Constitutional Hill

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The plot to spite our President

Sep 8th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
51 comments

I have been wondering whether Blade Nzimande and Gwede Mantashe might be fans of Nirvana, the rock band headed by Kurt Cobain (until Cobain tragically killed himself in 1994). On their Nevermind album — perhaps channelling the cult writer William Burroughs who famously remarked that “sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts” — they sing that: ”Just because you’r paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you”.

Even when people sound paranoid and express paranoid thoughts this does not mean that they have nothing to be paranoid about. So maybe we should take the recent mutterings of these two gentlemen seriously and explore the possibility that there has been a plot to discredit the President and the nominee for the highest judicial post in the land.

Consider the charges.

First, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told the Food and Allied Workers Union conference on Tuesday that criticism over justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s “nomination” as Chief Justice “is a proxy war on the President… It doesn’t matter who would have been appointed, the decision would have been opposed by an alliance of forces seeking to defeat the ANC”.

Then SACP General Secretary Blade Nzimande said in a statement on Wednesday that there was a “liberal agenda” to unfairly criticise the liberation movement and the government.

The most concerted expression of this offensive has been around the president’s [Jacob Zuma] nomination of Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to be the Chief Justice…. No sooner had the president made this nomination that a well co-ordinated and orchestrated campaign was launched to try and discredit Justice Mogoeng… to spite the authority of a president whose party was voted for by the overwhelming majority of our people.

I have been wondering how this “campaign” against the President’s choice for Chief Justice might have been “co-ordinated” and “orchestrated” in order to “spite the authority” of the President and the ANC he leads and how it might have turned progressive organisations such as Cosatu (which is in an alliance with the ANC) and the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) into liberal plotters and handmaidens of the “counter-revolutionary forces” represented by the unpatriotic DA. And how did they manage to co-ordinate their “campaign” with other progressive civil society organisations such as Section 27 and Sonke Gender Justice?

As a fan of Nirvana (and, I have to admit, of William Burroughs), I have been wondering whether Mantashe’s and Nzimande’s paranoia might not have been justified. After all, just because the possibility of a plot seems improbable does not mean it is not true. I have been told — can you believe it — that there might even have been a plot long ago (involving Nzimande and Mantashe themselves) to unseat then President Thabo Mbeki as President of the ANC and the country, but I am sure the people who told me this were lying. In this spirit of constructive inquisitiveness, I have been trying to reconstruct events which might have led to this alleged co-ordinated and orchestrated “campaign” against the “nomination” of Justice Mogoeng as Chief Justice.

Of course, all these organisations would have had to have shown extraordinary foresight, cunning and meticulousness to pull off their devious plan. Foreseeing that Jacob Zuma would one day become President of South Africa (I wonder how they knew this?!) and further foreseeing that he would then have wanted to appoint justice Mogoeng Mogoeng as Chief Justice, these organisations would have been required to put into place the building blocks of their campaign more than 10 years ago.

First, in order to fabricate supposed “evidence” of Justice Mogoeng’s unsuitability for high office, they would have had to fabricate several judgments supposedly authored by Justice Mogoeng and would then have had to sneak these supposed “judgments” into various legal databases. Knowing how damaging it might be to a nominee if it was ever revealed that he was ignorant of the post-constitutional law on sentencing regarding rape matters and if it was shown that he was a homophobic patriarch soft on child rapists, they would have included in these “judgments” arguments often used by patriarchs and sexists to minimise the seriousness of the effects of rape on women and children.

(Personally, I believe the plotters might have gone too far when they authored that judgement in which the nominee supposedly argued that a child rapist deserved a lesser sentence because he showed “tenderness” to the victim. I mean, who is going to believe such nonsense?)

But they would have had to be careful: if these cases were reported in the law reports, a cursory search — perhaps by members of that august body, the Judicial Service Commission – might have revealed these judgments before Justice Mogoeng had been elevated to the Constitutional Court. Cunningly they would then have had to ensure that the judgements were never reported, probably relying on the discretion of the editors of the law reports who (being counter-revolutionaries themselves) might have had to be roped in to ensure that the supposed “judgments” of the nominee did not become widely known.

Then, after President Zuma’s announcement of the nomination, the plotters would have all had to meet in secret at an undisclosed venue (maybe a bunker built by the CIA under COSATU headquarters – I, for one, would put nothing past those torturers wrapped in the American flag) to co-ordinate and orchestrate their vicious onslaught on the President’s nominee. Wearing dark glasses and false moustaches (despite the protestations of the women in the group who felt that wearing false moustaches did nothing for their gender credentials), they would all then have had to sneak into the secret venue to decide how the planted and completely fabricated judgments of the nominee could be made known to the wider public to cause the greatest embarrassment to the President and the nominee.

They would also have had to had luck on their side. They would have had to find some schoolboys who were prepared to fabricate a sexually suggestive picture of their headmaster and deputy headmaster and would have had to persuade the deputy headmaster to sue the schoolboys for defamation, prodding him to take his case all the way to the Constitutional Court. I am still not sure how they might have gotten to judges Froneman and Cameron to persuade them to write a separate concurring judgment “at the last minute” in the case in which they found that it was never per se defamatory to imply that somebody was gay.

I am also still at a loss about how they might have been able to influence justice Mogoeng – somebody in which the President has placed his trust and therefore not a man that would be easily persuaded by plotters to refuse to sign on to this judgments and then (on top of that) to refuse to give reasons for his dissent. Maybe they cunningly organised a three day prayer meeting which the nominee was persuaded to attend just when he was expected to write a dissenting judgment in this case.

