We’re not forcing people… you can support and be a supporter, but if you go beyond that and become a member, [and] if you’re a businessman, your business will multiply. Everything you touch will multiply. I’ve always said that a wise businessperson will support the ANC… because supporting the ANC means you’re investing very well in your business. – President Jacob Zuma in January, inadvertently explaining the root cause of the Guptagate scandal even before it happened.
Quote of the week
Malema, to a limited degree, ‘stood in’ for an African-nationalist tradition that attempted to oppose the rise to dominance of this peculiar bond between the sinister tribal chauvinist, strongman, big-man, populist Jacob Zuma and the SACP – held together with that reliable old glue of rank opportunism. Sure, Malema was a manipulative populist and looter of the worst stripe. However, it is impossible to avoid that ultimately, he was urged or pushed forward to fight Zuma and the surprising SACP advances by a group that could broadly be categorised as constituting an African nationalist tradition within the ANC (a tradition that would, over a span of years, have included individuals as diverse as Mandela, Tambo, Mbeki, Modise and Nkosazana-Dlamini Zuma). He ‘stood in’ for this shattered and directionless group as it gradually tried to pull itself back together – which it inevitably will, because it is and always has been the heart of the ANC. – Nic Borain in the Daily Maverick on the campaign against Zwelenzima Vavi
The large majority – me included – wants to be passive and rely on an efficient state apparatus to guarantee the smooth running of the entire social edifice, so that I can pursue my work in peace. Walter Lippmann wrote in his Public Opinion (1922) that the herd of citizens must be governed by “a specialised class whose interests reach beyond the locality” – this elite class is to act as a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omni-competent citizen”. This is how our democracies function – with our consent: there is no mystery in what Lippmann was saying, it is an obvious fact; the mystery is that, knowing it, we play the game. We act as if we are free and freely deciding, silently not only accepting but even demanding that an invisible injunction (inscribed into the very form of our free speech) tells us what to do and think. “People know what they want” – no, they don’t, and they don’t want to know it. They need a good elite, which is why a proper politician does not only advocate people’s interests, it is through him that they discover what they “really want.” – Slavoj Zizek on Margaret Thatcher
In the MOU I signed on behalf of South Africa in 2007, nowhere appears a commitment to plan, to implement disarmament, demilitarisation and reintegration. They appear nowhere and in fact, minister, you yourself, in a reply to a question put to you in Parliament on February 10 2011, you told Parliament that South Africa’s involvement in the security of the CAR followed a request by President Francois Bozize to assist the CAR’s defence force to upgrade their military capabilities. You then said subsequent to that, that an MOU was signed, and then accepted by Cabinet on August 29 2008. The issue of planning and implementation of disarmament, demilitarisation and reintegration is nowhere in this memorandum. The first time I became aware of it is when the president announced this year in February that he had deployed 400 troops to the CAR for that purpose of planning and implementation of disarmament, demilitarisation and integration. What happened between 2007 and this time – there must have been a change in my view. There must have been something else negotiated to change the MOU I had signed in 2007 to bring in this question of demilitarisation.When did that change happen? - Cope MP Mosiuoa Lekota on the CAR fiasco
I obviously don’t know whether in fact there is a plan to slap Ramaphosa aside, say after he has helped the ANC to victory in 2014. However, I would be entirely unsurprised; just as I would be unsurprised if we are witnessing such a “slapping aside” of Zwelinzima Vavi. What do Zuma, Zuma and Sisulu have in common that they don’t share with Vavi and Ramaphosa? The first three were immersed in the exile and prison culture of the ANC, of the bitter war of survival, where myriad decisions were made in the deepest secrecy and then defended with one’s life and sometimes with the lives of others. These were decisions of war councils and political military committees and often dealt in life and death, and routinely involved breaking many laws that had nothing do with Apartheid and political repression. When you have stood together in such an enterprise and never baulked and you’ve kept the faith – you might be trusted with the undoubtedly distasteful task of keeping ex-president Jacob Zuma safe from prosecution – “For the Movement comrade, for our country”. – Nic Borain
