Talking to friends, whether they be lawyers, journalists and other simple middle class professionals like myself (you know, taxpayers…) – there seems to be mass delusion taking hold – that the Protection of Information Bill and/or the proposed Media Appeal Tribunals will somehow not be pushed through by our pliant Parliament and increasingly compromised judiciary.

There is a very real, and terrifying possibility that should the bill and the proposed tribunals become law, and the opposition fails in its Section 80 referral of the law to the Constitutional Court (or indeed, even if that is successful), and a test case is sent to the ConCourt instead that the highest court on matters constitutional may in fact rule in favour of the ANC. Just ponder that one for a moment…

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That is the silence that precedes the complete collapse of freedom. South African patriots, democrats, constitutionalists, liberals, trade unionists and just plain old people (you know, people – the stuff that makes up the country itself) should start considering what they are going to do if this happens. It is no good to simply assert that it can’t happen – how is this different to the high priests of the Temple simply refusing to believe that the Romans would burn down their holiest of holies.

If the history of humanity is any guide, those who run rough shod over freedom don’t hesitate when something as trivial as a constitution faces the jack boot of despotic greed and a thirst to suckle at the teat of the state and the resources it can command even when oppressing a people as resilient as South Africans.

Look yourself in the mirror and ask: What will I do if I live in a country in which the press isn’t free and the common man has no public advocate? For many of the older generation of white South Africans the answer was easy – do nothing, watch Rugby, carry on as usual, and enjoy the benefits. But the new generation of South Africans, white and black, who never knew Apartheid, and have only known freedom will have to ask themselves afresh what it is to be a citizen of a country in which the state shoves its gloved fist down the throat of the citizen who wishes to expose corruption and moral degeneration in the party and the state.

The ANC is showing itself to be uncharacteristically competent in attacking media freedom. If only they had the capacity to deal with matters like service delivery and land reform with such clarity of purpose and vision.

We constantly hear of voices in the ANC being silenced, who in fact agree with the media and opposition, that the current attack on the media is not true to the heritage of the Old Struggle ANC (The party that looks to be buried along with Mandela when he perishes). But when the State President himself, in his capacity as ANC president writes that he sees nothing wrong in the current proposed policies of the party and state towards the media then we have long crossed the Rubicon.

If the few democrats in the ANC NEC think that they will somehow swing the party back to sanity and respect for human rights at the NGC in September then clearly they don’t listen to the party’s own president, spokespeople and publications.

I am a democrat. And whilst I may think it is helpful that the distraction of the ID is no longer going to waste the time of the Democratic Alliance – it is increasingly looking like the true majority buster of the ANC will not be the new majority of the DA, but rather, like so many other African countries before it – the saviour of South Africa’s democracy will come from a powerful and robust trade union based political party – most likely led by COSATU.

This party will most likely look a lot like MDC, and in fact you may well see a realignment (there is Zille’s word) occurring in which the DA happily veers to the left of centre to join COSATU in occasional coalition to legislate.

Of course all of this would be predicated on COSATU leaving the Alliance. Will that happen? Will the loss of our freedom of speech, which looks increasingly likely despite the pissing into the wind of the media and civil society, be the straw that breaks the donkey’s back? OR will Vavi and South African labour need an even graver affront to their rights and the constitution before realising that the rum sipping exiles and new black nationalists who loot the state coffers, have completely stolen the country that COSATU proved itself to be master of during the mass action of the late 80’s and early 90’s?

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Classic Zapiro from a recent copy of the Mail and Guardian

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It’s been a spicy few weeks for media freedom in South Africa. From the arrest of Wa Afrika, to the hearings on the Protection of Information Bill, as well as the Media Appeals Tribunal being supported by all manner of cadres – it cannot be said that there hasn’t been a vibrant national discussion around the media, it’s relation to the State, the ANC and our constitutionally protected right of freedom of speech.

It makes sense that our headlines and airwaves are being drenched in concern over media freedom – when it is the mainstream media that prepares, produces and publishes so much of what we consume. To get the story in South Africa, at least as far as daily print is concerned, you only really have a handful of voices to hear – either Avusa, Independent or Naspers Media24. Is that a good thing for South Africa? It may be, but I would suggest it isn’t. The concentration of our media space into the hands of a few is unfortunate and should be remedied.

Enter the ANC, the self-appointed voice of ‘the collective’. Media concentration in the hands of the few might annoy some in the ANC (Wasn’t Cyril Ramaphosa once heavily involved in Johnnic [now Avusa]?); but it certainly isn’t at the heart of the ANC’s attack against the media, although they are more than happy to use it as a smoke screen for their true intentions regarding the media and freedom of speech. It doesn’t take a genius to see the link between the ever increasing stories of corruption and malfeasance on the part of cadres deployed within government as reported in the press, and those very same cadre’s desire to have punitive measures taken against the media, who report their ever widening and deepening criminal activity both within the public and private sectors by ANC officials.

This week has seen the international media take a hold of this story. Journalists the world over LOVE stories of media crackdowns, and when they come from far flung and partially forgotten places like South Africa, with the World Cup achievement fading in the international consciousness by the minute, they especially love it – because the story won’t undergo any sort of in-depth analysis or reporting, and can rather be filed and stored in the ever increasing file of ‘broken Africa’ stories weeping liberal hearts in the developed world read over breakfast on a Sunday morning.

What is the impact going to be on our economy and international standing, if the will of a few criminal cadres to muzzle our press (it’s quality, or lack thereof aside) succeeds? The impact will be deep and long lasting, as the world becomes brutally aware that the South African miracle is severely compromised by a one party state that will stop at nothing to maintain and entrench its grip on power, and the feeding frenzy on the public purse which that facilitates.

There are three distinct issues that the media freedom debate has brought into stark contrast:

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The freedom of our press is being systematically and legislatively deconstructed, unconstitutionally by those who steal from the public coffers, and who enjoy the power which we the voters have erroneously granted them.

