Holy Cows. Gareth van Onselen
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: