What the President might have said ...

This picture of Nelson Mandela with a/his dog surfaced some time before the remarks by President Jacob Zuma about the different cultures of animal ownership between black and white South Africans.

The holidays, this year, have been dominated by remarks made by President Zuma regarding the way in which white people, apparently habitually, treat their domestic pets better than they do the black people around them.  The President’s mistake, as far as I can see, was not the observation itself – which may or may not upon investigation, prove to be true.  The real problem with his remarks, in my estimation, was the way in which he gets himself entangled in notions of “culture” which are not only spurious, but extremely dangerous.

The ex-governor of the Reserve bank, Tito Mboweni, tells a story about when he was working as a young man, as a gardener in a white person’s home – before Limpopo was Limpopo.He says that round about lunch time – in the heat of the day he would hear “the Madam” calling “Titus!  Titus! Come and get your lunch!”  That was the signal for him to run like hell, because he had to get to the stoep to protect his lunch, before the dog got it.

His lunch would be three very thick slices of bread with jam on them, served on a chipped enamel plate.  There would also be an enamel mug of extremely sweet, milky tea.  “The Madam” had never thought to ask him whether he actually drank tea, and whether he liked sugar and milk, or not.

When he tells this story – and I have heard it often – there are often shrieks of laughter from black people of a certain age, who recognise the scenario, and squirming embarrassment from whites, who recognise their mothers or their grandmothers in the story as well.

It is just a fact that people will not fail to notice when domestic pets are treated way better than they are as people.  They will not fail to notice this because there is a perceived natural hierarchy in the universe, with the humans at the top.  The life of a human is seen to be much more valuable than the life, for instance, of a dog and therefore there is enormous resentment and indignation when the dog appears to be getting the better deal.

The corollary of this is that because humans are perceived to be on top, they can do what they like with other forms of life and treat them as they will or desire.  So, we can starve the animals in our care (whether they be horses on farms, or dogs or cats); we can let them die from neglect; we can beat them if we want to; we can stone them when they come across our paths.  Why?  Because we are the boss of the universe.

Clearly, the truth is that both of these extreme frames are wrong.  It has bugger-all to do with that hallowed thing called “culture”.  Stoning a dog, because it irritates you - or because you can - isn’t some great statement of African culture – it is just despicable inhumanity.  Neglecting the plight of a farmworker while pampering a kitten is exactly the same thing.  These things are not cultural, they are the best examples of how ugly and revolting human beings can be.

Whether it be the revolting regular practice of slaughtering bulls with spears for fun in Spain, or whether it be the equally revolting annual practise of killing bulls with bear hands in Kwazulu-Natal; whether it be the neglect of a dog under one’s care or the neglect of human beings in one’s employ – these things are not cultural – they are just wrong.   To baptise a practise as “cultural” does not make it right, it does not somehow allow the practitioner to escape from criticism or critique.  It cannot be a cosy hiding place for acts of cruelty and barbarism.

So, let us be clear – the perennial acts of neglect of human beings, compared with the penchant for pampering pets is going to be noticed and it is going to be paraded as yet another example of ongoing oppression. (Of course, to presume that this is something which is entirely racially based, is just remarkably silly).  But on the other hand, to presume that human beings have the right to dominate and subject (and if so desired, torture and neglect) all other forms of life, is crass and backward.  Do not expect that this is going to go un-noticed either. Neither perspective is cultural.  Both should be condemned.

The President’s recently expressed view is nothing unique to him.  I have heard it expressed as an almost defining characteristic of white people, by many black people.  (And I have also heard the opposite expressed as a characteristic of black people, by many whites.)  Where these are simple prejudices, they are at least something one can attempt to deal with, either by education or by argument.  But where they get entangled in the concept of “culture”, they become dangerous and extremely blunt weapons of analytical destruction.  Culture is, mostly, a fearful and terrifying thing.

Thirty Three out of One Hundred

I joined the ANC in 1979. It was in Lesotho. I had left South Africa as a War Resistor. That was all I had done. Soweto 1976 came and went. I read the headlines with rising alarm. I was a student at a very rightwing university, at the time - Rhodes University. We were all white students. There were a couple amongst us mad enough (or brave enough) to join Nusas. But not me.

Steve Biko got killed. The news was told me by a black stranger on the streets of Grahamstown. He was in shock – that was clear. He said what I thought was “Steve Peacock is dead!” I tried to look sympathetic, but had no idea what he might be talking about. I only later found out that it was Steve Biko as all the headlines screamed at me – and still I was none the wiser. Who was Steve Biko? I had never heard of him.

