Holy Cows: The Ambiguities of Being South African

By Gareth van Onselen

From initiation ceremonies in the Eastern Cape to Helen Zille's Twitter account, South Africa is a land ripe with contradiction. It is a place where first world aspirations often clash with third world realities. Acclaimed commentator Gareth van Onselen takes a fresh and fearless look at some of these faultlines, from the rise and fall of Nelson Mandela's Christmas party to the contested meaning of words like 'respect' and 'excellence'. In the South African Twilight Zone, liberal democracy and modernity live side-by-side with tradition and culture. Van Onselen also asks why we have seemingly become a nation that bends over backward to accommodate mediocrity, settling for that which is only good enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Jun 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9780624066217

Gareth van Onselen

Gareth van Onselen is an outspoken political commentator and columnist for Business Day and Sunday Times. He published a collection of controversial quotes, "Clever Blacks, Jesus and Nkandla: The real Jacob Zuma in his own words", in 2014. Gareth moved to Cape Town in 2001 and for the next ten years worked for the Democratic Alliance as Executive Director for research and communications. In 2013 he left politics for journalism. He has a Master's degree in sociology from Wits University which he expertly applies for this incisive, often witty, analysis of South African society.

Book preview

NB-HolyCows.jpg

HOLY

COWS

The Ambiguities of Being

South African

Holy_cows_cover_symbols.jpg

Gareth van Onselen

Tafelberg

For my father

Introduction:

The theatre of the absurd

‘We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd … Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste … ? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?’

– Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, 1966

Here follow three stories from South Africa’s roads, all three from the same six-month period.

In September 2014, a truck hit a hippopotamus on the R529, outside Tzaneen, in Limpopo. When the hippo was discovered word quickly spread to five local villages, the inhabitants of which arrived in large numbers to cut the flesh off the dead animal. It was, unfortunately, night-time and, as they did so, the driver of an oncoming bakkie lost control and crashed into the group, killing eight and, according to paramedics, leaving 12 others severely injured and scattered across the road. Ultimately, 11 people died. Reflecting on the tragedy, Nkakareng Rakgoale, mayor of the Mopani District Municipality, said, ‘We are urging our people that when they find an animal on the road, the least they should do is to pull it out of the road and call safety authorities.’

In January 2015, a double-decker truck and trailer carrying around 100 cattle overturned near the Grasmere toll plaza on the N1 freeway, just outside Johannesburg. It was alleged that rocks had been thrown at the truck from a bridge, causing the driver to lose control. A mob then set about stealing and killing the cattle that had survived. Nineteen cattle were killed and 58 stolen before emergency services arrived on the scene. Many of those cattle that were killed had the meat hacked off their bodies while still alive.

A representative from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said in a statement: ‘With knives and buckets, the mob was chasing cattle that had managed to release themselves from the vehicle, some of which had injuries, including broken legs. Their intention was to hack meat from the living animals.’

In March 2015, ANC Public Service and Administration Minister Collins Chabane, along with two VIP protectors, were killed on the N1 while travelling between Polokwane and Gauteng. A truck driver unexpectedly did a U-turn in front of their car. Chabane’s car, a luxury 4 × 4, was reported to have been travelling at around 200 km/h at the time of the crash. It was later claimed that the minister had been assassinated and that the truck driver had been paid R15 000 to perform the U-turn. The ANC fervently denied the claim, saying in a statement, ‘To us it’s an insult, it’s derogatory.’

There are few countries in the world today, if any, in which you would find three stories that share so much in common – death, for one – and yet which differ so fundamentally in nature and cause. Between them, you have on display many of the ambiguities that define South Africa. A society capable of producing these three different scenarios, all in a matter of months, is a complex one indeed.

Each one is worth exploring in some detail. There is much to learn from them about the country, its people and its condition. That is how the press approached them – as isolated incidents, each to be explained and analysed on its own merits. But what happens when you put all three together and view them as a whole? South Africa’s roads have produced three extraordinary events, as disturbing as they are intriguing. How is it possible that they all coexist?

This book looks to explore these kinds of questions – to look at those situations, people and events where these kinds of everyday contradictions are brought together, and to see how they play out when in direct contact with one another. It is an attempt to view these three stories as one and to ask what can be learnt from that observation, as opposed to the more obvious questions each on their own might suggest.

At the end of the Pink Floyd song ‘Eclipse’, you will find the line, ‘There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.’

On first reading, the sentiment would seem to be the very definition of pessimism: the light you see at night is an illusion, a mere reflection. But on the moon, as it drifts effortlessly through space, there exists only an inky blackness everywhere.

Certainly that is how the pessimist label is generally applied in South Africa. We are a country desperate for hope and positivity and, more often than not, pessimism is uniformly used to refer to the things that run in the opposite direction to the national impulse. Pessimism is therefore inextricably linked to negativity and, with it, the idea that hope is an illusion and despair looms large.

