First, boxer turned hit-man, Mikey Schultz, testified that he had actually pulled the trigger (after several bumbling attempts), but that Glen Agliotti had nothing to do with the murder. They then “sped off” (but kept to the speed limit for fear of being caught on  a speed camera) and destroyed the murder weapon in a chop-shop before melodramatically dumping the pieces of the gun into the sea.

Then ex Transvaal rugby player turned gangster (what is it with these sportsmen – can we ask some of them to go to work on the All Blacks before the next Tri-Nations game?), Nigel McGurk, told the court of his involvement in several hits – including the Kebble hit – but again stated that Agliotti had nothing to do with the murder of Kebble. (McGurk, like Schultz, may not be a very good witness, as advocate Laurence Hodes, appearing for Agliotti, at one point told him: “You’ve got a memory like red wine, it improves over time”.)

Yet Glen Agliotti is the person standing trial for the murder of Brett Kebble, while the two people who actually now claim to have killed Kebble are state witnesses and may well obtain indemnity from prosecution if the court finds that they testified frankly and honestly about the murder.

(Advocate Gerrie Nel, the guy who secured the corruption conviction against former police chief Jackjie Selebi, was supposed to lead the prosecution in this case but Menzi Simelane decided at the last minute to replace him. Not surprisingly, the new prosecutors appeared unprepared to lead the evidence: the lead prosecutor Advocate Dan Dakana today were constantly told what to ask by his colleague Advocate Kholeka Gcaleka.)

In any event, this arrangement by the NPA to offer possible indemnity to Kebble’s killers in order to prosecute Glen Agliotti, who may or may not have been involved directly with the murder at all, does not – on the available evidence – seem very wise or fair.

Of course, the trial is far from over and it might yet transpire that Agliotti was the mastermind behind the murder of Kebble and that the NPA had every reason to cut a deal with the actual killers to get to the “big fish”. But if it is found that Agliotti was not involved or that his involvement was not central to the killing, many questions will be asked about the decision by the NPA to cut a deal with the very people who claim to have killed Kebble.

Whatever transpires, there was nothing illegal in the deal done by the NPA with Shultz and McGlurk. Section 204 of the Criminal Procedure Act allows the NPA to cut deals like this and if the judge finds that any witness has testified “frankly and honestly”, the judge may indemnify that witness from prosecution – even if the witness had incriminated him or herself in the very crime he or she is testifying about. The discretion to grant indemnity is in the hands of the judge, so if the judge finds that a witness has not been frank and honest, the judge may refuse to grant indemnity to that witness – regardless of any deal done between that witness and the NPA.

Could it be that the NPA is playing a very clever game to try and secure the conviction of all the main players in this drama? Did the NPA offer indemnity to the main killers, knowing that they would be such bad witnesses that they would not testify frankly and honestly, thus making it impossible for the judge to grant them indemnity and opening the way for their own prosecution? Probably not, because section 204(4) states that the self-incriminating evidence of a witness denied indemnity could not be used against him if that witness were to be tried later.

This means that if Schultz or McGurg is not granted indemnity and the NPA decided to prosecute them for the murder of Kebble, the NPA would not be able to rely on the evidence led in court over the past two days in which they had explained in detail how they had killed Kebble.

Unless the NPA has more evidence up its sleeve implicating Agliotti as the mastermind of the Kebble murder, the indemnity granted to all the other main players in this drama makes little sense. Unless, of course, this was done to put pressure on Agliotti to force him to testify against his old friend Jackie Selebi. “If you do not testify truthfully against Selebi and implicate him, we will prosecute you for the murder of Kebble, so you better testify.”

If this was indeed the case – and I stress, it is too early to say for certain that it was – then many questions will be asked about the manner in which the NPA acted in these matters and the wisdom of the deals it cut. Although it is very important for the state to prosecute very powerful people like Selebi on charges of corruption (after all, when the top cop in the country is corrupt, the whole criminal justice system becomes suspect), I am not sure that it would be more important than securing the conviction of the actual murderers in a murder case – even where the case is one of alleged “assisted suicide”.

Personally I will withhold judgment on this until the end of the Kebble trial. Who knows what other evidence will be led by the state to vindicate its decision to cut a deal with the very people who now claim to have pulled the trigger in order for the NPA to go after the man who was found to have bribed the top cop.

Whatever happens though, the case has already provided utterly bizarre and riveting testimony. Surely somebody at ETV (or one day when they have money again, the SABC) must be commissioning a drama series based on these events. It has everything: political intrigue; larger than life characters (some of them marginally known sportsmen), a murder victim who was alleged to have led a triple life, sex and scandal with the alleged involvement of a rent boy, and office politics in the NPA.

NOTE: Some of the details in this post were gleaned from the riveting Twitter feeds posted by the Mail & Guardian amaBhungane reporter following the Kebble trial. Find them at: http://twitter.com/amaBhungane.

Much of the discussion and questions at the hearings were completely unrelated to the Bill, suggesting that many of the MP’s had no clue about what the Bill intended to do or would in fact achieve. Many other questions and comments displayed a rather Stalinist view of democracy (in other words, it was distinctly anti-democratic). Remember, the Bill would empower heads of government departments and parastatals to classify any document as secret if that document dealt with the “national interest” and would provide for 15 year jail terms for those who leaked or received such classified information.

Some random examples from the minutes would give a taste of the tenor of the “discussion” (I use that word very generously here):

Mr Motitso said that the community where LCDD worked had stated that they did not need the media to protect them, but only the State. Its citizens voted in the government, which had the duty to protect them.

Ms Sunduza asked Ms Moore if she did not think that the Bill would protect the citizens of South Africa.

Ms Mgabadeli  noted that there was a need to protect information in order to address issues of poverty.

Ms Sunduza noted that in every democracy there was an obligation on the State to protect its people. She commented that there were many concerns that the South African media was transgressing personal and private rights in trying to secure interviews or comment. She asked that CCR comment on allegations that had been published about public figures.

The Chairperson noted his concerns, but also indicated that legal opinions were only opinions until the case was proven

Ms Sunduza noted that Government had a responsibility to ensure that human dignity was maintained, which was the principle underpinning confidentiality of medical records, banking records and the like. She also pointed out that certain cultural practices must be respected; for instance, it would be considered wrong to discuss information about an older member of a community.

Read these minutes and weep about the quality of representation in our beloved Parliament. A few random questions do come to mind though.

