Polygamy is a sexy topic yet again. It is back on the table for debate thanks to our most famous polygamist, President Jacob Zuma, who married his fifth wife this past week. Some people have an intrinsic hatred of polygamy. They regard it as dated, misogynist, irresponsible in a time of HIV/AIDS and a violation of core constitutional concepts like dignity and equality.
Others, with equal intensity, loathe what they view as the cultural chauvinism of liberals, defending cultural practises as an integral part of the socio-historical reality of too many people. For these supporters of polygamy, such practises must be defended from the liberal tyranny of a constitutional model that is out of touch with the ethical intuitions of the conservative majority.
In such a polarised debate space, with seemingly irreconcilable moral frameworks brought to the discussion table, is moral consensus possible? Or are we stuck with assertion and counter-assertion which can best be described as intractable differences in moral taste? How, if at all, can common ground be reached?
There is, in fact, an important liberal justification for polygamy that critics of the practise – who often think of themselves as subscribing to liberal or progressive moral values – are not aware of. The dichotomy between ‘tradition’ and ‘liberalism’ is hasty and lazy. There are important non-conservative reasons why polygamy should be allowed. Liberals, if they were to think more clearly about what liberalism means and commits them to, would realise that they have to be more accommodating of conservatives if they are to remain true to their own values and principles. Likewise, conservatives who often thoughtlessly regard liberalism as a threat to traditional forms of life, have to face the uncomfortable truth that a proper understanding of liberalism reveals a compassionate (even if qualified) permissiveness on the part of liberalism.
In order to understand this connection between liberalism and tradition, and polygamy in particular, it is of course important to get a clear conceptual grip on liberalism. Terms like ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ are bandied about in political discourse, often without clear meaning.
The users of these terms simply hope to evoke positive feelings in readers or listeners rather than making substantive and clear points. It does not really matter how one interprets these inherently tricky concepts – the important thing is to be honest and clear about your own definitions in order to both avoid being misunderstood and to allow for substantive differences and agreements between interlocutors to be clear.
Liberalism regards individual freedom and autonomy as critically important goods that the state should promote and protect. The core justification for this view is that individuals are best placed to know what values and principles they want to endorse and live their lives by. The state should not interfere in the exercise of that autonomy other than, as was argued by John Stuart Mill, to ensure that others’ right to freedom are not infringed. This gives us a framework to explore the ethics of polygamy. Is polygamy consistent with a liberal ethics?
Polygamy certainly is consistent with liberalism. One of the more subtle justifications for liberalism, in addition to and connected with, the premise about respecting individual autonomy, is valuing pluralism. The very point of allowing individuals to be free is to enable them to live the experimental life and settle for life forms that they endorse as worth living. It follows that if some communities wish to endorse polygamy, then this is perfectly permissible.
A liberal society’s liberalism is measured by its tolerance for diversity. There is no reason why polygamy is illiberal in a context where the persons entering into those relationships do so of their own free accord. To take away the moral entitlement to choose such a lifestyle would amount to a violation of liberalism’s commitment to protecting individual autonomy and pluralism.
There is thus no tension between liberalism and polygamy. There is, in fact, a positive relationship: a liberal society must allow for such a practise to be possible.
There is a mixture of principled and practical objections that have been trotted out on this issue. The principled arguments range from the downright silly (such as Kenneth Moeshe’s worry that it is an unchristian practise, as if we live in a Christian state) to more serious worries that values like substantive equality and dignity cannot be squared with polygamy. The serious worry merits attention.
Kenneth Moeshe’s worry deserves a mere parenthetical retort. South Africa is a secular state – for many good reasons - in which church and state is separated and so it would be unacceptable for any denomination’s moral code to be domesticated as national law.
Concerns about substantive equality are much more serious. If only men are allowed to enter into concurrent relationships with many female partners, then the practise is a violation of women’s right to equality. This means that anyone who wants to hang onto a liberal justification for polygamy must accept that both men and women should be allowed to enter into such relationships. Many supporters of polygamy will resist this move. They cannot have their liberal cake and eat it. They would have to find some other basis for their sexist views.
The strongest type of objections to polygamy, however, is practical rather than principled. One worry is the very real fear that concurrent relationships should not be encouraged in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. When the political head of the country leads such negative messaging by engaging in concurrent sexual relationships with his wives – presumably – then it is not unreasonable to regard such leadership as irresponsible. It also becomes reasonable to consider discouraging polygamy in society more generally as part of the fight against the pandemic.
This is a tricky objection to negotiate. It is obviously desirable that all reasonable measures be taken to deal the pandemic a death blow. Messaging about responsible sexual practises are central to this strategy. However, if the value that is placed on polygamy by some individuals and some communities are as deep and serious as appear to be the case, then a ‘second best’ strategy is to encourage safe sexual practises within polygamous relationships. Concurrent relationships are not ideal. But such relationships are not inherently inimical to halting the spread of HIV.
Messaging about HIV/AIDS must be evidence-based in the context of the social realities of ordinary people rather than pretending that an ideal reality can be created. So if polygamy is valued and ethically permissible and happens, then focusing on encouraging safe sex within these relationships must be a core part of our fight against the pandemic. Discouraging tradition is not essential.
The second worry is that, in practise, women are forced into polygamous relationships all too often. It is myth to imagine that full consent is routinely obtained and autonomy exercised by women as prescribed by some long-dead Western philosopher. In the real world, in the rural hinterlands where columnists, academics and even political leaders often do not tread, many young girls and women are forced or pressurised into such relationships. Many who are not physically forced, are constrained by their economic disempowerment. Not all women have university degrees and the capacity to live independently - like the President’s latest spouse.
Are these practical worries decisive? It is always difficult to assess the impact of practical considerations on ethical debates. How many practical concerns need to be stacked up before a practise should be banned or discouraged regardless of principled justifications?
Take a parallel example – how many boys will have to die in the Eastern Cape during initiation ceremonies before the death toll justify stopping the practise even if in principle there are important justifications for allowing cultural practises that are integral to a community’s identity?
In the case of polygamy, I cannot proclaim to know the practical facts intimately enough to offer a view. A qualified view is that, certainly, should well-researched and peer-reviewed social science studies – or even compelling cumulative anecdotal evidence – reveal that in practise too many women are abused in polygamous relationships and, furthermore, that practical interventions to stop such gender abuse are not possible or continue to fail, then we will have good reason to discourage the practise.
If there are only a handful of abuses, and these can be dealt with without throwing the cultural practise out of the window, then the life form should remain as one that can legitimately be chosen by people who deem it valuable. The polygamy debate would benefit from robust empirical evidence on this point.
What has seemed like deep disagreement between traditionalists and liberals turns out to be superficial disagreement. Liberalism and pluralism are core values that our liberal constitutional model is based on. These liberal values form the basis of a liberal justification for allowing polygamy. Traditionalists, in their turn, may curiously come to learn that the protection of their non-liberal, communitarian life forms are often best protected in a moral and political system based on liberalism and not conservatism.
