I have a T-shirt brought back from the Newseum in Washington, DC, that reads: “Trust me, I am a reporter”.
It’s the one I am wearing in this month’s issue of Empire, the boldest and most adventurous and fecund new magazine to hit South Africa’s bookshelves in years. After so long we have a magazine with the intestinal and testicular fortitude to tackle the really tough issues head-on, armed only with the penmanship of the best in journalism.
Legendary hard-arse newshound Rian Malan, the Chuck Norris of South African journalists, wrote the article on “race and resentment in South Africa’s newsrooms” — about my failed attempt to drag the Sowetan along the path of quality without excuses, the journalistic code less travelled in South Africa today.
The T-shirt was given to me by one of the toughest, hardest-working and bravest people I’ve ever had the honour to meet — Zane Wilson, founder and still CEO of the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, Africa’s biggest and most successful mental-health NGO.
Journalism and, more accurately, freedom of expression are under serious threat in South Africa. The biggest threat comes from the ruling ANC government.
I was asked, in all seriousness, by an al-Jazeera freelancer not so long ago how long I thought it would be before South Africa went the way of Zimbabwe. I was stunned. I thought that kind of talk had died a quiet death.
But it seems that outside of our chakalaka cocoon there are other perceptions sprouting. Maybe the non-African world sees spooks like the Nats saw the rooi gevaar behind every bush.
Then again, you see Kenya and Chad and the DRC and the disbanding of the Scorpions and the ANC campaign for media tribunals and asinine “pledges of allegiance” that conjure images of Leni Riefenstahl documentaries and fresh-faced Aryan schoolkids. And I wonder.
Zuma Simpson genuinely scares the crap out of me. His interview on BBC was a sitcom and would have been genuinely hilarious if it didn’t remind us all so much of Idi Amin, the last king of Scotland. Like an arrogant puppy overwhelmed by the noise of his own yapping, Showerhead has withdrawn most of his idiotic charges against the media and slunk away at the sight of his shadow.
But it is a shadow that is looming increasingly menacing over our future.
This week, Chunky Charlie Nqakula’s obsequiousness in disbanding the most successful crime-fighting outfit this nation has ever had is indicative of the Zulu might under Zuma and the lack of testicular fortitude or plain common sense in the rest of the ANC. That does not bode well for the rule of law in South Africa.
And while our president-in-waiting (but waiting for the oath of allegiance of office, or that he will tell the truth in court?) is mooning in Mauritius, 33 000 e.tv viewers condemned the disbanding of the Scorpions, which he orchestrated, and the Independent Directorate of Complaints confirmed that more than 800 cops in KwaZulu-Natal alone were under investigation.
Little wonder that more and more people are seriously whispering war-talk of the Shell House kind pre-1994. The idle, jobless young warriors in Zululand and Pondoland are pawing the ground. And the Isuzu bakkies that hunted arms caches in post-war Mozambique are said to be scouring remote regions of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape with fervour.
And when one sees how increasingly thin the veneer of law and order has become with schoolboys shooting up townships, drunken white louts firing on black pub-crawlers and gangs of black skollies hunting white farmers in the Northern Cape, Anthony Altbeker’s book A Country at War With Itself seems a euphemistic what-if scenario.
Thank God we have courageous religious leaders spearheading the bill of responsibilities to counter-balance the Bill of Rights. It has clearly never occurred to the ANC that rights without responsibilities lead to the kind of out-of-control corruption that permeates every level of government. It was this kind of amoral megalomania that gave Mad Bob the platform from which to launch his dictatorship, and which underpinned the craven response from Thabo the Timid.
Call me alarmist, sensationalist, even racist (if you’re that stupid), but then seriously ask yourself how effective our national intelligence capacity is; how effective our police “service” is; how safe you feel at night, every night; how much confidence Thabo instilled last week; and why the cream of our intelligentsia is leaving.
Just listen to the mindless mouthings of our rulers from Alec to Charles to Naledi to Moosa (skip Manto, that’s just plain airhead stuff) to the perpetually perplexed Geraldine who doesn’t even know how many people there are in her department or whether her computers are working lekker.
Can you seriously trust these buffoons? They are the ones Bill Cosby would place in “slow class”, the experiments evolution filed in the bottom drawer or left on the island of Dr Moreau. If you knew yours was the winning Lotto ticket, would you ask one of them to cash it for you?
Fellow TL blogger Steve Vosloo speaks of the Matthew Effect in education, based on Matthew’s Gospel 25:29:
“For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance;
but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.”
The ANC overlords fall into the latter category when it comes to brain matter.
The problem is that when it comes to brawn … well, we see what they’re doing to the Scorpions, state health, our roads, our energy, our water supplies, our food inflation, our credit rating and, yes, what they want to do to our media. When looked at in that light, maybe Zimbabwe is just a short swim away.