We do know that people like Zackie Achmat and Zwelenzima Vavi are quite astute political strategists (and it might surely have helped that Zackie is reported to know justice Edwin Cameron), but how they might have managed to convince a man of the intellectual calibre and possessing the high morals and principles of the nominee to dissent from a judgment that seemed entirely uncontroversial is still beyond my comprehension. I must say, if this is what happened, I have new respect for the ability of the plotters to orchestrate a completely baseless and vicious campaign against the unblemished record of an innocent man.

The rest must have been easy. After all, the media will do anything to discredit our President as they all hate the President, probably because he is a more successful lover than any of the editors of the big newspapers and a far better singer and dancer. Thus, once the fabricated judgments of the past came to light and once cheeky academics started asking questions about the failure of the nominee to give reasons for his seemingly homophobic views, the job was as good as done.

(By the way, I can neither confirm or deny that I have been involved in this alleged plot. Neither can I confirm or deny that I sit up late at night while listening to recordings of passages of the Constitution – played backward — while fondling my false moustache in the manner of Dr Evil in Austin Powers movies and sticking pins into a voodoo doll of our President, all while giggling hysterically.)

Another thing that I am not yet at liberty to explain is why justice Mogoeng would not have exposed this plot by denying that he ever authored the incriminating judgments fabricated by his tormentors. Surely it is unthinkable that he is in on the plot as well? Maybe he just lost track of all the judgments he had authored or signed on to as a judge, having authored so many judgments in his day as Judge President of the North West that it would have been impossible to keep track of all of them.

But luckily it all worked out well for him — or so it seems.

If one were to take the paranoia of Mr Mantashe and Dr Nzimande seriously, one will have to admit that this was a cunning and devious plan executed with military precision. Well co-ordinated and orchestrated indeed. But the plotters obviously had failed to take account of the fact that Dr Nzimande and Mr Mantashe (old plotters both), were going to be on to them and that soon enough they would be exposed by these gentlemen as the evil plotters they have always been. Now the plot has completely backfired and both the President and the nominee in all likelihood will come out of the events smelling like roses.

Which just goes to show: in politics it always pays to be paranoid. One can never be too careful because enemies lurk around every corner and will go to the most absurd lengths to discredit you if you happen to be the President (or one of his henchmen) of a mid-sized developing country and you happen to be tormented by dreams in which speeches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth recur:

Whence is that knocking?—
How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Nuts!

Jan 20th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
39 comments

Ever since I read the claim by the publishers of the bestselling book Spud that it “has changed the landscape of fiction publishing in South Africa” and has drawn “over half a million” young South Africans to books and reading, I have been toying with the idea of writing my own novel. (Yes, I have already written a minor novel — in Afrikaans, about a Vlakplaas hit squad commander — but that was many years ago, it was not very good, and it only sold a few thousand copies.)

Imagine all the money that is to be made from a bestseller like Spud. A book that many white people (nostalgic for a world that never was but which they firmly believe did exist) would want to buy. If I play my cards right, I might even be able to afford a Breitling watch after the profits start rolling in — without ever having obtained a government tender or without personally knowing anyone whose surname is Zuma. Sure would beat working for a University Professor’s salary.

The problem is that I did not go to a posh private school called Michaelhouse, so I do not have the same raw material that Van de Ruit had to draw on. I am also told that I do not have the same unthreatening and soothing middle class “wit” which has made Spud so loved and much revered amongst people who do not normally read books. (Those people who usually only read bank statements and the instruction manuals of their new cell phones.)

I went to Pietersburg Hoerskool, an apartheid-era bastion of Christian Nationalist education where we were taught to believe in ourselves, believe in our Volk and — above everything else — believe in God (as Doktor DF Malan once said). God was a big thing at Pietersburg Hoerskool, but obviously not as big a thing as The Headmaster, who was to be loved and feared and obeyed at all times. Even when The Headmaster warned us about the dangers of listening to Rolling Stones records backwards (he said one would start smoking dope and before one knew it one would turn into a Communist or a moffie or — one never knew — a Black!) and we could not figure out how to play those damn records backwards, we still feared —  if not loved — The Bloody Headmaster.

We were also taught to fear that God that we had to believe in, but not to the same degree and with the intensity with which we were told to fear Catholics, Communists and black people, who — we were told — wanted to undermine our Christian way of life by forcing us to read novels called Black Beauty or White Mischief and by forcing ungodly concepts like human rights down our throats. (Later I discovered that having a human right forced down your throat was rather exciting, but that is a story for another day.)

I am not sure I will be able to pull this off, though. Writing an unthreatening and loveable book about white, middle class life during apartheid South Africa, a book in which no one gets harmed, only moffies and lesbians are made fun of and all the people in authority — even teachers — are more or less decent, would probably be beyond my powers of invention. It would have to be a tour de force of inventive fiction – Lord of the Rings meets One Hundred Years of Solitude, with a dash of Dead Poets Society.

In any case, to make money from a South African novel is not that easy. One can make money writing a book containing uplifting spiritual messages to guide todays Christian through the minefield of temptation and sin, or perhaps by writing a best selling cook book featuring the boerewors recipes of Steve Hofmeyer and Nataniel, but Spud is a phenomenon that will be difficult to emulate.

