Premier Helen Zille regards herself as the best thing that ever happened to South African politics. President Jacob Zuma thinks he’s a victim of some unnamed conspiracies, and believes he deserves not only our commiseration, but our cheer and compensation, and we must butt out of his private life even though he’s the country’s no 1 civil servant and public figure. To every man their illusions. But if a person is judged by the company they keep they are both disappointing. By company I include with whom one shares similar opinions.

I think we all know the kind of company president Zuma keeps by now; premier Zille is another case. If you peruse through the support material premier Zille got from her article at Polticsweb, first published on the DA website, you’ll, like me, be convinced that she keeps some rotten company also; a bunch of unrepentant angry racists. She may argue that it is not by personal invitation. There are always reasons why people are attracted to another, and mistaken identity is rarely not one of them.

What is clear from most of the people who wrote to support premier Zille is that before the DA’s win of the Western Cape they had been feeling alienated. The win boosted their confidence to frankly express their views and show their true colours. Their main opinion is strong racist aversion to the ANC. Why these are drawn to premier Zille is, to me, a simple matter; bees are drawn to sweet nectar and flies to rot.
South Africa needs to tackle its number one rot, the racial problem (attitude), head-on. That is why you don’t hear me complain much, even if I think the vulgar tone is regrettable. It is always better to be upfront about these things instead of talking about them at tearooms. I hope by now that the 2009 elections have finally managed to convince most people that we are incorrigibly racist.

After the superficial wallpapering of our racial problems through the so called Mandela era, we entered the harsh transformation era of Mbeki that left all of us dissatisfied and clearly resentful. All can see now that our project of racial harmony (rainbow people), with the exception of few shining examples (bless that), has been an unmitigated failure. The fault is not in the skies but in us that we are inherently racist. We preach non racialism but we don’t embrace its spirit. In fact, I don’t find it acceptable to speak of racism in a third person voice; it gives respite from personal responsibility. So I’ll speak of myself in my own voice.

In 1903, W.B. Du Bois published a book titled The Souls of Black Folk. In the book he panned the borderline feelings of black intellectual into what he called “problem”. Du Bios had a feeling of being “trapped between two worlds”. He talked of “unreconciled strivings”; what another writer, expounding on him, called “the tension between race man and aesthete, between puritan and pagan, between the pursuit of social justice and the self-cultivation German ideal of Bildung.” This might be true in my case to some extent, but it is not how I define myself. In fact, that’s one of my criticism of Du Bios, defining one’s black life by how you relate to white people. I just don’t feel that much concern about the issue, which is probably why racists don’t bother me much when not directly poking my nose.

Though not going as far as classifying myself as a “problem” I probably can easily say with Du Bois that white racism “has made me far less rounded a human being than I should like to have been.” This is not to excuse my failings on superfluous historical terms like ‘reactive racism’. And I certainly do not feel I live under the shadow of white man’s civilisation, which I regard only as an amalgam of different cultures assuming a progressive spirit.

What I’m starting to lose patience with is the stupendous titillating lowdown mob psychology of radical collectivism that is supposed to be my cultural background, as typified presently in our country by the ANC and its alliance partners. And I am sure many a white person feels the same about the smug assurance of superiority complex and covet attitude of exceptionalsim as exemplified by the DA under the leadership style of premier Zille.

I belong to a group of people (and we are growing fast post the 2009 elections) who with weary resignation watch the bad gain more passion and the beast crouch in our Jerusalem. What is clear for those who have eyes to see is that our political discourse, and emotions, are under the clutch of master manipulators who know how to use our identities, anxieties and hopes against our own good – and for their political gain. The worst part is that we make ourselves defenseless against them by our own prejudices, which the manipulators know how to abuse and manipulate.

I’m growing angry at the lost opportunities of hope flux to build our country into a great nation. But I’m through blaming it on our leaders, even those of obvious short-comings; ukufa kusembizeni [death is in the house]. After all, people, especially in democratic governance, get the rulers they deserve. Hence I assume Jacob Zuma’s presidency had something to do with me, whether I voted for him or not. For one, the kind of regressive racism we see both in support of and against premier Zille is what caused everyone to go back to their respective laagers in these recently passed elections, and subsequently brought about the governance we have today.

We are now at each other’s throats, showing how much we loathe one another, mostly because of our skin colours and the inherent social attitudes that are consequential to it. It does not just end with racism, we’re annoying, annoyed, stupid, repetitive, superficial, hateful, supercilious, bigoted, narrow, vulgar, stiff-necked, selfish, conniving, prejudiced people who only see the speck in another’s eye before we take note of the mote in our own. In short, we are a disgrace even to ourselves. Until we learn to be true to the values of humanity, and see the serious correlation between integrity and good society, we shall remain a house divided upon itself that’ll never stand.