In the end, however, this interesting principled consensus between liberals and traditionalists need to be informed by empirical facts. If polygamy is shown to systemically enslave women and such ills cannot be practically arrested, then the principled defences of polygamy collapse under the weight of practical burden.
[ This article was published in Sunday Independent on 10 January 2010 ]
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Why I only date black men (a republication, for fun)
[ This piece was published in the Sunday Indy last year and caused a minor storm in a small teacup, including on SAfm when I was invited to discuss it. One charming listener sent a text stating "SAfm has run out of healthy topics!" haha. The issue re-surfaced in a chat recently with two good friends of mine - so I thought i'd repost it and provoke further discussion- if anyone cares. Use it. Don't use it. ]
******
I drew quite a bit of flak in a chat room the other day. I had expressed a preference for black partners. “I thought we’ve moved beyond such racism!” one self-confessed progressive smarty pants piped up. Others even accused me of having an “immoral” attitude. “What’s wrong with whites?!” insisted yet another. My cheeky “Not much!” was lost on the humourless bugger. After a brief attempt at explaining myself, I accepted defeat. My faceless conversationalists showed no openness to reason. The whole saga has forced me, though, to wrestle with a pretty tough question: are racially exclusive sexual preferences immoral? I date only blacks: does that make me racist?
I always regarded sexual preferences as subjective stuff about which very little can be said. Just as some people like banana on pizza, or can be moved, miraculously, by the jarring sounds of Metallica (yuk!), others enjoy avocado on pizza, and listen to Lionel Richie on repeat (cool!) These are all mere matters of taste. And taste, surely, cannot be objectively evaluated? One person’s ‘bad taste’ is another’s aesthetic heaven - or orgasm even!
And so it is, I always thought, with our choices of who we sleep with. I, for one, don’t ‘get’ my black male friends’ obsession with gigantic booties, for example. But, then again, my near-drooling after tall, well-sculpted black hunks that strut past our lunch table, not only mildly embarrass these same straight friends, but leave them as puzzled about the drivers of my own tastes. Yet, the incident in the chat room tests the foundations of these convictions. Are sexual preferences really so innocent? Or, are they reflections of deeper attitudes, and earlier experiences, which can be morally criticised? In a country like South Africa, in particular, can the potent political sociology of race so easily be divorced from the ethics of sexuality?
A good friend of mine recently challenged my long-held view about the inherent subjectivity and innocence of sexual preferences. He suggested that, in fact, the question of who we sleep with might actually be one of the most interesting litmus tests of how much progress we’ve made in South Africa in terms of race relations. Interracial dating, he argued, is perhaps not as common fifteen years after Apartheid’s demise, as one might have predicted. “There should have been many more coloured kids by now!” he half-joked. Unfortunately, our local academics are not interested enough in sexy social questions, so there isn’t much written, and documented, on these post-democratic behavioural trends.
I am, on second thoughts, inclined to partly agree with my friend – sexual preferences do reflect background experiences, and so might well be a decent proxy for measuring various social phenomena, such as our evolving attitudes towards ‘the other’.
Take a pedestrian example. There was some interracial dating between boys from my Model-C, multiracial high school, and girls from our sister school (gay teens remain invisible). My black friends who attended township schools, on the other hand, continued to date only black girls. This is no co-incidence. Exposure to different languages, cultures, classes, nationalities, bodies, phenotypes and cultures de-mystifies ‘the other’ so that you become socialised into not just ‘understanding’ ‘their’ differences, but also ‘feeling’ (for) ‘them’. The desire for sex, one of those most basic of human drives, suddenly finds itself oriented towards a greater range of potential partners. This, surely, is a sign of successful racial integration, the humanising of black and white folks in each others’ eyes.
There seems to be something to my friend’s hunch that racial exclusivity in sexual choices reflects a psychosexual inability to view ‘the other’ as fully, and basically, human. This thought dovetails our natural impulse to explore things that are foreign. One of the biggest tragedies of ‘growing up’ is that our childhood fascination with exploring stuff (think of the baby, that most intellectually curious of creatures, yanking at every object in its way!) dies before puberty. Throw in the psychological damage caused by Apartheid, a system which criminalised any fascination with difference, and our natural impulses flew into exile.
Against this backdrop, greater interracial dating in post-democratic South Africa would signal the growing impotence of our racist psychologies. Does all this mean that sexual preferences are not all that innocent, then? Should I feel ashamed of, or at least regret, dating only black partners?! An affirmative answer would be hasty, I think, even if we warmed to the idea that sexual choices might reflect the extent of our comfort with others.
We must separate psychological accounts of the origin of our preferences, from the very different issue of whether it matters that those origins might be embarrassing. Imagine, for example, you are an absolute sport fanatic, spending seven days a week at the gym, and taking part in a team sport or two over weekends. You also know that your deeply insecure dad – bless him! – forced you, sometimes near-violently, to participate in sporting activities, just so he could live vicariously through your sporting prowess, having been pretty useless in his day. This sounds like a tragic origin of your adult love affair with health and fitness. Does this mean you should tone it all down, and substitute a few gym visits with trips to McDonalds instead?! Surely not.
Similarly, while it’s true that sexual preferences can reflect tragic earlier life experiences, it does not follow that one has a moral duty to now change one’s preferences. It simply means that we understand where our sexual tastes come from. It is up to us, as individuals, to decide whether we like these tastes we are saddled with, or whether we want to take steps to alter them. Though, heaven alone knows what steps would work - therapy?! hypnosis?! I, for one, would find it difficult to have a pep talk with my sexual hormones, “Friends, PLEASE organise me a few erections when I see white peeps! Please?! In the name of racial integration?!” I’m perfectly happy to remain enthralled with the black body.
Furthermore, what seems like a supposedly healthy and innocent fascination with difference and variety can also sometimes land us in hot ethical waters. There’s a fine line between indulging in interracial bonding, and fetishising ‘the other’. The number of times someone has used the pickup line, “I’ve never been with a black guy!” in the hope of bowling me over, continues to shock me. While I am all for giving substance to the word ‘pluralism’, a word I bandy about every other day, the flip-side is that we must avoid unhealthy obsessions with others.