I would have to write a fantasy about how life at Pietersburg Hoerskool might have been if apartheid had never happened, a fantasy that would have to pretend that many of the teachers there were actually not psychotic bigots with disturbingly perverse and violent tendencies with a very nasty streak of racism, sexism and homophobia mixed in. (Either that or my book would have to pretend that in those days we had lived in Australia or that most white people were not disgusting racists who were getting rich as fast as they could while exploiting black labour.)

But how could one possibly write a funny novel about life at Pietersburg Hoerskool, a book that was filled with nostalgia for a world that never existed but that most of us white South Africans wished existed and even remember existing? How would I be able to write a book which — like Spud – would make people who lived an upper middle class existence at the end of apartheid feel comfortable, that would soothe them and would tell them: “We whites were not really all that bad back in the day”? It would have to be a nice, undemanding and unthreatening middlebrow book that functioned as mass therapy for white guilt.

It does not seem possible to write such a book about my school days. I would have to write an altogether different book. I would have called my book Moffie, but there is already a novel with that name, so I would have to settle for Nuts!

In my book one of the characters I would have to include would be the ”flawed but funny” math teacher called Koorspen (named thus because of his trademark red ties and the red marks left on one’s buttocks after one of his sadistic caning sprees). We would all laugh at Koorspen because on Monday mornings he would come to class to regale us with stories about how he and some of the selected matric boys from the boarding school had gone out on Saturday night to do some “Kaffir-bashing”. This would have to be handled carefully so that everyone would know that I am not endorsing the racism of good old Koorspen. After all, not everybody knows that an author never shares or endorses the prejudices of his or her characters. It could be hilarious, don’t you think?

(The fact that this really happened at Pietersburg Hoerskool, would be a bonus because if some mother grundy — taking politically correctness too far — would then complain about me endorsing Koorspen’s racism, I would be able to argue that I was merely depicting events and the fact that I made Koorspen into a loveable rogue does not mean that I endorse his “Kaffir-bashing” at all.)

Ha ha!

In my book, Koorspen would teach me many life lessons — including the lesson that violence trumps reason. In fact, he would teach me that violence trumps everything else in life —  including compassion, intelligence, wit and critical thinking. This he would do by calling me to the black board and demanding that I complete the math problems written down there. If I made a mistake, he would take out his mini-cricket bat and start assaulting me. I am sure that this scene could be played for laughs — especially if I am made to flap about enough so that it could be made clear that I am a bit of a poofter. I would be screaming and shouting with my arms effeminately flapping while the blood oozes from my trousers.

This could become even more hilarious if I included that scene where Koorspen assaulted the whole class one day because we were making a racket while he was out training the first rugby team when he was supposed to teach us math. Asking the girls to lift up their dresses so that he could hit them with that cricket bat on their school issue green panties would really be hilarious. A few old men in raincoats would also love that scene, I am sure.

Of course, I would have to include black people in the book. I know, there would be a domestic worker who would make an appearance as the servant who make my bed, clean my shoes and cook dinner for the family. Her name would never be mentioned but she would be funny too because she would tell stories in a heavy accent about the Tokkelosh and will explain why her bed was on all those bricks. Ha ha. Black people are funny, hey? When my father fires her for entertaining her husband in her room and she  weeps and begs for her job back, that could be played for laughs too. You know, black people can be so funny when they are distressed and when they plead with the white baas and wail and say a few words in Xhosa or Sotho or whatever language they speak — just ask Leon Schuster.

Oh, and there would have to be another hilarious character called Andre. Quite an effeminate guy who does art and takes music lessons, talks with a lisp and does not play rugby. He walks funny too, ha ha! Obviously I am scared of Andre because I would not want other people to think he is my friend. But after school, Andre would come to my house and lend me his Barbara Streisand records so that I can tape them on my TDK tape deck. Very heartwarming, these scenes would be. One of the funniest scenes would be the one where I find Andre hanging in the storeroom after Koorspen had told him that he should stop behaving like a moffie and did he really wanted to be a girl, or why else was he behaving like one. I am not sure yet how I can make that scene funny, but I am working on it.

On second thoughts, I am not sure Nuts! is going to sell as many copies as Spud. I fear it might be too much like the real world (too much like life really was during apartheid) and not enough like a fantasy. A bit of a downer, as the kids say these days. These days white South Africans do not want to be reminded of how they lived during apartheid and what kind of people they had been and, to some extent, some of them continue to be.

I am not sure that the hanging scene is going to be funny either, but here is an idea. Maybe if I take some liberties with the truth and dress Andre up in a dress and fishnet stockings, it might play for laughs. Hanging there from the rafters with his school tie around his neck wearing a dress, now THAT could get middle class South Africans laughing — just like they laughed about Spud and the Guv’s antics.

What do you think: will I be able to pull it off? And if I do, will I not run the risk of being lambasted by someone like Ronald Suresh Roberts for glorifying apartheid, for endorsing racism, and being, well — the worst insult of all — a liberal?

On “Spud”, laughter and “political correctness”

Jan 13th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
91 comments

Imagine the following scenario. Two decades from now an author writes a book taking an affectionate look at life during the wonderful but crazy days of farm invasions in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The book, set at a boys boarding school, is then made into a movie and many people — especially supporters of Robert Mugabe and those who yearn for the good old days when whites who stole the land were put in their place — find the movie hilarious. The main character — a young sensitive black pupil entering puberty — is a bit timid, but he gets the (black) girl in the end and everyone can cheer.

