Credibility Gap

A report in yesterday’s Sunday Times here in South Africa, provides a warning and food for serious thought.

A survey by Stellenbosch University’s Centre for International and Comparative Politics, compared the views and values held by the ‘elite’ to those held by ‘ordinary people’. The ‘elite’ were defined as people who hold top position in business, government, cultural and other institutions. The study found that there are some sharp differences between the perspectives of these two groups on issues such as politics, religion, homosexuality, corruption, and domestic violence.

The study found that both groups see family as the top priority followed by work. But after that, values start to differ. Religion is firmly in 3rd place among most members of the public, but much less so among the elite. And while the elite put politics in 4th place, ahead of friends and leisure time, members of the public put politics firmly in last place.

Even more interestingly, while the elite place a great deal of confidence in the Constitutional Court and other institutions of state, the public puts most confidence in the church.

This translates into other differences. For example, while elites believe in the right to abortion and support equal rights for homosexuals, most adults in the general public believe that both homosexuality and abortion are unjustified.

I don’t actually find this very surprising, but it is rather worrying, all the same. My own values are closer to those of the elites as outlined in the study, and I believe that in general, that approach is consistent with respect for human rights. It’s worrying to me that most South Africans don’t seem to buy into these progressive values.

But who’s fault is this? I believe the problem lies firmly with the elite, because they (or should I say we?) have not succeeded in taking most South Africans along with them. And one of main reasons for this is that the elite actually do not believe in what they say they believe. Their actions (or lack of action often), directly contradict their professed values. Ordinary citizens see this, and draw their own conclusions.

How easy it is to feel superior and self-righteous because one has the ‘correct’ beliefs — tolerant, progressive, in favour of diversity, against the death penalty, pro abortion and so on. But a sad event just a few weeks ago exposes all of this as hollow and hypocritical.

Let’s go back eight years to 2000, when the Constitutional Court made a ground-breaking judgment, in what’s become known as the Grootboom case. In 1998 Irene Grootboom, a resident of an informal settlement outside Cape Town, took the government to court after she and her neighbours were threatened with eviction. The case went all the way to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in 2000 that according to the Constitution, the state had an obligation to provide Grootboom and her neighbours with decent shelter and basic services.

The Grootboom ruling was hailed around the world. Lawyers and legal experts made careers and lots of money, interpreting and analysing the case over and over again. Dozens of journal articles were written about it. It has been lectured on by professors and studied by law students. The case is considered a key component of the jurisprudence of socio-economic rights.

But all of this meant nothing to Irene Grootboom. Back in the shack settlement near Cape Town, Grootboom’s life didn’t change one bit. After the judgment, she became a hero for her community. But despair and frustration soon set in, as the authorities repeatedly stalled on implementing the Court’s ruling.

Early in August this year, Irene Grootboom died, at the relatively young age of 39. Her health could no longer withstand the howling wind and the seeping rain, from which her overcrowded little shack failed to shelter her.

Ordinary South Africans go to church in their millions each Sunday. Through their churches they give millions of rands to help their fellow citizens in some way or another. They also hear the lesson about hypocrisy of the Pharisees (the political and religious elite in biblical Israel), and they draw their own parallels with what they see and hear in their own country. Small wonder they distrust state institutions and try to stay out of politics as much as they can.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal.

Do Olympic protests show double standards?

I’m not much of a sports fan, but the Olympics are something else. There is something larger than life about it all, from the opening ceremony to the agony, triumph and glory that can be witnessed several times each day, until the end.

The Olympics are also very interesting because of the political context. With the games set in Beijing, a lot has been said and written about China, it’s human rights and environmental record, and its rise as a superpower.

The opening of the Games was spectacular. I’ve never seen such masterly use of performers, rhythm, light and colour to create patterns and moving shapes on such a scale. There were 2008 individual performers on the field, dancing and drumming and moving in unison.

It was compelling, jaw-dropping stuff, but it also made me feel a little uncomfortable. At times I had the unsettling feeling that each of those 2008 individuals was nothing more than a cog in a gigantic machine. Certainly the scale of things made the individual human seem tiny and insignificant.

But I wonder too, whether that uneasy feeling I had was evoked solely by the images on TV, and to what extent it was influenced by the views about China that have been expressed in the media recently. Views that paint China as a fearful, unfeeling machine-like force, about to become dominant in the world.