This is not a warning against interracial relationships. It is a cautionary tale about the danger of trying to turn multiculturalism into something of a normative ethical theory. There are also prudential reasons why we might choose to date someone from a certain group. Almost all of my black American friends on fancy scholarships at Oxford made it clear that they would only marry a black partner when they returned to the States. They left jungle fever experiments for ‘studies abroad’. They thought they’d get greater political mileage out of dating their ‘own kind’. It is interesting to guess, for example, how Obama’s candidacy might have played out if he had a white partner. Would a greater number of white Americans have warmed up to him? Would black Americans have doubted his ‘black credentials’?! One driver of white America’s support for Obama (if you’re into pop psychology theories about voting patterns, like scholar Shelby Steele, who punts this particular view) is that voting for a black President was a form of racial redemption for many whites. If so, an interracial couple running for office might have elicited fewer white votes from those seeking an opportunity to ‘prove’ their non-racism. All this is, of course, speculation – but the truth it speaks to is that choices about who we sleep with, and who we marry, are irreducibly complex, and deeply personal. It is surely ok if I choose Michelle partly because it helps me get to the White House – or, even, because it is easier to introduce her to the family, and mama’s unhealthy ‘soul food’ (unless of course, mama is white, and not into soul anyway!)
In the final analysis, we should think twice about imposing norms on each other for how to pick bedfellows. . Morality does not and cannot dictate to our erotic yearnings or the responses of our privy parts. We don’t need to be equal opportunity lovers. While sexual tastes clearly can betray our deepest anxieties and prejudices, we should also learn to just chill about this issue. Like sin, prejudice can be fun. When the prejudice is innocuous, like my choice of a mommy or daddy for my kids, then we’d all do well to keep away from overzealous moralists trying to take the fun out of loving. Sex, like religion, should not be politicised.
******
I drew quite a bit of flak in a chat room the other day. I had expressed a preference for black partners. “I thought we’ve moved beyond such racism!” one self-confessed progressive smarty pants piped up. Others even accused me of having an “immoral” attitude. “What’s wrong with whites?!” insisted yet another. My cheeky “Not much!” was lost on the humourless bugger. After a brief attempt at explaining myself, I accepted defeat. My faceless conversationalists showed no openness to reason. The whole saga has forced me, though, to wrestle with a pretty tough question: are racially exclusive sexual preferences immoral? I date only blacks: does that make me racist?
I always regarded sexual preferences as subjective stuff about which very little can be said. Just as some people like banana on pizza, or can be moved, miraculously, by the jarring sounds of Metallica (yuk!), others enjoy avocado on pizza, and listen to Lionel Richie on repeat (cool!) These are all mere matters of taste. And taste, surely, cannot be objectively evaluated? One person’s ‘bad taste’ is another’s aesthetic heaven - or orgasm even!
And so it is, I always thought, with our choices of who we sleep with. I, for one, don’t ‘get’ my black male friends’ obsession with gigantic booties, for example. But, then again, my near-drooling after tall, well-sculpted black hunks that strut past our lunch table, not only mildly embarrass these same straight friends, but leave them as puzzled about the drivers of my own tastes. Yet, the incident in the chat room tests the foundations of these convictions. Are sexual preferences really so innocent? Or, are they reflections of deeper attitudes, and earlier experiences, which can be morally criticised? In a country like South Africa, in particular, can the potent political sociology of race so easily be divorced from the ethics of sexuality?
A good friend of mine recently challenged my long-held view about the inherent subjectivity and innocence of sexual preferences. He suggested that, in fact, the question of who we sleep with might actually be one of the most interesting litmus tests of how much progress we’ve made in South Africa in terms of race relations. Interracial dating, he argued, is perhaps not as common fifteen years after Apartheid’s demise, as one might have predicted. “There should have been many more coloured kids by now!” he half-joked. Unfortunately, our local academics are not interested enough in sexy social questions, so there isn’t much written, and documented, on these post-democratic behavioural trends.
I am, on second thoughts, inclined to partly agree with my friend – sexual preferences do reflect background experiences, and so might well be a decent proxy for measuring various social phenomena, such as our evolving attitudes towards ‘the other’.
Take a pedestrian example. There was some interracial dating between boys from my Model-C, multiracial high school, and girls from our sister school (gay teens remain invisible). My black friends who attended township schools, on the other hand, continued to date only black girls. This is no co-incidence. Exposure to different languages, cultures, classes, nationalities, bodies, phenotypes and cultures de-mystifies ‘the other’ so that you become socialised into not just ‘understanding’ ‘their’ differences, but also ‘feeling’ (for) ‘them’. The desire for sex, one of those most basic of human drives, suddenly finds itself oriented towards a greater range of potential partners. This, surely, is a sign of successful racial integration, the humanising of black and white folks in each others’ eyes.
There seems to be something to my friend’s hunch that racial exclusivity in sexual choices reflects a psychosexual inability to view ‘the other’ as fully, and basically, human. This thought dovetails our natural impulse to explore things that are foreign. One of the biggest tragedies of ‘growing up’ is that our childhood fascination with exploring stuff (think of the baby, that most intellectually curious of creatures, yanking at every object in its way!) dies before puberty. Throw in the psychological damage caused by Apartheid, a system which criminalised any fascination with difference, and our natural impulses flew into exile.
Against this backdrop, greater interracial dating in post-democratic South Africa would signal the growing impotence of our racist psychologies. Does all this mean that sexual preferences are not all that innocent, then? Should I feel ashamed of, or at least regret, dating only black partners?! An affirmative answer would be hasty, I think, even if we warmed to the idea that sexual choices might reflect the extent of our comfort with others.
We must separate psychological accounts of the origin of our preferences, from the very different issue of whether it matters that those origins might be embarrassing. Imagine, for example, you are an absolute sport fanatic, spending seven days a week at the gym, and taking part in a team sport or two over weekends. You also know that your deeply insecure dad – bless him! – forced you, sometimes near-violently, to participate in sporting activities, just so he could live vicariously through your sporting prowess, having been pretty useless in his day. This sounds like a tragic origin of your adult love affair with health and fitness. Does this mean you should tone it all down, and substitute a few gym visits with trips to McDonalds instead?! Surely not.
Similarly, while it’s true that sexual preferences can reflect tragic earlier life experiences, it does not follow that one has a moral duty to now change one’s preferences. It simply means that we understand where our sexual tastes come from. It is up to us, as individuals, to decide whether we like these tastes we are saddled with, or whether we want to take steps to alter them. Though, heaven alone knows what steps would work - therapy?! hypnosis?! I, for one, would find it difficult to have a pep talk with my sexual hormones, “Friends, PLEASE organise me a few erections when I see white peeps! Please?! In the name of racial integration?!” I’m perfectly happy to remain enthralled with the black body.
Furthermore, what seems like a supposedly healthy and innocent fascination with difference and variety can also sometimes land us in hot ethical waters. There’s a fine line between indulging in interracial bonding, and fetishising ‘the other’. The number of times someone has used the pickup line, “I’ve never been with a black guy!” in the hope of bowling me over, continues to shock me. While I am all for giving substance to the word ‘pluralism’, a word I bandy about every other day, the flip-side is that we must avoid unhealthy obsessions with others.