I remember that some of us got captured by the thing. It was horrific – that was clear. We were students. Students protest. So we protested. The Minister of police at the time tried to tell everyone that he had killed himself by not eating for 8 days. So we fasted. We would meet once a day at lunch time in the office of the Philosophy Professor, an enigmatic ex-Methodist Minister by the name of James Moulder. We fasted for eight days. And that was it. There was the occasional student protest about stuff I knew nothing about. But that was it. That was my entire experience of the struggle.

Well, not entirely. Up the road from me had lived Eli and Violet Weinberg – Communists under house arrest. The Security Police would sit all night long in a car across from our house – watching the Weinberg house. My mother used to chat sometimes with Eli, over the garden fence. She found it odd that a Communist would, on a yearly basis, send us a Christmas card.

Just up the road from us in Fanny Avenue, lived a woman called Helen Joseph. My mother had a strange fear and fascination for her. She was clearly bad news, because she consorted with the natives – but at the same time, my mother admired her principles and the fact that she stood up for them.

It was only when I was a student in Cambridge that I read some of the speeches from the Treason Trial. I read the Freedom Charter. They were a revelation. They determined for me that, no matter what, I would not allow myself to be conscripted. I was lucky enough to have a wife then, who agreed with me and supported me. Together, we decided to leave the country. It was a big thing for us. But that is all it was.

So we encountered a very suspicious ANC in Lesotho. Our first contact was with someone whose name we had been given while inside the country. The reception was chilly. We decided not to push the issue. And so we were watched. Background checks, presumably, were done on us. And eventually, it became clear that we were to be regarded as comrades, rather than spies. That realisation does not give any sense of the dramatic and dynamic change which was happening inside us.

For the first time, in our lives, we were living amongst black people as equals. For the first time in our lives, we were interacting with black people at an eyeball to eyeball level. For the first time in our lives, we were not the “baas”. Lesotho provided all of us with a foretaste of what liberation might be like. What it might be like to live side by equal side. Cheek by equal jowl.

For many of us, when we found ourselves elsewhere in the world down the years, it was Lesotho that we pined for. Because it was there that we experienced what we could never experience inside South Africa itself. We experienced a unity of purpose. We experienced and we started to live a progressive, revolutionary and life-changing ideal. And once you have crossed over that bridge, you can never go back.

It was black ANC members and the people of Lesotho who gave us back the humanity that apartheid had robbed us of. And this is something I, for one, cannot ever forget. Jacob Zuma held underground meetings in our back bedroom. Tito Mboweni learned to drive in our Volkswagen Beetle. Ngoako Ramahlodi ironed his shirts in our living room. Others, with equally big names bathed in our bath; made tea from our kettle; spent the night on the lounge sofa. And then there were those people, whose real names one never knew – until they were killed in one of the two raids which the Boers (and I use that term knowingly) executed with such extraordinary cruelty in Lesotho.

I wish, passionately – I wish with every fibre of my being – that every white person in the country could have experienced what we experienced. I wish they could have learned, as we did, that white people could not lead the struggle. I wish they could have eaten from that same pot. I wish they could have drunk from that same river. Alas, it is impossible.

But you ask me today why I am still a member of the ANC and I will say this to you: I will say that it is the ANC which has led this country to a peaceful and successful democratic reality. It has done so with the utmost generosity and grace to the former oppressors. It has done so in a way which has ensured that – against all odds – the country still functions and the economy continues to grow. It has done so without violence. It has done so in a way which has been respectful of culture and heritage and origin. It has never faltered from its commitment to non-racialism and non-sexism.

You and I may criticise the ANC. That, in itself, is an amazing achievement. You and I may stare in disbelief at some of the antics of some of its members – but you cannot suggest, if you are in any way honest, that the ANC has failed. That would be not only churlish, it would be fantastically ill-informed.

The ANC has gone through some difficult times of late, but when I compare policy for policy, position for position, principle for principle, I have no doubt where my loyalties lie. And I would suggest that everyone who has come to love and honour that former “terrorist”, who made the difficult decision to opt for armed struggle – Nelson Mandela – should look beyond him to the Movement which gave him life and breath and to which he still owes allegiance. Look to the principles of the Freedom Charter. And once you have done that, take courage in the Constitution of the country, which is our joint crowning achievement.