There is a scene in the movie where a kind hearted Zanu-PF supporting teacher (played perhaps by an older, slightly washed up, Denzel Washington) chuckles fondly about these crazy whites who cling on to their farms so stubbornly. Why did they not all go back to Britain or Somerset West where they come from? Then he states that he has absolutely nothing against white farm owners or their wives. In fact, he says, he would like to give all those farmer’s wives a good “rogering”. The vast majority of the people in the Harare cinema laughs hysterically at this “joke”.

Let us assume in two decades Zimbabwe is a slightly more sane country, yet the few white farmers and their wives who remain in the country live in fear because every year a few white farmers are killed and a few of their wives are raped by Zanu-PF supporters who yearn for the days when land invasions were officially supported and when good people could still laugh at the stupid whites without the politically correct thought police making a fuss about it.

Of course, neither the book nor the movie would make similar jokes about MDC supporters who used to be tortured and murdered, because now twenty years later the MDC is the majority party in the government.

The same scenario could be imagined about a book and a movie fondly recalling the nineteen seventies in apartheid South Africa, but only, of course, with the white schoolmaster making jokes about “rogering” black domestic workers.

Now I wonder how many of the people who have dismissed the letter of Justice Edwin Cameron in which he objects to the casual homophobia in the movie “Spud”, would have argued that white Zimbabweans (or black South Africans in the other scenario) should get over themselves? How many would have argued that this complaint about the racism in the movie was “politically correctness gone mad”? Maybe there are many principled people out there who would have exactly the same reaction.

But I suspect not.

And why would those who might have complained abut the racism in the movie scenario sketched above be more upset about the racism in my imaginary movies than about the homophobia in “Spud”? One answer would be that they would not find the scenes in my movie funny because they would argue that the movie is racist, that instead of leaving open the possibility of us laughing at racism, the movie actually depicts and endorses that racism by laughing with the racists at the victims of the racism.

But why would they then be perfectly happy to laugh at the homophobia in “Spud”?

In other words, why are so many South Africans prepared to laugh at depictions of homophobia in which the “joke” consists of merely repeating long held and tired beliefs, prejudices and assumptions about the group who forms the but of the “joke” in question? Could it be because the joke is funny to them, not because it is daring, surprising or subversive, but because it is comforting. It reaffirms that their world view — in which lesbians can be “rogered” to make them straight and effeminate gay men can be ridiculed — is still alive and well and that this world view is the dominant one. It comforts them and assures them that they are ok and that they are not prejudiced. It is a kind of comforting and nostalgic laugh about how some things in the world have at least not changed. At least we can still laugh at the moffies.

Does this knee-jerk rejection to Justice Cameron’s letter not reflect an attempt at protecting and safeguarding the prejudices and hatreds of the majority from the so called “politically correct” thought police? And is this reaction to “political correctness” not an attempt to avoid being reminded that being cruel and demeaning to people whom one have always been cruel and demeaning to and who are still raped and murdered in South Africa because they are gay or lesbian is only funny if one endorses the hatred and prejudice which is the cause of so much of the suffering of gays and lesbians who are not as lucky as somebody like myself who are relatively safe from attack and of sufficient status to be mostly left alone?

Now some would argue that this is ridiculous because if we cannot make jokes about someone who happens to be gay or straight, a man or a woman, black or white, what would we laugh about. This is not a good argument. Of course one can make very funny jokes about a gay man or a lesbian. But such a joke will have to surprise or shock or challenge our preconceived ideas or prejudices. Such a joke will at least allow the possibility that we are not merely laughing at the gay man or lesbian, but also, perhaps, at the absurdity of the whole discourse of sexual orientation or the absurdity of the stereotypes that are still so deeply entrenched in our society. Such a joke need not be “kind” to the gay man or lesbian, but it cannot merely describe and endorse the prejudices which every year still lead to the assault, rape and murder of gay men and lesbians.

Now, does this mean that we should ban such jokes? Personally, I would be vehemently opposed to such an approach. This is also not what Justice Cameron had in mind. He did not request that the movie be censored or banned. Unlike a certain City of Cape Town councillor who requested me to delete certain sections of my Blog because it hurt his ego, neither Justice Cameron in his letter, nor myself has ever advocated censorship — even when the feelings or ego’s of a whole group of marginalised and vilified people are deeply affected. If someone wants to make a movie with racist, homophobic or sexist jokes, let them do that.

But let us have a conversation about it. Let those of use who bear the brunt of the racism and homophobia perpetuated in such movies point out our discomfort. Let us hear how the writer of the book or the producer of the movie justifies these scenes. Let us debate the issue and let us not dismiss concerns with heartless and bullying phrases like: “Get over it!” (It is a bit like someone telling a Holocaust survivor reflecting on anti-semitism to: “Just to get over it”. It might shut the other person up but it is not honest and it does not embrace the principle of free speech and robust debate.)

Let us reflect on our own knee-jerk reactions which dismiss as ridiculous any objection to a scene in a book or a movie that makes others uncomfortable or upset them – which we do in an attempt to delegitimise the person and the views he or she is expressing so as never having to confront the easy certainty of your own world view and whatever prejudices might lurk there. And let us — if we feel strongly about it — engage each other and have a real debate.

Why not have a discussion about what makes something funny and what not? Why not ask questions about when a joke can be funny even if it relies on some kind of hurtful or even dangerous stereotype? Why is “The Producers” — a play about a Jewish mogul putting on a musical about Hitler (Springtime for Hitler and Germany / U-boats are sailing once more) — funny, but why would a movie depicting life in Germany during the second World War in which we are invited to laugh at the Jews in Auschwitz who are terrorised by their German guards probably not be funny?