There is a grave and growing unease in South Africa, ironically sparked by rubbing together the Polokwane pantomime and the energy crisis. The faithful sheeple’s lack of faith in the empty promises of the ANC was translated into grasping at a ridiculous straw — a man of low moral stature infatuated with automatic weapons but who shouted a good shout and danced a nifty shuffle. The same thing has happened before — when an equally curious little Austrian corporal mesmerised a demoralised Germany with power-to-the-people talk.
We are living in dangerous times — even that lonely little man in Parliament last week inadvertently alluded to this in his misguided quotation from A Tale of Two Cities. People tell me they can actually feel the tension, the razor-wire taut aggro in the air, when they arrive at OR Tambo. I felt it in December on returning from the green Kalahari. I feel it now in shopping malls and steakhouses on Friday nights. I haven’t felt safe anywhere for many, many months, and triple-check the alarms, the locks, the windows and the dogs before cowering into bed.
The first responsibility of any government is the safety of its people. No one is safe in this land any more. And now they have made it much more dangerous by eliminating the closest thing we’ve ever had to Batman.
Each day each one of us — 46-million, give or take — goes about our affairs not knowing if we will be alive tomorrow. That is wrong. Every move you make is in some killer’s cross-hairs. That is indefensible. Mothers cannot carry babies on their backs and little girls can’t even wait in cars in safety any more. That degree of danger exists only in war zones. The scales have tipped completely. We no longer die by accident; we survive each day by purest chance.
I, who have always trusted too readily, too expansively, too naturally, find it harder and harder to trust anyone any more. I am become genuinely ambivalent about my homeland. I still have some “Proudly South African” stickers, except the slogan is now bracketed by the words “not” and “any more”.
For all I know, this could be my last blog. That is not alarmist. That is the reality of living in the Cradle of Mankind.
Mr Kriel, sometimes I find it hard to figure out whether your general pessimism is genuine or maybe you are the poster boy of the not-so-well. I say this with the greatest respect knowing that you have shared with us so openly about your demons.
There is a point in your post where you talk about things being given to you in abundance; the more successful you are the more successful you become. And those poor souls who have nothing, even the little they have it will be taken from them.
The irony of that statement is that I see exactly the same in you. The more you find wrong in your country and your government and your employers and human beings in general, the more depressed and the more it all looks worse than it might actually be. It’s an illness, sir.
I do not want to come across as an apologist for anyone, especially the ANC government. I have been hijacked 3 times and walk with a bullet in my gut to prove it. However, I could never be in the state of absolute negativity that you are in.
Maybe you are correct, sir. It SHOULD be you last blog.
I say this because I care. Trust me.
By all means, do make this one your last blog.
Llewellyn,
Thank you for putting into words what many of us feel but are afraid to say for fear of being attacked by the PC brigade.
What on earth were we thinking in 1994 when the ANC took over.Hindsight is a perfect science the say – had we only known then what we know now.
@Lew
Hang in there Ou Boet. Don’t let the kak grind you down. Read history. We have faced worse in the past.
You are one of the few who call a spade a spade. They all see Zim coming, just wont admit it. But the young generation growing up now is hard, not like the 15-35 year olds.
Its just time to go back to the old values. Listen to your heart. That blood flows through your veins.
Keep going. Then they will call you the same names they call me ha ha! Who cares? look at where the names come from. Who are they?
By the way, my son is one of those blonde fresh faced Aryans. He is 6 and can now shoot Oros bottles at 10 m with a rifle. Polite, well disciplined and happy.
Sterkte
Llewlellyn succintly put. I agree with every single one of your points and I too agree that we, in the space of two months have become another Zim. There is nothing reactionary or negative about that – it is quite simply the truth. Mzanzi is a tinderbox waiting to explode…. you CAN feel it in the air.
Fo a millennium, the Church ruled the Western world with fear by invoking the nonsensical concept of original sin. The ANC, and all its AK47-toting brethren who are laying waste to our continent with their taste for democide and kleptomania, have been ruling Africa with their recycled theology of white and Western guilt.
Whites, being conceived and born in the sins of colonialism and apartheid, have no right to criticise even the worst excesses of the Mbeki/Zuma/Mugabe[...] gang. Only the black “elite”, disadvantaged as much by Kwame Nkrumah’s war cry “liberation before education” as by Bantu Education, have a right to speak. But not sommer any old black person – only those who have been washed in the Blood of the Struggle. There is only one proviso. To become a member of the Elect, they must talk nonsense.
The prize for the worst nonsense ever uttered by an ANC luminary must go to Jeff Radebe.
When asked about the ANC’s inability to deliver services to the poor (presumably roads, housing, electricity, clean water, sewage disposal and so on), he started his explanation with the words: “Well, you know, after two hundred years of colonialism…”
My mind is still reeling.
It is good to draw out polarities and your article certainly does this, and anyone who does not see the writing on the wall from this perspective that you write about is either asleap or numb.
From another perspective the writing is also on the wall in favour of the fact that it is time for ALL South African’s to “Wake Up” and “Grow Up” and become active responsible citizens who add value through taking a stand about the policy making and policy compliance in our country.
Well put Lindy.
@Sam
Well it is 1000 years since Blacks colonised southern Africa after migrating from west Africa, and still nothing.