I have been a member of the ANC for 33 of its 100 years. I have had my doubts. I have had my worries. I have had my moments of anger and even rage. But I look back on the 100 years of struggle which this movement has led and I know, beyond any doubt, that I made the right decision way back then. I look at where we are now, and where we could have been - and I know it. I look at the tremendous achievements we have made - and I know it. I look at the peace we enjoy - and I know it. I look at the greed and the gluttony and the shenanigans and the unsupportable nonsense - and I know, beyond any moment of doubt, that the spirit of the Charter and the will of the people will survive it all. We just need to make it so. Aluta Continua!

Mary and sacrifice

My child Joshua, full of wonder at today's Candlemass

Today, the church celebrates the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's an odd business, really, involving a celebration of Jewish purification rituals which take place after childbirth, otherwise called "Candlemass" in the Catholic tradition. So, because Joseph and Mary were poor, they could not afford the required lamb for sacrifice, and offered, as the Law required, two doves, instead. Mary would have handed over the doves to the priests in the Temple, and would have then had the blood of the sacrifice sprinkled over her, to make her clean. It's fairly strange to those of us who don't slaughter things anymore and certainly sounds fairly distasteful.

Blood obtained through sacrifice. Armies are inspired by it. I see virtually every day on Sky News, soldiers in Iraq dying and the newsreader dropping his or her voice appropriately at the announcement of the news of yet more deaths there. In our own country, there are many people, some of them practising Christians, who will also sacrifice for big events, such as births, deaths etc because that is what tradition requires. (I am very glad indeed, that my tradition doesn't require anything of the sort from me!)

And the Christian tradition itself, a theological breath away from Judaism, is one which is also full of blood, as it relates to sacrifice. The crucifixes in our churches, the pictures and celebrations of Saints and Martyrs often depict in very graphic detail, the suffering and sacrifice of forbears in the faith. And the honour we give to them, and the veneration we show, is very often in direct relation to the amount of blood spilt. That is not the way it is put. It is put in the language of suffering, sometimes vicarious, and sometimes direct. And most of the time it is fairly raw and meaningless, as well.

So, today we remember a mother who fulfills the fairly bloodthirsty requirements of a Law book, to purify herself - presumably in the eyes of God - but particularly in the eyes of the patriarchy, after childbirth.

And that got me remembering the encounter we had with Social Welfare, when we were finding a child to adopt, 9 or 10 years ago now. We were told to go to the Adoption home, because there was a child there which they thought was suitable. He was a lovely little boy, and, of course, Leon (my partner) fell instantaneously in love with him. His name was, let's say, "Grant". We played with "Grant", picked him up, and hugged him. He gooed back at us. And after half an hour or so, we went back home, thinking we had met our son.

On the way back, we got a phonecall from the social worker. "Sorry!", she said, she had just had another look at the file and the birth mother had said that the child could not be adopted by gay or lesbian couples. So, that was the end of that!

Some time later, when we were still up in the air, waiting for a child, the social worker was discussing what had gone wrong with "Grant", before. Basically, she hadn't bothered to read the file before sending us to meet "Grant". Then she said something else, apropos nothing at all: "Oh yes,", she said, " If I remember correctly, Grant was the product of rape".

My mind went into a whirl. I tried to imagine how one would talk to that child, who could have been my child, about that fact. And sure as nuts, if one didn't talk to him about it, he would eventually find out about it - and which would be worse?

I thought about that story today, during the reading of the Gospel. Jesus was the product of some really quite fishy circumstances. Yes, I know that the Church holds that the conception was not caused by Joseph, but rather by the Holy Spirit, but it clearly was something which was (and remained) fishy, throughout his life. John's Gospel (8:37 - 47)has a wonderful discussion recorded in it between Jesus and the Pharisees, basically on who is a true Jew. The discussion revolves around paternity and being "children of Abraham". Jesus casts some aspersions on the character of their Jewishness by saying that "You claim to be descendents of Abraham, yet you are trying to eliminate me". They answer basically in this way : "We, at least, know who our father is! We are not born of fornication!" - with the tacit - "Like you were" implied. Jesus gets extremely angry at this and tells them that their father is really the devil.

In a context where our President, Jacob Zuma has fathered 20 children (at least!), some born inside and a good deal born outside of marriage, the kind of argument between Jesus and the Pharisees seems a little archaic, to say the least. But the essential patriarchy of the narrative, and the assumptions of patriarchy, remains deeply embedded in it.(As it does, incidently, in the national debate which is taking place at the moment about Zuma!)

