necessarily useful – and might be part of a warning system directly implicated in us getting things wrong in the complex and networked world in which we live and act.

The billions of tons of grinding debris in the violent waters surging over Japan’s eastern coast seem part of a flood of dangerous chaos and instability stretching from the sovereign debt markets through the shifting front lines in Libya to the meltdown at the Fukushima  nuclear power facility.

Two months ago the theatre of the world seemed to be playing to a comforting old script we all knew.

Today it feels like anything might happen – and it probably will.

Let me not pretend to expertise on plate tectonics, but the clearest and most current metaphor that best explains how we should think about the world and the global economy is the state of the earth’s crust east of Japan just before Friday’s quake.

The Japanese main island of Honshu is unique in the world in that it is at the meeting point of four of the Earth’s fourteen major tectonic plates.

Plates driven by convection in the plastic rock below (in the asthenosphere) meet each other with a gradual build up of complex pressure and stresses, which are, in truth, continent smashing in their power and potential.

After sometimes extended periods of apparent stability the stresses reach a point at which they are suddenly released and one or more plate(s) move(s) violently – in this case the Pacific Plate jerks in the direction it has been pushing all along: deep underneath Honshu.

And then follows a sequence that might, with the benefit of hind site, look like tumbling dominoes in one of those endlessly complicated but strangely compelling set piece knock downs (only click here if you have the patience and bandwidth for watching endlessly toppling supermarket products – the Balkan juice  boxes are the most mysterious.)

First the quake: 8.9 on the Richter Scale, making it the 5th most powerful earthquake ever recorded. Then the seabed buckles over hundreds of square kilometres displacing a huge volume of water that sends a whole series of giant waves travelling at over 600 km/h in every direction, giving the Japanese authorities less than 15 minutes to react.

Then consider if you will the extended shuddering cascade of triggers and causality that will travel into the future – think of it as a wave that unlocks energy, destructive or otherwise, inherent in the situations and objects it encounters, rather than the cause of what happens.

Beyond the immediate human tragedies of loss, displacement, suffering and death there is long-term infrastructure damage, economic catastrophe in the already stretched insurance industry, political turmoil from a populous that will accuse the politicians of not having prepared adequately, an unfolding nuclear crisis and sundry other effects and consequences that we can all speculate about, but will likely be a surprise anyway.

The point is that while we can attempt to model such systems, beyond a certain level of complexity there is almost nothing we can say with certainty about how things will unfold.

While you consider these waves spreading out from the disaster that has struck Japan,  bursting other bubbles, causing other wound up instabilities to suddenly unwind, consider the ripples of this earthquake meeting the ripples of the oil supply shock rooted in the political turmoil in North Africa and the gathering force of the the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and elsewhere.

“Why” is not the question

When tragedy strikes us, particularly the personal, catastrophic and traumatic kind – a fatal car accident, a murder or the unexpected suicide of a family member – our first self-protective act is to grasp for an explanation.

Our initial need is for something simple, some prime cause that can give us the limited comfort of being able to say to ourselves: “This is why it happened”.

Fredrick Nietzsche {here quoted from”Ubiquity: The Science of History – or Why the World is Simpler Than We Think” by Mark Buchanan (Crown 2000) – it’s heavy going but well worth the effort} said:

To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none…The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear….

In the world in which we live, no explanation is almost always better than an incorrect one. At least then you know you don’t know – which is a slight protection in itself.

There is no new tide of chaos sweeping the world. This is the world as it has always been: interconnected in dizzyingly complex ways and apparently both deeply unstable and unpredictable.

But we have never lived the world at this level before. When twitter and Facebook and Al Jazeera TV and immediate images of the terrifying dark swirling waters engulfing the Japanese coast are brought together in our sensory universe in the same moment our evolved risk assessment tools are inadequate.

We are seeing the world not at the human scale of the hunter in the suddenly quieted forest. This is the world from a perspective that humans previously imagined was only available to their gods.

As individuals we are still essentially the same animal as that palaeolithic hunter in the primal forest.

But collectively we have recently gained the technology to see – if not fully understand – what is happening way beyond the forest, way beyond the world.

It will be a collective endeavour (through states and various other forms of human organisation) to make that information useful to us – as such forms of organisations have imperfectly striven to do in the past.*

Already Tsunami Warning Systems have saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives over the last few days and Twitter and Facebook have kept millions of Japanese families in touch with the world and each other.

But we are only at the very beginning of the journey towards the kingdom where our collective ability to generate and harness vast streams of data will become meaningful and intelligible to us as individuals.

For now it is enough to say: when dealing with the world in all its complexity, don’t trust your instincts.

Luckily for us “pattern recognition” is not the only reason we have survived as we have.

“Adaptability” is this primate’s main strength and with the finger pressed firmly on the fast forward button of technological advancement we are going to need every edge we can get.

*The struggle between ourselves as individuals and the collective elites, governments and national secret agencies that previously attempted to monopolise this information and act on it to further their own interests – as often as not incompetently and mistakenly – is the subject of another discussion, although an important and linked one.

Egypt, my Egypt

I am clicking “Publish” in a rush … I suspect I will come to regret this later.

Anyway:

The popular mobilisations in Tunisia, Egypt and a swath of authoritarian North African and Middle Eastern states are interesting and important for more reasons than can be named, let alone examined, here.

