The ANC and Ideology – I

It’s strange how even the best of intentions can produce results contrary to what was planned.

It’s also strange how the most meticulous planning and foresight can fail to predict outcomes at variance with what the planners had hoped to achieve.

Strange, too, is the fact that the more motivated and inspired the planner the more likely is the plan to go awry and the less likely the planner is to admit that the plan is not working.

The more ideologically pure is the plan then the more likely it is to come off the rails. The world is noted for its penchant to inject varying degrees of reality into the best thought-out and executed of Man’s schemes, dousing dreams with hefty sluices of ice-cold sanity. There are always those, however, who – regardless of the teeth-chattering shivers and goose bumps of the Arctic chills of real life – will persist in their cherished and cockeyed perceptions of the world as they believe it should be. Like the KFC advert in South Africa, showing two grown men sitting on a park bench in the depths of winter, both consuming some iced KFC confection and progressively shedding items of their warm winter clothes (down to their underwear), each seeking to show the other that he is not cold and is, in fact, quite warm, thank you very much, the ideologues and the proud will go to almost any lengths to deny the existence of the reality of the situation they find themselves in.

Recent South African history has more than its fair share of such idiocy.

The episodes earlier this year of xenophobic violence between different national, cultural, racial and economic groups within the townships and squatter camps of South Africa are but one example.

Having had the images and stories of the brutal black-on-black savagery that was perpetrated in the townships of South Africa flashed around the world – to the astonishment of the global population, given the previous propaganda of the ANC government that all was sweetness and light in the new ‘democratic’ and ‘egalitarian’ South Africa under the benevolence of the ANC – the government of South Africa was, initially, just as surprised as the rest of the world and failed to act in any meaningful way against the hatred and violence for a couple of weeks.

When, eventually, the government began, slowly and inadequately, to address the problem, the official line was merely that the attacks were merely spontaneous and random criminality – ignoring the widespread nature of the onslaught throughout much of the country.

As, finally, the scale of the problem began to be realised the government then turned to one of its old favourite lines of reasoning in times of crisis – viz; the attacks were said to be the result of the work of some unidentified and shadowy ‘third force’ (by implication, disaffected whites and their lackeys lusting after a return to the pre-1994 days of perceived power, privilege and glory) conspiring towards the destabilisation of the country and the overthrow of the ANC government. At which point, notably, the army was called in and troops were put on the streets in support of the police.

(Strikingly similar arguments had very quickly been produced by the ANC government when the country’s only commercial nuclear power station had been crippled by a technical failure, just prior to the realisation that the government and Eskom (the national parastatal solely responsible for the generation and distribution of electricity in South Africa) had blithely led the country into an economically disastrous power crisis. These politically bankrupt, inept and transparent arguments were quietly – and quickly – abandoned in the face of the incontrovertible evidence of the rank incompetence and stupidity of both Eskom and the government.)

Then, as the violence and xenophobia reached its height, the ANC government declared that, once the orgy of hatred had subsided, the victims of the attacks seeking refuge and safety in hastily set up tented camps away from the townships and squatter camps would, as a matter of government policy and ideology, be (forcibly, if need be) re-integrated back into the very same areas and neighbourhoods that had attacked, dispossessed and killed the poor bastards in the first place.

Such is the ideology and illusion of ANC thought and propaganda. The desperate need of the ANC to promote and defend its communist ideas of what, according to their cherished conceptualisations of the world, should be – rather than what actually is – drives them into a denial of reality. The sad part is that they then drag everybody else who is subject to their power into a world that does not exist – much to the discomfort and danger of those who do not share or enjoy the benefits and privileges of the ANC leadership and their ivory tower ideologues.

The concept of different tribes, races and socio-economic groups living peacefully side-by-side in joy and harmony is alluring. It should, perhaps, be an ultimate goal of mankind’s. But in the here and now of human social life on this planet opposites tend to repel and likes attract. It is a simple fact of human behaviour in this day and age, as well as throughout our history.