Mary sees her son go out on his mad mission. She watches him gather the crowds and dazzle them. She watches his serious political mistakes and clear misjudgements, his betrayal and his death. She watches as he is soon put to death and she is utterly powerless to stop it.

That is why Christians in the Catholic tradition venerate her, because she is much more than what she appears to be at face value. She represents the whole spectrum of motherhood, from the violated to those gracefully accepting the patriarchal plan. She represents mothers who are powerless to stop their children destroy themselves, before their eyes, and against their best advice. She represents them all. She represents the legitimate and the illigitimate. She represents the victims of rape and those mothers who simply cannot cope anymore and are forced to give their children up.She represents the mothers who sacrifice throughout their lives for the wellbeing of their children.

Our son Joshua's birth-mother was HIV+ when she gave up her third child for this adoption. She simply could not support any more children. Chances are, she might be dead now.

Gabriel's bother was a vegetable seller in Johannesburg. His father had done nothing to support her and was not likely to support her now that she was pregnant. She decided that her alternatives were either, to keep the child herself, (which would mean that she would have to bring him up on the steet and which she felt would be unsustainable), or to give up her job, which she could not do, if her family was to survive. The other alternative was to give him up for adoption.

Her choice was to sacrifice her child in an act, I suppose, not unlike Mary, with Jesus. She also gave up her child to his religious extremism, which ended up with him dead.

I think I understand the essence of the sacrificial, which is something Christianity thrusts upon us, as a thing we should all strive for. Sacrifice is good, we are told. Sacrifice makes things better, somehow. The question we need to ask, though, is, whether or not that is actually true? A Hindu friend of mine once rounded on me saying that the perspective of sacrifice for others was just plain madness. The only person you could sacrifice for was yourself, she said.

Sacrifice is a concept which is deeply embedded at the heart of Western Christianity. However, you don't see much evidence of it in the way the religion itself is practised. You don't see it in the well-preserved buildings; you don't see it in the lives of the priests, to any real extent; in the processions; in the meticulous ritual; in the daily praxis. Suffering is acknowledged, but it is very seldom actually experienced. And when it is experienced, it is often simple abuse, more than anything else

It seems to me, though, that it is women who experience it in our society, far more than men. They spend a great deal of time surviving the patriarchy and playing by rules they have not themselves created. I do not want to speak for them, but that is something I cannot fail to observe. How else, for instance, can one understand 20 births being caused by the same man, in an age of HIV and Aids?

That is the kind of thing, it seems to me, to which Mary points. That is her present-day sacrifice.

Does the worm inevitably turn?

Pic: A dam just outside Worcester - where the meeting was held

“To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'"
Shakespeare Henry VI Pt. 3.

I am interested to note, these days, how quiet the media is, (and more interestingly, the white public is) about Jacob Zuma. Just a matter of months ago, you could have sworn that the sky was going to fall, the earth was going to heave and we whites would all be swallowed up in the disaster which would follow the victory of the ANC at the polls and his ascendency to the Presidency.

I note with further interest, a recent newspaper report about a meeting which the leader of the opposition and Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille had with the President. She came away from it saying that it is “hard not to like him”. She went further and said that this was all the more remarkable, seeing she had run a specific and individually targeted campaign to “Stop Zuma” during the election.

I also see how silly former President Thabo Mbeki is seeming these days and I can’t help seeing some kind of vague similarity between him and “Die Groot Krokodil” – former apartheid President, PW Botha. When he, in his day, was kicked out by FW de Klerk and the new breed of Afrikaners (who were seen as crazy reformists in some circles) and the ANC, Communist Party and other Liberation movements were unbanned, Botha continued to breathe fire and brimstone, never seeing the wood, for a forest of trees.

And some whites, many whites, perhaps even the majority of whites today, are still breathing the same fire and brimstone. I hear them all the time, all around me. The other day I was in a meeting in a rural area way out of Cape Town. There were a total of five whites in a meeting of about 20 people. At lunch, being fairly early in the queue, I happened to sit at a table with no-one else at it at that point. I could not fail to notice that within a short while, all the other whites in the meeting had gathered at my table. And then it started…

They simply assumed that I was one of them and would therefore agree with their reactionary position on things in general. They spoke about “them” and they spoke about “us”. They lamented the passing of the old days. I chewed on my salad and said nothing. Not because I am shy. Not because I am slow in coming forward, but because I was totally gobsmacked!

These were four people I had never met before in my life. They work in significant, public interface related jobs. They deal with black people on a daily basis. But their minds are twisted and distorted and their understanding of South African reality is profoundly skewed. The world which they apparently live in is monochrome and diseased. And here is the tragedy – they have no idea that this is their reality!

