It’s all in the stories we tell

I have just finished reading The Uncertainty of Hope, by Valerie Tagwira. It is a novel set in the Harare area of Mbare, during the time of Operation Murambatsvina (which began, incidentally, almost exactly 3 years ago, on 25 May 2005 – see http://www.sokwanele.com/articles/sokwanele/opmuramb_overview_18june2005.html). The novel tells the story of two families, and their lives and losses as they try to survive the turmoil caused by the ‘cleanup’ operation, high prices, and food shortages — not to mention the ravages of HIV/Aids. Tugwira focuses particularly on the women, who are the ones trying to keep their families together against formidable odds — often having to deal with abusive men on top of all the other difficulties.

It’s a good novel. Not brilliant, but good (in places it’s a little too preachy for my liking, but Tagwira definitely knows how to tell a story and her characterisation is strong). I don’t want to give away the plot, but let me just say I found the rather upbeat ending depressing rather than uplifting — because in the light of recent events, it just doesn’t seem plausible. In the novel, in the midst of the worst of Operation Murambatsvina, when people’s houses and market stalls are being bulldozed, the characters take consolation in the fact that ‘things surely can’t get much worse’. Well, we now know they can, and have.

But The Uncertainty of Hope reminded me why fiction is so important. It’s important for lots of reasons, but one of them is that it teaches us, by helping us imagine — other people, other lives, other circumstances. I have read loads of news articles and features about Zimbabwe. They have given me a sense of what’s happening or happened, a sense of the facts of the situation, and the range of opinions being expressed. But Tagwira’s novel has given me more of a felt understanding of what people have gone through and are going through, than any news item or academic article could hope to do.

Thinking about the awful wave of xenophobic violence that’s hit South Africa over the past two weeks, I wish more people would read fiction. Yes, I know how naive and pie-in-the-sky and even callous that sounds. When people are dying, being beaten up, and having their homes destroyed, I’m wishing people would read more novels. What we need are houses, jobs, more effective police, better education in tolerance – not fairy stories!

But it’s all about stories! It’s the stories people tell one another about what it means to be South African, the stories we tell one another about what a foreigner is, what foreignness is, who is in, who is out, who’s to blame. Not one of these things has anything to do with fact — it has to do with our stories and the collective imagination.

The political scientist, Benedict Anderson, understood this well. In his book Imagined Communities, he defines a nation as “an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” It is imagined, because it is simply impossible for all the members of a nation to know or even see one another. So they live in the mind, as members of a nation.

In South Africa, we’ve liked to imagine ourselves as the rainbow nation, a miracle-nation, a country where we’ve overcome intolerance and hatred and moved on to a democratic, tolerant society. Much of the shock and distress people are expressing has to do with the fact that that image, that ’story’, has been shattered in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary. And the people who are attacking foreigners have their own imagined South Africa, in which foreigners are all criminals and job-stealers, and just do not belong.

The power of fiction is that it has the ability to influence and change the stories we tell ourselves and one another. It can stretch our imagination, to help us understand ‘the other’. And I also believe that reading stretches the imagination in a way that TV can’t. As we read, we re-create the characters in our heads, they live with us, live within us, they are our co-creations.

And as much as the news is necessary – we need to know, to be made aware of what’s going on – we also know that the news can de-sensitise. Endless images of hurricane victims and earthquake survivors and fleeing migrants are not pleasant to see, but eventually they just wash over us, leaving us numb and uncaring. Good fiction, on the other hand, has the power and potential to re-sensitise us all.

This post first appeared at www.citizenjournalismafrica.org.

Mugabe’s praise singers show contempt for ordinary Zimbabweans

(Although this was posted on the 19th, I wrote it on 12th May)

I was quite disturbed to read two opinion pieces in the SA Sunday papers, on Zimbabwe, where the authors were basically defending Mugabe.

In an article in The Sunday Times, titled “The West is conspiring to unseat that valiant warrior, Mugabe”, (www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight/Article.aspx?id=764077) Mohau Pheko repeats the tired old line that the MDC is an agent of the West, and that while Mugabe has had made ‘gross mistakes in governing’, the reason the West wants to unseat him is that he’s a ‘valiant warrior against Western superiority in Africa’. In another article (and now I can’t for the life of me remember which paper it was in), a former senior member of the Presidency in South Africa defends Mbeki’s approach, and again argues that the MDC is an agent of colonialism.