In a democracy such as ours, we should remain ever vigilant against tyranny and domination, and the will of elite and powerful, for example now, when it attempts to usurp the trust that is granted to those in power.

The proposed Protection of Information Act, and the media tribunals feted by the ANC and its deployed cadres in the civil service, are grave harbingers towards our young democracy. They signify a blatant attempt to subvert the people’s freedom by an elite, non-representative, corrupt and morally compromised cabal of opportunists at the very top of the ANC, who grabbed power with the elevation of that most compromised of politicians, Jacob Zuma.

Our people are not simply defined by the past, by Apartheid, by the Struggle for non-racialism, and the history of our many source groups. Rather, we as a people are defined by our present and our future – a future built upon the common consensus forged at CODESA, which established our country as one built on a constitution that is world renowned both as a legal document and as an expression of a common will, a democracy bought with the blood of many, and a political and peaceful compromise by those who could have very easily pushed us into an oblivion that none of us, true patriots, seek.

The ANC has been corrupted. Thus the government is corrupted. This is because the ANC has uttered lately, and frequently, in its actions, its discourse and its choice of so-called leaders – the statement of tyrants: L’État, c’est moi – I am the state.

But they are NOT the state. The state is a complex structure composed of a lot more than simply the government of the day. And those in the ANC who have fallen under the spell of their own corruption, greed and vice are to discover the hidden and silent component of the state that they seek to defraud and rape of resources : the people of South Africa.

The ANC is prone to speaking of the will of the people, and how they are the protectors of the collective desire of the people, as expressed (they believe) in the National Democratic Revolution. But these are the utterances of an ever increasingly isolated Kremlin of kleptocracy – that has become detached from the wails of the people they have failed in their inability to serve the people and deliver vital services and protections.

I do not know what is to come in the future. But what I do know is that if the small minority within the ANC who wish to destroy our democracy for their own protection and malicious designs on the wealth of our country succeed, then there will have to be a far greater struggle than the one which has just befallen us in the 20th century. The struggle of the 21st century will not be one between the white and black – rather it will be between those who wish to be free, open and democratic, and those who wish to be closed, oppressive and kleptocratic.

And as the ANC’s ever increasingly ideological bedfellows, the historical National Party learnt, this new ANC that wishes to oppress the people of South Africa – there are definite limits to that which the common South African will endure before all trust is lost, and the government is forced to change by the people.

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Whilst the charges are apparently related to a fraudulent document in his alleged possession, it doesn’t take a genius to see a possible connection between his arrest and the story that ran in the Sunday Times this week indicating that Commissioner Cele was involved in a dodgy real estate deal.

A clamp down on the media by the police in such a way is shocking and unjustified and speaks to a growing desire by the state, and thus the ANC, to muzzle those who expose its excesses and corruption. 

The Sowetan describes the scene:

Sunday Times senior reporter Mzilikazi wa Afrika got arrested today - "by a large number of policemen in an operation that was clearly designed to intimidate"

The arrest happened even as the country’s leading journalists were meeting in the Avusa newspaper house building to discuss the proposed media law clampdown, under the aegis of Sanef (the SA National Editors Forum).

No doubt commentators will jump to conclusions as to the meaning of the arrest. It may be no more than a routine aspect of an investigation, although it would certainly appear to be orchestrated to intimidate SANEF and the media in general.

Cele has, in my opinion, grossly overreached here. This does not bode well for a free society or a democratic society for that matter. I do not see how a show-arrest such as this can be reconciled to our Constitution or our national desire for openness after the closed system of Apartheid. 

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There are many theories as to why the majority of South Africans continue to vote for the ANC, and thus provide them a legitimate mandate for an ever increasingly closed and kleptocratic merging of party and state. Some theories centre around racial affinity and liberation debt, whilst other centre around a lack of broad based alternative.

To many outside of the ANC sphere of collective thinking, the continued following of the ANC’s policies by the majority of South Africans seems inexplicable and has to be justified under the tawdry lights of race and history. But perhaps a far more likely truth underlies the continued vote of the majority of South Africans in support of the ANC: they like what the ANC does at election time – they like what the ANC says.

This is not to say they like what the ANC does, if they even make the connection between their grinding continued poverty and lack of access to basic services (in the case of the extreme poor) and opportunities for higher services such as education and health care (in the case of the working poor and the lower middle class). There exists to my mind an issue in which the legacy of opposition to suffering [in the ultimate case, Apartheid] as personified by the people’s self-appointed champion, the struggle ANC and affiliated bodies, has created a meme that endures in the majority of South African society: the word of the ANC comes true, even if it takes some time (48 years perhaps), and it takes some evil and terrible compromises (In the past: mass action, street violence, the removal of children from school Vs. The Present: unemployment, crime, disease)  to achieve it.

This meme is reinforced by words such as ‘economic liberation in our lifetime’ and similar slogans shouted at Youth League and Party rallies. Now in Government, the ANC needs to maintain a constant state of struggle to perpetuate the meme that the people can only be truly liberated by the ANC, and its policies.

This is of course rubbish. But that doesn’t mean that it resonates any less in communities to which there is no alternative political outreach and education. To allow this state of constant struggle, and the ethical allowances that such struggles make use of, is to fail the people of South Africa who need the struggle to end, and peace and harmony to reign. This state of perpetual struggle is of course articulated in the much ignored (by the opposition at least, the ANC never fails to present it) concept of the National Democratic Revolution, or NDR, which in the articulation of the ANC belongs to it. Political parties such as the Democratic Alliance happily leave the NDR with the ANC and do not address it, because they see it as little more than rhetoric.

This is a grave failure of opposition politics. The NDR is not simply a touch stone which the ANC roles out when trying to burnish for some votes: it informs the entire political narrative of the ANC, in which the revolution is neither complete nor accessible to those outside of the ANC. The NDR has been used brilliantly as a political tool to emasculate both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the Inkhata Freedom Party (IFP) largely irrelevant in the post-Apartheid black political landscape.