The tragedy is that they position themselves as liberals – as people who “never supported apartheid”. Now they are merely observers. Now they are the experts on democratic government. Now they are the victims of affirmative action. They chose to ignore, I could not fail to notice, the fact that three of them were actually employed in the state itself or para-statals!

It is this killing, whinging mindset which is so totally reprehensible. Crime is “their” responsibility – and “they” don’t have a clue how to solve it, because “they” are either criminals themselves, or stupid – or, of course, more probably both.

And what does this kind of attitude do (besides making the bearer into a bitter, twisted human being)? This is what I think. I think it infects everyone – the good and the bad, the criminal and the victim, black and white. It sets up a societal dynamic which corrodes and insinuates itself into every aspect of life. It is there in the shopping centre, the gym, the Church, the street, the airport. It feeds on itself. It grows fat and it spreads. It is insidious. It is contagious.

But here is the issue. It is not just a “white” thing. There is nothing genetically involved here. It can equally become a “black” thing. In the Western Cape, it is undoubtedly now a “coloured” thing.

I see yesterday in the press, the African National Congress in the Western Cape issued an apology to the Western Cape Province, for its previous fractious, inefficient and nepotistic government. It was a government which was fairly trounced at the polls, bringing the Democratic Alliance to power again.

I think the apology is well intended and it is a desperate attempt to salvage some level of credibility. But I do not think it will work. It is not the case, after all, that previous Democratic Alliance governments were wonderful. In fact, they were disastrous. But the ANC has managed to completely alienate vast swathes of the Western Cape population – a population which is already deeply conservative, racist and divided. What the ANC has managed to do is to compound fears, prejudices and racist beliefs. It has done so by ignoring people, by marginalising people, by arrogance and by greed. This is the consequence of its actions.

So, whatever good President Zuma may achieve - through openness, or accessibility or through tight controls on corruption – it won’t matter a damn in the Western Cape in my estimation, for a very long time to come. Because the party he belongs to seems to have forgotten the primary matter of race in the equation. Race isn’t an issue which can manage itself and in this country it isn’t going to just go away. And as long as there are some South Africans who feel more important than other South Africans, we have all the ingredients we need for a profoundly depressed and diseased society.

The ANC and ruling "till the Son of Man comes"

It's strange how the wheel turns. Was it just yesterday when the South African Council of Churches was considered a hive of Communists and micreants by the government? Now I see that the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust (in the form of spokesperson Brian Sokutu) is lambasting the organisation for "conducting itself as if they own Jesus Christ".

Now this is extremely interesting. Because, of course it is true that Jesus, per se, is not ownable. And it is also true that the churches, in all their various forms, individually and collectively, have never really been terribly successful at controlling the Jesus "brand". Compare the "Jesus" brand to, say FIFA's ownership of the Soccer World Cup and the churches come in a very pale second. In fact they come in amateurish!

I remember people of my parent's generation frequently saying that this or that wouldn't happen "till Kingdom come". A circumlocution indeed, meaning "forever", or at the very least until the whole thing gets wrapped up. Jacob Zuma's choice of phrase, this time - that the ANC will be in power "until the Son of Man comes" is itself a very curious phrase, about which there is a huge amount of theological debate. Jesus uses the phrase fairly frequently in the Gospels and the Gospel writers themselves seem to assume that the reader understands what it is all about. It probably is messianic in reference, though this is not always the case. What we do know for sure is that it is a phrase meaning "this man", at its basis. And through echoes throughout the ancient world, it comes to take on more messianic meaning as well.

Zuma could have chosen the circumlocution my parents used frequently - and it would probably not have got into the press. He didn't. Unwisely, or deliberately, he chose to use the much more technical phrase about the "Son of Man". But what was the point he was trying to make. Surely the simple (albeit unlikely) one, that the ANC should be enabled to be in power forever.

Now where people start getting uncomfortable, I suspect, is when Zuma himself starts to be made into a Christ-like (or Messianic) figure. In other words, the equasion comes to be "Zuma is like Jesus". Indeed, he is sometimes described even more precisely as Jesus himself, through depicting him on the cross, as the innocent victim etc.

There is nothing especially new in this. No less a Christian personality that Canon John Collins rescued a painting by Ronnie Harrison, called Black Christ, where Jesus is portrayed with the face of Chief Albert Luthuli - also an ANC leader, and secreted it out of the country.