This is not a warning against interracial relationships. It is a cautionary tale about the danger of trying to turn multiculturalism into something of a normative ethical theory. There are also prudential reasons why we might choose to date someone from a certain group. Almost all of my black American friends on fancy scholarships at Oxford made it clear that they would only marry a black partner when they returned to the States. They left jungle fever experiments for ‘studies abroad’. They thought they’d get greater political mileage out of dating their ‘own kind’. It is interesting to guess, for example, how Obama’s candidacy might have played out if he had a white partner. Would a greater number of white Americans have warmed up to him? Would black Americans have doubted his ‘black credentials’?! One driver of white America’s support for Obama (if you’re into pop psychology theories about voting patterns, like scholar Shelby Steele, who punts this particular view) is that voting for a black President was a form of racial redemption for many whites. If so, an interracial couple running for office might have elicited fewer white votes from those seeking an opportunity to ‘prove’ their non-racism. All this is, of course, speculation – but the truth it speaks to is that choices about who we sleep with, and who we marry, are irreducibly complex, and deeply personal. It is surely ok if I choose Michelle partly because it helps me get to the White House – or, even, because it is easier to introduce her to the family, and mama’s unhealthy ‘soul food’ (unless of course, mama is white, and not into soul anyway!)
In the final analysis, we should think twice about imposing norms on each other for how to pick bedfellows. . Morality does not and cannot dictate to our erotic yearnings or the responses of our privy parts. We don’t need to be equal opportunity lovers. While sexual tastes clearly can betray our deepest anxieties and prejudices, we should also learn to just chill about this issue. Like sin, prejudice can be fun. When the prejudice is innocuous, like my choice of a mommy or daddy for my kids, then we’d all do well to keep away from overzealous moralists trying to take the fun out of loving. Sex, like religion, should not be politicised.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Police brutality leaves me cold
Hours before my departure for Johannesburg on Tuesday evening, I was still labouring under the illusion that my holiday trip to Port Elizabeth had been very pleasant. Unfortunately, police officers doing a drug bust in Parliament Street in Central spoilt my festive mood. They brazenly assaulted three suspected drug peddlers in the full face of the public glare. As if the assault itself was not illegal and immoral enough, they clearly assumed that all bystanders are vulnerable foreigners who lack the capacity to lay charges against the police officers. They had not banked on an accidentally-embedded analyst.
Drug peddling is, of course, an incredibly serious criminal offense. The police are right to eliminate the social scourge. No doubt many of the peddlers are also dangerous and a tough attitude on the part of the police is therefore not inappropriate.
However, what I witnessed was disturbing.
I was sitting at a local restaurant, Zanzibar, when police vehicles screeched past. The news junkie in me insisted on going outside to see what the commotion was about. I walked about 200 meters to where the police had cornered three men. They were lying on the ground when three police officers – including a female police officer – assaulted them with their rifles. Two of the officers emerged from a police vehicle with registration BRT 056 B. One of the suspected criminals quickly sported a gruesome facial swelling as a result of the assault.
Meanwhile, a white civilian woman –driving a top of the range Mercedes Benz with a child in the back – who appeared to have tried to deal with the suspected drug peddlers were casually allowed to drive off after an exchange of numbers with the police. I took down the number plate details of both the presumably would-be customer and the police officers who committed the assault. I spoke to a number of bystanders who had the exact same understanding of the events as me. Some of them were amused by my disgust – for them this is a daily reality.
Before walking away, I overheard one of the three officers – he was casually dressed, very aggressive and comically stout in appearance – laughing in Afrikaans while boasting to a colleague about showing “them” what xenophobia really means. He recalled earlier in the evening nabbing one of “them” at a nearby corner and kicking him with the greatest possible force while he was lying on the ground and claiming to have no drugs on him.
The incident is disturbing for many reasons.
First, a human rights culture requires the rights of both innocent persons and suspected criminals to be fully respected.
Second, the incident was clearly layered with both racism and xenophobia. The rich white woman, who should have been arrested for purposes of further questioning at the very least, was treated like a police buddy. Black bodies were treated like objects to be assaulted. This was no doubt heightened by the fact that the suspected peddlers appeared foreign.
Third, this undermines relations between the community and the police. If you wish the community to come forward with information that can lead to the arrest of criminals, then it is important that the community have confidence in how you conduct your affairs. This incident does not inspire confidence.
Finally, South Africa need to do much more to affirm the rights of foreigners living within our borders. We have seen too many assaults on foreigners by both ordinary South Africans and the police for too long now. This is in violation of international humanitarian law.
The police are right to be tough on crime. But one cannot help but think back to the dark days of Apartheid when you see an all-white, mostly Afrikaans and sadistically aggressive police unit invading a mostly-black zone and arrogantly and openly assaulting the bodies and rights of real human beings. It leaves me cold.
Drug peddling is, of course, an incredibly serious criminal offense. The police are right to eliminate the social scourge. No doubt many of the peddlers are also dangerous and a tough attitude on the part of the police is therefore not inappropriate.
However, what I witnessed was disturbing.
I was sitting at a local restaurant, Zanzibar, when police vehicles screeched past. The news junkie in me insisted on going outside to see what the commotion was about. I walked about 200 meters to where the police had cornered three men. They were lying on the ground when three police officers – including a female police officer – assaulted them with their rifles. Two of the officers emerged from a police vehicle with registration BRT 056 B. One of the suspected criminals quickly sported a gruesome facial swelling as a result of the assault.
Meanwhile, a white civilian woman –driving a top of the range Mercedes Benz with a child in the back – who appeared to have tried to deal with the suspected drug peddlers were casually allowed to drive off after an exchange of numbers with the police. I took down the number plate details of both the presumably would-be customer and the police officers who committed the assault. I spoke to a number of bystanders who had the exact same understanding of the events as me. Some of them were amused by my disgust – for them this is a daily reality.
Before walking away, I overheard one of the three officers – he was casually dressed, very aggressive and comically stout in appearance – laughing in Afrikaans while boasting to a colleague about showing “them” what xenophobia really means. He recalled earlier in the evening nabbing one of “them” at a nearby corner and kicking him with the greatest possible force while he was lying on the ground and claiming to have no drugs on him.
The incident is disturbing for many reasons.
First, a human rights culture requires the rights of both innocent persons and suspected criminals to be fully respected.
Second, the incident was clearly layered with both racism and xenophobia. The rich white woman, who should have been arrested for purposes of further questioning at the very least, was treated like a police buddy. Black bodies were treated like objects to be assaulted. This was no doubt heightened by the fact that the suspected peddlers appeared foreign.
Third, this undermines relations between the community and the police. If you wish the community to come forward with information that can lead to the arrest of criminals, then it is important that the community have confidence in how you conduct your affairs. This incident does not inspire confidence.
Finally, South Africa need to do much more to affirm the rights of foreigners living within our borders. We have seen too many assaults on foreigners by both ordinary South Africans and the police for too long now. This is in violation of international humanitarian law.