Why are we paying the huge salaries of 400 MP’s if so many of them are completely unprepared for an important meeting like this? Why did many MP’s, who posed questions at the hearings, seem not to have a clue what the Bill was actually about? Did they come to the meeting only for the free food (which, admittedly, is usually quite nice)?  

Why did so many committee members not understand that the Bill does not deal with the classification of private medical records, the securing of interviews by journalists, the protection of “cultural practices” like “not discussing information about an older member of the community”, or the criticism of public figures?

Surely one does not need to be a rocket scientist (or even a lawyer) to understand that the classification of documents held by the state would not address the concerns raised by many members during the hearings. One only has to read the Bill – once – to understand that. Did the honourable members of Parliament actually READ the Bill before they asked such stupid and irrelevant questions? The minutes suggests that few of them did.

Second, some members of Parliament have a very scary, paternalistic and anti-democratic view of the world and of our constitutional democracy. The view that the government or the state was the only appropriate body to protect citizens (or that citizens were so frail that we had to be protected from hearing upsetting information – say – about a cabinet Minister awarding tenders to himself) is very reminiscent of a certain kind of oppressive regime where the protection of the elite is equated with the protection of the citizens.

According to this view, ordinary citizens need to be protected from information that could upset us because such information could persuade us to vote for another party. And if that was allowed, well, we would have to ban voting and then it would be a bit more difficult to pretend we live in a democracy. 

In a constitutional democracy, a Constitution is put in place exactly to protect us FROM the state and FROM powerful private individuals and institutions who will abuse their power and will infringe on our rights if we give them half a chance. The media is left to do its work to expose the abuses of the politicians and powerful individuals and institutions.  Thinking that the state is the only legitimate body that should be “allowed” to protect citizens, is like thinking only Catholic Priests should be allowed to protect young boys and girls from being sexually molested.

Third, the notion that state secrecy is necessary to address poverty and to help ordinary citizens, is paternalistic and arrogant. It is also utter nonsense. In a democracy, ordinary citizens are in charge while politicians have to serve us, the people. We can demand things from the state and if the state fails us we can vote for another party and put them in government in the hope they will do better. But we can only do that if we have as much information about what the government of the day is up to as we can process with the limited time and capacity to our disposal.

Where the government starts thinking that it has to keep secrets to alleviate poverty, it really is saying that it wants to keep secret the extent of the poverty and the extent to which the government has failed to address that poverty. In such a world we will never know whether or how the state is stealing our money, why it has negligently caused the deaths of many babies in hospitals and how it has exacerbated poverty by using the taxpayers money to enrich themselves and their friends. Secrecy would mean that we might never get to know about tender rigging, failures to supply essential medicines to hospitals, arms deal crooks and other cock-ups about service delivery. Secrecy would make us poorer, not better off.

Lastly, every single reputable legal scholar who has commented on this Bill has indicated that at least some of its clauses will be declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Yet, the chairperson blithely rejected these opinions because they are only opinions. What is the use of a Parliamentary hearing if the opinions of experts (who are unanimous about the unconstitutionality of several parts of the Bill) can be dismissed as mere opinion and hence can be ignored. It suggests the public hearings is no more than a charade – a bit like the show trials in Stalins Russia. (I guess it is also merely opinion that the earth is round, that the earth revolves around the sun and that Father Christmas does not exist.)

To address poverty, to empower citizens, to make our democracy work, we need MORE information and LESS secrecy. Not the other way around. The fact that many of the ANC members on this committee (were they carefully selected for their subservience and lack of insight?) think otherwise suggests that they themselves think that they are not really fit to rule the country and that they are incapable of addressing the many and serious challenges we face as a nation. (These challenges include addressing widespread poverty and unemployment, the vast discrepancies between rich and poor, a failing education system, a health system that only works for the upper middle classes, and racism and discrimination that remains rife.)

One get’s the impression that this Bill is really an admission by the government of the day that it needs to hide as much of the facts about governance as it can in order to retain support of the voters.  

Surely there are still decent and level-headed members in the ANC who will put a stop to this anti-democratic and dangerous folly within their midst? Surely some ANC members will realise that the Bill will be bad for the ANC as it will diminish trust in the government it runs (and hence in the ANC), will enhance suspicion about its motives and its honesty amongst ordinary voters, will drive dissent further underground or into illegal activity and will sow the seeds of the complete deligitimisation of the ANC in the long run?

Don’t they see that support for this Bill would be as good as an admission of guilt and failure on the part of the ANC, an admission that the party is incapable of properly running the country and thus needs to hide this fact from the voters in order to remain in power (and to continue drawing the perks of government)? Surely some people have read this Bill and know just how weak and incompetent it makes the ANC look and how bad it will be for the ANC in the long run?

What if we had not been able to remember how the apartheid state oppressed and humiliated the majority of South Africans? What if we had no clue that some people in South Africa are fabulously rich while many others are desperately poor? What if we were blissfully unaware that Ministers stayed in the lap of luxury and that unscrupulous businessmen were bribing many of our politicians and parastatal bosses – sometimes by paying them rather insultingly small amounts of money or giving them small discounts on ridiculously luxurious cars?

What if we all had long since forgotten how our erstwhile lovers, spouses or work colleagues had humiliated and hurt us with their prejudice, callousness and selfishness? What if we could not remember the day that Bafana Bafana lost 3-0 to Urugay or the day one of our parents died?

Such thoughts quickly lead me to the rather startling realisation that this kind of world would not be a world worth living in. Such a world would not be inhabited by flesh and blood human beings possessing an inherent human dignity – human beings who feel pain and joy and anger, who form opinions and later change them, who take action about what they perceive to be wrong or acquiese in injustice, who hurt others and are hurt in return, who forgive or continue to hate - but rather by dull semi-automatons with few feelings and little agency. 

This insight (in as much as it is an insight at all) lies at the heart of why I believe that the proposed Protection of Information Bill – which I have already written about before - is such a fundamentally flawed and even dangerous concoction. This is also why I profoundly disagree with an article written by one Paul-Michael Keichel and published in today’s Business Day in which he dismisses concerns expressed about this deeply reactionary and oppressive Bill.

Keichel advances several arguments to justify this rather startling endorsement of a Bill that represents such a fundamental attack on the human dignity and freedom of every South African.