I would therefore propose that opposition parties, such as the DA and it’s leader Helen Zille, address the ANC directly in this territory and expose the NDR as the hollow construct that it really is. Too much oppositional bloviating is wasted on proposing an alternative – this is good and must be done, but one cannot truly articulate an opposing vision until one has addressed the paucity at the heart of the ANC’s political vision.

It may be hard to explain the vagaries of tender processes and supply chain management dilemmas that result in baby deaths – despite how apparent they may appear to the middle class as a sign of a failing government. But if opposition goes out into communities and rakes them over with the truth of the NDR, its true purpose: namely to enrich the few at the expense of the many. If opposition engages communities in debate about what and who are the so-called ‘collective’ – not simply to score cheap shots in congresses on television, and in parliament – but to truly enter into a dialogue with the common man and woman and ask them if they can identify the ‘collective’ then there may be a basis for communicating a political alternative to the ANC.

The DA is attempting to express an alternative view point of an open and opportunity society for all. This may well be a great positive communications message – and it may make those in the party feel comfortable with being part of an increasingly multi-racial, but ultimately economically unitary body. But the DA can only truly convince ALL South Africans of the value of their vision for an open opportunity society if they actively listen and reconcile the thoughts and desires of average South Africans, who are predominantly poor and black, with such a society.

If the average South African continues to believe he or she is caught in a perpetual cycle of struggle, it will be no surprise that the seek solidarity with the princesses and princes of the ANC who rape the State of wealth, whilst articulating a state of National Democratic Revolution and perpetual struggle. This is not a new way of oppressing a people – it is seen in all fascist and totalitarian regimes – however that cannot serve as an excuse for the Democratic Alliance to simply footnote the fact that the ANC is following a pattern of dictatorship which is self-evident to it’s (the DA’s) members – the party must communicate that reality with average South Africans.

In doing so the party will have to roll up its sleeves and do some really heavy political lifting. The work of deconstructing a struggle meme which has permeated the South African political psyche for half a century, and continues to be tended (excuse the pun) and nurtured by the ANC as a tool for vote getting and oppression of the majority with their given consent. Consolidating the minority vote is done, window dressing has been rejected, but the party will have to show itself willing and able to convince South Africans of what to the party already appears to be self-evident in the ANC.

Only then will this party of modern African democrats be able to lay claim and fraternity to the modern culture of accountable liberal democracy, which has served to guide our world to ever increasing peace, which one found articulation in Jefferson’s pen as “We hold these truths to be self-evident,…”

Self-evidence of the political truth in the mind of the common man and woman is the first step. An opposing vision is the second.

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For me the biggest mistake strategically, although it may have been tactically sound, was Zille’s slamming of the Human Rights Commission report on the toilet saga. Zille contended that the SAHRC, a Chapter 9 institution, had allowed itself to be corrupted and was simply an ANC flak. This may or may not have been so – not because the toilet saga wasn’t a case of human rights being neglected, but rather than the SAHRC hasn’t spoken out as vociferously against instances of ANC-led municipalities’ failure to provide basic human services to people. But it was surely prepping the ammo for those who believe the DA is arrogant and simply uses the Constitution as a smoke screen for a racial supremacist agenda.

That night a few weeks ago, I argued strongly that Zille had undermined the DA’s position on supporting the Constitution by intimating that some of it’s bodies had been corrupted. It was only a matter of time before in the natural course of duty as the official opposition the party would have to laud the acts of either the SAHRC or another Chapter 9 institution. The DA has recently done so in extolling the virtues of the Public Protector. Political observer and constitutional scholar Pierre De Vos wasted no time today in pointing out the hypocrisy of this statement in light of the ribbing Zille gave the SAHRC, at the time of the findings regarding the toilet saga, on behalf of the party.

De Vos is right to point out the bad politics and messaging of Zille in going after one Chapter 9 institution and lifting up another. Firstly it smacks of meddling in what should be independent organisations by publically indicating the party’s preferences for those who occupy seats in one or another institution. This is by no means unlawful, but in the battleground of ideas it seems silly and unnecessary – what shall the DA do if the SAHRC rules in it’s favour on another matter?

It also suggests that what the party’s enemies claim, that the DA is simply posturing in its support of the Constitution, has some underpinnings of truth – that the DA supports bodies constituted under Chapter 9 when it suits them, and undermines them when not.

It just so happens that I don’t think this was Zille’s intent – but she shouldn’t have engaged the toilet saga. It was a local service delivery issue fraught with political risk. Dan Plato should probably have hesitated to politicise something like this – the presence of ANCYL lackey Andile Lile should have been a clear indication that the ANC and the Youth League wanted to politicise a minor service delivery failure in the Cape Metro.

It was a service delivery failure, the DA could easily have acknowledge it as such, called for it to be handled by city officials and drawn a political victory by comparing the solitary service failure in Cape Town with the myriad of ANC-led failures around the country. There would have been no loss of face to show that the DA acknowledges when mistakes have been made, and looks to deal with service delivery failures were they do occur, such as in this case, professionally and swiftly.

This is not to say that I find Prof. De Vos’ assessment correct in its entirety. While I agree with him that the DA sometimes acts in such a way that it could be perceived by some to expect two sets of rules, one for the DA and one for the ANC – I feel he goes a bit overboard by jumping from some failures in political posture to suggesting that the entire party is engaging in some sort of baas mentality, and that the party is the home of racists and hypocrites.

Unsubstantiated criticism such as this always presents an interesting dilemma to me. Where it does occur it occurs amongst either the political enemies of the DA, namely the ANC to which can be expected as the usual humdrum of political sparring and should be embraced as part of the game of politics. But when public intellectuals such as Prof. De Vos denigrate a political party based on unproven assertions of racism it seems like a neo-swaartgevaar.

