Dear local political parties, I turned 30 this year. When I grow up I want to be a politician. Don’t laugh. I am fully aware that growing up may well bar me from membership. I would like to join one of your ranks.
Call me naive or optimistic or both, but I believe that there may yet come a time when our — your — political culture is one that is not averse to a crop of young, interested politicos who want to openly declare a desire to lead, to be allowed to express that desire and to debate the merits and demerits of party views openly and frankly without fear of being sent into the political wilderness through the various crafty tactics you use to crush dissent.
Unfortunately, there is a massive disincentive for many of us youngish South Africans to seriously consider the honourable, or what should be honourable, business of law making and public service as career paths. Perhaps it would be useful to be party specific about my lament, since each of you contribute to that unglamorous reality in differing ways.
The African National Congress (ANC) is the worst sinner of the lot. Here is a party whose vision I endorse more than any other. I regard it as something of an ideological home. It is the most liberal party on social policy and lifestyle. While the Democratic Alliance (DA) folk running Cape Town harass sex workers, the ANC leads discussions on improving the lot of sex workers and rendering their rights to dignity, bodily integrity and economic freedom, meaningful. The ANC similarly had the most liberal attitude towards same-sex marriage, unlike the DA, which copped out by giving its MPs a cowardly free vote.
On the economic and socioeconomic fronts, I am attracted to the ANC too. Here a combination of market friendliness (thanks, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, for reducing cost of business through relaxed exchange controls) and serious investment in social projects and welfare signal a classic commitment to social democracy.
Yet the ANC’s internal political culture leaves me cold. I cannot, Comrade Jacob Zuma , imagine joining your ranks. I am bilingual, and the two languages do not include struggle-speak. That alone would cost me. I am also all too eager to debate openly and to declare support for this or that idea. I would want my right to sometimes step outside “the structures of the party” to be respected. Yet, as was the case with old Kader Asmal, violent language would follow suit, or I would be dedeployed or redeployed away from the action. I therefore cannot in good conscience join your party at this time.
DA, you do not perform much better, so it will not do to chuckle quietly at my criticism of the ANC’s organisational culture. In your case, to be fair, there is the appearance of less internal acrimony. I often wonder if this is genuine, since Madam Zille’s dominance does make one question whether the rest of the leadership has real influence — even the farmer in charge of your parliamentary team has already faded into oblivion. (Curious readers who do not recall his name will easily find it through a Google search for old articles published around election time, when said farmer gained momentary fame for being Xhosa-speaking, among other new-SA accolades.) But, even if I assumed that you have a perfect, internal democratic culture, I could still not join your ranks.
My interest in party politics is motivated by ideological conviction. Seriously. Of course, I would get a kick out of debate, public speaking and the like — any politician claiming otherwise is lying. But I could not join just any party. It must be one, like the ANC, whose vision I endorse. Alas, DA, you remain morally conservative (do not think your name or historical lineage fools me) and economically right wing. No South African with a sense of historicity and social justice intuitions could seriously be attracted to this vision for our country. So, Zille et al, while I commend your seemingly decent internal political culture, I’m afraid your ideological convictions, in their turn, leave me cold.
Since smaller parties, such as the Independent Democrats, have squabbled themselves out of political relevance, only the Congress of the People (COPE) remains as a party I might join. COPE has no vision, unfortunately, and so joining it is a bit problematic for a committed social democrat and moral liberal. Until they have an identity, and an agreeable one at that, I cannot claim to be attracted to them. It would also help, of course, if they demonstrated a preference for open contestation of ideas and leadership. Alas, they remain a grumpy Mini-Me duplicate of the ANC, taking the Mini-Me role so seriously that they resist growing up.
I look forward to the day any of you parties gives me a decisive reason to ditch the easy business of analysis for the tougher, more honourable one of law making and public service — before I turn 40.
Surprise me.
Sincerely,
Optimistically grumpy,
Eusebius “would- be-politician” McKaiser.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Why I just lost all respect for our deputy president...