First, he argues that no right is absolute and that rights can be limited where ”legitimate state interests are served”, implying that a legitimate state interest would be served by a Bill that allows state officials to prevent the rest of us from ever knowing anything about any document if they believe information in that document may “harm the national interest”. Remember, the national interest is defined so broadly in section 15 of this Bill that it would include such vague and undefinable concepts as “the advancement of the public good”, the “pursuit of justice, democracy, economic growth”, (no mentioning of Miss World and World Peace) ”free trade, a stable monetary system and sound international relations”.

This is of course a ridiculous and legally untenable argument. It fails to take cognisance of the fact that when one decides whether it is justifiable to limit a right, one should do so by asking what is reasonable and justifiable in an OPEN and DEMOCRATIC society based on HUMAN DIGNITY, EQUALITY and FREEDOM. One should also ask whether the law strikes the correct balance between the legitimate state interest and the interest of every individual who is being deprived of the information. One should ask whether the limits placed on that individual’s rights are so severe that it just does not justify the law – even where a legitimate state interest is being served by that law.

Because receiving information – even information that is upsetting, or information that will make us worry or feel fearful about our government – is absolutely essential if we are to live meaningful lives as human beings with an inherent human dignity, limits of the right to receive information should be kept to an absolute minimum. In an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom we rather allow more information and more freedom – even if there might be potential harm to the state.

Only where it is absolutely necessary to keep information secret to prevent serious and irreparable damage to the state (not to be confused, of course, with the well-being of the governing party) should secrecy be allowed by the law. Information about troop movements in a time of war, for example, could be kept secret. As would information about arrangements to ensure the personal safety of the President. But information about South Africa’s secret diplomacy in Zimbabwe or information about how the NPA has abused its power in order to protect individuals to further the government’s goal of attracting more foreign investment, would not.

Second, Keichel, accuses those of us who have warned that this Bill presents a fundamental threat to democracy of “quote mining”, referring to sections of the Bill that indicate that the aim of the Bill is benign. The problem is that Keichel fails to understand that these sections are not the operational sections that would do the “legal work” – they are not the sections officials will use to decide whether to classify or not and are therefore pretty useless when one evaluates the possible application and abuse of the provisions of the Bill. 

Section 15, which provides an extraordinarily broad definition of “national interests’ and thus allows for the classification of a vast array of documents, is the section that does most of the legal work, while the clauses Keichel refers to are the nice padding added by the drafters to try and pull the wool over our eyes. But apart from Keichel, few people have been fooled by these rhetorical flourishes aimed at hiding the authoritarian tendencies of the Bill.

Lastly, Keichel has no understanding of how government or the media works and does not understand that the Bill – if passed – will necessarily have a chilling effect on freedom of expression. It is true, as Keichel claims, that journalists will only be able to be prosecuted successfully if they can be shown to possess secret documents validly so classified. But he is wrong to say this means that the provisions pose no threat to media freedom and to the protection of our human dignity.

Because the definition of what would constitute secret documents is so broad, officials will be able to classify millions of state documents perfectly legally and journalists in possession of such documents will then be sent to jail for 15-25 years. This is not the kind of law that can be justified in an open and democratic society – unless one considers North Korea, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia open and democratic societies.

But even where documents are classified wrongly, this will not be of much assistance to freedom of the media. What journalist is going to be brave or stupid enough to hold on to the document in the hope that a court will eventually find that the document was wrongly classified as secret? What happens if you are tried before the wrong judge and you then have to spend 25 years in jail – all for having your byline in the newspaper? It is therefore laughable to claim that these provisions would not prevent journalists from doing their jobs.

No, the Bill as its stands is untenable. If passed it would plunge us into a world where we will be oblivious about much that our government does. And while this might take some stress off the experience of reading the newspaper every morning, it will condemn us to half-lives: sleepwalking through a life that we do not fully inhabit and a world we do not belong in or care about. 

Those Ministers sure do not want us ordinary folk to know what is in this mysterious Handbook of theirs. Finally, after contacting DA MP, Dene Smuts, an efficient DA researcher provided me with a copy of the Handbook (and as any good PR person would, also included DA proposals for changes to the handbook).

After studying the Handbook I understand why its content is being kept half-secret. 

This is the thing: It is far from clear that claims by a spokesperson of Communications Minister, Siphiwe Nyanda, that the Ministerial Handbook had entitled the Minister to stay in the most luxurious 5 Star Hotels for 6 months at a cost of more than R500 000 could be squared with the actual provisions of the Handbook.

Why did Nyanda not stay in the house allocated to him after he became the Minister of Communications? Why was the poor man made to suffer for six months by having to stay at the most expensive Hotels in Cape Town? Personally I would not be seen dead at these terrible, inhumane, dumps and would rather sleep in the boot of my car.

Who could possible live in a ”spacious, grand and elegant suit” with “spectacular views of Table Mountain”, have access to “two heated swimming pools”, ”magnificent flood-lit tennis courts”, a yoga centre “complete with feature inspiring music, fresh flowers, candlelight, therapeutic scents and post-yoga refreshments”, an ”on-site golf practice net”, “on-site hair salon” and a ”world class holistic spa experience, where the trilogy of mind, body and spirit is nurtured”?

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Who would not rather stay in a lovely state owned house in Upper Claremont?

(By the way, it’s a good thing Minister Nyanda was not allocated a house in lower Claremont because he would surely then have been entitled not to occupy a house in such a bad neighbourhood and would have been forced to stay at the Mount Nelson for another few years, poor man.)

Well, the Mail & Guardian reported as follows on the poor Minister’s woes:

A Cabinet colleague of Nyanda told the Mail & Guardian that the reason Nyanda had apparently given for refusing to move into his Hooggelegen residence in sought-after Upper Claremont was because the public works department had not bought him a bed. A senior communications department source confirmed this explanation was also doing the rounds in the department, but added that Nyanda was allegedly also unhappy that his house did not have a view.

Although Nyanda’s spokesperson strongly denied this, the department of public works confirmed on Thursday that Nyanda hadn’t moved in because of a delay with the delivery of furniture “to accommodate him”. Public works spokesperson Thamsanqa Mchunu confirmed that Nyanda’s furniture finally arrived on February 5 and February 26.

So, one explanation for his splurge was that while the house was furnished and he could have stayed in it (sleeping on one of the other beds in the house, one presumes) or could have bought his own bed (I am told one can buy a very nice bed for about R10 000 – a bit less than the R500 000 us tax payers eventually spent on the Hotel Bills), the house needed a bed for the General to sleep on. We all need a good night’s rest, after all, and national security, the national interest and the public good required the Minister to be alert at all times in case he had to deal with yet more reports of the SABC banning an old leader of the party from its airwaves.