The thing is, these writers have some valid points to make*. In their articles they question why such a fuss is made about Zimbabwe and not about other countries where there are undemocratic governments, such as Uganda, and Swaziland, to name two. They point out that Britain and the West reneged on promises with respect to supporting land reform in Zimbabwe, and correctly remind us that all foreign countries are pushing their own interests.

But they then seem to think that if these things are true, it must be a logical conclusion that the MDC is noting but an agent of foreign forces, and that Mugabe’s actually the good guy (though of course he’s made some mistakes). But why can’t all of these things be true: that we should pay attention to other problematic regimes too, that a lot of the noise made about Zimbabwe is made by people and countries with their own agendas to push, that the MDC is a legitimate party with demonstrably legitimate support within Zimbabwe (and perhaps with some questionable alliances), and that Mugabe is a brutal dictator who may have done great things in the past, but who has now driven his country into the ground?

Arguments like those made by Pheko seem to spring from a need for simplistic judgments — the world must be seen in terms of black and white, good versus evil. So if there are some people and interests on one ’side’ that are seen as bad, then everyone associated with them must be bad, and the other side must be the good guys. There’s no allowance for the fact that the real world is complex. There’s a refusal or inability to accept that the man who was once a hero is now a villain, and that countries which have acted despicably in the past just might be doing a good thing by supporting his downfall (even if they’re doing so for the wrong reasons).

But perhaps more disturbingly, these arguments show contempt for Africa and Africans — contempt expessed by people who purport to be defending Africa and Africans against colonialism. Firstly, they show contempt for the MDC and other opposition politicians. There is the assumption that if the Americans and British offer support to the opposition, that the opposition is a puppet in the hands of these powers. There is no willingness to believe that the opposition may have agency in such alliances — that they may be strategically using what support and supporters they may get, for their own aims.

But secondly, there is utter contempt for ordinary Africans — in this case, ordinary Zimbabweans. A refusal to believe that ordinary Zimbabweans may have voted for the MDC not because they are being manipulated by crafty colonialists, but because they believe that it is in their own interests to do so (despite extensive measures by the state designed to make them believe otherwise). And a refusal to admit that it is more important to support and defend ordinary citizens who have been jailed and tortured and had their lives and livelihoods ruined, than it is to cling to a childish belief that one’s one-time hero can’t possibly turn into a monster.

(*Amid some others that are less valid — like Mohau’s condemnation of the MDC for calling for sanctions against its own country — excuse me, isn’t that just what the ANC did during apartheid? With good reason, and good results.)

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org.

Keep democracy, scrap elections

I am becoming disillusioned with democracy. Elected leaders, all around the world, seem to be getting worse and worse.

In London they’ve just elected Boris Johnson, a bigoted buffoon, as mayor. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was recently re-elected as prime minister. This is a man who is notoriously corrupt, and who in his previous terms in power ran the government like his private business empire.

Here in South Africa, many of us spent last year terrified of the prospect of a Jacob Zuma presidency. But lately, Thabo Mbeki has revealed himself to be so bad that Zuma is beginning to seem like a better option. That this is so, just shows how far our standards have dropped.

Of course it’s our fault as voters, for electing every-more inept leaders. But it’s not like we have a great choice. The calibre of candidates seem to be declining year by year, so that now electorates are faced with choosing the least bad person, rather than the best one. In any case, money and PR spin have long removed any semblance of real choice from the electoral process. No wonder the idealistic youth are sickened with what they see, and stay away from politics.

More and more I agree with the person who said that the very  fact that someone wants to be elected, should automatically disqualify them. Hardly anybody seems to go into politics anymore with noble intentions — they go into it in a quest for power for money, or both. These are just the people who should be kept far away from the reins.  And the few people who may start out with some moral fibre and a backbone are either quickly corrupted by the whole dirty system, or they leave in disgust.

In my view, democracy is broken. And I have an idea about how to fix it. We need to look to the jury system that exists in some countries, and to the techniques used by public opinion and market researchers.

The jury system works on the premise that people should be judged by their peers. And behind that is the assumption that a pretty much randomly- group of ordinary people are competent to understand the issues involved, and to come to reasonable judgments.

So why not choose parliaments and governments in the same way? Present-day democracy is representative democracy. Representatives of the people sit in parliament and make decisions on the people’s behalf. At present we choose our representatives through elections. But this isn’t working, so let’s scrap elections. Why can’t the people’s representatives be chosen through a random process — every x number of years, through a random process, x number of representatives are chosen. It’s like the Lotto. If your number comes up, you have to go and serve in Parliament for a term. When your term is over, you are released and can go back to your life. For the sake of continuity, every year only 25 or 30% of the representatives are changed.