Blacks in Ethiopia and Liberia have never been colonised and what do we see there?
Meneer Radebe had it wrong. He is an order of magnitude out.
Just an aside – What did the late PW (remember him – die groot krokodil) and JZ have in common?
They both wag their finger at you.
@Llew
Seriously ….double the Zoloft, psychotropic’s and mood stabilisers. This stuff is out to lunch, scary and needs massive chemical intervention and TLC. Just don’t do a Heath Ledger on us.
We need someone to highlight the scourge of societally demonised depression and anxiety, that’s far more common than diagnosed and appreciated . There are millions of South Africans out there who are clinically depressed and in need of treatment – but PC media scoffs and calls for banning allopathic medicine in favour for natural remedies…. and looong walks with your dog…. to deal with psychosomatic “Prozac nation” psychosis mentality. Just don’t go the whiskey route – that’s self medication as well as self indulgent and generally corruptly……….. selfish and indefensible (so they say?)
Long gone are the days when we worked in vacs for our varsity fees – driving taxi’s, shunting trains at the bayhead in a pair of shorts and slops, operating cranes at night, so goofed on Tekweni poison, that we often dumped a load on the wrong ship – Nanika Atta? (wassup?). Oh Sh.it!! ……Gomen nasai!!! (sorry) Mr Tamahasa…. next time, you get Toyota parts …he get Levi jeans!!
All these black diamonds AA types expect degrees and fancy corporate jobs by default – struggle manna – Its a human right – “I am entitled by my centuries of slavery oppresion and victimhood to a life of opulence and conspicuous bling….. Whats more.. We got 70% of the vote and its payback… our-turn-big-time…… hands up… and hand over… everything thats left (that is) ”
Even our white pampered kids expect a first year Clio with aircon, power steering, ABS, MP3, beer dispenser, and auto-breathalyzer, while wee hitched, or collapsed in a ditch during rag fest. What really riles me is these reject kids of ours go to London with exile CA and engineering degrees – live the life of Riley – holiday in a Chateau in Prague.. while the best we could do in the 70′s, is eat cauliflower and cheese in a squalid squat in Sheppard’s Bush, shared with SA loons/junkies and furnished from a Irish Paddy dumpster with a crazy rastafarian next door playing 1000mw reggae ’til 6 in the morning! Even Eskom would cut him off for conspicuous power useage
Did Thabo Mbeki ever have it so good in exile-Surrey, I wonder.
What I would do to be black and advantaged in the noughties?.
Wow! Each time I blog from the heart (as distinct from chewing the fat for fun), I am overwhelmed by the realisation that so many people actually read what I have to say. It is humbling, to say the least. I speak honestly and candidly, cognisant that such is not everyone’s cup o’ tea (including khosi whose loyalty is the litmus test that I am having an impact).
I need to pay special tribute to Bonginkosi who makes a very valid point. It is something that does concern me. My desire to be an honest non-PC social commentator in pursuit of a better world, cannot retrogress into a narcissistic Timothy Leary-style electric Kool-Aid acid trip. Thanks for your candour and the heads-up, B. People such as I have to be on the alert all the time in case the boogeyman breaches our fractious emotional buttresses. And depression does that in invidious but mighty ways.
KYSSYG everyone & to quote another big-mouth, Mick Jagger, “If yer out on yer bike t’night, wear white.” (that means be safe’ khosi – in case you misunderstood).
@Kreef
Say what you want to say broer, let the PC brigade rant and rave.
Never mind 1994, what were 65% of people thinking in 1992? One look north should have been enough. That would have been foresight.
“That is the reality of living in the Cradle of Mankind.”
I was hoping that sentence was the last one you subject us to.
Llew, Of course your views matter, its just that if you kept quite – life would also go on and many of us will roll up our sleves and get our ‘hands on deck’. And be brave enough to fight the evils that you grump about.
Well anyway, welcome back (did you really go or were you just tried to test the love TL bloggers have for you?). Grand Standing, Grand Standing
I wish our friend, consulting engineer, was relevant; he isn’t.
Thanks, Mr Kriel, for your response. Despite what someone once said, irony is NOT lost on Black people. Ain’t that a thing to be celebrated?
I have told people this story before; bear with me if you’ve heard it. An old professor of mine used to say,’Bonginkosi, I understand you have the intellectual capacity to understand what the problem is and the different possible solutions. But what’s missing in your ‘analysis’ is what is it you going to DO.’
That shook me into realising that cleverness was okay but what really mattered were things that we did.
So we are at a bit of a crossroads. What are we going to do?
So, Khosi, I am with you on both points in that paragraph of yours in the middle.
-The sun will come up tomorrow despite everything.
-It’s what we are to do that matters.
Why the heck did Africa not colonise Europe? (Actually, this is quite an interesting question, but let’s not go there — I dont want the HRC aparat-chicks on my back).
If they did, then we could have been sitting in the rain complaining about the injustices that Africans inflicted on us.
What can one say but ja-nee.
@Sam
Because they never could have organised the logistics and colonising is hard work.