Some of us have decided to desert the houses we were placed by our birth conditions with growing realisation that we made a very good choice. At the moment you’ll find us seating at the plinth of our new house of hope and new agenda for change (Cope), learning to build it according to true specifications of liberty and human diginity.

Carefully, like bricklayers, we build the walls based on good foundation of good political ethics and moral foundation. Sure now and then we find somewhere that the wall is askew, and where we cannot straighten it up we demolish and start up afresh (that’s the advantage of our stage, we are still able to demolish walls without affecting too much the whole structure). And yes sometimes even our foreman take too long to realise the fault lines, but, as recently seen in the Eastern Cape, they do get to the bottom of it eventually, quicker than those who have settled and established bad habits.

There’s has also been some concerted criticism that we are not that different from the houses we deserted. Well you know what they say, our parents are sometimes our ruin; but we can also be wise through inheritance. At the least we are making an effort and are not yet addicted to mischief and politics of envy that comes with supposing we were born to govern the country until Jesus Christ comes back. Our faults are not yet structural. Moment by moment we’re getting rid of the company of parasites and flatters who followed us to the new house hoping for quick gain. We know Rome was not built in one day, and God willing, are certain it shall be built in our life time.

The remarks against the president of the republic, Jacob Zuma, by the incumbent Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille were blunt, explicit, uncalled for and in bad faith. But they didn’t warrant the kind of response she got from the ANCYL. The ANC was correct and responsible in scolding their wayward youth. It’d have even be better had they taken steps to make sure similar incidence do not occur again. We should cease to mock things that mattered to others, especially when we do not understand them. This does not mean we should do away with irony, freedom of expression and right to disagree.

The DA spin doctoring has been in pains trying to convince us that madam Zille didn’t insult the president but was merely making inference from the statements he made during his trial. What they fail to point out is the fact that her intentions were not innocent, like sharing information with us, or something like that. It was clear she meant to insult the person of Jacob Zuma. That attitude is regrettable, especially to a person in her position of leadership. No one is asking for holy cows here, but we have to draw a line somewhere. It is clear that madam Zille does not respect Mr. Zuma, and that is her prerogative and democratic right, but we would urge her to respect the office of the presidency at the least.

Having said that, I hope the members of the Tripartite Alliance understand our call against the protracted insults against the former president Thabo Mbeki after the ANC came from its Polokwane conference. No matter how much they happen to disagree with the personality of a president it should never go to the level of insults driven by the likes of Malema and Vavi last year. We must not behave like terriers and rottwillers, tearing each other piece by piece. As Dr. Boesak calls (in the adjacent piece) our dialogue needs to be dignified and principled no matter how much we disagree with each other. We must be mindful of our responsibilities as we lay the foundations for our democratic republic and its social order.

Ours is a form of governance that is based on the will of the majority but things must not end there. For one we need to provide our citizens with enlightened conscience for the responsibilities that are demanded by our constitution. We should try to resurrect Locke’s distinction between liberty and license; make it absolutely clear, especially to our young, that liberty is not license, it comes with tremendous responsibilities. Liberty is a form of order, not license for anarchy and self-indulgence. We should remind the generation coming after us that happiness does not come from hedonism, the pursuit of only pleasure, nor does freedom entitle us to be rude to others. That’s the great message which is getting lost in all this noise stirred up cheap stylistics of sensationalist publicity.

I’m no particularly fan of George Orwell’s fictional writings, especially Animal Farm, which I never really liked even at school where I first read it. Methinks Orwell was at his strongest in non-fiction writings. I’m surprised when many people today make such a big deal about T.S. Elliot’s rejection of the manuscript20 of Animal Farm while he was still working as a director for publishing at Faber and Faber. I’d have done the same; perhaps in retrospect, for commercial reasons, I may now think twice.

I would not have followed Elliot’s reasoning, but taking things in their context I understand him. It was after all 1944, Britain was an ally of the Soviet Union against Hitler’s Germany. Elliot acknowledged the good writing and what he called the “fundamental integrity” of the manuscript, even if he said its viewpoint was a caricature of Stalin’s authoritarian government, calling non convincingly Trotskyite. At one point he wrote; “After all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm – in fact there couldn’t have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs.”

The Secretary of the SACP, Blade Nzimande, would beg to differ; he thinks what’s needed is more communists. He and his clique loathe ‘public-spirited pigs’; only their terms are more uncouth, calling them counter-revolutionary, snakes, cockroaches and all. Generally the ANC and its alliance partners regard as blasphemy any people who dare criticize the Party. Worse still is the SACP with its antipathy towards dialogue.