Another, unconfirmed, explanation was that he was not happy with the view (even though the house was in upper Claremont). The official version was that new furniture (obviously replacing existing furniture) had to be provided “to accommodate” the General. One assumes this means the General was not happy with the original furniture (which was obviously not up to the standard of the Mount Nelson) and he thus ordered new furniture which would “accommodate” him and would ensure he would stay in the style and comfort that he had become accustomed to.

This kind of thing is covered by the Ministerial Handbook, which states in chapter 2:

If, owing to exceptional circumstances, a State-owned residence is not immediately available for Members upon assumption of duty of office, expenses in connection with alternative accommodation may be debited to the State until an official residence becomes available.

The first question would be whether the absence of one bed or unhappiness with the existing furniture would constitute “exceptional circumstances” as required by the Handbook. The second question would be whether a house is “not available” if some of the furnishings in the house are not to the liking of the new resident.

Now, maybe I am just not used to the millionaire’s lifestyle, but I find it rather difficult to believe that the absence of one bed or unhappiness with the state of the existing furniture could possibly have legally constituted “exceptional circumstances” as required by the Handbook. In a country where many people live in shacks, one could hardly argue with a straight face that unhappiness with the quality of furniture constituted “exceptional circumstances” that mandated an extended stay at tax payers expense in some of South Africa’s most expensive Hotels. 

This conclusion seems irresistible if one reads the clause in conjunction with the provisions in Chapter 4 of the Handbook which stipulates what the Department of Public Works is required to provide to an official accommodated in official state housing:

The furnishing of State-owned residences is limited to the provision, and maintenance, of ordinary household furniture, mattresses, pillows, carpets, curtains, beds, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, tumble dryers and heaters, micro-wave ovens and dishwashers on request….. If a piece of furniture becomes redundant in a State-owned residence, the Office of the Member concerned should make the necessary arrangements in consultation with the Office of the Minister of Public Works to have the article/s removed and the inventories amended accordingly.

These provisions confirm that the Department would only provide the bare minimum of furniture for a house and would also – as a matter of course - replace “redundant” furniture. Such replacements are not treated as “exceptional circumstances” but are treated as ordinary day-to-day arrangements that should be made between the official and the Department. The sections in chapter 4 do not provide for a Minister to vacate his or her residence while the furniture are being replaced and it is thus not viewed as exceptional circumstances when any piece of state owned furniture is not up to the exacting standards of the relevant Minister.

More damning perhaps is that the residence was obviously “immediately available”. There it was standing – in upper Claremont nogal -  a shiny house, shimmering in the morning light, furnished and ready to be used by any good servant of the masses of our people. Although the furniture were not to the Minister’s liking, that did not make the house “not available”. It just made the house not to the taste of the Minister (whom it turned out, had rather more expensive tastes than the previous owners).

All this suggests that the Minister was not allowed by the Ministerial Handbook to stay in 5 Star Hotels for six months at a cost of  more than R500 000 and that he is legally required to pay back the money he had wasted. Maybe the Public Protector – who seems to be taking her job rather seriously and is acting without fear, favour or prejudice - should be asked to investigate this matter?

Meanwhile, the President might take up the suggestion of Cosatu’s Zwelenzima Vavi (is he finally regretting  the fact that he gunned for the abolition of the Scorpions?) to have the serious allegations of corruption levelled against Minister Nyanda investigated. Just because General Nyanda has displayed a taste for the good life and seems to have flouted the Ministerial Handbook does not, of course, mean that he is a corrupt businessman too.  But it does make one wonder.

If one is invited into somebody’s home, for example, and then spits on the floor and insults the host, this would not be illegal but most decent people would frown on such behaviour. If one’s partner informs you that he or she is HIV positive and one then tells that partner that he became HIV positive deliberately to humiliate you and one then drops that partner like a sack of potato’s, this would not be illegal either, but most decent people would find such behaviour at best to be selfish and unkind and at worst morally reprehensible.

Responding to newspaper reports that several cabinet Ministers and Deputy Ministers stayed in the most expensive and grand Hotels in Cape Town and had meals at taxpayers expense that cost more than the average monthly salary of a domestic worker – all because they could not possibly stay in the houses allocated to them by the state because (oh, the horror!) the curtains were stained, some furniture were not up to scratch or the carpets were a bit frayed – ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu blew a gasket.

The biggest culprit is of course Communications Minister, Siphiwe Nyanda, who spent more than R500 000 on luxury accommodation at Cape Town’s most expensive and luxurious Hotels after spending almost R1.1 million each on two new official vehicles that included R150 000 of “absolutely essential extras”. Nyanda also just happens to be at the centre of a fight with Cosatu’s Zwelenzima Vavi after Vavi demanded that President Jacob Zuma launch an investigation into the widely reported claims that General Nyanda was a tenderpreneur who had unlawfully enriched himself through crooked government tenders.

The Times reported this morning on Mthembu’s statement as follows:

The ruling party said in a statement issued yesterday that the ”attack” on its ministers confirmed its long-held suspicion that ANC ministers were being ”targeted”. ”There is nothing immoral, illegal or unconstitutional in public representatives staying in hotels, as this is not a breach of the Public Finance Management Act, or the provisions of the Ministerial Handbook,” said the ruling party’s spokesman, Jackson Mthembu.

It reported that since President Jacob Zuma was elected president, government departments and state-owned enterprises had blown more that R1.5-billion on cars, parties, World Cup tickets and other luxuries. But the ANC said yesterday the media was ”failing” in its work to ”properly inform” the public about laws governing accommodation of public representatives. ”In line with the Ministerial Handbook and prescripts governing public representatives, cabinet ministers, MPs MECs and MPLs are entitled to stay in hotels while their permanent accommodation is not yet ready for occupation,” Mthembu said.

Mthembu’s statement is interesting for several reasons. First he blames the media for reporting – accurately, by the way – on the exorbitant cost of these jaunts in the most luxurious and expensive Hotels which caters for millionaires and others who have stolen money from the poor. This is all part of a dark plot, you see.

How dare the media report on the facts! The bloody cheek of it! That is obviously why we need a Media Appeals Tribunal: to stop the media from reporting accurately on proven facts if those facts might embarrass the greedy and immoral Cabinet Ministers. The allegations of a plot are so ridiculous that one fears for Mr Mthembu’s sanity. The kind of paranoia he exhibits have had lesser souls locked up in an insane asylum.