I actually cannot believe the most pathetic defence I just heard from our deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, as to why government ministers were right to purchase a fleet of expensive cars between them even in the face of a recession. In an excellent interview conducted by Nikiwe Bikitsha on e-tv (she really has become a great anchor...), Motlanthe has just put the following argument (I kid you not):
The justification for the cars that were bought is that doing so is government's contribution to helping to halt the recession. The government was motivated, he says, by the fact that it wanted to make absolutely sure that manufacturers don't move their production plants from Uitenhage and East London to neighbouring countries. That can only happen if dealers order cars from car manufacturers. This in turn requires government to buy the cars .... so, ultimately, government is buying the cars in order to make sure that jobs are not shed in the automotive industry.
Holy cow! What warped - and no doubt insincere - reasoning.
1. A handful of luxury vehicles will not make or break the sector.
2. It is laughable to imagine that these manufacturers, like BMW, would think of hastily relocating their plants to Zim or Botswana or Namibia. This would be foolish because the cost of relocation relative to the risk of facing more volative economic conditions there, conditions that entail even more depressive demand for vehicles in these regions, make the net present value of any such investment almost certainly negative.
3. Government's failure to weigh the non-financial benefit (not to downplay the fiscal saving which is a decisive consideration at any rate) of showing citizens how to live frugally in times of a recession speaks to unimaginative and unempathetic leadership.
[Presumably that is also the reason why minister Nathi Mthwethwa decided to live in luxurious hotels - no doubt stimulating economic growth by injecting much needed cash into the tourism sector, ne?]
I find this defence by the deputy president not just unconvincing but callous. It is particularly callous when one thinks of the wording of the question on the part of the anchor, to the effect of, "Do you not think it is in bad taste to be buying such cars when the government is asking the poor to be frugal and accept austerity measures the government is introducing?"
At no stage did Motlanthe even bother to engage the salient point about the *perception* of government ministers' spending on non-essential goods even when such spending is permitted by the infamous 'ministerial handbook'. It is hard to believe that he is sincere in thinking that a million rand car is bought in the selfless name of saving the job of some poor oke living in the townships of Uitenhage and East London.
In fact, he added insult to the poor's injury by adding that they - the poor that is - would at any rate regard even a car of R200 000 as being in bad taste. [ ERGO: UHM....buy one FIVE times R200 000?!]
A good coup for Nikiwe and e-tv. A deep embarrassment for Motlanthe and a shocking reflection of political immorality even in those leaders we sometimes think are the exception to the rotten rule.
Shame on you, mr deputy president!
The justification for the cars that were bought is that doing so is government's contribution to helping to halt the recession. The government was motivated, he says, by the fact that it wanted to make absolutely sure that manufacturers don't move their production plants from Uitenhage and East London to neighbouring countries. That can only happen if dealers order cars from car manufacturers. This in turn requires government to buy the cars .... so, ultimately, government is buying the cars in order to make sure that jobs are not shed in the automotive industry.
Holy cow! What warped - and no doubt insincere - reasoning.
1. A handful of luxury vehicles will not make or break the sector.
2. It is laughable to imagine that these manufacturers, like BMW, would think of hastily relocating their plants to Zim or Botswana or Namibia. This would be foolish because the cost of relocation relative to the risk of facing more volative economic conditions there, conditions that entail even more depressive demand for vehicles in these regions, make the net present value of any such investment almost certainly negative.
3. Government's failure to weigh the non-financial benefit (not to downplay the fiscal saving which is a decisive consideration at any rate) of showing citizens how to live frugally in times of a recession speaks to unimaginative and unempathetic leadership.
[Presumably that is also the reason why minister Nathi Mthwethwa decided to live in luxurious hotels - no doubt stimulating economic growth by injecting much needed cash into the tourism sector, ne?]
I find this defence by the deputy president not just unconvincing but callous. It is particularly callous when one thinks of the wording of the question on the part of the anchor, to the effect of, "Do you not think it is in bad taste to be buying such cars when the government is asking the poor to be frugal and accept austerity measures the government is introducing?"