The DA is no doubt a very fallible organisation, but like ANC it engages political battles within the political realm, and therefore should be evaluated as a fallible institutions composed of occasional misplaced sentiments. If racism, or centralism (in the case of the ANC), was endemic and policy then I think Prof. De Vos’ vitriol for a political party such as the DA would be justified : but in light of the true composition of the DA, both in its membership and policies I think Prof. De Vos should consider setting personal dislike for some DA members aside and evaluate the party on its merits. The ANC should receive similar study and reflection. At the core of it, I’d say the issue, or rather the fallacy is that a political party is a homogenous and single minded entity – perhaps this is how some in our society understand politics due to the ever pervasive concept of the ‘collective’ – but I can attest this not true of the DA in its current form.

To stand from the sidelines, enjoying the moral superiority of one’s convictions, especially around the Constitution, whilst the ANC-as-government acts to undermine the Constitution, and the DA occasionally falls short in its mandate to defend the Constitution, backed by the 3.3 millions voters who supported the DA in the last election, as best it can; within the framework of a fallible political party which DOES have considerations beyond simply the defence of the written Constitution is Prof. De Vos’s luxury and right.

However, I just wonder if he’ll continue to enjoy that right if the DA fails, and we become the victims of a one party state.

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There is much I disagree with in Mr. Achmat’s analysis of the DA, it’s politics, it’s internal workings and philosophies as well as its true agenda. Proudly declaring that he would never watch a DA congress (and I assure you he would be more than welcome to be an observer), Mr. Achmat proceeds to draw unsubstantiated links between the DA and racial fear mongering and the oppression of coloured electorate as a tool for a bunch of white neo-nationalists.

In these substantive points I disagree with Mr. Achmat. But there is still an important lesson one can draw from his histrionics regarding the DA, which stop short of the ad hominum attacks of Nathi Mthethwa’s column in the ANC Today this week. The reactions of Mr. Mthethwa and Mr. Achmat both attack the DA but in very different ways for very different reasons.

Both of these polemics are factually untrue on a myriad of points. But even if they were true completely, the failings of the DA do not excuse the failings of the ANC. If the ANC proposes to the broad political church’big tent’ it once was, then surely it would be able to argue from the center, rather than attempting to throw mud on their opponents.

A few years ago I looked into Mr. Achmat’s movement for a Progressive ANC wing within the ANC. This idea appealed to me, as I understood the center left activist desire to renew and restore the ANC from within and wrestle it away from its black nationalist tendencies back to its original struggle commitment to non-racialism and non-discrimination. In my learning about the ANC and it’s history I eventually decided that the ANC itself, unshackled from the compromises required by the struggle against Apartheid was unlikely to ever remain committed to the political settlement that ended Apartheid in the long term.

Why did I feel this way? Because the progressive idea of what the ANC is was in fact better expressed as the idea that the ANC reflected the full gamut of free ideas from free South Africans. This included black nationalists, cultural traditionalists, Marxists, Trade Unionists, Communists, Liberal Democrats (of which I am one), Christian Socialists and the list goes on. This broad consensus will not be achieved again within the ANC because the ANC is now a political party, and a political party with nothing to gain and everything to lose – it’s behaviour in the last 16 years indicates a party increasingly disconnected from the true heart beat and desires of our country.

Mr. Achmat’s desire to make a more progressive and centrist ANC is a noble one. It is informed by his love of the party, his desire to renew our society into more positive and equitable place. But it is misinformed by his experiences of activism and identity politics. Mr. Achmat is well known as a crusader of considerable clout who spoke out against the denialism of his own party by founding the T.A.C. (The Treatment Action Campaign) – no doubt the highlight of his activism, and a tremendous achievement for Mr. Achmat as well as the many others who battled against the rise of HIV in our country.

Mr. Achmat is also an unwitting proponent of identity politics, as his article clearly expresses. He feels enabled to speak broadly about the ‘coloured’ electorate and that it fundamentally fears blacks. I am in no position to make such sweeping judgements as to the character and heart of millions of South Africans – but Mr. Achmat feels he can, because it is in using identity as a divider in politics and society his agreement with the ANC that rules today, is most stark. Identity – gay or straight, black or white, rich or poor – these are the easy labels of an activist and rabble rouser; and have an important place in a free and democratic society – but I believe they have less of a place as our country moves to a new multi-racial and free majority, especially in light of careful analysis and study of a broad based political movement such as the DA.

Political parties are built on consensus not division. The identification of groups that Mr. Achmat practices in his article is no doubt a legacy of the group think that pervaded white Nationalism and has polluted the political philosophy of even the brightest lights of the ANC such as Mr. Achmat. It would not be politically astute for the DA to embrace the categorization and segmentation that Mr. Achmat uses in his analysis of the DA. It would be a step back into the past rather than building for a new post-racial South Africa that we all need.

Ironically, I believe that were Mr. Achmat to come to the DA congress next time he might find a party he recognises quite well. I believe it will be very similar in shape to the progressive ANC he dreams of and which will never materialise. I’ve been trying really hard not to give an expression of the racial demographics of those who attended this weekend’s DA congress, especially in light of the congress passing a resolution which calls on all DA members and supporters to cease filling in racial profiles on forms and rather answer ‘South African’ – but I would note that white delegates were certainly not in an absolute majority.

As the DA expands, it begins to include many new voices. Many voices of social concern and a quest for justice that Mr. Achmat could relate to. Politically the party remains liberal, but the party is removing many of the policies Mr. Achmat finds so distasteful. The DA is a party which supports wage subsidies, which no longer places free market principals above removing and correcting the injustices of the past – and is committed to affirmative opportunity which will provide the greatest benefit to all those millions of South Africans who are not simple previously disadvantaged, but are very currently disadvantaged by the closed system the ANC increasingly imposes on our society at large.