The reactions to Xingwana’s utterance (eg it is “an extreme verbal attack on the integrity of Afrikaners” and “a sign of religious intolerance”) suggest that Afrikaner men and religious doctrine are both above criticism. Given the widely promoted predilection for forgetting, we have forgotten that a particular interpretation of Calvinism underpinned the Christian nationalism that drove the project of apartheid. Moreover, as theologian Christina Landman has written, “local Calvinism was as sexist as it was racist” (see an excerpt from the article here). This local form of Calvinism, which still grips gender relations in Afrikaner families, dictates that “part of the salvation of the soul was the subordination of the female body to male rule, both in intimate spaces and the church”, as Landman finds. This explains resurgent collaborations between Afrikaner women and men to reinstall “the Afrikaner man” as “king and priest” of the household, as currently promoted in congregations such as Moreleta Park Dutch Reformed Church. While Xingwana is condemned, the same critics fall over their feet to defend white Afrikaner men — the group that benefited most from apartheid. Their manoeuvres dovetail nicely with Time’s efforts at deflecting culpability in the Pistorius case away from masculinity and onto blackness. Thus it is ensured that the hard questions are shut out: the questions about an entitled, damaged and damaging masculinity that seeks to claw back power through violence. – Christi van der Westhuizen on Thought Leader
A few things are going on here. Thing one: hubris. But why dwell on it; who doesn’t when they have the chance? Thing two: nostalgia. When you grew up in a country like this, on the oppressor side of the frontier lines, nostalgia can feel a tad morally problematic. What’s that you miss? The eighties? Oh you liked those, did you? I think part of the recent Rodriguez high around here has been about this condoned nostalgia for an older white generation. Suddenly you can reminisce about which suburb you grew up in, which dances you went to, what music you were listening to, and not really have to mention apartheid. “I grew up in Linden!” “I grew up in Emmarentia!” “We danced at the Lemon Squeezer!” And maybe that’s okay. I’m not intent on having my say on the matter here, one way or the other. Nostalgia is an issue. But not the issue. – Anna Hartford, on attending a Rodriguez concert in Cape Town
[S]ince support for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is, in part, informed by the fact that, after Polokwane, the Zulu nationalist impulse was transferred from the IFP to the ANC, what will happen if a non-Zulu, such as Cyril Ramaphosa, is elected ANC president in 2017? Will the 2019 elections be the moment when the Zulu nationalist impulse shifts away from the ANC? This is the crux of the challenge that will face the ANC in the years and months leading up to its 2017 national conference. I was, therefore, not surprised to read in the Mail & Guardian on Friday that there is an ANC “caucus” in KwaZulu-Natal that does not want Ramaphosa to become the leader of the ANC. As they say in the province of my mother’s ancestors, “bafun’ ukumphuc’ isinkw’ emlonyeni” — they want to take bread out of Ramaphosa’s mouth just as he is about to swallow. There are two reasons worth highlighting about why this is happening so soon after Mangaung. First, it is about the consolidation of personal and political interests beyond the Zuma moment. Second, some members of the ANC are tribalists and some of these tribalists are in KwaZulu-Natal. – Aubrey Matshiqi in Business Day
Under the smooth guidance of state prosecutor Gerrie Nel, the case’s investigating officer Hilton Botha delivered what seemed to be a damning case against Pistorius in the morning session. But when defence advocate Barry Roux began his cross-examination of Hilton, it took very little time for things to fall apart. As a criminal lawyer pointed out to the Daily Maverick, “the skills of the prosecutor mean nothing if the IO [investigating officer] caves in the stand.” After a full grilling from Roux, the police work on the case was made to look sloppy and careless. – Rebecca Davis at Daily Maverick
