i love an underdog

 

 

voter in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

I have a ballot from the 1994 South African elections – the first truly democratic elections in that country and the one that saw Madiba become president. It’s a long, legal-sized sheet of paper with about 18 parties listed. Each political party registered for the election is named along with the party logo and a small picture of the party leader. This was so that people who couldn’t read or write could pick the person or the party they supported. So the ballot lists the ANC with its logo, and a picture of Nelson Mandela beside it.  The National Party had a picture of F.W. de Klerk, and so on. 

 

There is one party and one face missing from those elections – the Inkatha Freedom Party and Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The IFP boycotted the 1994 election, trying to hold out for a Zulu homeland within or without the new South Africa. The IFP were added to the ballot after the ANC offered Buthelezi a Cabinet post in the new ANC coalition government and just before the elections. But I returned to Canada before this happened, so no Buthelezi on my copy.

But I really wanted to talk about a small party that I have come to like, if only because it is just too cute for words. Sorry, no other words for it. It was one of the original parties registered in 1994 and, unlike most of the parties listed on my 1994 ballot, it is still in existence. It failed to run in 1998, but took part in the 2004 elections. It is the Keep It Straight and Simple Party, or KISS.  My ballot has KISS listed, with a lipstick kiss as its logo, and pictures of the party leader and her daughter.

KISS today has no candidate other than its leader, and only member, Claire Gaiford. This is how she describes KISS and its origins (follow the link to read a bit more from SA’s Mail & Guardian).

“People always ask me how do I join and I tell them you don’t have to join, just vote,” she says.”I was looking at the politics of the country and I thought to myself, well, one more fool won’t make a difference.” 

She asked her daughter to type a constitution, then put on some red lipstick and pressed her lips to the paper and KISS was born. 

my south african election story

 

voter lineups in South Africa

People in South Africa went to their voting stations today for the fourth time since the National Party of former President F.W. de Klerk released political prisoners like Nelson Mandela and unbanned anti-apartheid and revolutionary movements such as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the African National Congress (ANC). I missed those first elections (1994) for a truly dumb reason – to keep my job back home. I managed to be there, though, for the second elections (1998) roaming about the city of Johannesburg and then heading off to Durban, Port Shepstone and then north to wander about the Valley of a Thousand Hills in central KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province with SABC crews. I will never forget those days and weeks.

 

 

On one trip out to a Jo’burg suburb, our crew pulled into in a little market to talk to people about the upcoming elections. While the crew set up, I wandered off and discovered that we were in an area called Triomf (Triumph in English). It wasn’t all that far from where I was staying in my little apartment in Melville, but it was world’s away from what it once was – a place called Sophiatown. 

Sophiatown had been a vibrant and lively township with lots of shebeens, jazz, and the gangs that made life very interesting. Sophiatown became legendary, a symbol of injustice in South Africa as much for what happened to it as for the generation that it spawned in both arts, music and politics. In the 1950s, to set an example that places like Sophiatown filled people who flaunted apartheid laws would not be tolerated, the South African government bulldozed it into the ground. People and their families were thrown out onto the streets with only what they could carry. The South African government renamed it Triomf and built a whole new suburb for whites only in its place. 

(But bulldozers couldn’t destroy memories. The last time I was there last year, I walked to Sophiatown. They removed the name Triomf and put back the old name of Sophiatown. It may never regain the buzz it once had but I hope it at least tries.)

Shortly after, I managed to p*ss off one of the Canadian elections managers and found myself shipped out to the boonies. For me, it was exactly what I’d hope for. I wanted to get to KZN where I hoped to see some real South African politics. During the first elections four years before, KZN had been a battleground between the Inkatha Freedom Party, a mostly Zulu organization under Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and the ANC which had formed an alliance with many of the other movements, such as the SA Communist Party. The pre-election period in 1994 and for years after had been marked by murders and violent clashes at mass demonstrations between the two groups. Essentially, it was a continuation of the “hostel wars” by the IFP (supported by the National Party) to destabilize those first elections with a wave of bombings and killings.

However, as election day in 1998 approached, I noticed a distinct difference. The rallies in Durban, although large and loud, weren’t all that exciting. There had been four years since those first elections in 1994, during which the country took giant steps back from the brink of civil war.  The 1998 elections were very different. The IFP was still belligerent but Buthelezi had been a Cabinet minister in the ANC coalition government. Talk of a separatist Zulu homeland had dissipated significantly, if it had not completely disappeared. This was the big story, the main story, of the elections this time.  It was reflected by what we found even in the smaller urban areas, such as Port Shepstone, on the coast south of Durban. It was certainly what we found in that area around Uqutu, Dundee and elsewhere in central and northern KZN.