At no stage did Motlanthe even bother to engage the salient point about the *perception* of government ministers' spending on non-essential goods even when such spending is permitted by the infamous 'ministerial handbook'. It is hard to believe that he is sincere in thinking that a million rand car is bought in the selfless name of saving the job of some poor oke living in the townships of Uitenhage and East London.
In fact, he added insult to the poor's injury by adding that they - the poor that is - would at any rate regard even a car of R200 000 as being in bad taste. [ ERGO: UHM....buy one FIVE times R200 000?!]
A good coup for Nikiwe and e-tv. A deep embarrassment for Motlanthe and a shocking reflection of political immorality even in those leaders we sometimes think are the exception to the rotten rule.
Shame on you, mr deputy president!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Ubuntu depends on what you had for breakfast
I STILL often cheekily quote, without acknowledgement, the definition of “public morality”, given by one of my undergraduate law lecturers, as stuff that “depends on what a judge had for breakfast”. I wonder whether my lecturer also had ubuntu in mind?
Our Constitutional Court, in particular, references ubuntu with gay abandon.
This invocation of a supposedly distinctive African moral principle reveals the court’s desire to add a touch of the African to an otherwise western jurisprudential brew.
The truth is that ubuntu is a terribly opaque notion not fit as a normative moral principle that can guide our actions, let alone be a transparent and substantive basis for legal adjudication. In fact, it reminds one of the “African renaissance” motif. African renaissance is a concept similarly devoid of conceptual precision.
It is interesting to try to make sense of ubuntu and to reflect on why many of us feel compelled to render it meaningful.
Rather shamefully, it has taken an American philosopher, Thaddeus Metz who is now based at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), to force the wider South African philosophical community to invest some brain power into making sense of African ethics.
His first attempt to cut through various possible definitions, led Metz with the help of writing by folks like one Desmond Tutu of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission fame, defines ubuntu roughly as follows: ubuntu means that an action performed by someone is morally right if that action constitutes a way of living harmoniously or places value on communal relationships.
These are actions, in other words, in which people identify with each other and exhibit solidarity with one another. Behaviour that lack these features are not consistent with the spirit of ubuntu.
This definition is certainly a good start. Even though it refers to actions, the emphasis is clearly on relationships. Relationships, with some exaggeration, are deemed more important than one’s selfish interests. This is also why ubuntu is often cashed out in the form of a maxim to the effect that “a person is a person through other people”.
Your identity is partly dependent on, and constituted by, relationships with others.
And, if you desire to be a moral person, your actions had better demonstrate an appreciation of the requirement that morality’s fundamental point is to value relationships.
The critical question is whether this philosophising succeeds in getting us closer to a doctrine that can be practically useful in both our personal lives and in the public space, including the tricky enterprise of legal adjudication? The most optimistic answer must be, “Not yet.”
For one thing, this definition of ubuntu does not give us a doctrine that is unique to sub-Saharan Africa. To his credit, Metz comes close to acknowledging this fact but does some fancy philosophical footwork in shifting his claim to saying that the general emphasis on relationships is more widespread in sub-Saharan Africa than it is in western societies.
But it is surely anthropologically false to imagine that notions of “love” or “friendship” are not at the core of actual relationships between folks living in London or Berlin just because a couple of western academic philosophers had written texts that prioritise detached moral principles over more complex, relationship-focused ethics.
Western doctrines such as communitarianism can reasonably be interpreted, surely, as emphasising community not only for the sake of benefiting the individual but because community bonds — that is, relationships — are intrinsically valuable.
Ubuntu still appears like some kind of synonym for at least some versions of communitarianism, despite claims to the contrary by ubuntu’s loyal friends. This means that ubuntu does not capture anything in ethics or law that does not exist elsewhere in the world.