The police are right to be tough on crime. But one cannot help but think back to the dark days of Apartheid when you see an all-white, mostly Afrikaans and sadistically aggressive police unit invading a mostly-black zone and arrogantly and openly assaulting the bodies and rights of real human beings. It leaves me cold.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Stuff Christmas, let's talk about Solidarity, race & bursaries
At the risk of upsetting the Christmas cheer (not that I care ... I hate Christmas: compulsory happiness is not my thing), I thought I'd e-scribble a few thoughts on an article I had just read about a reportedly race-specific bursary scheme administered by First National Bank.
FNB reportedly have a bursary scheme for employees' children attending primary school. The chief criteria are financial need (qualifying employees earn less than R100 000 per annum) AND race (qualifying employees are black African, Indian & coloured).
Solidarity - the country's anti-race bulldogs - object to the second criterion. They argue that race-specific bursary schemes of this kind are wrong on the premise that - and this bit is important, so note the wording - white children in primary schools did not benefit from Apartheid.
Does Solidarity's argument hold any water?
Not at all. It is an argument that is tired, tiring and sloppily thought through. The pervasiveness of this less-than-cogent logic in the anti-affirmative action camp beggars belief. It is equally tiring having to trot out (again) the right response - but that is necessary. So here goes.
First, it is clear that race identification *in itself * is not what Solidarity has an issue with - despite the initial language in which the objection is couched. The details of their objection reveals a more pointed object of criticism: the excluded group of learners (young whites) did not benefit from Apartheid. This distinction is important. It means that Solidarity - rightly, if so - are not against race based redress in its entirety, but against particular race based policies that lack justification within the broader scheme of redress policy packages. The problem, of course, is that in this particular instance, Solidarity have not identified a scheme (the bursary) that is unjustified.
Second - and related - is the question of whether the phrase 'did not benefit from Apartheid' does enough ethical justificatory work in the objection of Solidarity to the race based bursary scheme. It does not.
A] For one thing, it is an historical fact that Apartheid was executed in group terms - with great success. Even though notions of 'groups' are conceptually and metaphysically fragile, it does not follow that effective working definitions of groups are socially and politically inert. The socially constructed groups 'black', 'white', 'indian' and 'coloured' took on a reality we all lived through and with. It is UTTERLY DISHONEST for any South African - particularly whites - to pretend that groups do not exist. They do.
B] Given that groups exist, and were the basis of Apartheid policies, it follows straightforwardly that redress at *group level* is necessary to dismantle the *group based* structural inequalities that Apartheid - courtesy of its inherently group based logic!! - left us with.
SO, with all these conceptual and historical facts (truisms, in fact) rehearsed, we can return to the issue at hand - the FNB race based bursary scheme.
The scheme, insofar as it targets groups of employees who suffered structurally - qua group membership - during Apartheid, is justified. The innocent little white kids in primary school born after 1994 DID benefit from Apartheid. They benefit from the general social advantage of being born into white lineage. In purely statistical terms, a white kid - simply in virtue of its arbitrary whiteness - STILL has a better shot at reaching the top of life's ladder than her black counterpart. That is fact - notwithstanding the sprinkling of BEE cats.
Does this mean that all blacks are poor and needy, and all whites, rich and not in need of assistance? Obviously not. BUT ... these exceptions do not mean that individual assessments for benefit schemes are always necessary and that group based benefit schemes are inappropriate.
It is a red herring to point to the existence of a few Tokyo Sexwales and a few poor whites at your street corner. This is a bit like pointing to Oprah Winfrey when denying a bunch of black kids from Harlem bursary schemes that target them specifically as poor *black* kids. Benefits and burdens remain distributed largely along race-group lines .... let's not overindulge in 1) debating individual assessments vs. group assessments ... nor 2) perpetuate the false dichotomoy of choosing between class based strategies and race based strategies, for dismantling past inequalities.
Last, the only remainining objection might be that as a *private employer* FNB ought to be race-insensitive in terms of its internal benefit schemes. But this is an overstatement of an employer's obligations: for one thing, Solidarity does not have a problem with the financial need requirement which already disqualify many employees (black and white), including ones who earn, say, R110 000 per annum and so arguably still identify as needy families (moral: employee benefit schemes may discriminate between groups within a company provided this can be justified, as per the logic of this piece...) ; for another, it does not (absent further information) appear like employees were promised automatic eligibility to the bursary scheme as part of a salary package. It is thus not quite clear where the entitlement - in positive rights terms - comes from. The debate is best understood then as an issue of whether the *exclusion* is justified, which it clearly is, by virtue of the politico-historical considerations outlined here.
Unless, of course, you think that SA was founded in 1994. Too many (mostly white) folks are beginning to think so - Solidarity included.
FNB reportedly have a bursary scheme for employees' children attending primary school. The chief criteria are financial need (qualifying employees earn less than R100 000 per annum) AND race (qualifying employees are black African, Indian & coloured).
Solidarity - the country's anti-race bulldogs - object to the second criterion. They argue that race-specific bursary schemes of this kind are wrong on the premise that - and this bit is important, so note the wording - white children in primary schools did not benefit from Apartheid.
Does Solidarity's argument hold any water?
Not at all. It is an argument that is tired, tiring and sloppily thought through. The pervasiveness of this less-than-cogent logic in the anti-affirmative action camp beggars belief. It is equally tiring having to trot out (again) the right response - but that is necessary. So here goes.
First, it is clear that race identification *in itself * is not what Solidarity has an issue with - despite the initial language in which the objection is couched. The details of their objection reveals a more pointed object of criticism: the excluded group of learners (young whites) did not benefit from Apartheid. This distinction is important. It means that Solidarity - rightly, if so - are not against race based redress in its entirety, but against particular race based policies that lack justification within the broader scheme of redress policy packages. The problem, of course, is that in this particular instance, Solidarity have not identified a scheme (the bursary) that is unjustified.
Second - and related - is the question of whether the phrase 'did not benefit from Apartheid' does enough ethical justificatory work in the objection of Solidarity to the race based bursary scheme. It does not.
A] For one thing, it is an historical fact that Apartheid was executed in group terms - with great success. Even though notions of 'groups' are conceptually and metaphysically fragile, it does not follow that effective working definitions of groups are socially and politically inert. The socially constructed groups 'black', 'white', 'indian' and 'coloured' took on a reality we all lived through and with. It is UTTERLY DISHONEST for any South African - particularly whites - to pretend that groups do not exist. They do.
B] Given that groups exist, and were the basis of Apartheid policies, it follows straightforwardly that redress at *group level* is necessary to dismantle the *group based* structural inequalities that Apartheid - courtesy of its inherently group based logic!! - left us with.
SO, with all these conceptual and historical facts (truisms, in fact) rehearsed, we can return to the issue at hand - the FNB race based bursary scheme.
