No place for the immorality of violent polemics

POLITICAL morality should not be regarded as an oxymoron. Unfortunately, some South African politicians and their henchmen disagree. They include Kebby Maphatsoe, national chairman of Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association, Thebe Meeko, chairman of the African National Congress Youth League in the Free State, and Gwede Mantashe, African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general. These gentlemen have performed speech acts that are politically immoral. The lessons are twofold. First, it is important we hold public figures to decent ethical standards, not just legal ones. Second, there is a desperate need for the grammar of politics to change from violent struggle speak to nonviolent, rational speech.


Maphatsoe reportedly told former education minister Kader Asmal to “go to the nearest cemetery and die”. This was in response to Asmal’s very thorny criticism of the new government’s strategy for fighting crime. Opposition political parties are seizing the opportunity to put together a legal case against the military veterans, claiming that the speech amounts to hate speech. Legal pundits are joining the debate by whipping out sources of law and precedent that set out the test for hate speech.


This is not unimportant. If a law has been violated, then due punishment should be meted out. But a bigger issue might get lost in this legal fracas. It is the difference between law and political morality. Requirements of morality are often different to those of law. Not all that is morally desirable can or should be legally enforced. Not all that is legally permissible is morally permissible. A discretionary rule may let you buy a luxury car, but doing so might still not be morally acceptable at a given time. Morality, in a sense, is more fundamental than legal precepts.


There are two senses in which politicians need to act morally. They should behave morally in the same sense in which us ordinary mortals should: do not cheat, try to treat other people with due respect, etc. In addition, they need to act with a sense of political morality, which refers to ethical rules designed to guide the behaviour of those wielding public power. These rules derive from our collective desire to ensure that public space conduces to fair political dialogue and responsive government.


One rule is that public officials should not utter speech that can reasonably be construed as violent. Another is that they should not express speech that is intolerant of disagreement. Maphatsoe’s speech violates these rules. It both expresses and constitutes violent intolerance of Asmal’s right to engage in political discourse. That makes it politically immoral regardless of whether or not a legal case of intimidation or hate speech could be successfully argued in an equality court. The legal debate is a moral red herring.


Mantashe half-heartedly conceded that Asmal had a right to engage the ANC, but ended his speech with the perplexing and somewhat incoherent warning that “in taking on issues, self-destruction can bleed you to death”. To be fair, this is too vague to constitute a clear expression of violent intolerance, but it does have a sinister ring to it which, coupled with delivery in Mantashe’s trademark cough mixture-averse voice and tone, amounts to speech that is politically immoral quite apart from mundane questions of legality.


Meeko, too, uttered violent speech when he reportedly said of the new rector of the University of the Free State (UFS), Prof Jonathan Jansen, that he should be “shot and killed”. He denies this now, claiming to have said that “racism should be killed”. Both of these phrases are politically immoral. The first is a clear incitement to kill the new rector. The second constitutes violent grammar, which is particularly macabre in the context of a volatile race debate playing out at UFS. Meeko has no sense of political morality.


Sadly these examples are typical of political discourse in contemporary SA, and so cannot be wished away as exceptional. One source of this political immorality is the inheritance of a grammar of violence from the heyday of the liberation struggle. But in a liberal democracy we should develop, promote and cherish deliberative politics rather than violent intolerance. One starting point is to eliminate physical violence between political groups. We have largely done that. The next step is to substitute the grammar of violence with reasoned debate. This is desirable not just because political courtesy is nice but more importantly because violent grammar begets political violence.


These changes in political language require party leaders who understand the requirements of political morality and can show how to respectfully engage opponents inside and outside one’s political home. Only time will tell whether our political leaders are up to the challenge . The deepening of our teenage democracy requires them to be.



http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=85493