On voting day itself, I woke up at 04:00 so I could leave Durban early. I needed to be in Dundee, about 250 kms north of Pietermaritzberg, by the time the polls opened. The only map I had came with the rented car.  It showed a small line heading north of Pietermaritzberg through hill country near Rorke’s Drift to Dundee. I didn’t know it at the time, as I pulled off the main highway and headed up that small line, but the map was wrong. 

The road kept shrinking. At first, it was a small but decent country road that would fit two-way traffic. As the road continued, it became barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Further on, I had to pull over to let a truck pass. Place names like Keate’s Drift and Tugela Ferry sound familiar. As daybreak neared, I was heading into these hills on a road that seemed to be turning into a goat trail. Soon I was weaving around large rocks that had fallen from the hillsides above. A thick, heavy fog boxed me in. I’d long given up trying to follow the map.

Then something happened that I still see as clearly as a post card. A face appeared out of the fog. It was painted red or ochre on one side only. A heavy blanket was draped over the man’s shoulders. My car inched along at less than 40 kph. I stared at the man’s face, nearly turned right around. He had this amazing face. Strong, proud. He vanished into the fog behind and after a bit I wondered if I had really seen him at all.

Then another man, similarly painted and dressed, appeared along the side of the road, heading in the same direction as the first man. The sun was still only a hint over the hilltops but my watch told me it was nearly 07:00. That’s when I had to slow down even more because there were suddenly lots of men just like the first two emerging from the fog in front of me, along with women and even children, some rubbing the sleep from their eyes, all dressed for the cold early morning air. Many staring in turn at this confused foreigner meandering in a car through their villages.

As the sun burned off the fog, I began to see small buildings; schools, stores, post office buildings and other government offices. I could see that these were voting stations. I could also see the lineups of people waiting to vote. This is what I had missed the first time, when I had to leave South Africa and miss the ‘94 elections. This remarkable sight of hundreds of people lining up in long queues, possibly for hours, for a chance to fill out out a ballot perhaps for the first time in their lives. This is what I had come all of the way from Canada to see. 

I pressed on. The fog lifted. The road improved. I found myself lost but kept driving north because I knew that I would eventually find a small town or township. I passed long-ago battlefields from the Boer War, from the Zulu wars, strangely familiar names. I emerged into the highveldt almost exactly where I should have been, at exactly the time I had planned. 

I spent the rest of that day with two remarkable people, freelancers that I nicknamed Batman and Robin. We raced from one voting area to another across northern KZN, doing interviews, getting pictures of long long lineups. The last time, Batman said, there had been bodies floating down one of the rivers we had just crossed. They had been killed in clashes between IFP and ANC supporters. This time, on voting day 1998, there wasn’t a single killing. No one had been hurt, except apparently for a policeman near Cape Town whose pistol went off, shooting himself in the foot. These had been the most peaceful, joyous, wonderful elections ever.

That’s my South African election story, and I’m sticking to it.

ghosts of sabc

It’s been almost a year since my last trip to South Africa. Before I hopped on that plane, I tried to write about my misgivings or vague worries about South Africa, and the journalists I’d come to know and respect there. My gut feelings have since become definite and growing concerns. 

I wrote it for a conference newsletter. It was about my growing unease with the SABC, the national public broadcaster, and by extension the nation itself. Jacob Zuma’s scramble for power seemed to stomp upon the very ideals of the anti-apartheid era that had amazed so many around the world, and seemed to signal a return to the bad old days of self-censorship if not state censorship. But the truth is that the African National Congress had already installed its very own version of the Broederbund into the nations institutions, including the SABC.

We just didn’t want to believe it. At least, I didn’t want to believe it. That’s what this piece was trying to say, while also trying to highlight the positive for the conference.  I’m not sure it succeeded at doing either. My only excuse is that I didn’t have first-hand knowledge when I wrote it.

===================

April, 2008.

Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Ontario, Canada.

I remember my first day at the SABC. It was a few months before the ‘94 elections. I’d never seen such massive security at a broadcaster – in peace time too. I had been to military bases and prisons in Canada. I’d once landed in the middle of a coup in Fiji. But the SABC surprised me. Airport-style scanners, signs telling people to check their pistols, armed security with hand-held detectors. Huge metal grates that could descend from the ceiling. The SABC was a fortress built to keep people out.