Dr. Nzimande recently wrote21 in their online journal, Umsebenzi; “The electoral victory [of the ANC] was also a massive failure of collaboration by sections of the elite, almost wholly supported by all of mainstream media, including the public broadcaster, to use the ‘rooi gevaar’, the ‘two-thirds gevaar’, and the ‘threat to the constitution gevaar’ to try and dislodge the ANC electorally.” He further says “In many ways these election results are an expression of the growing class cleavage in wider society between the haves (including now a small black group of tycoons as represented by Cope) and the have-nots.”

This has been a rather dubious practise of the SACP under the helm of Nzimande, to throw allegations of populist tendencies in an attempt to posture itself as the movement of the people-something strongly disregarded by its membership toll. If we take Dr. Nzimande in his word there are now more than 600 000 [Cope membership] black tycoons in South Africa (disregarding those inside their alliance).

This is probably why he says “a deeper reflection on the ideological and class struggles on the electoral terrain also brings out into the open the extent of collusion by these elites against the ANC. Their main plank was that our constitution was under threat from an ANC government.” Where is this deeper reflection; why doesn’t Dr. Nzimande share it with us? This habit of pointing to unsubstantiated things through straw-mat thinking is what is most disappointing about the SACP, and the reason why, with all its populist howling, it is stagnant as the party.

To be clear, Dr. Nzimade and his clique are followers of the intellectual come-down Marxian doctrine in historical terms is called Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy Theory, which sees hidden motives of greed and lust for material gain behind every scene of history and social life. They misuse the categories Marx explained as influences of history, like profit motive and class interests. Where Marx’s materialist interpretation of history points to the corrupting tendencies of these categories as an influencing factor in social systems, they exaggerate it into calling them a motive of history. With all their specious sympathy for the poor, and burning sense for correcting the wrongs of our society, their kind of radical collective is founded on a profound misunderstanding, hence their action always end up being destructive and reactive.

Marx was clear about the fact that factors influence history in a way that render humans puppets, irresistibly pulled by economic wires he called the “kingdom of necessity” at this stage of history. And he looked to a day when the puppets will destroy this system to attain a “kingdom of freedom”, what the vulgar Marxist pervert into Stalinism. We could argue the differences of what Marx called the “kingdom of freedom” against its perversions that saw the establishment of many communist states until the cows come home. I’m certain, for those with eyes to see, the tragic short-comings are clear from the history of communist states.

What I detest in the misuse of Marxism by the likes of Dr. Nzimande is their neglect of crucial imperatives of individual freedom. Marx loved real freedom, as can be determined in his writings; “The kingdom of freedom actually begins when drudgery, enforced by hardships and external purposes, ends, it thus lies, quite naturally beyond the sphere of proper material production.” Marx detested material bondage and was always about emancipating all of us, bourgeoisie and working class together, from it. Those who emphasise the materialist side of Marxism tend to adopt tendencies of dictatorship in their hollowed Leninist-Stalinist practises that has not Marx’s spirit of freedom and democracy. This can be noticed within the SACP and COSATU also, where the leaders seem to have entrenched themselves to be kings for life.

As for the threats to the constitution, respect for the judiciary and other state organs, Dr. Nzimade insinuates that they are a figment of COPE’s imagination. You just need to consider the views of those outside the fence of the Tripartite Alliance (TA) to see how ridiculous this sounds. For instance, everyone outside the realm of president Zuma’s vested interests thinks there was something shabby in a way his corruption case was dropped. For one, Justice Seagroatt, whose verdict Mpshe plagiarised in giving reasons for dropping the case, recently wrote:

“What Mpshe seems to have taken as the justification for his decision was not a material aspect of the trial procedure but a decision made by some branch of the investigative process as to when and where Jacob Zuma should be charged on the basis of political considerations. That is an entirely different scenario. Many might argue that motivation in relation to timing of a charge is very different from manipulation of the evidence available … It is very strongly arguable that [Mpshe] should have let the trial process begin before a judge, leaving the aspect which seems to have dominated his proper role as the prosecutor (the old adage being a ‘prosecutors’ job is to prosecute) to be determined by the judge with the N.D.P.P. being entirely candid (as he should be) as to the conduct of the investigative and prosecuting agencies.”

I suppose to Dr. Nzimande this is just further example of an agenda of the elites. He reminds me of the guy who was driving the wrong way on Highway, and when his wife phone to caution him against the maniac he answered; “It’s not only one, they are all driving the wrong way.” Only they have the correct interpretation of history.

More public-spirited pigs are not what the TA wants as the bishop emeritus Tutu will testify. The TA is more comfortable with sanitised nostalgia and unquestioning and unrelenting loyalty. To them wilful spirits must be damned, as in the Animal Farm [Stalinist state]. What Dr. Nzimande and his clique do not understand is that in all ages there’ll always be people who see beyond even the populist propaganda into following the dictates of their conscience, even if it means going against the voice of the mob. The Russian saying cautions when it says where an earthenware pot collides with an iron one it is the earthenware that will always crack, size is not the issue here but the material. Nothing can defeat iron values of true principles and truth.

