OUR general election – South Africa’s fourth since the advent of democracy – has been set for April 22 and the campaigning so far has been pretty vicious. Much of the poison, however, has been spread within parties by those jostling internally for positions.
There has also been an escalation of war-like rhetoric between the parties. This has recently had both the electoral commission and religious leaders warning about the potential for violence in the run-up to the poll. Above all, the past fortnight has shown graphically all the mounting weaknesses of the ruling African National Congress.
Some months ago, apparently at the insistence of ANC president Jacob Zuma, the party appointed a white Afrikaner with a theological and anti-apartheid background as its chief spokesman. This man has been revealed as a pathological liar and swindler on a massive scale, with a penchant for a sumptuous lifestyle he can only afford by fraud.
A powerful cartoon by “Zapiro” shows a weeping Carl Niehaus seated, with Jacob Zuma looming behind him. A prosecutor says: “While fronting the ANC, you’ve been a corrupt, lying fraudster.” Replies Zuma, “I know, I know. But first let’s deal with Carl.”
It says a great deal about the blatant acquisitiveness of many current ANC leaders. Some of Carl Niehaus’ desperate scams were also already well known to the ANC when he was appointed. Thus the initial responses of the party to the avalanche of fresh daily revelations about their former spokesman was depressingly, ominously familiar: denial. It reminded me overwhelmingly of the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude to errant priests: rather than publicly admit the truth, offenders are quietly shuffled from parish to parish.
In fact, this is almost always the ANC’s instinctive response when any high-ranking official is accused of misdemeanours or corruption. First there is the defiance: that this is merely the gossip of counter-revolutionary elements. Then, as evidence mounts irrefutably, there’s the back-up “Good Samaritan” position: we must help a fallen comrade.
The way the ANC protects its own top functionaries is very much like that of a closed monastic order. Even the language is often theological.
This is the same pattern displayed to the judicial woes faced by Jacob Zuma. Indeed, there are those within the ANC who have compared our putative president to Jesus Christ. This is not politics, however; it is the despairing hope of redemption.
Yet it emphasises that the ruling party, in its uncertain transition from a liberation movement, displays as many traits of a religious movement as of a political party. There is the sense of a divine right to rule forever; that accusations against it are inspired by inherent malice; finally, that if they are proved true, then, “the devil made him do it”.
On one level, this is an enclosed thought process impervious to outside logic. At another, it points to the development of a priestly caste, entitled to position and privilege. Compare the compassion shown to well-paid cadres (the high priests) who “stumble” with the vicious attitude displayed by some ANC ministers towards crimes committed by poor, ordinary citizens, encapsulated in the vile slogan: “Shoot the bastards”.
Such theocratic hypocrisy is disguised by repetitive and vacuous rhetoric about “defending the revolution”, whereas it is actually increasingly reactionary.
RECENTLY, in Cape Town, I saw a magical production of Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, with Antony Sher and John Kani, a co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company which is now playing in Britain. During the performance, I suddenly recalled that, inadvertently, I have Sher to thank for regaining my South African citizenship.
Early in 1994 our (old regime) High Commission in London informed me, rather brusquely, that there was absolutely no chance of regaining my citizenship. Then, only weeks prior to the April 1994 election, a friend working with Antony Sher mentioned that the actor might be getting his SA passport back.
The ANC, I was told, had managed to swing a deal whereby expatriates who had lost their citizenship could re-apply. The ANC calculation then, almost certainly justified, was that such people were more likely to vote for them.
For me, it was like having a limb re-attached. Early on April 27, I collected my passport at the back-door of our High Commission and went round the corner to vote.
How different from the ANC’s attitude today towards permitting citizens abroad to vote. The party probably calculates that most current ex-pats are doubtful ANC fodder.
In 1990, the Tories, with an election looming, passed a law to allow anyone who had been living abroad for up to 20 years to vote. They made a strong drive here on the logical assumption that Brits living under apartheid were likely to vote Conservative.
But when our history here is one of ruthless disenfranchisement, why on earth is the party of liberation now so cavalier about disenfranchising the previously franchised? Rarely has a party, with so huge a majority, yielded the high ground so swiftly.