Besides not being unique, it is also not clear that we had succeeded in stating the content of ubuntu clearly and comprehensively enough to be useful for practical purposes. As Metz argues in his most recent work, the Constitutional Court relied on at least eight different definitions of ubuntu in the case of The State vs Makwanya, in which it declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional. Each of these definitions seemed rather ad hoc. Each one, if used consistently in other areas of law, would lead to counterintuitive results.
Two examples from the list of eight will suffice to illustrate the point. One judge argued that the death penalty violates ubuntu because ubuntu requires that we respect someone else’s life at least as much as we respect our own. But this cannot be so. Presumably when we kill in self-defence, doing so is okay? It is probably also morally acceptable to intentionally kill someone to save the lives of others, in circumstances such as when the offending person is committing genocide and refusing to stop? This particular definition of ubuntu would render killing in these cases immoral.
Another judge argued that ubuntu requires that one always try to rehabilitate someone in order to restore their humanity. Again, this colourful invocation of ubuntu as an African foundation for restorative justice intuitions is laudable, but surely incorrect since it desperately marries ubuntu to rehabilitation simply to give rehabilitation a more powerful aura than it naturally might carry. This is not great legal analysis, just deceptive usage of ubuntu for ulterior (though certainly agreeable) hermeneutical purposes.
What these random and rather wide definitions of ubuntu from a landmark Constitutional Court judgment demonstrate is that the very notion of ubuntu is elusive. This does not, of course, imply that ubuntu cannot be stated clearly and more narrowly. Indeed, there seems to be admirable normative philosophical projects at both the University of SA and UJ that do just that.
So far, however, these project are still very much works in progress. Until they yield substantive results, our reference to the notion of ubuntu will continue to say more about our desire to be clearly African than about our commitment to only use words and concepts whose meaning we actually understand.
This last thought explains why some of us are desperate to render ubuntu meaningful. There is a yearning — not restricted to the Constitutional Court — to find values and principles that we can think of as “African”. This, in turn, stems from a deeper need to have an identity that is not wholly handed down from our colonial forbears.
While these motivations are understandable, it is equally important that our identity crises do not get in the way of designing laws and policies that are sensible, but which might get set aside on the spurious basis that they are w estern rather than African.
If a philosophical value is most common in Europe, and has been explained and justified as a great and useful moral principle by someone of European descent, so what? We are free to import concepts that can help improve our lot as Africans, surely? We should dismiss western concepts only if the logic for them is poor or if they will not benefit us.
It is important that we balance our yearning and search for an African identity and ethics with a prudential acceptance that many western concepts are benign and some are even useful.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=85698
Our Constitutional Court, in particular, references ubuntu with gay abandon.
This invocation of a supposedly distinctive African moral principle reveals the court’s desire to add a touch of the African to an otherwise western jurisprudential brew.
The truth is that ubuntu is a terribly opaque notion not fit as a normative moral principle that can guide our actions, let alone be a transparent and substantive basis for legal adjudication. In fact, it reminds one of the “African renaissance” motif. African renaissance is a concept similarly devoid of conceptual precision.
It is interesting to try to make sense of ubuntu and to reflect on why many of us feel compelled to render it meaningful.
Rather shamefully, it has taken an American philosopher, Thaddeus Metz who is now based at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), to force the wider South African philosophical community to invest some brain power into making sense of African ethics.
His first attempt to cut through various possible definitions, led Metz with the help of writing by folks like one Desmond Tutu of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission fame, defines ubuntu roughly as follows: ubuntu means that an action performed by someone is morally right if that action constitutes a way of living harmoniously or places value on communal relationships.
These are actions, in other words, in which people identify with each other and exhibit solidarity with one another. Behaviour that lack these features are not consistent with the spirit of ubuntu.
This definition is certainly a good start. Even though it refers to actions, the emphasis is clearly on relationships. Relationships, with some exaggeration, are deemed more important than one’s selfish interests. This is also why ubuntu is often cashed out in the form of a maxim to the effect that “a person is a person through other people”.