You must understand: I had just left a rundown, mouse-ridden, old red brick building in downtown Toronto. People sometimes wandered in from the street, roamed the hallways looking for someone to curse at about that stupid show we did the other day. Some labelled our modest workplace “the Kremlin.” We called it national news at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. So the contrast, to me, spoke volumes about the mindset of those who had built the SABC in Johannesburg.

I was amazed by the facilities. State-of-the-art studios and equipment. Need to hook up with reporters in Baghdad? Not a problem. Technicians ran full out to put their shows on the air. Journalists walked into amazing stories with their crews, all with apparent abandon despite the gunfire. Yet, back then, many or most felt – and were treated – like lepers for working where they did.

In those early days, people looked at me and other foreign trainers with a mix of fear, ambition, and hope. Some saw us either as career saviours or executioners. For a few, it was a chance to see if adaptive colouring could work. For others, it was all about people who knew  people in power. But the old powers were getting tossed, retiring, or changing jobs. The notion that we could change anyone’s future was nonsense.

We might offer some new skills? But most were already highly skilled. Tricks of the trade? We knew that would wear thin quickly. So we settled on offering hope. We looked for those who wanted to claim or reclaim something they had lost. The rest was up to them.

We helped people dig deep into themselves, to find that creative spark that changes a bland piece of writing into something that cries out to be read. That same spark that changes a boring slice of video into absolutely mind-blowing television. But we could only point the way. They had to find that love of storytelling, that love of craft, for themselves.

Most of the people I worked with craved for change. One person told me that he wanted his self-respect back; by trying harder than ever to perfect his craft. Another person said the training was the first time anyone at SABC had respected her, encouraged her to think, took her ideas seriously.

I could go on about the people who blossomed, or the ones who stumbled. Some may prefer me to concentrate on all of the things that went wrong during those transitional years, or have gone wrong since. But my mind keeps creeping back to successes like the amazing coverage during that first election. Nobody in South Africa had ever done anything like that before. That was also when SABC journalists decided – en masse – that they would never, ever ride in with the Hippos again.

I can recall scenes from live coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. I still hear moans of grief from documentaries that went beyond the hearings, deep into the minds of murderers and victims alike. Later, there came stories of secret arms deals. Early warnings about an impending energy crisis and global warming. Darfur. Squatters in Johannesburg turning abandoned buildings into self-contained villages. Stories about people groping for a place in the new South Africa.

The SABC is still evolving. The ideal, according to public broadcasters abroad, is that it should strive to become something that keeps everyone else honest. It would do so by example; by serving all of the people, all of the time; by never bowing before advertisers, lobbyists, governments, or any single segment in society. If it can do that, the SABC upholds a standard against which all other institutions begin to compare themselves.

That’s why some may look back at those earlier years with longing and even nostalgia. The transformation of the SABC, only fifteen years old, began with lofty sentiments and high ideals. But, as the saying goes, reality bites. Everything has changed with time. The whole country has changed – and still is. That process may be most visible and accessible to South Africans through the lenses and microphones of the SABC. 

[...]

forks in the road

You may have heard that a peace conference in South Africa had to be cancelled after the ANC government refused a visa for the Dalai Lama, making it impossible for him to attend. Noble Peace Prize laureates such as former Archbishop Desmond Tutu stood on principle with with their fellow laureate, unlike the ANC, and refused to attend the conference without him. A lesson, an example, for other countries in Africa, a stern warning from China. But also another lesson for me. 

I have learned so much from South Africans – about their country certainly, but also about  Canada and its Indian policies, its system of internal colonialism. So many of my own illusions and misguided hopes have been shredded by clear visioned, straight-talking South Africans who have helped me see true evil in all its ugliness. They ripped veils of self-delusion from my eyes. I can no longer look at the countries that I call home the same way anymore.

Why my interest or concern for the Dalai Lama, for South Africa, for Canada? Read this and perhaps you’ll understand.

South Africa had a choice. It could have been a shining light for human rights and democracy for all of Africa and even the world, but it seems to be heading down a different road these days, mere weeks before national elections. It seems to be heading for the “big man” form of governance like so many failures on the continent and away from the original intent of 1994.

Mandela’s dream of a “rainbow nation,” the example he set by stepping down after one term in office, his commitment to protecting and abiding by a constitution that put to shame those of many other countries, including Canada’s. It’s been only 15 years since those first elections that saw the old regime fall, and the new one with Mandela replace it. 