As a fairly new member to the party, I shared Mr. Achmat’s outsiders view of the former Nat’s in the party before attending this weekend’s congress. I was very concerned that I would be throwing my lot in which some bitterenders from the Nats. This is happily not the case. Those who were once NP are ‘reconstructed’ and ‘reconciled’ if you will. I have no doubt there are racists in the party, just as they are clearly many racists in the ANC – the difference being that in the DA a racist attitude or demeanour is thoroughly rejected by all, whereas racial demographic studies are the bread and butter of ANC policy. I have no doubt that what few remaining pockets of racism in the DA will be eliminated very soon simply by virtue of the fact that there are so many different cultures and backgrounds being represented within the DA I could hardly believe that a true racist would find somewhere to sit

I know that activists will never be pleased with the pace of change, and Mr. Achmat slams the DA for its leadership, and its racial composition. I’m not going to dignify his racial classification of the leadership with a justification, rather I will say this – as a young member in the party, and looking at both young and old in the party, the DA is a diverse and pluralistic party, which increasingly reflects a microcosm of South African society : rich, middle class and poor. I look forward to the day, a few election cycles from now, when the DA leader takes the President’s oath of office outside the Union Buildings.

I look forward to that moment, because in that moment I have no doubt that the personage representing the hopes and dreams of the then majority of South Africans will be someone Mr. Achmat can live with, and who in all likelihood would have never known Apartheid as an adult, and therefore would have never been subject to the tragic classification in which so many in the ANC would like to place the South African people.

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The ruling party continues to entrench race as a measure of our society because it not only reconciles with their own race-based view of South African society, but also because it serves to fracture our society into groups vying for the pie. I’m sure Hendrick Verwoerd looks up from hell with a smiling grimace each time an ANC press statement or policy document is written; because in those documents his philosophy of separation, nationalism and control are all found.

The Democratic Alliance is therefore faced with a quandary. The party is diversifying, growing and increasingly realigning the South African body politic, from the ground up. This is hard and thankless work in many instances, a situation in which change is effected over several election cycles rather than the flash in the pan grand standing of parties such as COPE and the UDM. This diversification of the party’s support, and membership, as I can attest to when attending the congress this weekend, is something everyone in the party can and should be proud of.

But if the democrats were to fall into the ANC’s trap of making statements regarding diversity, beyond pointing out the obvious fact that increasingly it is the Democratic Alliance, and not the ANC, that represents the broadest representation of South African society – the party would be doing itself a great disservice.

The open opportunity society articulated in the parties resolutions passed this weekend, is in fact manifest in the camaraderie and spirit of the party itself, when it gathers – whether at branch level, or on a national scale such as was done this past weekend. The opponents of an open society want to see a vast racist conspiracy in the Democratic Alliance – but there really is none to be found.

Going into my first congress, my own prejudices were centred around the fact that the party was what it was alleged to be: too white, too conservative, too limited in thinking. How glad I was then to find a party nothing like what its critics present it as. The Democratic Alliance is rather an increasingly reflective microcosm of the silent majority of South Africans.

Why do I say this? Because the Democratic Alliance is not an alliance of the rich, the privileged or the powerful. I was in fact very surprised by the wholesome truthfulness of the many delegates. The party is not made of policy wonks who plot the overthrow of the ANC from ivory towers sponsored by big business: the DA is in fact a humble activist party in many respects, drawing from its roots as the ultimate parliamentary underdog during the Apartheid years.

The delegates to the congress, most of whom are public representatives of one sort of another, are ordinary South Africans doing extraordinary things for our country. I have no doubt the ANC, and other parties are filled with similarly committed South Africans who are trying there best to improve the country as well as they can. But there is marked difference in the way in which the ANC and the DA process the good intentions and actions of their members on the ground…

I covered the ANC congress in Stellenbosch as student journalist in late 2002 and I can tell you the difference. Whilst both parties are filled with committed South Africans trying their best, it is only in the ANC in which voices are silenced by ‘the collective’. The DA congress to me showed a real ‘practice what you preach’ attitude as far as listening to everyone, taking everyone’s voice on board and integrating it into a cohesive message from the party.

At the ANC’s congresses and meetings, the leaders are kept separate and elevated. They have a different opportunity to speak, a different experience entirely. In the DA this is simply not the case – the leadership is no different to the membership. And this is not due to false piety or fake signs of humility – rather the party is founded on service, respect and an openness to listen and speak to one another.

Perhaps interesting to those who may believe what is being said about the DA in the press alone, is that the DA in fact does not sing from one hymn sheet to the extent one may assume. For example, in one of the resolutions regarding policing the question was raised by a member that there were possible efficiencies in merging the metro and national police forces. This is of course anathema to the concept of spheres of government entrenched within the federal aspects of our constitution – however the delegate’s voice could be heard, and his point taken on board – as the DA’s membership grows, the concerns and ideas of a wider group of people will coalesce and in fact will only strengthen the DA’s capacity to correctly reflect the will of the majority of South Africans.

Coming back to the theme of this post, the DA is increasingly a party of diverse opinions and people. These opinions do come from the full diversity of South Africans, who are in the DA, but it is not their race or culture which defines them – rather it is their unity in agreeing to disagree from time to time, and joining together on a shared set of values and principals.

It all sounds rather schmaltzy doesn’t it? This party being such a good thing, such an open collective. But you have to judge a tree by the fruits it bears – and the DA seems set to bear great fruits indeed, just as our country does if we choose to remain firmly committed to our constitution and the liberal democratic values entrenched therein.

I have no doubt that the DA is evolving as party, becoming more inclusive and diverse, not simply because of disenchantment with the ANC, but because of the inevitable march that all societies take towards increasing levels of liberal values. Nationalists, Marxists and kleptocrats may slow the march towards to freedom and liberty, but they always lose out in the end, because humanity seeks the freedom to answer the question: who am I, and what shall I do with my life? Only openness and the opportunity to be free, can quench the moral man’s political thirst. As the sage once wrote, politics is the science of human happiness. Judging by the DA’s every increasing happiness in diversity, and strength in plurality, the politics of the DA is sure to grant much human happiness – not only to those who work from within the party, but to all South Africans.

