Bryan Rostron – Out of Africa
IN ITALY, recently I heard the kind of strident bigotry that’s all too familiar from our apartheid past in South Africa. Only 63 years after the fall of Mussolini, the spectre of renewed fascism looms. The brashly assertive right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi is whipping up a storm of anxiety about foreigners, Africans and gypsies.
If any African government issued the kind of crude, inflammatory racist pronouncements that Italian ministers regularly make, instituted systematic finger-printing solely on the basis of race, then introduced a state of emergency to bring troops onto the streets in order to control foreigners (for which read Africans and gypsies), the European Union and the United States would be shouting from the roof tops and calling for sanctions.
Cabinet minister Umberto Bossi, for example, the leader of the virulently xenophobic Northern League, refers to Africans as “Bingo-bongos” and stated that Italian troops should open fire on those trying to enter the country illegally in small boats. Some Northern League mayors have even suggested that apartheid-style segregation be introduced so that Italians could travel by bus and train separately from Africans.
Yet there’s little outrage in the rest of Europe about this insidious display of racial discrimination and jingoistic bigotry, or shock at such an avowed nostalgia for fascism.
There’s another massive double standard: corruption. The level of malfeasance that ANC president Jacob Zuma stands accused of shrivels compared to the battery of court cases billionaire Berlusconi has faced over many years. The sums of money also differ by millions; and while Zuma is the alleged recipient of illicit funds, Berlusconi is constantly indicted as the grand corruptor. Yet President George Bush calls him “my good friend”.
Berlusconi has another advantage over Zuma: it’s his third go as Prime Minister. In his previous two terms, he used his position to introduce laws that specifically got him off the legal hook. He’s been variously indicted for bribery, corruption, tax evasion, false accounting, money laundering, the illegal financing of political parties and connections with the Mafia. Last month, back in office, he passed yet another convenient law: that the four top political office-holders cannot now be prosecuted.
It is almost as if Zuma has been studying the Berlusconi court-evasion technique. It comprises three distinct tactics. First, attack the judiciary head on: yell that you are the victim of a political plot. Second, delay court proceedings with endless legal challenges. Finally: become president and pass laws to dissolve your legal problems.
Now some of Zuma’s senior supporters, in calling for his case to be abandoned, are quoting the example of Berlusconi’s self-serving laws, as though that set some kind of reputable, international precedent. The most disturbing question is: how can an African liberation movement seriously suggest that we measure the probity of our leaders against such a standard – a European government that is blatantly racist and flirts with fascism?
One answer lies in another similarity: a penchant for what in Italy is known as dietrologia (conspiracy theorising). Consider our current South African obsessions – the corrupt arms deal, fratricidal strife over Jacob Zuma, even the selection of national sports teams – and the explanation given by one of Italy’s leading intellectuals to author Tobias Jones in his acclaimed book The Dark Heart of Italy, helps. “Dietrologia is an air that you breathe in Italy. It’s the result of paranoia and jealousy, and it simply exalts an intricate intelligence… When something’s so obviously verosimile (probable) it can’t be the verità (truth), it would be too simple: it would be too obvious, so it can’t be true.”
Earlier this year, for example, a local ANC leader left a message for me to call back: did he want to revive a township project some of his comrades had wrecked in pursuit of personal interests? No, his brother wanted advice on how to appeal against a rape conviction. Yes, his brother admitted, he and the woman had sex, but then she cried rape because her family “had an agenda”. He couldn’t explain what the “agenda” was. “That,” he muttered darkly, “is a secret we still have to uncover.”
This addiction to conspiracy theories may partly explain many of the wild claims by Zuma’s supporters which, without any proof, link constitutional court judges, former freedom fighters and unnamed foreign spooks in plots to bring down their hero. It is a tactic used, abused and perfected by Berlusconi and his backers. The Zuma faction is recklessly following a convenient example that helps explain away inconvenient facts.
But they are in danger of pushing our new democracy towards an “Italicisation” of public life: massive cynicism, almost fatalism, about politicians. “Italians survive and somehow prosper despite their leaders”, one of Italy’s best-known journalists once said to me. “We have no illusions about why people seek power and position. So from an early age, Italians learn that they simply always have to work around whoever is in power.”
Only 14 years after the fall of apartheid, is this the direction that we are headed?