Your identity is partly dependent on, and constituted by, relationships with others.
And, if you desire to be a moral person, your actions had better demonstrate an appreciation of the requirement that morality’s fundamental point is to value relationships.
The critical question is whether this philosophising succeeds in getting us closer to a doctrine that can be practically useful in both our personal lives and in the public space, including the tricky enterprise of legal adjudication? The most optimistic answer must be, “Not yet.”
For one thing, this definition of ubuntu does not give us a doctrine that is unique to sub-Saharan Africa. To his credit, Metz comes close to acknowledging this fact but does some fancy philosophical footwork in shifting his claim to saying that the general emphasis on relationships is more widespread in sub-Saharan Africa than it is in western societies.
But it is surely anthropologically false to imagine that notions of “love” or “friendship” are not at the core of actual relationships between folks living in London or Berlin just because a couple of western academic philosophers had written texts that prioritise detached moral principles over more complex, relationship-focused ethics.
Western doctrines such as communitarianism can reasonably be interpreted, surely, as emphasising community not only for the sake of benefiting the individual but because community bonds — that is, relationships — are intrinsically valuable.
Ubuntu still appears like some kind of synonym for at least some versions of communitarianism, despite claims to the contrary by ubuntu’s loyal friends. This means that ubuntu does not capture anything in ethics or law that does not exist elsewhere in the world.
Besides not being unique, it is also not clear that we had succeeded in stating the content of ubuntu clearly and comprehensively enough to be useful for practical purposes. As Metz argues in his most recent work, the Constitutional Court relied on at least eight different definitions of ubuntu in the case of The State vs Makwanya, in which it declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional. Each of these definitions seemed rather ad hoc. Each one, if used consistently in other areas of law, would lead to counterintuitive results.
Two examples from the list of eight will suffice to illustrate the point. One judge argued that the death penalty violates ubuntu because ubuntu requires that we respect someone else’s life at least as much as we respect our own. But this cannot be so. Presumably when we kill in self-defence, doing so is okay? It is probably also morally acceptable to intentionally kill someone to save the lives of others, in circumstances such as when the offending person is committing genocide and refusing to stop? This particular definition of ubuntu would render killing in these cases immoral.
Another judge argued that ubuntu requires that one always try to rehabilitate someone in order to restore their humanity. Again, this colourful invocation of ubuntu as an African foundation for restorative justice intuitions is laudable, but surely incorrect since it desperately marries ubuntu to rehabilitation simply to give rehabilitation a more powerful aura than it naturally might carry. This is not great legal analysis, just deceptive usage of ubuntu for ulterior (though certainly agreeable) hermeneutical purposes.
What these random and rather wide definitions of ubuntu from a landmark Constitutional Court judgment demonstrate is that the very notion of ubuntu is elusive. This does not, of course, imply that ubuntu cannot be stated clearly and more narrowly. Indeed, there seems to be admirable normative philosophical projects at both the University of SA and UJ that do just that.
So far, however, these project are still very much works in progress. Until they yield substantive results, our reference to the notion of ubuntu will continue to say more about our desire to be clearly African than about our commitment to only use words and concepts whose meaning we actually understand.
This last thought explains why some of us are desperate to render ubuntu meaningful. There is a yearning — not restricted to the Constitutional Court — to find values and principles that we can think of as “African”. This, in turn, stems from a deeper need to have an identity that is not wholly handed down from our colonial forbears.
While these motivations are understandable, it is equally important that our identity crises do not get in the way of designing laws and policies that are sensible, but which might get set aside on the spurious basis that they are w estern rather than African.
If a philosophical value is most common in Europe, and has been explained and justified as a great and useful moral principle by someone of European descent, so what? We are free to import concepts that can help improve our lot as Africans, surely? We should dismiss western concepts only if the logic for them is poor or if they will not benefit us.
It is important that we balance our yearning and search for an African identity and ethics with a prudential acceptance that many western concepts are benign and some are even useful.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=85698
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