Only, the African National Congress wasn’t supposed to replace the old regime of the National Party. The explicit promise to South Africans, and the implied promise to millions of others around the world who worked to see that first truly democratic election day take place, was that the old regime would be dismantled. Nobody, except perhaps the most cynical of ANC insiders, wanted to see the old system that protected the elite, privileged few subverted and adapted to suit a new set of masters.

The vast majority of people across South Africa actually believed that a better, more equal and fair nation would emerge afterward. They spilled their own blood to topple the apartheid regime, and spilled their guts to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission afterward. They did so with the hope that their children could inherit a country that people like Mandela, and Tutu, and Mama Sarah could be proud of.

I worry now because I’m afraid that Canadians (at least some of their leaders) are not learning how to avoid past mistakes that resulted in massive violations of human rights, but are learning from South Africa’s example how to smother them with ever more efficiency.

On this end, consider Canada’s on-going refusal to recognize international covenants on Indigenous rights, its denial of humans rights of Indigenous peoples within Canada, and the refusal by Canadian governments’ to honour even its modern treaties, to say nothing of its historic ones. All the while, Canadian politicians travel the world bragging how it is improving the lives of Indigenous peoples, in effect lying to the world.

South Africa is still teaching me. Still reminding me to see through the illusions and lies. Sometimes, though, I wish it didn’t have to anymore.

some of the best journalism in south africa…

 

traps

… is not being done by journalists. It’s being done by bloggers like this guy, Michael Trapido. He’s a lawyer, a journalist, a writer who bills himself as a witty sports enthusiast. But there’s more. He writes with a sense of humour, of right and wrong beyond sports, and mixes in a healthy dose of righteous indignation. In other words, he’s got edge. He also has one of the better seats in the house when it comes to explaining what the hell is going on in South Africa these days.

 

Of particular concern to me is what has been happening of late to the South African Broadcasting Corporation. I worked at SABC. I know people there. I have friends who are still there after all of these years, although most have left disillusioned of their own accord, or have had their figurative throats slit from behind.

For instance, here’s his take on Snuki Zikalala, one of those people who slit many a throat, is perhaps the person most responsible for putting the SABC’s news operation under the ANC’s control, corrupting its promise to the people of SA as a public broadcaster, for ruining the careers of so many good journalists, and endangering SA’s once brave experiment with democracy and democratic journalism.

You can just feel the anger. But also the warning.

anxious about SA

I wanted to find something to underline my feelings about a previous post, one on Ahenakew, to buttress my stand against his current criminal prosecution. I check my newsreader for likely headlines and, lo and behold, I scan a story in the Mail & Guardian newspaper from South Africa. What I read sends shivvers down my spine.

I have read comments from the ANC’s Youth wing in a couple of stories that capture the increasingly harsh attitudes within the ANC about a breakaway group. The breakaways are led by former ANC stalwarts, like “Terror” Lekota, who disagree with the direction of the ANC particular under control of a faction that tossed out former SA President Thabo Mbeki in favour of Jacob Zuma.

There’s a lot of backstory here that time and space won’t allow, and would lead this post into alleys it should not go right now. Before you follow that link above, I offer this chilling excerpt from a recent interview. It underlines my feelings why Ahenakew’s trial is not justified, but it also explains my increasing unease with recent developments in South Africa.

The Mail & Guardian spoke to the 30-year-old former student leader and former ANC ward councillor in the Emfuleni municipality, who holds a degree in logistics management from the Vaal University of Technology and now works in the municipality as a senior administration officer.

Any change of heart on the “cockroaches” statement?
I’m not feeling bad about that statement. All these people in Cope are behaving like cockroaches and should be destroyed.

Why “cockroaches”?
By distorting the history of the organisation, by behaving as if history started yesterday, they are behaving like cockroaches and cockroaches should be killed.

League leader Julius Malema got into trouble for using the word “kill” and your colleague Themba Ndaba used the same word in the Al Jazeera interview …
We’re not talking about killing human beings here, we’re talking about cockroaches. When you see a cockroach in your house what do you do? You kill it.

Now where have I heard those words used before? My feelings go beyond disillusionment – to shock, sadness and even horror. I don’t want to believe that this is the same ANC that so many of us supported, the party of Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu, Slovo, Hani and so many more. The silence from Zuma et al, their failure to condemn the ANC Youth wing, speaks volumes about its intentions as well.