But the aspects that have fascinated me are the over excited “I told you so!” claims of pundits, politicians and much of the Twitterati.

And not just the assertion that they had this right all along, but that they somehow understand the clattering Nasserite dominoes better than anyone and would just like to point out that it’s coming to get you. Yes, you (insert name of political opponent here), the revolution is coming for you.

There are literally hundreds of “takes on the crisis” I would like to poke fun at and take to task over this absurd conceit, but there is one I will look at (only slightly) more seriously.

Blunt Blade’s Bollocks

Blade Nzimande takes George Galloway’s excellent communist tirade in his column in the Morning Star (read it, it is also bollocks and brutal and crass but has enough thought and truth in it to warrant a second look) and turns it into the obscure and rambling  “Tunisia and Egypt: The deepening crisis of US imperialism and neo-liberalism“.

Where are the South African communists of yore who could always be relied upon to lift the veil, expose the skull beneath the skin and see the ape within the man? Oh yes, they are all dead or helping run the Department of Transport or become  bloated and insecure plutocrats … hmm, is that everyone?

Blade has it that Tunisia and Egypt are manifestations of a series of crises in capitalism “and its contemporary neo-liberal ideology”.

In short (in as far as I can understand Nzimande) the USA as the global representative of the corporate/capitalist machine has fostered dictatorships in the Arab world because they have agreed to leave the USA’s good friend Israel in peace.

So far so good, but then things start to unravel. Political upheaval in these Arab and North African countries sets back the USA’s task to reproduce the conditions of capitalist accumulation – through an amazingly complex web of dialectical causality. Thusly, the selling of upsized McDonald’s meals to the American guest workers rebuilding (if they work for Haliburton) and de/restabilising (if they work for Blackwater USA) any countries the US has recently invaded is threatened, because democratic governments are more likely to take a hard line on Israel … eh … oh goodness, there goes the thread.

You cannot successfully characterise Tunisia and Egypt as “crises of capitalism” unless you take an amazingly complex and interlinked world and reduce it to a childish little model that even the crudest Marxists would reject as ‘reductive’ and ‘over-deterministic’.

If  the term “capitalism” means the totality of international relations between states, global trade, the activities of local and international corporations and the shaping effects of culture, history and technology, then it is less than useless to characterise Tunisia and Egypt as “crises of capitalism”.

If the term “capitalism” refers (as I suspect it does, when used by Nzimande) to the secret set of rules in a secret club of greedy Americans who seek to control the world to protect and deepen their wealth, then I am sorry, but you can’t really be expected to be engaged with.

There are powerful and organised interests at play in North Africa and the Middle East and only a fool would not look to the USA for the sources of some of those forces. But there is also chaotic human activity and chance and rapidly unwinding and reforming complex systems that are part of what is happening and the blunt scalpel of Blade Nzimande’s theory takes us nowhere.

I would still recommend Galloway’s piece (as more insightful and the source of any interesting thoughts in Nzimande’s words on the subject) because part of what is happening in the Middle-East and North Africa is the unravelling of another mystifying US strategy to define, protect and advance its “national interests”.

What I wish the communists would give more attention to is not the greedy and rapacious aspects of US imperialism, but rather how it is often profoundly misconceived and poorly executed.

In my view human society should not be conceived of as “shaped” by particular forces or of being set on a certain “trajectory”. The totality of human existence is not an object (plastic and/or in motion). The totality of human existence – including the bits of it in Tunisia and Egypt – must be conceived of as a system so complex that making predictive statements is not hugely useful. Also, attempting to reduce the complexity to make it more understandable is a worthwhile endeavour only if undertaken with extreme caution and care.  Cooking it up as proof that your side is winning adds no real value.

In as far as the statement: “what is happening in the Arab world is a failure of US imperialism” is true, I suspect the reason is that successive US administrations have misconceived both the nature of history (as has Nzimande) and the nature of their own interests – not an error Nzimande appears obviously to have made.

Can you hear the drums?

Those who know me would expect me to profess that I would rather eat broken glass than say anything sentimental and upbeat for the sake of Christmas cheer.

They would also know that I often fail: that a sort of “jolly hockey-sticks” optimism can sometimes creep into my disposition, that the studiously steely eyes often mist over at the occasional heart-warming story – usually about children, dogs, down trodden people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps (whatever that means) and politicians being hoisted by their own petards or any other suitable handle.

A bit lame I know, but that’s the way it is.

Anyway, nothing too mawkish this time – but still using every edge I can to generate interest.

Craig Tyson, my friend and the fine Editor of that  excellent men’s magazine GQ,  has agreed to my publishing in these humble electronic pages something of mine he has only recently paid for and placed in the December issue of his paper and ink magazine – which also has an excellent website you can catch here.

As I did previously: here is the cover of the GQ. Click on the nose of the gorgeous Gisela Calitz and you will be whipped through to my article arguing that it is, ultimately, unsurprising that political risk increased this year.

Only joking. You can click anywhere on the picture – I momentarily liked the thought of lots of people carefully resting the cursor on her perfect nose and giving it a little click, but I am over it now.

Oh, and buy the magazine. It’s a wonderful gift  for the season of giving … oops.