Elsewhere in Africa where refugees seek shelter from whatever political, military or economic storm they wish to avoid they are usually placed together in camps away from local populations where frictions could ensue. Even without coercive factors such as wars and famines to drive people away from their own homes, those fleeing less life-threatening situations have, historically, tended towards one another; the economic migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America and Australia saw Italians, Jews, Greeks, Poles, Germans, Chinese, Russians, Armenians and Slavs naturally coalescing into their own communities and neighbourhoods because that was what they felt most comfortable with and where they felt safest until, after a number of generations, they were able to assimilate enough of the predominant local culture to be able to venture out into that culture without undue threat.

So, the ANC and its government is intent upon farting against the thunder of human nature. Already many of those displaced during the xenophobic attacks have been returned to their previous abodes. (Others, seeing the writing on the wall, chose to return to their home countries, preferring the known evils and hazards of life in Zimbabwe, DRC, Mozambique, Somalia and Sudan to the uncertain hospitalities of South Africans.)

Already the rumblings in the townships and the squalid squatter camps have begun. Already the voices of dissent and despair over the re-integration have begun as mumbles of the ordinary people. Already have begun the not-so-quiet and subtle statements of local councilors that the ‘nkerekwere’ are not welcome – especially, for example, those Somali shopkeepers in the Western Cape townships who are seen to be too hard working and undercutting the prices of the local spaza store owners. It will only be a matter of time.

Criminality aside, it is only the ANC and its dogmatic and slavish adherence to its unrealistic and disgraced theories of a Marxist Utopia that is to blame for the initial outburst of xenophobic and genocide-intended violence and dispossession. It was the ANC and its inept and corrupt government that admitted millions of illegal migrants into the country and it was the same crowd that failed then to put in place the necessary social structures to police and care for those immigrants. And it is the ANC that, as with the Zimbabwean situation, continues to steadfastly maintain that no problem exists – as if ignoring or wishing away anything that is inconvenient to one’s perception of the world is really going to achieve something.

Nor is it any good to say that the USSR and the old Soviet bloc managed to keep racial and social peace in a wide-flung empire. That was only achieved at the point of a gun and under the constant threat – and utilisation – of ruthless repression from state organs such as the KGB and the Red Army. Despite recent talk from the ANC of instituting so-called ‘street committees’ as a means of doing what the South African Police Service clearly are unable to achieve – controlling and reducing crime – the ANC has neither the skills nor the stomach for such direct social repression, to say nothing of its lack of desire to admit to the world that only force could integrate a tribally diverse society and that its theories are valueless.

But such are the consequences of any system of political, social and economic control that is applied, willy-nilly, as a complete solution to the theoretical ills of mankind rather than as a set of aspirations and objectives which need to be realised within the context of the real world and the differing sets of circumstances in which different people find themselves from time to time. Such systems, applied without care and consideration, de-humanise and alienate those they are intended and theorised to more fully humanise and empower. Human beings are, first and foremost, individual beings within a social environment – not the other way around. And therein lies the danger of systems of thought in which people are primarily catagorised as, variously, (and by way of example) ‘the masses’, ‘serfs’, ‘consumers’, ‘the proletariat’, ‘peasants’, ‘communists’, ‘Democrats’, ‘Republicans’, ‘Tories’, and so on.

De-humanise humans for long enough and, eventually, they will behave as animals.

Spearpoint.

9^th September 2008

Reasons For My Recent Absence

 

Unlike many of my small yet faithful readership, I have been absent for several weeks from these pages. My thanks go out to those persistent readers who flatter me greatly by their repeated visits to my site in spite of my recent silence. I just hope that you will all forgive my lapse and continue your visits.

 

Perhaps some had thought that I had been the target of crime, with a dash of xenophobia thrown in for good measure. No, nothing quite so dramatic, thankfully.

 

I have been absent for rather more prosaic – and, it must be said, selfish – reasons.

 

Firstly, I have to confess that I find writing to be extremely hard work – and which is probably self-evident from the quality of what I have produced thus far. I have always been mildly word- and number-blind at the best of times and this can be disadvantageous when one’s brain races faster than the ability to write or type out thoughts into an acceptable format. It can take me several days to produce one of my little contributions.