The scheme, insofar as it targets groups of employees who suffered structurally - qua group membership - during Apartheid, is justified. The innocent little white kids in primary school born after 1994 DID benefit from Apartheid. They benefit from the general social advantage of being born into white lineage. In purely statistical terms, a white kid - simply in virtue of its arbitrary whiteness - STILL has a better shot at reaching the top of life's ladder than her black counterpart. That is fact - notwithstanding the sprinkling of BEE cats.
Does this mean that all blacks are poor and needy, and all whites, rich and not in need of assistance? Obviously not. BUT ... these exceptions do not mean that individual assessments for benefit schemes are always necessary and that group based benefit schemes are inappropriate.
It is a red herring to point to the existence of a few Tokyo Sexwales and a few poor whites at your street corner. This is a bit like pointing to Oprah Winfrey when denying a bunch of black kids from Harlem bursary schemes that target them specifically as poor *black* kids. Benefits and burdens remain distributed largely along race-group lines .... let's not overindulge in 1) debating individual assessments vs. group assessments ... nor 2) perpetuate the false dichotomoy of choosing between class based strategies and race based strategies, for dismantling past inequalities.
Last, the only remainining objection might be that as a *private employer* FNB ought to be race-insensitive in terms of its internal benefit schemes. But this is an overstatement of an employer's obligations: for one thing, Solidarity does not have a problem with the financial need requirement which already disqualify many employees (black and white), including ones who earn, say, R110 000 per annum and so arguably still identify as needy families (moral: employee benefit schemes may discriminate between groups within a company provided this can be justified, as per the logic of this piece...) ; for another, it does not (absent further information) appear like employees were promised automatic eligibility to the bursary scheme as part of a salary package. It is thus not quite clear where the entitlement - in positive rights terms - comes from. The debate is best understood then as an issue of whether the *exclusion* is justified, which it clearly is, by virtue of the politico-historical considerations outlined here.
Unless, of course, you think that SA was founded in 1994. Too many (mostly white) folks are beginning to think so - Solidarity included.
Friday, December 18, 2009
An anthropology of low expectations
Readers will recall that last week I took to task the invocation of ‘context' by Johnny Steinberg in order to ‘understand' and ‘situate' the moral failures of political leaders like Thabo Mbeki. Legacy debates will not go out of fashion anytime soon and so it is worth pushing the dialectic a little bit further.
Steinberg responds by claiming that " ... if Mr McKaiser's argument is taken to its logical conclusion, we should never again invoke the humiliation of Versailles lest we excuse Adolf Hitler. Nor dare we mention land hunger as a source of grievance in Zimbabwe lest we give Robert Mugabe succour. We are to still our questions, bury our curiosity and butcher our intellects in order that we may condemn."
Nonsense. But interesting nonsense - a colourful example of a straw man that I could trot out for beginner logic students to play with. In this rejoinder, Steinberg gives examples with which I certainly would agree. Of course one can point out multiple sources of any political or socio-economic problem. That is indeed the point of intellectually curious social science research that aims to offer us a critical understanding of the world we live in. Nothing in my criticism of Steinberg's use of ‘context' to understand Thabo Mbeki's legacy is incompatible with this. It is not rocket science to accept that there can be multiple sources of explanation for any issue.
What Steinberg in fact did, but tries to fudge by pretending he was engaging in subtle intellectual pursuit that I missed because perhaps I was sneezing while reading him, was to poorly distinguish between the contextual facts within which Mbeki had acted as a political animal and the individual moral and political blame that can properly be attributed to Mbeki. Mbeki simply chose AIDS denialism - period. History will and should rightly hold him morally responsible.
The irony of this exchange between Steinberg and myself was brought to my attention by a couple of readers who pointed me to an excellent review by Steinberg of Didier Fassin's "When bodies remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa". Steinberg rather pointedly - and rightly - criticises the excessive attempt on the part of Fassin to understand Mbeki. He calls this "an anthropology of low expectations" and concludes by urging that "we should beware generous anthropologies of African mistakes." Yet, fast forward to late 2009, and Steinberg himself is engaging in a low-expectation anthropology of African mistakes. It is important for researchers and writers to journey into the headspace and social landscape of a subject with critical distance. This does not mean that we must lack empathy. Nor that we should never exonerate someone or diminish the degree of responsibility we attribute to them. Mbeki's ‘leadership' on HIV/AIDS, however, is not such a case in point.
The bigger debate is ultimately one about structuralism's fate. Our individual beliefs, attitudes, personalities and behavioural patterns are strongly influenced by social, economic, political, familial and other structures into which we are born and within which we become adults. We cannot pretend to live in solitary universes as individuals. These social facts mean that individuals can only be fully understood if the structures within which they were and are shaped are understood equally well. This is the point of much social science. And it is a worthwhile and compelling enterprise.
What too many social scientists get wrong - and also biographers whose works are derivative of empirical psychology and sociology - is to perpetuate two analytic mistakes. The first is a failure to recognise that structures are constituted by persons with flesh and blood and brains and bodies - human beings. Instead, structures are anthropomorphised. Human traits are casually attributed to inanimate things. Then, in a jump of logic, we can, for example, claim that it is not a human being who is racist, but an (inanimate) ‘system' or ‘institution' that is racist, as if systems and institutions are not constituted by persons who take decisions that we can attribute to them as persons.
The fetishishing of structures allow leaders to be given convenient space to escape full responsibility for actions and decisions. Structures influence who and what are. But they do not determine what we do. We are capable of acting differently to how we in fact act. That is why attributions of praise and blame in the game of morality makes sense- even in the face of facts about the context within which we act.
The second confusion is a failure to distinguish between empiricism and normativity. Of course empirical projects are hugely intellectually interesting. New data and facts are the lifeblood of knowledge production. But normative questions - questions about how we ought to behave as opposed to how we actually behave - are equally important. If not, we will never bother to strive towards norms of moral excellence but simply replicate past mistakes well-chronicled in empirical social science works.
Ultimately, our criticism of Thabo Mbeki is a normative one. We take his intelligence seriously enough to blame him for failing to transcend the structures into which he was born. He could have and should have acted other than how he in fact acted as president of South Africa. A softer, later-Steinberg analysis of Mbeki's legacy perpetuates a condescending anthropology of low expectations, one the earlier-Steinberg would have rightly disapproved of.
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=154827&sn=Detail
Steinberg responds by claiming that " ... if Mr McKaiser's argument is taken to its logical conclusion, we should never again invoke the humiliation of Versailles lest we excuse Adolf Hitler. Nor dare we mention land hunger as a source of grievance in Zimbabwe lest we give Robert Mugabe succour. We are to still our questions, bury our curiosity and butcher our intellects in order that we may condemn."