This would still be representative democracy — the chosen representatives would just be chosen in a different way. To see how it will be representative, we can look to the sampling techniques that market researchers use. They select a random group of people, but in a structured way, so that the make-up of the group mirrors exactly the make-up of the broader population. It’s random in that every member of the broader population has an equal chance of being selected. In that way, they can get pretty reliable knowledge about the views of the entire population, by only speaking to about 2000 or so people.

So why don’t we choose our public representatives (let’s stop calling them leaders) in this way, and mandate them to discuss the important issues and make decisions on our behalf?

This has actually been tried. American political scientist Professor James Fishkin has already undertaken several experiments along these lines, using what he calls ‘deliberative polling’. (See for example http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/docs/summary/)

So, what are the benefits?

No more elections would mean no more campaigning, election violence, worrying about ‘free and fair’.  It would mean the end of political parties and the end of long-serving parliamentarians. It would thus cut out key motivators of and opportunities for corruption. It would mean the end of cronyism. Very importantly, it would also ensure equal representation. Instantly, 50% of Parliament would be women. A proportional number would be young, and old. Numbers of black and white would reflect the population. About 10% would be homosexual, and so on. What’s fairer than that?

The ‘jury’-like process means that those who are chosen in this way would probably be reluctant to do so, as it would mean disrupting one’s regular life to serve in Parliament.  Parliamentarians should not benefit excessively, as this would create an incentive to corrupt the process of selection. In fact, perhaps each person should get a salary linked to what they were earning in their everyday lives and careers.

This would have two benefits — although serving in Parliament would disrupt a career path, it wouldn’t lead to any financial losses. Secondly, this would avoid the problem that occurs now, where elected representatives become fat cats who lose touch with the concerns of their constituents. The rich would remain rich, the poor would remain poor. They would thus represent the perspectives and interest of rich or poor people respectively. But because there are many more poor than rich people, Parliament would tend to make pro-poor decisions.

But there should be some incentives to serving in Parliament, so that people also don’t try to corrupt the process in order to get out of it.  This benefit need not be financial. At any rate, ex-Parliamentarians from whatever background would be on a fast-track to good jobs, as their 4-year term would have served as an education in decision-making and a crash-course in leadership

One objection to this idea might be that a randomly-chosen group such as this would not necessarily be equipped to understand complex issues of public policy — to deliberate on them and make good decisions.

My first answer to this is that most of the current bunch chosen through elections, aren’t doing such a great job anyhow. Any randomly-chosen group of people is unlikely to do worse, and may well do better. And anyhow, democracy is already based on the belief that every citizen is capable of making informed decisions — at least once every 4 or 5 years.

But my more reasoned response is that we already have examples of randomly-chosen ordinary people being able to understand and make reasonable decisions on complex issues. The jury system works on this premise. It doesn’t always work well, but it works well enough for several countries to remain confident in it. Fishkin’s experiments in deliberative polling also indicate that ordinary people do a pretty good job of coming to grips with and making decisions on complex public issues.

Some may say this may be true in the developed world, where average education levels are higher — not in places with low average education levels, and high levels of illiteracy.

But this is nonsense. We also have examples in developing countries proving that the average person is perfectly capable of coming to grips with complex issues, no matter their level of education. This example is the work done by the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, and similar organisations such as the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign in Zambia. Through training in treatment literacy, thousands of ordinary, often poor and poorly-educated people have been able to master extremely complex medical and scientific information. Sometimes to the extent that they put ill-informed doctors and nurses to shame.

The system that I propose would in place Parliaments that are at least as competent as ours are now, but most likely they’d be a whole lot better.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa website: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org

A soap opera unfolds at the SABC

SBoy, am I glad I don’t work at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) at the moment! It’s been a week of drama. First the CEO, Dali Mpofu announced he was suspending the head of news, Snuki Sikalala. Then the next day we woke up to the news that the Board had suspended the CEO.

All of this, in turn, comes after Parliament’s Communications Committee passed a motion of no confidence in the SABC board last week!
(http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20080501063442739C583465)

Many commentators have been saying that this is part of the battle between the Mbeki and Zuma factions in the ANC. So, it goes like this:  Snuki Zikalala is known as an Mbeki man, and he was suspended by Mpofu, who perhaps used to be an Mbeki man but is now apparently in the Zuma camp. Mpofu was then suspended by the Board, which is believed to be loaded with Mbeki supporters, and the board has been censured by the Parliamentary committee, which is full of Zuma’s people.

It’s rather like one of the SABCs own very popular soap operas. The only difference is that any scriptwriter who dared come up with such a plot would be fired for being too far fetched!