Mr Mthembu actually wants us to believe that members of the media sit in dark rooms and say: “Well, our readers will not really care about this wasteful spending, but because we are all Dr Evils (with our own Mini-Me De Vos as a sidekick!) we will use these completely irrelevant facts of no interest to anyone as part of our dark conspiracy to discredit the ANC. How clever we are!”

Second, Mthembu conflates what is legal with what is moral, revealing that he utterly lacks a moral compass. Because this kind of scandalous expenditure is allowed by the Ministerial handbook, he argues, it cannot be immoral. With respect, this line of reasoning displays a warped and perverted sense of morality. To argue that everything that is legal is also moral, is to show such a breathtaking and scary lack of understanding of morality, that it makes one believe the absolute worst of those who peddle this nonsense.

In South Africa it is not illegal to be a racist in your own home. According to Mthembu’s logic that makes it perfectly moral to be a racist. It is also not illegal to call Nelson Mandela a terrorist. So I guess that would also be a perfectly moral thing to do in Mthembu’s world. It’s not illegal to be cruel to your girlfriend and to call her all kinds of names because she refuses to wash your dirty underpants, so, once again, in Mthembu’s world that behaviour would be considered completely moral.

Let us think about this some more.

Every day, millions of South Africans go hungry because they have no food to eat. Millions do not have houses to sleep in and are cold and wet. Every day thousands of South Africans do not receive the medical care they need and some of them die. Many children do not receive even the basic education that could help them to succeed in life. Although not every single person who suffers like this could be assisted immediately, the state could do much to alleviate the plight of those who are suffering by wisely and effectively using our tax money to address problems of poverty and lack of service delivery.

Yet, Ministers stay in the most luxurious Hotels (while perfectly habitable accommodation is available elsewhere at no or little cost), eat Oysters and Caviar and drink the most expensive wines, drive around in cars that cost more than most South Africans earn in a lifetime. In my universe, this seems immoral. The fact that general Nyanda and Jackson Mthembu thinks it is not immoral, I would contend, reflects rather badly on their value system and poses questions about their humanity.

Maybe they are lovely people, but on the available evidence in the public domain I would guess they are callous, selfish and greedy and that they lack the basic decency one would expect from a servant of the people voted into office to serve the vulnerable and marginalised “masses of our people” (as President Thabo Mbeki used to say while surfing the Internet).  They seem to have a completely perverted sense of morality, but like most people who lack compassion and have an overinflated sense of themselves, they do not have the necessary wisdom to reflect on who they are and how their actions might seem to appear to ordinary, decent, people.

Instead, they blame others for their bad publicity because if you are s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o (self)important, you are never to blame yourself for anything you might have done. They should be ashamed of themselves. Pity, on the available evidence, they won’t. One needs a sense of morality to ever feel ashamed about what you have done and as they equate morality with what is legal, they obviously lack this very human trait that one requires to appear decent, caring and – well – moral.

As the Marx Brothers might have put it, ‘this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don’t let that deceive you – he is a corrupt idiot.’ – Slavoj Žižek

On 30 May 2003 then President Thabo Mbeki published one of his politically and analytically most brilliant internet letters. The missive, which became one of his most famous, attempted to challenge the widespread perception that had taken hold (and remains to this day) that the government arms deal had been riddled with corruption.

The letter laid bare some of the deeply problematic ideological assumptions underlying the discourse on corruption in post apartheid South Africa. It then used this insight – which was not only spot on, but also tapped into a widespread resentment amongst members of the newly emerging post-apartheid elite – to defend what seemed to be indefensible.

(This was a tactic often used by Mbeki in his letters: correctly expose and analyze widespread racist or Afro-pessimistic assumptions, then use the insight to deny the existence of obvious problems or to discredit the valid criticism of progressive voices in our society. He used the same tactic against the so-called “ultra left” in Cosatu and the SACP and against those who pointed out the folly of his HIV stance.)

In the letter Mbeki wrote (and I am quoting at length):

In the Biblical Gospel according to St Matthew, it is said that Jesus Christ saw Simon Peter and his brother Andrew fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And He said to them: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Perhaps taking a cue from this, some in our country have appointed themselves as “fishers of corrupt men”. Our governance system is the sea in which they have chosen to exercise their craft. From everything they say, it is clear that they know it as a matter of fact that they are bound to return from their fishing expeditions with huge catches of corrupt men (and women)….

[W]e should not, and will not abandon the offensive to defeat the insulting campaigns further to entrench a stereotype that has, for centuries, sought to portray Africans as a people that is corrupt, given to telling lies, prone to theft and self-enrichment by immoral means, a people that is otherwise contemptible in the eyes of the “civilised”. We must expect that, as usual, our opponents will accuse us of “playing the race card”, to stop us confronting the challenge of racism.

The fishers of corrupt men are determined to prove everything in the anti-African stereotype. They rely on their capacity to produce long shadows and innumerable allegations around the effort of our government to supply the South African National Defence Force with the means to discharge its constitutional and continental obligations. They are confident that these long shadows and allegations without number will engulf and suffocate the forces that fought for and lead our process of democratisation, reconstruction and development. However, what our country needs is substance and not shadows, facts instead of allegations, and the eradication of racism. The struggle continues.

Re-reading this letter, it seems almost inevitable that Mbeki would have attempted at first to protect  former Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. It also explains (better than anything anyone else may have written) why he refused to believe the evidence of Selebi’s corruption provided to him by the Prosecuting Authority and even continued to claim that nobody had provided him with any information that Selebi did anything wrong – even after Vusi Pikolu had briefed him on ten different occasions on the evidence against Selebi.

For Mbeki, his (often perceptive and accurate) ideological insights often trumped the proven facts. His tragedy (if you are sympathetic to the former President) or his evil genius (if you are not) was that these general ideological insights were often brilliant and perceptive, but blinded him to the specific facts and the valid criticism of individuals and about particular problems facing the government and the country and its people.

Which brings me to the set of questions I want to try and address in this post: why did an obviously brilliant, courageous and seemingly deeply principled struggle hero like Jackie Selebi became corrupt? Why are we confronted almost every day by news of crooked cops, Home Affairs officials and tenderpreneurs? Why does it sometime feel as if we are being engulfed in a tidal wave (or is it a Tsunami) of sleaze and corruption in South Africa?