Much of my reflection over the past day or two has been sparked by a very interesting article by Brendan O’Neill, in the online magazine, Spiked (see www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/5562/).

O’Neill argues that a lot of the rhetoric about China, painting the country as a threatening, unfeeling, alien giant, is simply a reflection of double standards, prejudice, and insecurity on the part of the Western media. For example, O’Neill says that the Chinese have been criticised for going all-out to win as many gold medals as possible — as if this is somehow morally wrong, and not what every country is striving for.

He argues out that in coverage of the Games (and the run-up to them) in the Western media, the Chinese athletes are shown as a team, without much insight into their individual stories and personal dramas, while athletes from Britain and the US are presented in much greater depth. O’Neill argues that all of this reflects a form of racism: “Here, contemporary China-bashing has echoes of yesterday’s ‘Yellow Peril’ fears about the Chinese. The idea of the Chinese as peculiarly driven, unemotional and unforgiving is an old prejudice that is being rehabilitated on the back of the Olympic Games.”

I have noticed this kind of prejudice in South Africa. While disparaging comments about blacks or whites are not permitted, it’s still somehow seen as fine to depict Chinese or Japanese or Korean people as having slanty eyes, buck teeth and talking with a funny accent. You also hear comments on the radio such as, “I can’t really tell the difference between the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans” (Which is just as racist or xenophobic as saying “I can/can’t tell a Zambian or Malawian just by looking at them.”)

And several weeks ago, when a small community of Chinese South Africans went to court and won legal recognition that they had been discriminated against during Apartheid, all sorts of racist nonsense was spouted against them — including a very embarassing tirade by the Minister of Labour.

O’Neill’s article has caused me to do a lot of reflection. Certainly, I think one can criticise the actions and policies of the Chinese government. Its human rights record is dismal, it severely limits freedom of speech, and its policies in Africa are at times very worrying.

But criticism must be consistent. During the build-up to the Games, there were often quite violent protests as the Olympic flame made its way around the world by people outraged at China’s regular violation of human rights.  One could ask, though, whether the USA is presently that much better. Think of ongoing events in Iraq, and the prisoners detained in Guantanamo Bay. And just last week I was reading in the New York Times about how the military has prevented journalists from publishing photographs of dead soldiers in Afganistan and Iraq. And yet I wonder, would the expressions of outrage have been as many and as loud, would the protests have been as vociferous, had the 2008 Olympics been held in the USA?

Somehow, I doubt it.

(This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site on 11th August: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

Democracy in action

Earlier this week I read an article in the Financial Times about an American congressman named John Culberson who is doing something rather controversial. He’s using new technologies over the Internet, to provide live coverage of, and commentary on, Congressional committee meetings.

Culberson has been using his cell phone to send short messages to the internet via the social networking service, Twitter, and now he’s also started sending live video feeds directly from his cell phone, using a new service called Qik (For the FT article see http://ft.onet.pl/0,13117,a_qik_from_new_technology,artykul_ft.html. The Qik site is at http://qik.com/).

Qik allows a direct video feed from a cell phone to be streamed live to a web page. Viewers can type comments and questions back, which the phone user can see and respond to.

According to the newspaper article, the congressman says he’s doing this to enable citizens to take back control of government — it’s opening up the US Congress to public scrutiny in a completely new way. Apparently Culberson also tried to provide a live Qik feed from the Oval Office when he went to the White House to meet with the President — but he was blocked from doing that.

Qik may be new in allowing live video feeds, and Culberson may be getting a lot of publicity because of his position, but others have not been slow to become citizen journalists by using the potential of the Internet to place public representatives under scrutiny.

For example, the blog, Mzalendo (www.mzalendo.com/) provides detailed coverage of debates and discussions in the Kenyan Parliament. It’s the brainchild of two Kenyans — Ory Okolloh, and someone known only as “M”. On their site, they say they started the project was started because they “were frustrated by the fact that it is difficult to hold Kenyan Members of Parliament (MPs) accountable for their performance largely because information about their work in Parliament is not easily accessible.” They have certainly been instrumental in beginning to change that situation.

Anyhow, inspired by this example, I went off on Tuesday to the South African Parliament, to sit in on a public hearing held by the Portfolio Committee on Communications. They were discussing a proposed amendment to the Broadcasting Act, which will allow members of the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to be removed. (This is the latest in an ongoing dispute between the Committee, the SABC Board, and the SABC CEO, which has been covered in earlier posts on this site.)