 

And despite sharing the fault of many writers – namely, that of having the arrogance in assuming that what one wishes to express is worthy of the time and attention of one’s hoped-for readers – I tend to avoid until the last possible minute actually creating the masterful missive, waiting until the urge to present my particular and peculiar ideas can be restrained no longer.

 

A driven firebrand clearly I am not…

 

Secondly, my office is fiery hot in summer and numbingly cold during winter. Owing to the fact that our beloved telecommunications monopoly, Telkom, no longer wishes to provide fixed-line telephone/fax/Internet services to my suburb (just 40 km from the centre of Johannesburg), I have had to resort to the incredibly more expensive and temperamental wireless services offered by a local cell phone network – whose signals are unavailable within the body of my house. Consequently, I have had to move my office into a partially completed and totally uninsulated outbuilding some distance from the house where, on good days, I can receive a signal just barely adequate to conduct my modest business and creative activities.

 

Today, with an outside temperature of around 19 degree Celsius and 8 degrees Celsius inside my spacious storeroom/barn, it is not too bad. Yet my fingers are still stiff with cold, my feet no longer part of my body and my arms and torso almost immobile because of the layers of clothing encasing my shivering frame.

 

Thirdly, since my last post last month I had the chance to earn a couple of bucks, so had to take a few days chasing some consultancy work – regular full-time and permanent work is hard to come by for a white man in his fifties in South Africa these days. As mentioned in a previous post, I like to eat on occasion.

 

Fourthly, I have been severely distracted by some immediate family concerns.

 

The first of these has been the impending permanent departure from South Africa of my daughter and her little family. At last, she has had enough of the crime, the corruption, the utter indifference to levels of professional service delivery and the inability for a person of her considerable energies and skills to progress in life merely because of her European ancestry.

 

This truly is a tragedy for South Africa. Even allowing for the fact that she is my daughter and my resultant natural bias, I have come across few people who have demonstrated anything like the grit, doggedness and sheer natural ability of this young woman. Having divorced her pathetic and selfish excuse of a husband (and whom I shall be making a point of seeking out one of these fine days), penniless and with a small daughter of her own in tow, she has exhibited a strength of character that saw her not only raise her child into someone I am proud of but also drove her to carve out a life and career to the maximum possible under the circumstances of present-day South Africa.

 

Her new life will be no easier to begin with. She will, however, be allowed to take her career to whatever level she desires; the only obstacles she will face in her new home will be those imposed by her ambitions and her talents.

 

I shall greatly miss her and my first granddaughter.

 

The second family concern that has been occupying my attention in recent weeks relates to my second granddaughter.

 

Born three months premature last month, this little pink angel has been fighting for her life since being so rudely thrust out into the world. Fractionally larger than my outstretched hand when I first saw her the day after her delivery, she has repeatedly faced the spectre of death – including surgery on a heart little larger than my thumbnail (and, in the process, reducing the surgeon and his team to tears as they worked their incredible skills on that tiny body).

 

Expecting, at any moment, to hear the worst, this little girl has fought back time and time again. We all thought that the end had come early this week when, hours after the heart surgery, she crashed catastrophically. One of the nursing staff, bless her, even hung around in the waiting room for several hours that same night – after the end of her twelve-hour shift – just to be there.

 

After counseling my son and his wife, the decision was reached by the doctors to take the baby off the ventilator. The family gathered to say their farewells to her and to await the arrival of the doctor who would be switching the machines off.

 

The machines are still running. Incredibly, joyously, just one hour before the due time, my little granddaughter, whom I had angrily accepted that I would never know, rallied and, for the time being at least, re-stormed the ramparts of life yet again.

 

Even those most cynical of creatures, the doctors and nurses, described the recovery as ‘miraculous’.

 

Who knows what the next hours, days, weeks and months will bring. Perhaps all of the terrors and fears of the last few weeks will be for naught. I feel most, of course, for my son and daughter-in-law. My desperate hopefulness can be as nothing compared to theirs. The little that my wife and self have been able to do has been confined largely to babysitting our three-year old grandson and trying to distract him away from his bewilderment and anxiety at all the upset within his family at present.

 

To those who gave thought and prayer to the newest member of our family in her predicament I offer my thanks – even though I have never met or known most of you. To the doctors and nurses at the Medi-Clinic where this little drama is being played out, I offer my thanks for your skill and concern.