The easy answer would be to blame everything on the racist stereotypes that Mbeki rightly warned against and to deny the very facts before our eyes. But this approach would not help us to understand the root causes of the problem and neither would it help to eradicate them. Although the Afro-pessimistic master narrative which Mbeki warned us against may well have helped to exaggerate the perception of corruption in our society, it cannot explain away the problem, which is very real and very dangerous for the long term well-being of our country.

For the same reason we should reject with contempt the racist and offensive claim that there is something in the DNA of the ANC and the government it leads that predisposes it and its members to corruption.

I would like to suggest that the problem can at least partly be attributed to the nature of our transition to democracy. South Africa did not experience a true revolution, but a managed transition. The state remained in tact and the private sector was largely left untouched. During the transition period the crony capitalists and the opportunists, who had exploited the conditions created by apartheid to make vast amounts of money, went to work to capture the new elite in order to protect their own financial interests.

Thus some of the big mining houses and other big business institutions who had resolutely supported apartheid, jumped ship and went to work to woo the members of the incoming government in order to protect their profits and their vested interests. They donated money to the ANC, forged close personal ties with some ANC leaders by wining and dining them and by providing them with all kinds of material “assistance”. They claimed they were doing this out of altruism or out of a deep sense of shock about the horrors of apartheid which – so they laughably claimed – they had only belatedly become aware of.

In essence, what large sections of the big business community did, was to offer legal bribes to the ANC as a movement as well as to individual ANC members to ensure that their own financial interests would be secured. They would offer fantastic riches to a few lucky well-connected individuals through BEE deals and directorships with the understanding that there would not be any fundamental transformation of the economic system in South Africa. Workers would still work and die for a pittance, while bosses would be allowed to continue to draw huge salaries and bonuses and subvent profits to London and New York.

Was it then not all too human and understandable that some (but not all) members of the new elite – who had not benefited from these legalized bribes – began to feel hard done by and tried to do something about it? Thus the mutually beneficial relationship between crony capitalism and some members of the new elite became firmly enrenched. In the feeding frenzy that followed, the lines between the legalized bribes paid by the apartheid capitalists and the criminal bribes paid by people like Schabir Shaik and Glen Agliotti became somewhat blurred.

And as more and more people seem to get fabulously rich (perhaps not as rich as those who exploited the apartheid system) and the culture of accumulation and consumption firmly took hold, it was perhaps inevitable that somebody like poor Jackie Selebi would begin to think that there was not really anything wrong with a gangster buying your very own child a nice pair of shoes. Ironically, it is exactly against this new kind of colonization that Mbeki himself warned in his Nelson Mandela Lecture when he said:

Thus, everyday, and during every hour of our time beyond sleep, the demons embedded in our society, that stalk us at every minute, seem always to beckon each one of us towards a realizable dream and nightmare. With every passing second, they advise, with rhythmic and hypnotic regularity – get rich! get rich! get rich! And thus has it come about that many of us accept that our common natural instinct to escape from poverty is but the other side of the same coin on whose reverse side are written the words – at all costs, get rich!

Is it too late to turn around this ship? Well, extraordinary political and moral leadership is required to address the capturing of our hearts and minds by the crony capitalists. We have the perfect Constitution and the perfect laws to fight the good fight and to stop the rot, but without the political leadership there will be no success. That is why the fight raging currently inside the ANC between the tenderpreneurs and those who believe in the creation of a more fair and just society is pivotal for the long-term well-being of our society.

Sadly, because he is himself compromised and implicated in the culture of greed through his association with the fraudster Schabir Shaik, President Jacob Zuma is probably not the best leader to lead the fight. Time for a change in ANC leadership perhaps?

Not that Agliotti was a much better witness, but in as much of his testimony was corroborated by other witnesses, the court found that he had to be believed and not Selebi.

The conviction must place a question mark over the actions of former President Thabo Mbeki, who appointed Selebi, at first took steps aimed at protecting Selebi and claimed that there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Selebi even after Mbeki was briefed by the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) about the evidence against the former top cop.

Why was Mbeki so adamant that Selebi should not be arrested? Why did Mbeki ask us to trust him on Selebi and why did he maintain – in the face of overwhelming evidence provided to him –  that there was no evidence to suggest that Selebi was a crook? Why did he appoint this guy in the first place? Does it not show- at the very least –  a spectacular lack of judgment on the part of our former President?

One should also ask if Selebi would ever have been investigated and prosecuted by the Police and whether he might not have still been our Police Commissioner had it not been for the Scorpions. If the now defunct Scorpions had not taken on the case, the chances are that we would never have known that Selebi was a crook. The conviction of Selebi thus underlines the sheer folly of the decision to abolish the Scorpions.

During Selebi’s trial it emerged that several members of the Police Service tried to assist Selebi to prevent him from ever facing charges of corruption. The prosecutor was arrested and acting crime intelligence boss Mulangi Mphego intervened to secure testimony from Agliotti to weaken the case against Selebi. But it is not entirely clear to what extent the Police tried to protect a now convicted crook from prosecution.

Meanwhile Menzi Simelane has dropped all charges against Mphego relating to the Selebi case. Why was this done? Who is being protected? Can one trust Simelane to have dropped the charges purely for legally sound reasons? The conviction of Selebi suggest that the decision to drop all charges against Mphego was at best dubious.

For the conspiracy theorists, or even for those merely skeptical of the integrity of the Police, questions must now also be posed about the role of Selebi and other members of the police in the investigation into the murder of Brett Kebble. Selebi was called from the scene of the crime and it is alleged that he allowed Kebble’s car to be removed from the crime scene before the police could gather the required forensic evidence. Was Selebi protecting anyone when he allegedly did this?

At Kebble’s funeral then President Mbeki’s side kick and enforcer, Essop Pahad, bizarrely said that “what Brett said to any of us in private should remain private”. It is well-known that Kebble bankrolled the ANC and questions will inevitably be raised about the link between Selebi, Kebble, Mbeki and the financial dealings of the ANC and some of its members. Whether Selebi and others are hiding anything is, of course, unclear.

Lastly, the conviction underlines the fact that the relevant piece of legislation on corruption – passed by the ANC dominated Parliament – is excellent. Where a political will exists to investigate and prosecute corrupt individuals, whether they are politicians, state officials or private businesspeople, the legislation will provide sufficient legal backup to secure convictions. In that sense, the prosecution and conviction of Selebi is remarkable: I suspect in most countries in the world the top cop would never have been investigated and convicted of corruption – no matter how crooked he might have been.