Why do many white and black people laugh at Leon Schuster movies, while they would probably not laugh at a movie in which Nelson Mandela is depicted at a gardener in the household of a rich Afrikaner family?

Laughter can be healing and cathartic. Sometimes it is just mindless fun. Sometimes we squirm with laughter because we are uncomfortable at how shocking or subversive the joke is. But sometimes laughter is dangerously soothing and reassuring (boring mother in law jokes; jokes about how men hate their wives who nag them all day long to mow the lawn; jokes about effeminate gay men) because it tells us that all our prejudices, fears and hatreds are justified and fine, that we are ok, that we never have to reflect on the way we live, what kind of people we are and what our sad and sorry lives have come to.

Merry Christmas

Dec 25th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
14 comments

To all Christian readers (and those who celebrate Christmas for other reasons) hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks to all the contributors who made this Blog lively, at times challenging but (I hope) seldom boring. I leave you with the most camp and cheesy Christmas song I could find. Enjoy!

Weekend breather

Sep 4th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
3 comments

The Windows of Heaven (and your wallets) are open!

Aug 27th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
144 comments

One of the (many) reasons why I am not a fascist or a Stalinist is because I am rather worried that people might begin to think that I am a repressed and self-hating homosexual who is trying to hide his true self by embracing rightwing Christian fundamentalism. If I ever wavered in my commitment to remain a constitutional democrat and if I ever feared that I would fall into the arms of dangerous spin merchants, there will always be people like Mr Errol Naidoo (who is the director of an outfit called the “Family Policy Unit”) to keep me on the straight and narrow (no pun intended).

Errol2

Mr Naidoo (see picture on the left), who has the suave charm of a Verimark infomercial presenter and the fading good looks of a celebrity contestant on Fear Factor, is a busy man. (I must confess, if we were both a bit younger and if he had been a bit more careful about his diet, I might have lusted after his body – if not his mind.)

In an email addressed to his fans entitled, “The Windows of Heaven are Open!, he informs all who wish to listen of his latest exciting escapades and thoughts (I use the latter term rather generously, of course). He informs us that he had spent an “exhilarating” two days in the Kruger National Park with his wife, Arlene (whom he refers to with suspicious regularity). “Being up close and personal with God’s awesome creation – in their natural habitat – is an experience Arlene and I will long remember,” he enthuses.

(Why he had to go to the Kruger Park – instead, say, of going to the local Shoprite in Brackenfell or to an HIV clinic in Khayelitsha – to get close to God’s awesome creation is unclear. I guess the folks who demonstrate their sincere commitment to God by donating buckets full of money to his outfit do not begrudge him this little extravagance. After all, people are dirty, troublesome, sinners who have a tendency to make fun of you, while wild animals never talk back and live in the Kruger Park – which is rather more glamorous than Brackenfell.)

But I digress. In the email, Mr Naidoo (I make no comment about the fact that his surname sounds rather similar to an Afrikaans word often used at Stag parties) has the following to say about his wheelings and dealings with politicians and about our sacred constitutional democracy:

There appears to be a growing sense amongst Christians across the country that God is giving the Body of Christ in South Africa a “window of opportunity” to rise up & impact the nation. Despite all the negative reports in the media, many Christians believe God is supernaturally removing barriers to areas of power & authority to provide access for the influence of the Church.

I noticed this shift in attitude towards the Church since the Zuma administration came to power. My submission on gambling law reform to parliament, my partnership with the Dep Minister of Home Affairs, Malusi Gigaba to ban internet pornography, and my work to inform government about the dangers of legalised prostitution, all bear witness to a more family-friendly environment.

The liberal media also appear to recognise this shift in attitude toward family values and are openly attacking government for granting access to the “rightwing Christian fundamentalists”. Several hysterical articles appeared in the media recently criticising government for talking to “shady” Christian organisations like Family Policy Institute. Apparently, groups that disagree with homosexuality and oppose abortion, pornography etc, have no right to engage government.

Read this article by so-called constitutional expert and homosexual activist, Pierre de Vos. ‘The return of fake morality’. A similar article by Tony Weaver was published in the Cape Times. When the Mbeki administration suspended South Africa’s democratic principles in 2006, to railroad same-sex “marriage” legislation through Parliament – despite massive public opposition – people like Pierre de Vos and the pro-homosexual media were conspicuously silent! Ironically, this attitude – promoted in the media – is a violation of core constitutional freedoms…..

P.S. Please forward this to a friend

As I do not like sending spam emails, but at the same time do not want people to think that I have anything against poor Mr Naidoo, I decided to reprint the sizable section of his email above. Hey, Errol, you know what they say: “All publicity is good publicity.” (Or was that rather: “All publicity brings in the bucks?”)

However, it saddens me to note (and I do hope Mr Naidoo and his followers do not take this in the wrong way) that all that time with Gods creatures in the Kruger Park seemed to have affected Mr Naidoo’s ability to construct a rational argument. Mr Naidoo also sadly seems to have lost his memory and has forgotten that we now live in a constitutional democracy (and not in the Christian Nationalist state of the apartheid era).

He seems blissfully unaware that we now have a justiciable Bill of Rights in which the power of the state to oppress people and to discriminate against them based on their personal attributes and characteristics (like their race, sex, disability and sexual orientation) is severely limited.