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It was my first national party event, and I took a lot away from what was a very busy and interesting weekend. This week I look forward to writing up a few of my observations and thoughts relating to the congress, the party, the state of the relationship with the Independent Democrats, as well as prospects for the party in the year ahead, especially as campaigns in the 2011 local government elections.

Stay tuned during the week…

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The security apparatus of the country is in full flight in swatting the few incidences were the rightly named criminals hiding under the cloak of ‘xenophobia’ are attempting to put a damper on the close of the World Cup.

Much ink has already been spilt on this story, as President Sepp leaves his temporary fiefdom and our free press returns to its often self-assured fear mongering and seldom accurate exploration of the South African street. [That is not to say there reporting should be muzzled, lest anyone think I am a Mantashe in the making…].

I anticipated that after a safe and secure World Cup, it would be ordinary South Africans who would be the first to connect the dots of a successful and safe month long tournament and start asking hard questions of the government as to why foreign fans are worth securing the country for, but locals and resident foreigners are not.

Much to my delight, minister Mthethwa and ‘General’ Bheki Cele have decided to completely nullify some local backlash at a return to the regular South African law and disorder by squashing the attempts to destabilise the country with ‘xenophobic’ violence.

Whilst our written constitution serves as a shining beacon of our national intent and desire for human rights, the implementation in the last 16 years has often been weak and confused in matters of the security and safety of our citizenry. This is no doubt a product of the complex task of integrating the South African Police force, as well as a hesitancy on the part of former enemies of the police, in the form of the incoming government, to wield the stick of policing in our country in the same way as those from whom they wrested power.

The product of this vacillating policy towards policing in our country was an unprecedented growth in crime, many crimes which should not be primarily ascribed to poverty, such as murder and rape, often between kin. Our society was allowed to become increasingly violent, and the government and its police failed to protect the internal populace – surely a precursor to a failed state, a state unable to protect its citizens.

With the World Cup, our officials and officers on the beat discovered, perhaps for the first time in a large scale since the end of Apartheid, that it is criminals and criminality which is not only the enemy of the police, but that it is criminals and criminality that should fear policing and not the other way round – that there are more of ‘Us’ law abiding citizens, then there are of ‘Them’ those who seek to commit crime.

No longer do we seem to be burdened with defeatist terms like those who ‘do’ crime. Now our police officials are using the correct terminology, appear to be implementing the correct mindset.

Whilst some may try and ascribe this to the rediscovery of the police’s right to use deadly force, the truth is that the government and its police were at a cross roads, with the World Cup, or without it. South Africa cannot continue under such a burden of violent crime. The police either needs to protect the country or the country will have to protect itself more broadly, and ultimately less securely.

I think the police, and its leadership, granted the necessary resources due to the World Cup, now have a real practical example that they are in fact control, that they are no longer the enemy of the majority, and that in fact it is the police who hold the key to eradicating much of the scourge of the crime in our society – when partnered with a swift and fair judicial system (a discussion for another time…).

Ironically, the ramp up in police numbers for the World Cup is not very different to the plans of many opposition parties over the last decade or so – it doesn’t take a genius to realise that in a country as crime ridden as ours, more police are needed. The World Cup forced the ANC’s hand, and now those in government can be bolstered by the realisation that once resources are put to good use, rather than to line the pockets of tenderpreneurs great things can be done.

I suppose this is in fact the broader lesson of the world cup. For many years now, many government consultants have bemoaned the lack of capacity to adequately spend the allocated budgets within the government, that idle money was the cause of corruption because cadres deployed to departments simply did not know how to spend the vast sums of money allocated to them by central planning. The World Cup has served as a template for all government departments: SPEND YOUR MONEY ON WHAT IS NAMED AFTER DEPARTMENT OF…

The ministry of police is doing so, and showing a new vigour in protecting our country. Whilst many of us may mourn the millions of victims of crime who should have never been in this country over the last 16 years, we should commend those who now seem to have realised that our police can serve and protect, not simply cower and hide.

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If you are interested go through to http://www.tradesettlementservices.com and see what it’s all about. 

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But the World Cup isn’t simply about Bafana, its about our beautiful country, and our capacity to host an event of this magnitude and scale: and the naysayers are being proven wrong. This truly is serving as a chance for South Africa to shine – and our whole country is seizing this opportunity. Well done to us all, but especially well done to the LOC, the volunteers, and the hundreds of thousands of South Africans actively involved in welcoming the world, along with the 49 million of the rest of us; this tournament is serving as a wonderful reminder that we are one nation, with one destiny – and there is more that binds us together than that which drives us apart.

No doubt, after the World Cup, the narrative of this time of national pride and exposition, will be amalgamated into the liberation narrative of the ruling party. There is little that can be done about this… or can it? Should South Africans allow our leaders to suggest that our achievements are theirs? As the ANC never fails to remind us, it was they alone (in their opinion) who liberated the country: now this may be playing loose and fast with the truth of history (the PAC, the IFP, the UDF, the verligtes, the Black Sash, etc. would disagree with that narrative) but it is the predominant narrative.

In politics, the story matters. And our country’s story is getting as tired as a Bafana’s players legs after 90 minutes against Uruguay: it’s growing weak under the burden of the expectation placed upon it.

Can we honestly believe that the ANC will be able to continue to peddle the liberation debt to the electorate? Even Zuma acknowledges that the flip-side of this political narrative, that it’s all Apartheid’s fault is wearing thin. Events such as the World Cup may bandage the narrative by providing an epilogue: we liberated you, then we threw a lot of great parties (World Cup, food parcels before elections, Julius Malema’s Birthday were you could be showered with real French Champagne).

But this epilogue will ring hollow as well. What then?

Some in opposition would like to believe it is at that moment that the electorate will turn around and punish the ANC. This is as unlikely as it is unjustified. Electorates which stop buying liberation drivel tend to stay away from the polls: a viable alternative needs to be offered up. The DA try to provide one with the ‘Opportunity Society’ – and this is certainly more affirmative than the ‘Fight Back’ narrative, which despite what Mr. Leon might have said at the time, was clearly a calculated move to consolidate the white minority vote.