Dr. Nzimande ends by saying; “we must refuse to be cowed down by neo-liberal ideological blackmail about what is to be done about this crisis. We believe that the only sustainable solutions that can effectively deal with the current capitalist crisis are leftist solutions, not more of the same liberal dogma whose failures are the direct cause of the current crisis. At no stage in the history of our democracy have we needed a developmental state, buttressed by popular power, than at this point in time.” All well and good, but what does he actually mean by these high sounding words, ‘developmental sate’, ‘popular power’, and all?

There are things we know for certain; like capitalists will leave with their capital if it does not serve them with profit. Changing laws does not stop them; at best it just delays them in their tracks. Indeed the present crisis is demonstrating that liberal dogmas have serious short-comings, like the communist failed doctrines. This is time for creative innovation not of importing fleas from the failed and failing dogmas; couching them in modern parlance will not help. You may, for instance, call for ‘a revolutionary dictatorship of the majority’ for popular appeal. It might sound grand on paper but what does is mean in reality?

We are all for a comprehensive social insurance for our poor, who are the majority, but going as far as establishing what in communist circles is called a dictatorship of the workers and the poor is going too far.

With dictatorship individual freedom and innovation tends to flee first (read capital also), then manufactures close, raw materials incur better value on the black market, banks cease to support industrial enterprises, and economy gets dislocated. Following it are energy supplies, transport and communication becoming unreliable. Popular opinion, even against reason predominates, and civilian administration collapses. From there workers call for higher pay and permanent employment against sound business principles; consumers demand protection against interests of big business and economic sense; then insubordination in general becomes common (who wants to take orders when they are in dictatorial power) particularly in garrisons and police stations. In short, everything becomes out of control before you know it.

The message of Animal Farm is in exposing the hypocrisy of the oppressed turning oppressors, wearing the dethroned master’s slave-driving habits. What Orwell was trying to tell us is that, when it comes to these things, the boot is always on the other foot. You cannot fault his clear thinking, plain writing, moral clarity, speaking truth to power, and so forth. He warns us against the corrupting effect of politics, public life and also the misuse of language and all. Hopefully now that he’s a minister of education Dr. Nzimande will keep Orwell in mind when he speaks or write about these things.

The Parliament of the Province of the Western Cape sat for its first session of the Fourth Parliament on Wednesday, 6 May 2009. The proceedings started at 11h00, presided over by Justice Dennis Davies of the Western Cape High Court. After a moment for silent prayer the Swearing of Members began, starting with the 24 of Democratic Party (DA), which was lead by it leader Helen Zille. The DA was followed by the 14 of the African National Congress, led by Mcebisi Skhwatsha who was shadowed by Lyn Brown. Then came the 3 new members of the Congress of the People who were the only members given a stunted applause. It was clear that a lot of people are hoping the coming of COPE in the legislature will introduce some form of vivacity if not, for now, much real change. The 2 Independent Democrats (ID) and 1 African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) followed.

The COPE MPLs are Dr. Allan Boesak, who was the premier candidate for the Western Cape; Mbulelo Ncedana, the chairperson, and Thozama Bevu, who resigned as the ANC sub-council chairperson in the city of Cape Town Municipality to join COPE. Dr. Boesak, in a magnanimous gesture considering how Zille has castigated him in the recent elections, crossed the floor to congratulate Zille who accepted the compliment with enthusiasm. Similarly Ncedana went across to Skwatsha [whose fraudulent tricks were the ultimate reason that compelled Ncedana, as a secretary of the ANC Metro, to lead a breakaway party. You’ll remember that this was the sparkle that eventually became COPE, formed before Terro Lekota served his divorce papers to the ANC].

It was a day of magnanimity and conciliatory attitude, that one hopes will mark the conduct of the legislator even when differences arise.

After the announcement of appointment of Returning Officer and Assistant Returning Officer the members were asked to vote in a secret ballot for the premier. Helen Zille emerged a winner with 24 votes against 14 for Lyn Brown and 4 spoilt. It does not take a genius to figure out how members voted there. The rest of other election, for speaker and his deputy, went along the similar path, with the DA taking all major seats.

After being swan Zille gave a rather long speech (unfitting to the occasion) the gist of which she promised the usual, open society, commitement to clean, efficient government and so forth. She gave the assurance that the DA shall govern on strict values that define, establish and tell the truth in ‘whatever situation we find ourselves in’. We’ll certainly take her on her word and constructively remind her of her commitments when they deviate. COPE will oppose and cooperate with any party according to its its principles and values.