Few things are frowned upon more heavily by the powers of political correctness than a negative disposition. To be a pessimist is to be a pariah, out of sync with the collective dream and shunned. But, as with so much binary thinking, it is an understanding limited in its application.

However, we forget that there is another kind of pessimism, one born not of disdain but of idealism. Here, disappointment is the consequence of a failure to achieve the highest possible standard. One’s frustration is not the result of an inherent belief that anything praiseworthy is impossible. Quite the opposite. It is the result of the conviction that amazing things are indeed possible – only the general standard is so low, so mediocre, that even when the acceptable is accomplished, it falls significantly short of higher aspirations and ideals. Hence the disappointment. Holding the second kind of disposition can be a cruel business. Very rarely in life is an ideal made real; rarer still in South Africa. That outlook lends itself to unrealistic expectation.

The new South Africa makes a perfect case study for this tension between hope and disappointment. It generally has both things in large quantities and as a result they enjoy a hostile relationship. Optimism and pessimism perpetually trade blows and every morning the newspapers present new evidence over which the two sides battle. It is a sign of the times that pessimism often prevails.

It is a conflict that those who wield political power both use and abuse to their advantage. When times are tough, we are told we are ‘nation building’ and that we face ‘challenges’ as we ‘build democracy’. When times are good, we are a ‘nation’, even a ‘rainbow nation’. We are both walking towards our goal and already there.

Yet amid all this fighting, the kind of idealistic pessimism to which I refer seems in short supply. At the end of the day, the average optimist and pessimist seem to be fighting over whether South Africa can be just about good enough – no more and no less. The real victor is mediocrity. It has won from first principles.

Of course, each side feigns idealism in order to keep up pretences. Ideas like ‘patriotism’ and ‘loyalty’ are used to shore up their respective causes, often blindly so. Therefore, regardless of the evidence on display, on any given day you can be sure South Africa is ‘bound to succeed’ or ‘doomed to fail’, depending on whom one talks to or what one reads.

But you never hear South Africa is destined to be a ‘world leader’, to set a ‘global standard of excellence’, ‘redefine expectations’ or ‘break international barriers’. That is not the kind of language we indulge in. Real excellence has been more or less outlawed and in its place is the pursuit of the satisfactory. For the most part, then, the goal is to ‘Pass Go’ and collect our winnings. If we don’t, it is to write off our entire future.

The evidence that is presented to the public on a day-to-day basis, as politics and current affairs unfold online and in print, doesn’t help matters. Often, it too appears binary in nature. Always South Africa seems to be two worlds – a shining beacon of hope and a potential failure on the verge of being made real.

By way of illustration, here is one set of contradictions that reflect that kind of evidence. On the one hand, there exists in South Africa a constitution and with it a Bill of Human Rights. There is simultaneously a set of cultural impulses and practices, across a wide demographic spectrum, which often run in the opposite direction. This ambiguity would seem to be epitomised by President Jacob Zuma. Charged with upholding and embodying those constitutional values as president, he is just as likely to pontificate about the importance of freedom of choice as he is, in his private capacity, to suggest his party is divinely sanctioned by God and therefore set to rule until Jesus himself returns.

The president knows what he is doing too or, at the very least, his message resonates with people. A 2014 Pew Research Centre poll found that 75 per cent of South Africans think it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. That introduces another contradiction, between enlightenment thinking and religious dogma – the idea that choice is an illusion and God’s will an all-determining force. With that, freedom is denuded of its worth. That is not a conflict unique to South Africa. It plays itself out all over the world. In truth, all South Africa’s contradictions can be found elsewhere, to one degree or another.

But rarely do you get them all in one place and each so fundamental and well set: patriarchy and equality; culture and constitutionalism; wealth and poverty; racial nationalism and liberal individualism; freedom and control; the past and the future; bigotry and human rights; modernity and traditionalism; democracy and monarchy; a Western idea of liberty and an African idea of collectivism; and a hundred more. You name it and you can be fairly sure there exists in South African current affairs some powerfully divided debate on the subject. These sorts of ambiguities are everywhere and we expend much time and energy fighting for one side or the other. They are both a way of life and life itself.

And these conflicts stack up, one on top of the other, each blending into the other, their boundaries porous and their full nature enmeshed with endless other ideas, processes and experiences. The truth is, none of them are easily discernible; in any given circumstance many are to be found and they are all interlinked. Whether you analyse them individually or collectively, they are the contradictory forces that define our contemporary universe.

On any given spectrum, inevitably much has been written about either extreme. Much less has been written, however, about the broad shade of grey in between. This book is an attempt to tease out, explore and analyse some of the ambiguities that result from this space. In other words, to look at the middle ground – that space in public life where it is difficult to say which of two opposing forces is in full command. For the most part, although there are one or two essays that do attempt to address these contradictions directly and analytically, it is my hope that, on the whole, the topics in this book illustrate more than they dissect.