The question does arise though, whether there is sufficient political will on the part of the Zuma administration to ensure that this act will be utilized properly to help stamp out corruption in both the public and the private sector. Given the fact that President Zuma himself only escaped prosecution for corruption through the shenanigans of the NPA, this is sadly far from clear.

Political will is key to fighting corruption. If we see more high profile cases of private and public corruption brought to court, we will know the Zuma administration is serious about stamping out corruption. If we do not, we will know that it is rotten to the core.

Boy, was I duped or what?

Yesterday it was reported that Ashley Smith, a reporter for the Cape Argus until April 2006, “came clean” in an affidavit submitted to the National Prosecuting Authority, alleging that he had been bribed by Rasool. Smith claimed under oath that he and then political editor of the Cape Argus Joseph Aranes used their positions as full-time staff members on the Cape Argus to assist Rasool’s campaign against political rivals, and that they received money from a public relations company that obtained provincial government contracts handed out by Rasool’s office without using the tender route.

Rasool, who is supposed to take up the position as South Africa’s Ambassador in Washington, issued a tepid denial of these allegations, saying that the allegations are old hat and had been dealt with before. But Smiths allegations are backed up by Rasools enemies in the ANC who have made similar allegations against Rasool in the past.

If the allegations are true, Smith, Aranes and Rasool could all face conviction for corruption in terms of the excellent Prevention and Combatting of Corrupt Activities Act 12 of 2004. If convicted, they could face heavy sentences, as the High Court is empowered by the Act to impose a sentence of up to life imprisonment for contraventions of the relevant sections of the Act.

Section 3 of the Act – which creates the general crime of corruption – is rather broad and has two components.

First, it targets any person who gives or accepts “directly or indirectly” a “gratification”, which is defined as including any money, gift, contract, benefit, position, employment or service. If it can be proven that Rasool had arranged for the PR company to receive contracts from the Premiers office (as alleged by Smith), this would satisfy the first part of the test for corruption as not only direct payments or benefits are targeted. Where a front company is used to channel the payment of money or the rewarding of contracts (as is alleged in this case), that will still fall squarely within the definition of corruption set out in section 3 of the Act.

Second, the “gratification” had to be given or received with the intention to achieve any number of specific goals. Where a gratification is given or received with the understanding that the person who received it would act in an illegal, dishonest, unauthorised, incomplete, or biased way, or that would amount to an abuse of a position of authority or that would amount to any other unauthorised or improper inducement to do or not to do anything, the parties will be guilty of corruption.

If the allegations by Smith are proven to be true, this second requirement would also clearly be met as the journalists would have acted in a dishonest, unauthorized, biased and improper manner by writing bad things about Rasools enemies within the ANC and good things about Rasool while they were supposed to report fairly and honestly about politics in the Western Cape.

Section 24 of the Act further makes it easier for the state to prove its case. As long as it can prove that a “gratification” was given or received, it could be assumed that this was given or received with the intention to corrupt – unless the accused can produce evidence that raises reasonable doubt about this link.

A prosecutor would therefore have to show that the PR company did indeed receive contracts from Rasool’s office and that the journalists did indeed write stories favorable to Rasool and detrimental to his enemies in the ANC. Once this has been done, Rasool and the journalists would have to provide evidence that cast reasonable doubt on the link between these two events.

Two issues arise. First, given the fact that these explosive allegations have now been made under oath, will the police and the prosecuting authority investigate the matter properly and will they bring charges against Rasool and the journalists – despite the fact that Rasool is a well-connected member of the ANC and Ambassador designate to Washington? Or will Menzi Simelane strike again and make sure that these rather troubling allegations go away?

Second, can Rasool plausibly take up his position as Ambassador to Washington with these very serious charges of corruption hanging over his head? Rasool has, of course, not been convicted of any crime. Perhaps these allegations are all part of a dark plot by his enemies. But it seems to me untenable that he could properly represent South Africa in the USA while this dark cloud hangs over his head.

Surely the best way to deal with these allegations would be to investigate them properly and – if they seem plausible – to prosecute Rasool and the journalists who will then either be convicted or have their names cleared by the court. If Rasool is innocent, he might also want to explore the possibility of suing the Cape Argus and Smith for defamation in order to clear his name.

In the absence of such steps, Rasool would clearly not be fit to become the South African Ambassador in Washington. If President Zuma is serious about corruption he will have to withdraw the appointment until the matter has been cleared up. Any bets on whether this will happen? I guess it will depend on internal ANC politics, rather than on whether the President is committed to stamping out corruption or not.

It has been several months since the Judge President has done anything controversial, reactionary, ethically dubious or even newsworthy. Meanwhile, Ngobeni has seemingly been too busy giving the Minister of Defense bad legal advice to call me a racist and a pervert or to utter spluttering denials about ever having been disbarred as a lawyer in the USA.

Oh, how I miss our very own Tweedledum and Tweedledee!

Of course, several legal challenges are in the pipeline to try and overturn the absurd and illogical decision on Hlophe by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) last year, so we might still hear from Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the next few months. The JSC, as you might recall, decided to avoid any investigation of the complaint lodged by the judges of the Constitutional Court against the Judge President, because such an investigation would have forced the JSC to decide whether Hlophe or the judges of the Constitutional Court were lying through his/their teeth. If there was one thing the JSC wanted to avoid at all cost, it was discovering the truth.

Nevertheless, now that the dust has settled somewhat, it might be appropriate to reflect on why the JSC made their patently absurd and indefensible decision and why the case seemed to have split the legal community, largely along racial lines.

The first question seems the easiest to answer. A political decision was taken by the Zuma administration to protect Judge President Hlophe – perhaps because he was accused of trying to protect Zuma and he was being rewarded for his zeal and initiative in protecting the Dear Leader from criminal prosecution. (Not that it was necessary, what with the National Prosecuting Authority doing the protection.) The JSC was thus loaded with pro-Hlophe supporters by President Zuma, which enabled a majority of its members to avoid making a finding that either Hlophe or the judges of the Constitutional Court were liars.

The second question is more perplexing. Why did seemingly good people (I am not including the opportunists, charlatans and crooks who came out to bat for the Judge President) keep quiet or offered support for the Judge President? Why were they almost exclusively black, while those who insisted that the truth be determined were almost exclusively white? Why did the tactic deployed by Hlophe and his storm troops to racialise the issue (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of accusers were black themselves) succeed so brilliantly?