In a constitutional democracy the religious views of some – and I have no reason to believe that Mr Naidoo and his lovely wife Arlene do not hold their religious views deeply and sincerely – cannot be imposed on society as a whole as this would be in fundamental breach of the rights of those who do not share these views. Sincerity and deeply held convictions do not justify unfair discrimination in a constitutional democracy.

While every person is entitled to believe what he or she wishes (one can believe, for example, that Simba the Lion King is the God Almighty, or that all homosexuals will burn in hell or, even, if one wants to stretch the point, that 300 000 believers will be whisked away to Heaven on the day of the Rapture) a person cannot get the state to force his or her beliefs down the throats of others as this would constitute a fundamental breach of our human rights. (For example, a religious group – even if it had the support of the majority – could not legitimately demand that the state ban all driving on a Sunday because the group happens to believe the Rapture would occur on a Sunday and that driving on that day would therefore cause too many accidents.)

Mr Naidoo is therefore entitled to believe that same-sex marriage is just as evil as child abuse or woman’s liberation – as the leadership of the Catholic Church seem to do, at least about woman’s liberation – but he cannot require the state to enforce that belief by banning same-sex marriage. If he wanted the state to ban same-sex marriage or to force woman to stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, he is of course free to emigrate to Saudi Arabia. (I hear Iran also has lovely game parks and rather strict laws on homosexuality – although I am not sure whether they will embrace emigration by right wing Christians.)

He is free to believe what he wants, to preach what he wants and to even practice what he preaches (the latter being a rare occurrence in the overtly pious – at least in my experience). And in the unlikely event that, like many Evangelists in the USA, his animosity towards homosexuals is fueled by a secret desire to have sexual relations with members of the same sex, he is even free to divorce his wife and marry another man – although he will have to go on a diet, radically revise his beliefs, and read a few satyrical novels before I would seriously consider his marriage proposal.

The claim by Mr Naidoo that the “core constitutional freedoms” have been breached by the adoption of same-sex marriage laws can only be sustained if one believed that freedom had nothing to do with freedom at all, and hence that freedom was completely divorced from the notion that people had a right to live their lives free from hatred and discrimination. His view of “constitutional freedoms” would require one to endorse the idea that the state had a right to enforce the views of some on society as a whole.

Such a society would not be free, of course, and neither would it be a substantive democracy. In such a society the only people who would have “core constitutional freedoms” would be those who wielded power and could therefore ensure that their beliefs were enforced through the barrel of a gun and through torture (perhaps by forcing people to listen to Gospel music played backwards), imprisonment or campaigns of social vilification. Such a society would be one in which the human dignity of almost all people would be flagrantly disrespected and would be decidedly undemocratic (a bit like Texas without the big hats, the funny accents, the Hummers and the occasional election).

PS: This post must be read in the same spirit in which Umberto Eco wrote his novel, The Name of the Rose. In this novel a Fransciscan Friar discovers that Monks are being poisoned in a monastery when they read humorous books because some members of the church hierarchy believe that laughter is the antidote to fear and that if one stopped fearing one might also stop believing in God. As Wikipedia explains: “As the plot unfolds, several other people mysteriously die. The protagonists explore a labyrinthine medieval library, the subversive power of laughter, and come face to face with the Inquisition. It is left primarily to [the main protagonist] William’s enormous powers of logic and deduction to solve the mysteries of the abbey.”

How to mock a racist

Jul 13th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
17 comments

The premise of this satirical piece from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is of course not entirely correct – as anyone who reads the letters pages of South African newspapers (or the comments section of this Blog!) would attest, but the way in which it mocks that arch-racist Dan Roodt is brilliant. By mocking Roodt (seemingly without him realizing), the interviewer is not giving him the power to make his racist views potent and hurtful. Roodt merely becomes a buffoon and a laughing stock – and hence powerless.

A lesson for South Africans, perhaps?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Oliver – World Cup 2010: Into Africa – The Amazing Racists
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

World Cup guide to South Africa (part 1)

Jun 10th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
14 comments

This is not a Blog about sport (unless you view politics as a kind of robust and sometimes dirty sport), but South Africa only hosts the Soccer World Cup once in a lifetime, so in the spirit of the moment, I thought I would post something fun about this momentous event in our nations history. So, here is the first part of an occasional guide for locals and for foreign visitors to help them come to grips with the World Cup and with the intricacies of our country.

world cup

The Vuvuzela: A cheap plastic trumpet that makes an ungodly noise and can be blown at any occasion. Also called South Africa’s secret weapon in the tournament. Not to be confused with Julius Malema (see below) as the Vuvuzela probably scored higher marks in woodwork.

Do say: I am a Mexican player,  please blow in my ear. Don’t say: Hope this was not made by child labour in China.

Jacob Zuma: The President of South Africa when Fifa is not in town, this affable and very musical politician has a complicated family life that includes several wives and a brood of children that could form its own soccer team. He loves discussing things, but really hates making any kind of decision. When asked a question he will chuckle and say: “Well, why are you asking me that, I am only the President?” Not to be confused with Sepp Blatter who is the President for the next month.

Do say: I believe the ANC will rule until Jesus returns to earth or Schabir Shaik goes back to prison. Don’t say: Whatever happened to that R500 000 from the arms company your friend Schabir scored for you under the table?

Julius Malema: The man white South Africans love to hate, this youngster obtained a G for Woodwork in High School but is nevertheless a sharp businessman who has invented a whole new way of making money: he pretends to build roads and bridges and most South Africans pretend we like him while giving him lots of our tax money so that he would not sing “Kill the Boer”.

