Killing for Zuma

A lot has already been said and written about this in the South African media, but I think it’s important enough for me to add my two-cents’ worth.

On Youth Day, June 16th, Julius Malema, the leader of the ANC Youth League, said at public rally that the youth were prepared to kill for Jacob Zuma — the ANC President and likely next president of South Africa. Zuma himself, who stood up to speak at the same meeting shortyl after Malema, did not publicly rebuke him at the time (though in the subsequent furore he has since criticised the remark).

In the outcry and outrage that followed this remark, Zuma at first defended Malema, and Malema himself refused to apologise, saying he didn’t mean the words literally. Then a few days later, Zwelinzima Vavi, the head of the giant trade union federation, Cosatu, said the organisation’s members would be willing to sacrifice their lives for Zuma.

I am heartened by the widespread outcry over this and the fact that South Africa’s Human Rights Commission has threatened legal action against both Vavi and Malema unless they retract their statements. But I’m deeply, deeply disturbed that the two men do not seem particularly sorry for what they said, and have tried to explain away their remarks, rather than retract them. But whether or not there are retractions and apologies, I’m disturbed that such thing were said at all.

I’m disturbed because I see in this kind of language, strong echoes of the kind of language used by Robert Mugabe. What Zuma and his supporters have in common with Mugabe is that they combine religious references, with a strong sense of menace and threat. Mugabe says only God can remove him from office, for example, while Zuma says the ANC will rule until Jesus returns.

Now, lest I am misunderstood, I’m not saying that Zuma, Malema and Vavi are like Mugabe in anything but their language. Yet. But that ‘yet’ is the crucial word. I am deeply disturbed my these recent statements because they illustrate a way of thinking — an elevation of people and personalities above principle and performance, and a sense that might is right — that they, as leaders, have been placed where they are by God — that they have a divine right to lead, no matter what.

This is deeply undemocratic. We need our elected leaders to understand, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are not placed there by God, but by us, the citizens. They have been elected by us to serve, not to rule. And if and when we feel that they are not serving us in the way we wish to be served, we have the right and the means, to fire them and find somebody else.

The language used by Vavi, Zuma and Malema is worrying because it represents a step, or a few steps, towards a Mugabe. Once you believe you are chosen by God, you soon believe you are entitled to rule and to rule forever. You start to believe that your words and thoughts are God-given, and that you can do anything you want. And you start to believe that your opponents are your enemy, that they’re on the side of evil. And when that happens, human rights disappear, and violence and torture become the order of the day.

As we in South Africa watch the unfolding of events north of the Limpopo we need to urgently look to our own back yard, lest we see a repeat performance in our own land, in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years from now.

(This post appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa website on 26th June 2008: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

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.