South Africans, well most of us anyway, say we see former president Nelson Mandela as a symbol of dignity, pride, measure and humility.
Which of course is why when the great statesman was in hospital last week, we were egging on the media vultures who hovered at the hospital hoping to pick up and sensationalise anything that appeared, even remotely, to be news. Never mind that this and the attendant speculation, infringed on the man’s dignity and privacy.
Forget that this meant his family could not go about attending to him in peace and with the privacy we would all like in times of family crisis. We wanted our juicy news, and we wanted it now. Nothing would stop us from gossiping, speculating and fuelling vicious cycles of rumour around Madiba’s health.
Even now Madiba has a contingent of pressmen loitering in his street seeking non-existent clues from the faces of those who visit him. We even took to lambasting his family for not putting our need for information and juicy tidbits before his need to rest and recuperate, and their need to come to terms with the ever increasing frailty of their father figure.
Ditto the Dewani matter. We are all outraged that a person would see our country as a place where spousal disposal could be affected for a mere R15 000. Yet we ignore the fact that he could indeed do such. He could get to SA and, if his fellow accused are to be believed, meet a man and arrange an elaborate murder intrigue in days. The same goes for how we engage in debate with one another.
We like to point at the ultimately relatively peaceful transition we had as showing our capacity to rise above pettiness and self-interest but look at how we go about our discourse. See how the Kenny Kunene matter has gone from a man finding out the ways of throwing his own money away to being about race, the ANC and Julius Malema.
See the headlines every day about spousal abuse, rape, violence, drunken behaviour and fraud — both in the public and private sector, the willing giver-receiver nature of bribery in our country. Media icon Kgomotso Matsunyane once said that there is a large gap between who we say we are as a country, and who we really are.
It is time we owned that we need to move out of the mediocre mess we are muddling in.
This blog first appeared on NewsTime
Not only the media, my dear Siyabonga, but the family, government officials and the rest of the wabenzi crowd descended on Milpark producing an undigified frenzy. As I said before, Madiba is a world figure and has himself set an example in openness to his fellow countrymen and the rest of mankind who revere him.
The old man is frail and we are now told suffered a serious respiratory crisis requiring him to be airlifted from Cape Town for specialised treatment. Rather than immediately issuing authoritative, concise and informative bulletins promising an ongoing stream of such to a world that would obviously be concerned, there was a huddle of denial, indignant protestations about the right to privacy (a much abused term used by very dubious characters)and the obviously absurd claim of it being a routine medical procedure. This really set the alarm bells ringing.
You are right. This country needs to grow up and learn to act in a dignified, mature fashion worthy of its potential.
Where you throw the ongoing communication debacle around our father figure into the same media pot as the Dewani case and horror of horrors the obscenity that is a Kunene, you go way off the rails.
Siyabonga I really did not learn much from reading this one. I think you decided to report one side of Mandela story ignoring his above-ordinary role and sacrifices for humanity. After winning against the past demons that tried to buy his patriotism, the man is a natural interest. Moreover, your sudden switch to Dewani case took me by surprise. I think as much as we may be far from what we think to be, surely we have lots of what we think we are. We agree that we are a democratic nation, we are taking efforts to review and develop our education, police, etc. Even other nations beat themselves of their own challenges.
South Africans (Black and White in our racial obsessions) are all prisoners of self imposed persecution complexes and inferiority complexes created by BBBBEEEEE. We will not be able to rise above mediocrity. Merit should be the only basis we judge each other – not the colour of our skins or our supposed disadvantages. I came from a dirt poor east rand family who voted UP/PP/DP and as “ingelsmen” benefitted about as much as the average black urban dweller from apartheid – i.e. we were all carried by that tide of prosperity driven by rapid industrialisation. So fellow South African’s I say throw off your BBBBBEEEEEEE chains , you have nothing to lose but your complexes.(Recommended reading – Biko and Fanon.) As for Mandela – while the myth continues – someone really needs to assess the damage he did. Mandela really missed his opportunity to help forge a nation by abdicating his presidential responsibilities to Mbeki, who as a result basically got 3 terms and the rest is history as they say.(Recommended reading – SA Brave new World).As a result Mbeki’s racist legacy will live with us forever – not Mandela’s Rainbow platitudes.
Yeah! Not a conclusively productive post. Also, I’d consider it a bit insulting to Mandela that you felt the need to link him in any way to either Dewani or Kunene. The link is definitely not public outrage, nor media reaction.
“South Africans, well most of us anyway, say we see former president Nelson Mandela as a symbol of dignity, pride, measure and humility”
If we cannot suppress our prejudices – “well most of us anyway” – like Madiba managed to do, I see only disaster for – “well most of us anyway”