Nonsense. But interesting nonsense - a colourful example of a straw man that I could trot out for beginner logic students to play with. In this rejoinder, Steinberg gives examples with which I certainly would agree. Of course one can point out multiple sources of any political or socio-economic problem. That is indeed the point of intellectually curious social science research that aims to offer us a critical understanding of the world we live in. Nothing in my criticism of Steinberg's use of ‘context' to understand Thabo Mbeki's legacy is incompatible with this. It is not rocket science to accept that there can be multiple sources of explanation for any issue.
What Steinberg in fact did, but tries to fudge by pretending he was engaging in subtle intellectual pursuit that I missed because perhaps I was sneezing while reading him, was to poorly distinguish between the contextual facts within which Mbeki had acted as a political animal and the individual moral and political blame that can properly be attributed to Mbeki. Mbeki simply chose AIDS denialism - period. History will and should rightly hold him morally responsible.
The irony of this exchange between Steinberg and myself was brought to my attention by a couple of readers who pointed me to an excellent review by Steinberg of Didier Fassin's "When bodies remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa". Steinberg rather pointedly - and rightly - criticises the excessive attempt on the part of Fassin to understand Mbeki. He calls this "an anthropology of low expectations" and concludes by urging that "we should beware generous anthropologies of African mistakes." Yet, fast forward to late 2009, and Steinberg himself is engaging in a low-expectation anthropology of African mistakes. It is important for researchers and writers to journey into the headspace and social landscape of a subject with critical distance. This does not mean that we must lack empathy. Nor that we should never exonerate someone or diminish the degree of responsibility we attribute to them. Mbeki's ‘leadership' on HIV/AIDS, however, is not such a case in point.
The bigger debate is ultimately one about structuralism's fate. Our individual beliefs, attitudes, personalities and behavioural patterns are strongly influenced by social, economic, political, familial and other structures into which we are born and within which we become adults. We cannot pretend to live in solitary universes as individuals. These social facts mean that individuals can only be fully understood if the structures within which they were and are shaped are understood equally well. This is the point of much social science. And it is a worthwhile and compelling enterprise.
What too many social scientists get wrong - and also biographers whose works are derivative of empirical psychology and sociology - is to perpetuate two analytic mistakes. The first is a failure to recognise that structures are constituted by persons with flesh and blood and brains and bodies - human beings. Instead, structures are anthropomorphised. Human traits are casually attributed to inanimate things. Then, in a jump of logic, we can, for example, claim that it is not a human being who is racist, but an (inanimate) ‘system' or ‘institution' that is racist, as if systems and institutions are not constituted by persons who take decisions that we can attribute to them as persons.
The fetishishing of structures allow leaders to be given convenient space to escape full responsibility for actions and decisions. Structures influence who and what are. But they do not determine what we do. We are capable of acting differently to how we in fact act. That is why attributions of praise and blame in the game of morality makes sense- even in the face of facts about the context within which we act.
The second confusion is a failure to distinguish between empiricism and normativity. Of course empirical projects are hugely intellectually interesting. New data and facts are the lifeblood of knowledge production. But normative questions - questions about how we ought to behave as opposed to how we actually behave - are equally important. If not, we will never bother to strive towards norms of moral excellence but simply replicate past mistakes well-chronicled in empirical social science works.
Ultimately, our criticism of Thabo Mbeki is a normative one. We take his intelligence seriously enough to blame him for failing to transcend the structures into which he was born. He could have and should have acted other than how he in fact acted as president of South Africa. A softer, later-Steinberg analysis of Mbeki's legacy perpetuates a condescending anthropology of low expectations, one the earlier-Steinberg would have rightly disapproved of.
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=154827&sn=Detail
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Only a black-led party has a hope of taking on the ANC
THE much-punted possible merger between the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Congress of the People (COPE) will succeed only if two fundamental issues are successfully negotiated. The one is leadership — who should be the face of the merged party? The other is ideological — should the merger continue in the DA’s libertarian vein or carve out a more progressive, social justice foundation?
The leadership question is easier to resolve — in theory. A lofty desire to make the world a better place is never the sole source of motivation for entering politics. Politics is ultimately about gaining power. Both the DA and COPE presumably desire at some point actually to govern SA. A crafty mixture of principle and pragmatism is needed to get there. This means accepting that the South African electorate would vote only a black-led party into power in the foreseeable future. Whether this is good or bad is neither here nor there. It is a fact. The implication is that a merger between the DA and COPE must have a black face.
This may be a bitter pill to swallow for some of the current DA leadership. After all, they are the official opposition with a much larger support base than COPE. However, they would be naive to negotiate a merger with COPE solely on the basis of this year’s election results. They must take account of likely patterns of voter behaviour in the future. But once you venture into that kind of crystal ball gazing — which itself, of course, requires some analysis of past voter behaviour — one inevitably faces the truth that racialism remains an important strand in voter decision-making. This means that if the senior leadership within the DA really cares about maximising the chances of a merger being bigger and better than both the DA and COPE, they must accept the strategic necessity of a black-led merger.
Fortunately — if reliable political sources close to the action are to be believed — most senior leaders within the DA understand this, including the parliamentary leader, Athol Trollip. It is not so clear that DA leader Helen Zille understands or accepts this. One cannot blame her. She has done well to keep the DA on an upward trajectory in its post-Leon phase and no doubt she would therefore want to cling to the personal power and career success that she has amassed.
But unless she, and other like-minded leaders close to her, can put the goal of maximising party success at the top of political priorities, a merger will be doomed. The white-led DA has reached a glass ceiling. A black-led merger presents the only chance of further growth.
Of course, even if it is accepted that a black leadership is important for strategic reasons, complications will remain. Who, exactly, among black leaders within both the DA and COPE could lead a merged party? Certainly not Mvume Dandala or Mosiuoa Lekota . Dandala has been a shoddy parliamentary leader for COPE. He should exit the political stage. Lekota, in his turn, has failed to build COPE structures on the ground and has lost all political fizz over the past months.
The only serious candidate within COPE for leading a merged party is Mbhazima Shilowa . Even then, Shilowa does not exactly have gigantic gravitas and needs to become a much better and more charismatic leader. If he were to lead a merger, a team of communications experts and political consultants would be a necessary part of the toolkit.
A black leader from within the DA ranks would be preferable, as that would mitigate against legitimate fears among the DA leadership that COPE stands to gain more than the DA from a merged opposition. The problem, of course, is that the DA has been shoddy at successfully nurturing or attracting senior black leadership.
How all this plays out will determine the success of a new outfit. For the sake of SA, it is necessary that the ruling party finally be given a serious run for its liberation money. Only a black-led merger can fulfil that role.
On the ideological front there may be even deeper disagreement. The DA has already made it clear it will merge only with parties that are willing to buy into its mantra of an open, equal-opportunity society for all.
Of course, that phrase sounds rather inviting but it is, in the first instance, vague and uninformative.