Do say: What a lovely revolutionary and militant watch you are wearing. Don’t say: Can you help my son with his woodwork project – it will be good exercise and help you with your weight problem?

Greenpoint stadium: A magnificent football venue which was supposed to be built in Athlone until Sepp Blatter realized that it would look better if it was built in the rich suburb against the backdrop of table mountain, far away from Cape Town’s poor. Everybody was against the building of the stadium in Greenpoint. Now everybody believes it was a brilliant idea.

Do say: It looks like a traditional Xhosa woman’s hat. Don’t say: How many toilets could you have built with the money spent on the stadium?

Helen Zille: The leader of the official opposition in South Africa, this feisty and principled  journalists turned politician is an avid fan of conspiracy theories involving the ANC. No one does hurt and beleaguered the way she can. Just a pity her eyebrows can’t shoot up in alarm anymore, apparently because of a botched operation which was intended to make her look less white.

Do say: By building the stadium in Greenpoint you have brought Cape Town together and shown a principled commitment to the poor and to the Constitution. Don’t say: Do you know where I can have some Botox done (and by the way, where can I find a toilet?)

SABC: The official mouthpiece of the Soccer World Cup (and the ANC government) the South African Broadcasting Corporation pretends to be a public broadcaster by ensuring that its own management drama’s provide South Africans with a never ending soap opera worthy of “Days of our Lives”. They love reporting on events of world importance – like a Cabinet Minister opening the annual Biltong festival in Koekenaap – but are less succesful at paying their bills and reporting even-handedly about politics.

Do say: Feel it, it is here! Don’t say: When am I getting paid? The Minister called and you are in big trouble.

Is Terreblanche’s church allowed to discriminate?

Apr 15th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
41 comments

My friend was incensed: “Why,” he wanted to know, “is the Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk (APK) allowed to discriminate against black people?” Last Friday, at the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche, much was made of the fact that some black journalists and observers were allowed into the APK. This is because the APK is a whites only church and usually does not allow black people inside the church – at least not during the sermon.

“The Constitution and the Equality Act surely prohibits such discrimination,” my friend continued. “Why is Afriforum not making a noise about this? Why does it not lodge a complaint with the Equality Court against the Church to challenge its policy of racial discrimination? Afriforum claims to be so worried about discrimination so it should do something about this!”

Maybe, I explained, it was because such an action – by Afriforum or anyone else – would have no chance of success. The Equality Court will reject the complaint because the right to freedom of religion will trump the right to equality. In equality matters one must weigh up the purpose of the discrimination against the effect that the discrimination would have on the human dignity of those who are being discriminated against.

Here the purpose of the discrimination is to protect the freedom of religion of the weirdo’s who belong to the APK. They believe that God had separated blacks and whites and should pray separately and the purpose of the discrimination is to give effect to that belief. (I am not sure whether they also believe there is one heaven for whites and one for blacks. How would that work in any case?)

On the other hand, it could be argued that the effect of the discrimination would not be particularly egregious as there are many churches where black and white can pray together and black people would probably not feel very welcome in a church that believes that God was really a big fan of apartheid. Banning blacks from the APK therefore does not present such a fundamental affront to the human dignity of black South Africans that it should trump the freedom of religion of the APK.

“But that does not make sense at all,” retorted my friend. “The Constitutional Court found that Rastafarians were not allowed to smoke dagga, despite the fact that this is a central tenet of their religion. To ban them from smoking dagga discriminates against them in the most fundamental way. Besides, the smoking of dagga is probably far less harmful than the effects of racial discrimination. We live in South Africa, after all, and one can buy dagga on every street corner in the city centre of Cape Town.”

I explained that he was confused. In the case of the APK discrimination the question is whether the APK can discriminate against black people. In the Rastafarian case the question was really whether the state can discriminate against Rastafarians. The Court in effect found that it could (although it decided the case on the basis of freedom of religion, not on the basis of equality) because the purpose of the discrimination was so important that it trumped the freedom of religion of Rastafarians. The ban on dagga keeps us all safe from the evils of drug abuse and thus trumps the right to freedom of religion. At least that is what a majority of the judges of the Constitutional Court believed.

My friend was not impressed. “The Equality Act bans discrimination on the basis of race in the same way that the law bans the use of dagga. Are you saying it is ok for the state to discriminate against a religion when the adherents of that religion are mostly black, but its not ok for the state to discriminate against a religion to enforce racial equality when the religion is exclusively for whites?”

Good question, I had to agree. But the use of dagga is a criminal offense and while racial discrimination is prohibited by the Equality Act, it is not a criminal offense to discriminate against anyone. Maybe that’s the difference between the two religions – the practices of the one religion is a criminal offense while the practices of the other is only illegal and enforced not in the criminal court but by the Equality Court. Or maybe both the state and our Courts just think that the use of dagga is far more dangerous and harmful for our society than the racial discrimination by a private institution who happens to be a church.

“Are you kidding?” my friend wanted to know, his voice rising a notch as it always does when he gets excited. “More people are addicted to alcohol than to dagga and far more people crash cars and kill people in accidents when they are drunk than when they are high, so dagga cannot be that dangerous. Given our apartheid past and given what I saw on TV of the Terreblanche funeral, racism and discrimination is far more of a problem in our society than the use of dagga.”