To give an example, in one essay I look at the concept of respect – such a central component of so much debate in South Africa today. Its meaning is contested. It is a battleground for many of these competing forces, each trying to impose upon it their particular understanding. As a result, many of the conversations that take place on the subject are counterproductive from first principles – because the first principles themselves have not yet been agreed upon. In fact, on closer inspection, the two primary interpretations are in fact polar opposites. They are entirely incompatible with each another. The word ‘respect’ is a distinctly South African ambiguity; it is always two contradictory things.

It is a mistake to dismiss these sorts of contradictions as unhelpful, on the grounds that, because they are inherently ambiguous, they do not lend themselves to insight and truth. On the contrary, it is from the confusion that one is able to learn a great deal. And not just about the nature of each specific influence – for conflict often reveals much truth – but about the conflict itself. Interrogated in isolation, no idea can be fully tested. It is in how it responds to, accommodates or rejects an opposing force that its veracity is truly disclosed. It is in conflicts such as these that a society’s true nature is laid bare.

I have chosen a wide range of subjects, from politics to popular culture. In turn, I have tried to use a range of styles, from humorous to melancholic. Finally, I have endeavoured to present a variety of narrative techniques. Some essays read as stories, others as critical interrogation. If those contradictory forces are omnipresent in our lives, it follows that they manifest themselves everywhere. If this book succeeds, it will illustrate that ambiguity and contradiction are an ever-present part of the South African daily experience.

There are some recurring themes (or contradictions) that play themselves out over more than one essay. Of these, the conflict between modernity and traditional culture is one of the most prominent. Both forces have a number of component parts to them. Modernity, or certainly formal democracy, on which it rests, is relatively new to South Africa and it is entrenched to different degrees in different places. There are vast rural tracts in South Africa where traditional culture – and with it, chiefs and kings – still holds sway. It is true, all citizens are bound by the constitution, but that formal reality is often a vague abstraction to people who live their lives far from those urban centres where democracy enjoys a more conducive atmosphere.

Likewise, to many who have always thought, sometimes arrogantly, that Western traditional norms and standards constitute the unstated and indivisible conventions that underpin ‘South Africanism’, the idea that there exists a different world outside the cities in which they reside has simply never occurred to them. When they are forced to interact with that world, by chance or design, the response is often hostile and dismissive, if not patronising and condescending.

And even these grand markers – South Africa’s urban and rural constituencies – are fluid and intertwined. Each competing impulse in South Africa occupies some of the territory that its opposite would lay claim to as its own.

This particular clash is of interest to me because, of the many in South Africa, it seems to avoid meaningful critical interrogation. The reasons for this vary. A significant one is that ‘culture’ has come to occupy a sacred space, protected by the forces of political correctness and orthodoxy that react with great hostility to any suggestion that an attitude or practice particular to a specific belief system is in some way problematic. Culture is perhaps South Africa’s ultimate Holy Cow.

The essay on respect looks at some of the reasons why this is so. It suggests that inherent to the problem is a prevalence of low self-esteem – itself understandable, given a history in which the dignity and confidence of so many was so brutally taken from them. But the consequence is that any personal or deeply held belief, from religion to political ideology or cultural conviction, cannot be openly criticised for fear of causing offence.

The space for this kind of discussion is opening up ever so slightly as South Africa matures but, for most part, it remains off limits.

When modernity and culture clash in some natural way, the results are fascinating for the social observer. But, when they are unnaturally bound together by orthodoxy – when an event or occasion prescribes that both should artificially tolerate the other – then the results can be truly captivating or depressing in equal measure. I have tried to seek out some of the more fundamental divergences, and to describe them as much as analyse their nature.

A by-product of this is often humour – usually only in retrospect, however. At the time, as an event or series of events unfolds, the irony or contradiction inherent to it is generally lost on those scribes who document South African current affairs.

Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham is credited with the famous line ‘journalism is the first rough draft of history’. In South Africa the draft is generally rough indeed. For all the emphasis we place on our shared history and the great injustices that define it, we are almost entirely ahistorical when it comes to anything that has happened post-1994, since the dawn of our new democracy. There is our brutal past; then 20 amorphous years; then today. But, when trying to understand today, the comparative reference point is almost always 50 years ago.

That is understandable to some degree. That reference point had an enduring and profound influence. Twenty years might be a blink of the eye in historical terms; nevertheless, it is enough time for a range of new influences to manifest themselves, distinct from our past, even if informed by it. There doesn’t seem to be much interest in them, though. Grander narratives generally subsume them: events, attitudes and patterns of behaviour post-democracy can only ever be understood with reference to South Africa’s pre-democracy.

But what of the wide range of entirely novel social, economic and political forces that are often best understood by reference to more recent events? There simply is no comparative point to them, mainly because they have not yet been well defined, understood or agreed upon.

In some small way, then, one of the purposes of this book is to look at the way these new forces imposed themselves and the situations they created. That is not to discount the impact of our grander historical circumstances on contemporary events but rather to look at these various subjects through a post-democracy lens and to try to understand them as a consequence of contemporary change, alienation, ambiguity and novelty, rather than the inevitable consequence of forces much further back in the mists of South African time. If the reader chooses