With deeper knowledge of the DA’s character, however, we can translate the notion of an “open, equal opportunities society for all” into simpler English. What it really means is that formal equality, such as equal treatment of all persons with no regards to cumbersome things such as social histories, are much more important than substantive equality. It means social justice interventions in the sociopolitical life of the country, which demand unequal treatment in order to ensure equitable outcomes and adequate redress of past, systemic inequalities, should be viewed with scepticism. This cannot be stated baldly and so Zille has to resort to euphemistic political phrases — but the libertarian undertones fool no one.
It is perfectly acceptable for any political party to be centre-right in its economic or social thinking. Political pluralism is not to be scoffed at. But such an ideological outlook will not see the light of day in SA in our lifetime. It is a recipe for remaining in the opposition benches. And, in fact, rightly so — it is callous to be ahistorical in crafting an ideological foundation for a country.
You must take account of the fact that Sipho Soap cannot pull himself up by his bootstraps because he does not have bootstraps. It is easy for his Caucasian competitor, Joe Soap, to do so — after all, Joe was born with bootstraps on his feet courtesy of the apartheid legacy of skewed, racially distributed economic and social goods.
The point is simple. A merged opposition would have to adopt a different tone and political identity from what some within the DA leadership would be comfortable with. That will prove the greatest stumbling block in creating a successful opposition to the African National Congress. It does not help that COPE still has no clear ideological foundation, let alone specific policies that flow from such a foundation. So it has little to bring to the negotiating table. When it does hastily put something together, it is to be hoped social justice principles will prevail and that all parties to the negotiation of a merged opposition can accept this alternative character for an opposition merger.
Perhaps most importantly, these two issues — who should be the face of the merger and what should be the character of the merger — should be discussed with detailed input from DA and COPE members and supporters to ensure legitimacy and grassroots buy-in. For the sake of defeating one-party domination, we should all hope an opposition merger is successfully negotiated before the next set of parliamentary elections.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=89650
The leadership question is easier to resolve — in theory. A lofty desire to make the world a better place is never the sole source of motivation for entering politics. Politics is ultimately about gaining power. Both the DA and COPE presumably desire at some point actually to govern SA. A crafty mixture of principle and pragmatism is needed to get there. This means accepting that the South African electorate would vote only a black-led party into power in the foreseeable future. Whether this is good or bad is neither here nor there. It is a fact. The implication is that a merger between the DA and COPE must have a black face.
This may be a bitter pill to swallow for some of the current DA leadership. After all, they are the official opposition with a much larger support base than COPE. However, they would be naive to negotiate a merger with COPE solely on the basis of this year’s election results. They must take account of likely patterns of voter behaviour in the future. But once you venture into that kind of crystal ball gazing — which itself, of course, requires some analysis of past voter behaviour — one inevitably faces the truth that racialism remains an important strand in voter decision-making. This means that if the senior leadership within the DA really cares about maximising the chances of a merger being bigger and better than both the DA and COPE, they must accept the strategic necessity of a black-led merger.
Fortunately — if reliable political sources close to the action are to be believed — most senior leaders within the DA understand this, including the parliamentary leader, Athol Trollip. It is not so clear that DA leader Helen Zille understands or accepts this. One cannot blame her. She has done well to keep the DA on an upward trajectory in its post-Leon phase and no doubt she would therefore want to cling to the personal power and career success that she has amassed.
But unless she, and other like-minded leaders close to her, can put the goal of maximising party success at the top of political priorities, a merger will be doomed. The white-led DA has reached a glass ceiling. A black-led merger presents the only chance of further growth.
Of course, even if it is accepted that a black leadership is important for strategic reasons, complications will remain. Who, exactly, among black leaders within both the DA and COPE could lead a merged party? Certainly not Mvume Dandala or Mosiuoa Lekota . Dandala has been a shoddy parliamentary leader for COPE. He should exit the political stage. Lekota, in his turn, has failed to build COPE structures on the ground and has lost all political fizz over the past months.
The only serious candidate within COPE for leading a merged party is Mbhazima Shilowa . Even then, Shilowa does not exactly have gigantic gravitas and needs to become a much better and more charismatic leader. If he were to lead a merger, a team of communications experts and political consultants would be a necessary part of the toolkit.
A black leader from within the DA ranks would be preferable, as that would mitigate against legitimate fears among the DA leadership that COPE stands to gain more than the DA from a merged opposition. The problem, of course, is that the DA has been shoddy at successfully nurturing or attracting senior black leadership.
How all this plays out will determine the success of a new outfit. For the sake of SA, it is necessary that the ruling party finally be given a serious run for its liberation money. Only a black-led merger can fulfil that role.
On the ideological front there may be even deeper disagreement. The DA has already made it clear it will merge only with parties that are willing to buy into its mantra of an open, equal-opportunity society for all.
Of course, that phrase sounds rather inviting but it is, in the first instance, vague and uninformative.
With deeper knowledge of the DA’s character, however, we can translate the notion of an “open, equal opportunities society for all” into simpler English. What it really means is that formal equality, such as equal treatment of all persons with no regards to cumbersome things such as social histories, are much more important than substantive equality. It means social justice interventions in the sociopolitical life of the country, which demand unequal treatment in order to ensure equitable outcomes and adequate redress of past, systemic inequalities, should be viewed with scepticism. This cannot be stated baldly and so Zille has to resort to euphemistic political phrases — but the libertarian undertones fool no one.
It is perfectly acceptable for any political party to be centre-right in its economic or social thinking. Political pluralism is not to be scoffed at. But such an ideological outlook will not see the light of day in SA in our lifetime. It is a recipe for remaining in the opposition benches. And, in fact, rightly so — it is callous to be ahistorical in crafting an ideological foundation for a country.
You must take account of the fact that Sipho Soap cannot pull himself up by his bootstraps because he does not have bootstraps. It is easy for his Caucasian competitor, Joe Soap, to do so — after all, Joe was born with bootstraps on his feet courtesy of the apartheid legacy of skewed, racially distributed economic and social goods.
The point is simple. A merged opposition would have to adopt a different tone and political identity from what some within the DA leadership would be comfortable with. That will prove the greatest stumbling block in creating a successful opposition to the African National Congress. It does not help that COPE still has no clear ideological foundation, let alone specific policies that flow from such a foundation. So it has little to bring to the negotiating table. When it does hastily put something together, it is to be hoped social justice principles will prevail and that all parties to the negotiation of a merged opposition can accept this alternative character for an opposition merger.
Perhaps most importantly, these two issues — who should be the face of the merger and what should be the character of the merger — should be discussed with detailed input from DA and COPE members and supporters to ensure legitimacy and grassroots buy-in. For the sake of defeating one-party domination, we should all hope an opposition merger is successfully negotiated before the next set of parliamentary elections.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=89650
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