Holy Cows. Gareth van Onselen
influence an individual’s public standing, every damning opinion would have to be censored.
And there is another commonly used South African word, often exploited as a euphemism for censorship and intricately linked to the idea of respect: ‘offence’. To cause offence is a cardinal sin. And, again, its relationship to low self-esteem is essential if we are to understand its power. In the usual sense of the word, to offend someone is to hurt his or her feelings, nothing more. It is to leave them feeling hurt and wounded. But, together with the confused demand for respect it has been elevated to a higher, more sacred plane in South Africa. To offend someone, in practice, is more commonly understood as diminishing his or her sense of self-worth. Just as with respect, the person is seemingly reduced to a victim, unable to dismiss criticism or evaluate its veracity based on evidence. The implication is that to cause offence is to irrevocably destroy someone’s dignity.
The response has been to try to regulate the problem. It is no coincidence that the SACP’s proposed law focuses as much on banning insults as it does demanding deference. Respect and offence share an intimate relationship.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury describes a world without books – where books are sought out, banned and burnt. The reason, he reveals deep into its pages, is offence. At first it started small, he writes. A minority would express outrage at a seemingly offensive opinion and, as a result, that opinion would be suppressed. So, the first pages were torn out of books. But, as soon as it became acceptable to suppress any opinion that caused offence, it quickly became apparent that for every opinion there was a minority outraged at it. And, soon, every page had to be torn from every book and in no time at all there were no books at all – the very idea of a book was revolutionary.
We are in danger of developing a hierarchy of offence in South Africa and, at the top of the pile, are those who cry loudest about their deeply held personal beliefs, regardless of their nature. They have become emboldened by this and cry louder still until no one dare speak up in opposition for fear of the resultant noise.
The truth is that an opinion, even one that is highly critical and damning of another person, is anyone’s right to hold. As with respect, it is true that the best opinions – or at least the ones that are most credible – are those informed by reason and evidence but, even here, they needn’t be. If a person oversteps the mark in their criticism and lies or defames another, the courts are there for protection. Outside of that, argument is one’s best weapon. So, it is of little surprise that societies able to engage in meaningful debate and people confident in the veracity of their own beliefs are often not weighed down by repressive and constant references to offence, in an attempt to circumvent discussion from first principles.
This conflation of the right to be judgemental and the quality of that judgement is the calling card of many the world over who wish to negate critical interrogation in the name of offence. It is a kind of bullying.
A healthy society is one constantly engaged in peer review and self-reflection. It is a static society, not a dynamic one, that outlaws such things and it is one on a sure path to stagnation. When a society loses the ability to reflect, that is fertile ground for oppression to take root.
The value of your judgement, however, and how it is received, depends on its veracity. If it is grounded in reason, based on evidence and has at its heart the desire to progress and advance thought, discussion and behaviour, it should never be dismissed, however critical the conclusion it arrives at.
The moment respect becomes a proxy for negating offence, criticism is delegitimated. Equally, the moment you start demanding respect, it has likewise lost its intended effect, because what you are really talking about is deference – you are demanding obsequiousness, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with respect. Indeed, it is the ambit of bullies and authoritarianism.
If it is respect you are after, you need to earn it. It is an unrewarding business. Ask any politician. Good behaviour does not always engender respect. But that is the only way to obtain it.
It is no coincidence that so much of the political debate around the idea of respect revolves around Jacob Zuma. He has come to embody its confusion with deference.
Zuma is perhaps South Africa’s ultimate political victim. His personal brand has been infused with the idea, from court cases to his negative portrayal in the media. And always he makes the case that he has been badly treated and suffers an unfair reputation as a result.
To counter this, the ANC often refers to the office of the president as something that demands respect, regardless of who holds that station. It is an impulse that predates Zuma by some considerable time.
Asked in an interview in 2006 why it was he disliked Tony Leon, former president Thabo Mbeki laughed and denied the suggestion. He then went on to identify a ‘banal example’ of what he deemed to be a lack of respect on the part of his counterpart. He pointed out that F.W. de Klerk, as leader of the National Party, after the 1994 election, would occupy the second bench on the opposition side of the house – in other words, the one facing the deputy president, and not Nelson Mandela, the president. Mbeki argued that this system changed with Leon.
When he became the leader of the opposition, Leon adopted the bench opposite the president – something Mbeki took as an affront and a sign of a lack of respect. He argued that this showed that the Democratic Alliance saw Mbeki first and foremost as a political rival and counterpart, and not as a president.
‘You can’t have an opposition party that does not recognise the office of the president,’ said Mbeki. ‘You can hate the president and attack him, and so on, that’s fine, but once you seek to diminish the authority of his office, the whole constitutional system can get into a serious problem.’
‘It is wrong and that is what I am saying that has bothered me about it. I have no problem with Tony Leon, I don’t dislike him whatsoever, but he needs to understand that in our constitutional setting there is such a post as the president of the republic.’
De Klerk, a nationalist himself, understood the game that Mbeki was playing. Although mortal enemies, the National Party and the ANC both spoke the same nationalistic language, and deference before authority has always been central to both. Because it is feigned, that deference must be demonstrable in some way. It must be visible to be believed. Which makes sense, because if it is not authentically felt how else can you reassure yourself that the requirement is being adhered to?
Mbeki might have couched his criticism as the description of something ‘banal’ but that cannot be easily reconciled with his assertion that ‘the whole constitutional system can get into a serious problem’. It cut Mbeki deeply that Leon did not show him what he understood to be the deference shown Mandela. That, as with Zuma’s response to The Spear, is a product of nothing other than low self-esteem.
The truth is that the office of the president is an institution, an abstraction. It is incapable of emotion or hurt. It represents a set of ideals towards which the incumbent should aspire. The incumbent does not, on assuming office, assume with it the values, principles and ideals it symbolises. At best, they can strive to uphold them. Hence the question, is this person fit to be president?
It is unfortunate that, in several fundamental ways, both presidents Mbeki and Zuma have demonstrated quite the opposite. By failing to protect and promote the principles of the office demanded of them, often acting instead deliberately to subvert them, the argument can be made it is they who have disrespected the office.
This conflation of individual and institution lies at the heart of the manner in which so much of the ANC’s formal politics subverts the idea of respect.
But one can dig deeper still. Respect for Jacob Zuma is not tied solely to his formal position. He also harbours a set of private personal cultural convictions, deeply patriarchal in nature, that inform his understanding of the idea.
In December 2013, addressing hundreds of people in Impendle, KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma told of a recent visit he had undertaken to Limpopo: ‘When I was in Venda recently I was so impressed to see how people there express respect for other people. A woman would clap her hands and even lie down to show respect. I was so impressed. If I was not already married to my wives