When I arrived, a civil society coalition formed to mobilise for changes in the SABC, were making their presentation to the Committee. They were arguing that if the Act is amended, the changes should go further and incorporate measures to make sure the SABC board is free of political interference and that the Corporation is run in the interests of all South Africans. The discussion afterwards was lively and interesting.

I didn’t have time to do a proper citizen journalism job and report on the proceedings in detail, but I did haul out my cell phone and snap a couple of pictures. I also took some short audio recordings, just to prove that I could (one of my pics is attached to this post — a bit out of focus, I’m afraid).

Amid all the news we’ve had recently of attacks on the judiciary, and crises in our major institutions it was very heartening to me to be reminded that as a South African citizen, I am free to walk into Parliament, and sit in on almost any of the proceedings, and see my elected representatives at work. I can take photos, notes and sound recordings (even video) if I want to, and am free to publish the results. And to do all of this, all I need is some sort of ID to get through security. I don’t have to be a card-carrying journalist, or have any special title or position.

Of course, most South Africans live too far away from Parliament to be able to do this, but among those who are in easy travelling distance, I reckon far too few take advantage of this right, and go and monitor what’s going on.

I highly recommend it. It’s a great reminder of what democracy is all about.

(This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site on 7th August: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

Undermining the rule of law

I’m hopping mad.

Zacob Zuma, the man who is likely to be South Africa’s next president, is in court today, to try and ward off a corruption case against him. It’s the latest in a long series of court appearances, as Zuma’s lawyers try every tactic to avoid or postpone his corruption trial.

That’s not why I’m mad. I’m mad about the stance that Zuma’s party, the ANC, is taking on the case. The front page headline on Business Day today, one of the biggest dailies here, is “ANC fears ‘mobilisation’ of judges against Zuma” (see www.businessday.co.za/articles/frontpage.aspx?ID=BD4A815022). The Argus, Cape Town’s afternoon paper, carries the headline, “Zuma slips into court”, with a sub heading, “Trial smacks of apartheid, charges ANC.” The article carries a quote from the ANC’s spokersperson, saying “this trial smacks of apartheid… when if you told a story often enough, it became fact.”

The statement that this trial smacks of apartheid is laughable. This is 14 years after the end of apartheid. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is an institution of the new South Africa, staffed with professionals from all racial and ethnic groups. There may be some old, apartheid-era judges left on the benches, but the judiciary has been dramatically transformed since 1994 — most of our top judges are black, many are women, and many of them have a solid record of involvement in the struggle against apartheid.

Furthermore, the assertion that the case amounts to nothing more than the repetition of a fabrication, is blatant nonsense. Zuma has already been shown to be corrupt. Because this happened during the trial of somebody else — Schabir Shaik — Zuma and his supporters can assert that he hasn’t been found guilty. While that may be technically true, the fact remains that a court has already established that Zuma took money from Shaik as part of a corrupt relationship. The NPA has boxes and boxes of documents and extensive forensic audits, to back up its case. I’m not saying that this in itself means Zuma must be convicted, but clearly there is substance to the case — substance worth serious consideration by a court. It’s not just based on rumour.

The ANC is the ruling party. It has an overwhelming majority in Parliament, has ‘deployed’ its members throughout state institutions, and has implemented a long-running programme of transformation. Yet the language it uses is from the past, as if it were still the outsider, struggling against an unjust regime. The language is the language of war, and political intrigue, plots and conspiracies. Judges who rule against Zuma are accused of being ‘counter-revolutionary’.

This is very, very dangerous stuff. It’s one thing to say, let Zuma have his day in court. It’s another to then begin a campaign to discredit the entire judiciary and prosecutorial system. The idea is that even if Zuma goes to trial and is found guilty, the verdict will not be accepted, as the courts will be seen to be suspect.

The ANC, which has considerable power in South Africa, is playing the victim and setting up imaginary enemies, in order to try to save its chosen leader, Zuma. In the process the party is prepared to  undermine public confidence in institutions vital to our democracy. The outcome of this can only be bad. A democracy must be based on the rule of law and if faith in that law, and in the institutions that uphold it, is undermined, the very foundations of our democracy will begin to crumble.

And all of this not in defence of a principle, or of human rights, but of one deeply flawed man. It’s shameful and disgusting.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org on 4 August 2008.