Well, I explained, maybe this also has something to do with the separation of powers doctrine. If the state explicitly banned religious groups from discriminating against anyone then maybe the courts will agree that such a ban was constitutional. But then I realized I was talking rubbish. The state will never force the catholic church to open up the priesthood to women. Neither would it ever pass a law that would force churches, mosques or synagogues to abandoned their homophobia and to marry same-sex couples.

“So,” said my friend gleefully, “what you are saying is that the state is too scared of the established religions and of people in the APK to ban their religious practices, but because the Rasta’s are such a small and powerless group the state has no problem with banning one of the central practices of their religion!”

Don’t ask me, I told my friend. Ask the Constitutional Court and the members of Parliament why they do not ban the APK from discriminating against black people or why they do not make an exception to allow Rastafarians to use dagga.

My friend laughed. “I wonder what the APK position is on men sleeping with young black men? They are probably not too keen on that.”

Luckily, I am not planning to visit my local APK anytime soon to find out, I told my friend.

On hate speech and a phone call from prison

Mar 11th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
82 comments

I have new respect for ANC spokesperson, Jackson Mthembu, who was arrested on Thursday morning around 7 am for drunken driving in Cape Town but apparently gave a 21-minute telephonic interview to the South African Press Association (SAPA) - while in police custody – 90 minutes later. Now that is what I call a work ethic worth emulating.

During the interview Mr Mthembu passionately defended ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema for singing “shoot the boers, they are rapists” - before bursting into song himself. At this stage it is unclear whether Mthembu was really drunk at 7 in the morning and if he was, whether he had been partying the whole night or had started drinking very early in the morning.

Although I cannot claim that I have never been drunk at 7 am in the morning, I can confirm that I have never been arrested for drunken driving and I have definitely never given a media interview from a prison cell while allegedly under the influence of liquor. Respect bru!

Sadly, the said interview was not his best work as ANC spokesperson. Whether he slipped up because he was drunk or because he was in prison and did not have the Internet handy, is unclear. Malema obviously attacked Zille (she is apparently a Satanist) and De Lille (she is apparently not a fit wife) and sang the “kill a boer” song to detract attention from the fact that Julius has not been paying his taxes and has been lying about his business interests.

The media fell for this ploy hook, line and sinker. Malema is a genius at manipulating the media – a bit like Hitler, but without the mustache and without the scary uniforms and the homoerotic military parades. (Relax, I am not saying Malema is as evil as Hitler – just that he is very good at getting the media to play to his tune.)

Back to Mthembu, who explained to SAPA (while he was either sober or drunk, but definitely in police custody) that the “kill a boer” song did not constitute hate speech as it was an old struggle song:

This song was sung for many years even before Malema was born … Julius doesn’t even know who’s the writer of the song. He got it from us [the ANC]. You must blame the ANC, don’t blame Julius. But when you blame the ANC, then contextualise it.

The problem is that in 2003 the Human Rights Commission Appeal Committee found that chanting the “kill the boer, kill a farmer” did constitute hate speech. In an opinion written by Prof Karthy Govender, the appeal body, relying on the much narrower definition of hate speech in section 16(2) of the Constitution and not on the more expansive definition in section 10 of the Equality Act, rejected the line of reasoning offered by Mthembu from his prison cell.

The liberation effort, including the armed struggle, was directed against the policy of apartheid and against its supporters. One of the slogans used to mobilize people against Apartheid was ‘’Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer’’. It was a rallying call to resistance, defiance and acts of violence in furtherance of the objectives of defeating apartheid. In effect, it called for the ultimate harm to be visited upon persons deemed to be the enemy. It was a slogan created for a particular time and in a particular context. It reflected the intensity of the race based conflict that was raging in South Africa at the time….

There can be no doubt that the slogan, given its content, its history and the context in which it was chanted, would harm the sense of well being, contribute directly to a feeling of marginalisation, and adversely affect the dignity of Afrikaners. The slogan says to them that they are still the enemy of the majority of the people of this country. It contributes to the alienation of the target community and conveys a particularly divisive message to the majority community that the target community is less deserving of respect and dignity. This generalized slogan is directed against an entire community of people. Words convey meaning and do cause hurt and injury. There is a real likelihood that this slogan causes harm.

As apartheid had ended and the political situation had normalized it was not acceptable anymore to say “kill the boer” and if one does it constitutes hate speech on the basis of race.

I would therefore be surprised if an Equality Court, relying on the far wider definition of hate speech in the Equality Act, does not find Julius guilty of hate speech. Of course, it is not clear that the provision in the Equality Act is constitutional as it infringes on the right to freedom of expression and is far wider than the exclusion carved out by section 16(2) of the Constitution. It may be saved by the limitation clause but I am nots ure it will.

If I was Malema’s lawyer I would challenge the constitutionality of the relevant provision of the Act to try and escape responsibility and to appear to be a champion of the Constitution. That would be brilliant public relations and may even teach the media and ordinary South Africans a thing or two about freedom of expression. 

However, if the Equality Court finds Julius guilty of hate speech it has wide powers to impose the appropriate punishment. It could order Julius to pay an amount of money to Solidarity or the Freedom Front (or maybe to donate his watch to one of these organisations?), or to apologise to white South Africans, or to do community service in Orania.

As for Mr Mthembu, I hope the ANC does not fire him. We all make mistakes, but few of us would show his dedication in getting our message – no matter how misguided – out there. If he was drunk as alleged, he should plead guilty and apologise to the ANC and the nation. Then he could continue to act as spokesperson for the ANC, which would allow all of us to snigger at him and make fun of his dedication to the cause of spin-doctoring. As the add says, that would be priceless.

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