 

To my new granddaughter – be with God and give it all you have.

 

Spearpoint.

12th June 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Xenophobia in Africa

 

 

 

Today the media are full of the barbaric xenophobic attacks that have been taking place in and around Johannesburg over the past week or so.

 

Quite right, too.

 

It’s interesting, however, that the xenophobic murders of hundreds of Somali refugees in the Cape Town area some months ago never prompted the same aghast response of shock and horror from the media.

 

What a shame that the xenophobia which is so characteristic of Africa in general and South Africa in particular is being portrayed as a recent phenomenon. Very little recognition has been given to the fact that xenophobia has always been an intrinsic part of African life throughout the continent and I doubt that much will change in that regard.

 

The Xhosa hate the Zulu. The Hutu hate the Tutsi. The Shona sneer at the Matebele. The Bushman and San are reviled by everyone. The list is as long as the number of tribes on the continent. And it is not new; many of the efforts of the past colonial powers went towards quelling and controlling the culturally traditional internecine strife between the peoples under their yoke and trying to instill a wider sense of purpose – to no avail, it would appear.

 

Whatever the reasons for intra-African xenophobia, it is a fact that it exists and is so deep-seated as to be all but ineradicable in the foreseeable future – notwithstanding the best efforts of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and panels of so-called experts called upon to explain and remedy the periodic flare-ups that occur in a general climate of simmering distrust and demonising mythologisation.

 

Under such circumstances it doesn’t take much to throw the spark leading to conflagration.

 

South Africa is a good case in point.

 

• The thrusting together of large numbers of people from diverse and historically antagonistic groups in the overcrowded ghetto-like environments of townships and squatter camps.
• Large-scale and uncontrolled illegal immigration from poorer neighbouring countries.
• Insufficient, inefficient and corrupt delivery of the most basic of human needs to those who have been deprived for so long.
• Poor education facilities and expertise from kindergarten on upwards.
• Insufficient work leading to an excess of available time to drink and seethe on the perceived causes of various misfortunes.
• Failure by government and its organs to devise and enforce policies and practices to, firstly, control and then eradicate crime and its consequences.
• Failure by community, municipal, provincial and national leaders to elevate themselves as role models away from the basest elements of human behaviour.
• Failure by the above leaders to acknowledge and actively address numerous problems, ranging from crime, policing, corruption, HIV/AIDS, service delivery and so on through to public office probity.

 

These are just some of the factors which make it too easy to find scapegoats when life gets a bit tougher than usual. And the scapegoats are, all too often, those who, for some reason or another, don’t fit into the usual patterns of local life; those from outside the country, outside the district, outside the neighbourhood – the most vulnerable because they are isolated and, therefore, easy targets. The savagery of the attacks is peculiarly African – witness the days of the Congolese uprisings, the ‘necklacings’ of South Africa and the genocide of Rwanda and Burundi.

 

Such targeting, of course, is the course of the ignorant and the cowardly – those too lazy to make the effort to properly evaluate the causes of their present predicament and too craven to challenge those events or people truly responsible for their plight (including, I might add, themselves).

 

The response of our government has been to convene a panel to investigate the causes and results of the violence in the townships.

 

Whoops! Wrong thing to do – at least, in the short-term. Fine for the longer view and for the formulation of later policy.

 

Short-term – get the situation immediately under control. If the police can’t handle it (and they seem, as ever, to be struggling) then get troops in. Separate the rival groups. Patrol the streets. Shoot dead (remember the words of the Deputy Minister of Safety and Security?) the attackers and opportunistic looters.

 

This is a time for resolute and firm action to quell the trouble before it becomes even more widespread and indiscriminate. This is not the time for anguished hand-wringing or high-minded political and social theorising. Fix the problem now and worry about fixing the blame later, when time permits.

 

Already I can hear the gasps of disbelief from the rest of the world – and the increasingly overt sniggers over our inability to face up to the daily realities of running a Third World country.

 

Worse still, I can hear the cries of despair from our own people as they witness yet another step into chaos and depravity.

 

Spearpoint.

19^th May 2008