I suspect the answer to this question has much to do with the lack of racial transformation of the legal profession and the consequences of a particular legal culture that exacerbate racial divisions. More than 80% of practicing advocates and attorneys are still white (and in Cape Town this percentage must surely be much higher). Moreover, lawyers (of all races – Seth Nthai hi there!) are notoriously egotistical and arrogant and ready to gossip about, and belittle, their fellow lawyers. They love to snigger about the stupidity and ignorance of colleagues and of judges and often do so in a sneering and sarcastic manner.

In the absence of a fundamental change in briefing patterns, many white attorneys still only brief white advocates with whom they grew up, went to university with or drink and play golf with. Some of these advocates are brilliant and some are rather mediocre but in a kind of reverse affirmative action the mediocrity is overlooked while the potential brilliance of young black advocates are sneered at or dismissed. This is unjust and scandalous, but because of the way in which the legal profession is structured it is not easy to change.

Let’s face it, if you are a brilliant young black lawyer starting at the Cape Bar, your chances of being briefed by anyone but the state lawyers is rather slim – unless you have demonstrated that you are a good coconut and is white in all but skin colour. Judge President Hlophe did not create the racial divisions in the legal profession – he merely skillfully exploited it for his own selfish gain.

In this kind of atmosphere, it was very easy for Judge President Hlophe and his cronies to appeal to racial solidarity or to silence some black members of the legal profession, who feared they might be associated with the racists and the anti-transformationists in the legal profession or might alienate their potentially biggest client – the state. Support for a full investigation of Hlophe was seen as support for the sneering and arrogant white lawyers who make cynical jokes about the intellect and ability of even the brightest and most brilliant black advocates and judges.

One therefore had to be exceedingly brave and strong (or perhaps foolhardy) to be a black lawyer supporting a full investigation of the serious allegations against Hlophe.

So, while I have been a sometimes harsh critic of Judge President Hlophe and his cronies, I would argue that the disastrous turn of events, which led to the failure of the JSC to investigate the various allegations at all, can at least partly be blamed on white lawyers who have not always shown the necessary understanding for the urgent need to transform the legal profession. Is the legal profession doing enough to change briefing patterns and to transform the legal profession? Surely not. And if they do not take drastic action on this front, the legitimacy of the legal system and of the judiciary will be further imperiled.

When a white judge makes scandalously patronizing statements about black judges or lawyers, white lawyers and judges must speak out. And when a black judge acts in a way that suggests he or she is a crook, black lawyers must insist that he or she should be fully investigated.

But at the moment this does not seem to happen as racial solidarity seems to trump everything. The more transformed the legal profession becomes, the easier it would become for the good men and women of all races to stand up and insist on the upholding of high ethical standards in the profession and in the judiciary.

When this happens, a lawyer or a judge who is accused of taking a bribe, of drinking one cup of “tea” too many, or of scandalously overcharging clients will not be able to garner support from a block of lawyers merely because he or she belongs to the same race.

Until then we will have to cope with the antics of the Tweedledums and Tweedledees of this world.

The petrol attendant – distinguished grey beard, high cheekbones, yellow Makarapa of the petrol company on his head – bantered with her about Bafana’s chances. Attending to her car, he started singing the national anthem in a loud but beautiful voice. The old women joined in, her thin but solid voice harmonizing with his deep baritone. They sang the whole anthem, including those bits about “die blou van onse hemel” and “let us live and strive for freedom in South Africa our land”.

Everybody stared and smiled and nodded to each other. Some clapped and whistled. I wiped away the tears and had one of those incredibly naive and romantic but rather trite thoughts: Why can’t we live like this all the time?

Since then, Bafana had lost disastrously and won proudly and had crashed out of the World Cup. But I am still wondering about that moment and what to make of all this emotion around the World Cup. Does Zackie Achmat have a point when he says he refuses to wave the South African (or any other country’s) flag because it is inherently nationalistic and problematic? On the Writing Rights Blog he writes:

Racism, chauvinism and nationalism have always been part of the seedy underbelly of sport. I have flown flags in the past. They were flags that expressed my political views: the ANC flag symbolising the Freedom Charter when the party was banned; the red flag of socialism and the rainbow flag to signify equality for all. Today, World Cup nationalism in South Africa hides our xenophobia and it pretends that racial and class tensions do not exist.

Zackie is, of course, correct when he warns that the World Cup nationalism won’t erase the tensions, contradictions and injustices in our society. Nationalism, even the relatively benign nationalism associated with hosting the World Cup, may well be used to paper over the cracks and may allow some people to pretend that racism, sexism, poverty, corruption, greed and the arrogance of the rich do not exist in our country.

Holding hands and singing Kumbaja (or the national anthem) while cheering on 22 players on a pitch chasing a round ball will not end the deeply ingrained distrust, the pockets of arrogance and prejudice, the deep divisions based on class, race and ethnicity that exist in our land.

And yet…. and yet… I want to hang on to the magic of that moment at the petrol station.

This does not mean I wish to give the crooks at Fifa a free ride. It does not mean I want to stop being critical about what is wrong in our society and that I do not believe one must continue to look for ways to address those wrongs. Neither does it mean that I want to forget the past or that I believe that it is really possible to engage in constructive dialogue with people whose unacknowledged racism and colonial attitudes I find very difficult not to name – even when I am accused of “labeling” people.

I want to hang on to that magic moment because it suggests to me that apart from the political mobilization, the resistance and the day to day struggle of individuals and organisations, something else can also make a difference (no matter how small) and can also contribute to the creation of a better and more just society.

The World Cup nationalism, so it seems to me, has produced that “something else”. It has allowed some people from different races and classes and ideological persuasions to see each other as human beings and to connect with each other as human beings – not as representatives of their race or class. We are all people who eat and sleep, who love and hate and even have sex, who laugh and cry, who want to be accepted and want to be loved. Yes, we are not all the same. Our material interests and cultural assumptions often differ. But we have much in common, too, merely because we are human beings.

It’s probably naive to think that moments like this will change racists into non-racial social justice campaigners, that it will change greedy and corrupt politicians into upright citizens who care about the vulnerable and the marginalized. But maybe a few people will remember moments like the one I experienced last week at the petrol station the next time they want to make sweeping generalizations about people because they happen to be white or black, rich or poor (I am an optimist, after all, as well as an incorrigible romantic).

Hey, it’s not much, but its enough for me.