The tragedy is that no matter who wins in the end, it can no longer be denied that the SABCs independence as an institution has been seriously compromised.

But the SABC is a strange animal. Most of this news, as it was unfolding, came from the SABC itself. I listened open-mouthed in my car yesterday as SABC’s current affairs teams brought us blow-by-blow commentary. In radio, in particular, the current affairs teams of serving the various stations enjoy a fair deal of autonomy and while the SABC as a whole is in a sad state, it must be said that there are still many good, dedicated journalists there, with integrity, who are doing their best in the circumstances.

But of course turmoil like this is bad for morale. I know – I worked at the SABC for most of the 90s, and from about 1993 the organisation has been pretty much in permanent transition. The SABC has seen some of the most talented and dedicated journalists in SA pass through its doors, only to leave again when they could no longer stand the constant politicking and upheaval. I shouldn’t be surprised to see a new wave of good people leaving in the wake of this latest debacle.

Meanwhile, there is another point to be made from all of this, which is that we are seeing an increasing number of top officials sitting in limbo, as they wait out sometimes indefinite suspensions — as The Citizen newspaper has pointed out (www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=mc): “Other notables who find themselves in limbo are National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi and National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli. Then there’s the famous safe driver, Ekurhuleni Metro Police Chief Robert McBride, who’s not officially suspended although he’s not supposed to be at work.”

In my head I keep hearing the voices of Zimbabwean colleagues and friends, who have told me many times: “we see the warning signs that your democracy is in danger — it starts slowly. Watch out.” I wonder what they are thinking as they observe the latest events unfolding. I’m too scared to ask.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal – www.citizenjournalismafrica.org

Effectively fighting poverty

This week, if you were browsing AllAfrica.com (http://allafrica.com/stories/200804240734.html), or if one of your local newspapers happened to carry the news, you may have noticed an article about a meeting in Kampala this week of governments and civil society organisations from eastern and southern Africa. The aim of the meeting was to discuss programmes and policies on social protection.

The chances are that you didn’t notice, though, as the meeting did not receive much media coverage (at least it didn’t here, in SA). But in fact this meeting is part of a continent-wide process that has huge potential in fighting poverty.

Well, you may ask, what is social protection and why is it so significant? In a nutshell, social protection refers to policies aimed at providing regular, long-term assistance to those living in poverty, or vulnerable and in danger of falling into poverty. The idea is to move away from short-term emergency-based responses to poverty and hunger, and to put in place long-term, reliable and coherent policies to assist the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Old age pensions, child support grants and disability grants are good examples of social protection measures.

These policies have been pretty controversial. For example in 2004, Lesotho’s government decided to introduce an old-age pension, and was strongly advised against it by donors and the likes of the IMF (they went ahead anyway and now it’s seen as a big success).

While social protection is pretty much taken for granted in developed nations, for some reason many governments and even international donors have opposed putting in place such measures in Africa. But there is clear and growing evidence that social protection policies and programmes have huge impact in reducing poverty. For example, in South Africa, which has a pretty good and well-developed system of social protection, research has found that children in households that received a pension, were on average taller than children in households without a pension. That kind of measurable difference is hard to argue against! (If you’re interested in looking into this, there’s loads of research and updates available online at www.wahenga.net).

Anyhow, in March 2006, senior government representatives from 13 African countries gathered in Livingstone, Zambia, and signed what’s known as the Livingstone Declaration. The Livingstone Declaration recognised social protection as a human right, and it called on African governments to put together social protection plans within 2-3 years. The declaration was subsequently adopted by the African Union.

So now, in 2008, the AU is spearheading what’s known as Livingstone II. The meeting in Kampala this week is the first of 3 regional gatherings (the others will be in Cairo for north Africa, and Dakar for west Africa), leading up to the first ever African Union Conference of Ministers of Social Development, in October. The aim is to assess progress since 2006, discuss challenges in implementing and funding national social protection programmes, and map the way forward.

As I say, so far it’s not getting the media coverage it deserves — perhaps because journalists are always sceptical of so-called ‘talk-shops’ — where a lot gets said, and very little gets done afterwards. And to be honest, that is always a danger – but that’s why it’s important that we pay attention to this process. Civil society organisations and ordinary citizens across the continent should be watching the Livingstone II process, and making a noise in their own countries to ensure their governments make clear commitments to social protection, and then follow up with practical implementation.

This process really has the potential to transform the lives of millions of Africans — it’s up to all of us to make sure that this potential becomes a reality.

(This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal – www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)