Similarly the ‘opportunity society’ story is perfectly tuned for coloured voters, not the large swathes of black poor. Why do I say this? Because in the coloured voter, we have an electorate who are perpetually denied opportunity – from the past and the present. And this message of offering opportunity really engages the coloured community, as well as salves the conscience of the white core of the DA.

Where to from here then? The opportunity society angle could well extend into the Black electorate, but there is a deep mistrust of the DA, as well as a continued awareness of the liberation debt to the ANC. Many of my friends who vote ANC have told me over the years, and these are middle class educated voters, that to not vote ANC would to them be a betrayal of history. This is a dangerous precedent – opposition parties and citizens must then ask themselves what will they offer to these voters, what can break down the limitations of speaking of white or coloured or black voters – what narrative can capture the South African sense of South African-ness, and both express a common goal as well as a shared problem?

There lies a great truth: so often our solutions don’t solve our problems because South Africans don’t share common problems. What are vital basic services like sanitation and primary health care for some, are taken for granted by others. What are so foreign as to be from Mars, like corporate taxation or higher education for informal settlement dwellers, are vital for professional South Africans and there families.

So perhaps then the real answer to what will be the overarching narrative which can defeat the ANC in the polls, is given by answering the question: What problem do all South Africans share? What problem limits ALL South Africans?

Some might say poverty, although some experience it first hand, whilst others experience the secondary and tertiary effects of it by living in a country with such crushing poverty.

But in fact I would say that the problem which limits all South Africans is a sense of worthlessness, a sense of impotence, a sense of victimhood. South Africans only know fascism. Not in the racial and militaristic sense of 1930s Europe, but rather in the grudging sense that we are ruled by the few, and that we have no power to stop them.

The fasces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces) has been a symbol of defence of those in power for millennia. How are the lictors of Ancient Rome any different from the thugs of the blue light brigades?

The ANC learnt its fascism at the knee of the Afrikaner Nationalists. The terrible tragedy is that South Africans are as prone to fascism as any society – i.e. not very. In the early 20th century three ideologies vied for power of the world. The first to fall was undoubtedly the least strong: fascism. In the evolutionary political lab of Europe, fascism was proven to be weak and fuelled by fear.

Parliamentary democracy with its economic system of Capitalism faced off against Communism. As we all know, in the end Democracy one. And it looked like it won in South Africa too. But this certainty is no longer certain at all: clearly the fascism of the Nats was discarded by the Tripartite alliance – this most bizarre of big tent alliances. In its very heart rage the trinity of political voices of the 20th century, still standing unresolved from within: the social democracy of Mr. Vavi, the Communism of Mr. Nzimande and Mr. Cronin, and the Fascism of Mr. Malema. In the middle stands our representative, Mr. Zuma – and what a perfect symbol of representative of the people he is: he is weak, he is afraid, he is ineffectual – he is the victim of those who choose to lead instead of him.

He is perfectly reflecting the impotence of the South African voter, and I suppose is that lies the bitter irony democracy: the chosen reflect those who do the choosing.

What then for South Africa? What narrative can defeat the ascendant fascism of Mr. Malema? Shall we hope like many did in Italy and Germany that good sense will prevail? That Parliamentarianism will succeed?

I don’t think so. Instead I believe South Africans should use the power we have discovered: to talk to our neighbour, to talk to those who we work with, and for, or who work for us – and talk, not of football after the World Cup, but talk of our country and what is happening in it, and what we need to do to make it better.

The problem is fear. The narrative is faith, hope and strength. The narrative is that we as South Africans standing together defeated Apartheid, not the exiles and their foreign backers. The narrative is that there is no liberation debt to pay, and if there was it has long been paid off. The narrative is that South Africa cannot simply be an opportunity society, or a ‘better life for all’. It must be BOTH. South Africa must embrace its diverse problems, and address them with diverse solutions. And those solutions will be enacted by our unity, and our stand against being afraid of our leaders.

Then truly will we be deserving of our motto: !ke e: /xarra //ke – Unity in diversity! We have nothing to fear at all. This country belongs to us all, the time is coming soon for us to remind those who claim leadership over us, the source of the power which is bestowed and entrusted to them: Us!

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Julius Malema is the Nongqawuse of our time. Peddling the same non-sense: that by destroying the food security of our country the whites will be driven into the sea. Of course in the 21st century subtext is necessary in these things, but the gist is the same:

Destroy the beasts of burden that feed the nation. And the nation’s hated enemies will be swept away, the granaries will be full and the people will live in peace.

Of course in Modern South Africa, the beasts of burden are the Boers. The Afrikaner farmer who toils on the soil with black farm workers. The farm workers and the Boers, as a team feed our nation.

Ironically, whilst the Boer and the enemy of Black Nationalists may seem to be the same thing, nothing could be farther from the truth. Few farmers in South Africa are rich. In fact they scrabble in poverty not dissimilar to the poverty of their workers in many cases. No – the hated enemies of the Black Nationalist Extremists like Mr. Malema are in fact those who OWN things. These people are urban, they are often English speaking or foreign. In some cases, they are urban Afrikaners, to whom the Boer experience is as close to reality as cattle herding is to the majority of Black South Africans. They are also blacks of course – but the sort of ‘counter-revolutionary’ blacks who have managed to get educated and rich without ‘tenderpreneurism’ and corruption.

These elites rarely if ever till the soil, unless you are thinking of vanity agriculture such as wine or game farms – and in those cases poor Blacks and Afrikaners serving as farm managers will do the dirty work.

Much has been said about race in our country in the past couple of days. This is a decoy. The real fissure in our society is between three classes. The elites, political and capitalist, black and white. The middle class, black and white. And the poor, black and white. Ironically Boers exist in all three classes.

The elites, at least in the form of the Radical Elite, the Black Nationalists whom Malema represents, are determined to consolidate the assets of the entire country in their hands, to engorge themselves in a manner not dissimilar to Zimbabwe.

While some snivelling middle class intellectuals may say this is not the case, they will unfortunately have to eat humble pie along with the rest of us. But not all is lost…

Why do I say this? Because just as the calamity of Nongqawuse did not result in the collapse of the Xhosa nation, so too will any sort of Zanu-fication of our country stop short. Why do I say this? Because all that happens when calamity occurs is a new balance is found. Tragically that new balance is often found after the needless loss of life.

Malema may be the prophet, the poor ignorant child who wishes to grab attention upon themselves and their vision for the future – no matter how misguided it may be. But the Leaders of country, just like Sarhili, will be the fools who listen to the ignorant child. They will command their headmen to slaughter the cattle. And it is they who will be deposed when famine sweeps the land.

But what of the middle class, of which I am a member? How can we stop this calamity befalling us all – black and white? We must protect our democracy. How? Not by commenting on newspaper articles, or by becoming inflamed and personalising on a political character as tragic and ultimately irrelevant as Julius Malema and his mirror image Eugene Terre’blanche: we must rather steel ourselves against the evils of radicalism, nationalism and the destruction of food and national resources by a few ruling elites.

How can we do that we may ask, when the middle class, of all races, is in the minority? To that I simply answer: we have to educate the poor. It is not enough to simply pay taxes and expect the elites to provide the opportunities for the poor to flourish and join us in the middle class. The onus falls on us to educate the poor politically, to educate them as to how the elites no only steal our taxes, but in doing so steal the future of the poor themselves. The French bourgeoisies understood this, why don’t we?

Poverty movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo need the support of the middle class. It is not enough that the shack dwellers of our country simply want to stop voting in exasperation with the ANC’s failures to improve their lot. We cannot let this stand. We need to join the middle class and the poor in a silent majority that will not remain silent. This will require the middle class to conquer their fear of the poor – this is no easy thing to do. Surely our goal – as a middle class – would be to conquer our fear and swell our ranks with fellow democrats. Just ask Americans about how successful a country can become when the tired, and weak and downtrodden are cared for and raised into a productive, educated and healthy democratic middle class!

But the poor live a far harder and more vivid life than either the elites or the middle class. It is them whom the new South Africa has failed the most. The black nationalists care little for them at all, casting them aside. They, once educated and given the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty, will owe the ANC and the corrupt elites of this country nothing, and therefore will have no incentive to retain such rotten officials in government.

And then we all will be able to sleep calmly at night, knowing that the likes of Julius Malema are were they deserve to be: safe, and sound, out of power and laughed at by the people who took the country back from those who wished to destroy it, for personal gain and bizarre fantastical prophecy.

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But as I was driving around the Cape yesterday, in the beautiful late summer sun, I thought about the fact that I, like so many others, was packing the road on a day of solemn reflection – for a Christian at least. I think what really happens as you get older is your own conservatism and religiosity increases, and you paint a picture in the past of your own piety which doesn’t connect with the truth. Then, when asked if the ‘world’ ignores religious holidays or has lost the ‘true meaning’ its easy to reflect and say yes, indeed it has.

A few days ago I was wrapping up a bumper essay writing session for UNISA. Two of the essays really strike me as important as I headed into Easter weekend. The first, an exploration of J.S. Mill’s principle of hedonism, and the second an essay for my Islamic studies course on the dimensions of Islam: Surrender, Faith and Beauty.

Now these are two very non-Christian things to have been working on, and then to draw a conclusion about Easter. But it wasn’t that hard…

Christianity is philosophically selfless, at least in its commonly understood sense. Rather than obsessing about the pleasure of the self as a channel to happiness (Mill) it rather preoccupies our concern with everything but ourselves. Christianity tells us that with our own salvation granted, our attention should be to care for and love others. This is far more easily said than done.

In Islam, the concept of the oneness of God – the founding monotheistic principle of surrender joins with the faith in God’s universal creation to create a beautiful synergy. To the outsider, Islam seems often a religion of certain practice, and shifting interpretations of faith – foundationally this is not true. While all Muslims must share in the common practice, they are also encouraged to a common faith in God, the Prophet, God’s Angels, His Books and the Day of Judgement. Outside of the faith that Muhammad was the Paraclete and the seal of the prophets, there are tremendous similarities between Christianity and Islam as far as the structure of God’s relationship to Man. On the consequences and requirements of this relationship there of course is great difference.

But just as surrender and faith join together to express beauty in the spiritual life of a Muslim, it is during Easter time that Christians are reminded of their story of fulfilment. Adam, the first man of God’s making was cast into God’s creation and called to tame and care for it. The fall of man through sin required of man a sacrifice to pay for his sins. The Old Testament constantly explores this idea of the wage of sin and the consequences there of. We must submit to God’s perpetual right to punish us for what we do.

But in the New Testament, a second component arrives in the person of Jesus and his teachings. That faith in God results in salvation. And in beautiful symmetry the wage of sin is paid by sacrifice. But God knew that the sacrifice was too much for man to make, because man was imperfect and as unable to ensure his own salvation as he would be unable to create the universe itself. So God had to do it. In dying Jesus paid the price. He had faith that his death would bring about the redemption of mankind. As to whether or not that is true is up to man to have faith in or not. That is his choice.

But the submission of the old Testament, and the faith of the New merges together to form a framework of the beauty of God – the symmetry of the Universe He has created between man and God. Easter is for me a time of reflection on the fulcrum of the balanced Universe, the very epicentre of the see-saw in which the personage of God faces the most brutal of man’s sins – death at the hands of another man, and conquers it by offering himself in sacrifice.

It is a mesmerising mystery to those of a Christian persuasion. It is the inner mystery of the Christian pattern of thinking. And I don’t think it is lost… even when it would seem people are busy with other things.

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