The monsters among us

The Monsters Amongst Us

If you follow news in general, and celebrity news in particular you've probably heard about the public throttling and assault of Nigella Lawson, the beautiful British celebrity chef. She was assaulted by her advertising mogul cum arts collector Charles Saatchi as they settled in for a meal at a relatively packed restaurant. I was not going to write about this because almost everything that can be written about the incident has been written. That was until this past Monday when I heard a statistic that changed my mind for me:  50% of all women in Africa have experienced or will experience physical abuse in their lifetime. Scary! In simple non-statistical language: if you're a woman and you have five friends, three of you have suffered physical abuse, or will be beaten up by their intimate partner in the course of their lives. If you're a man, and like me have three close friends, two you have assaulted their wives or will do so at some point in their lives. Of course that's  very simplistic, but it serves to drive the point home, it's not them doing the assaulting, it's  us, me and you.

That very human thing inside of you, the one that always says, "no, not me, never!" , the one that says "I can use the phone whilst driving, I'll never cause an accident", right now it's telling you "I've never hit a woman, so this doesn't concern me". If not me, or you, then who's doing the assaulting or getting physically abused for that matter.

Well, consider, Mr Saatchi, all of 70 years old, filthy rich(at least to me), he throttles Nigella, who's far from poor herself. Socially, upper class, if you will,He does this in a relatively packed restaurant, doesn't wait till he gets home to sort out the domestic matter.

I hope you noticed that I said he doesn't wait till he gets home, as if domestic abuse is ok if it happens behind closed doors. We've been brought up to think domestic disagreements belong in the house, which makes a lot of people loathe to raise cases of abuse with people or structures that are supposed to help them. The second thing I hope you noticed is that not a single person in the restaurant dared to come to Nigella's defence. Not one.This I believe is a result of that upbringing that says Mr Saatchi should have waited till he got home, so who am I to intervene?

Do you know why people do drugs in private? Well it's illegal for one, but more importantly it's socially embarrassing to be known to have a weakness for illegal substances so much so that people will go to great lengths to hide anything that might cause people to suspect them of using. Now, before I lose you, here's my point: why was Mr Saatchi only "interviewed" by the police about the assault? I put it to you that Mr Saatchi should feel the same amount of shame over his actions as any criminal caught in the act should feel. He should have left that restaurant covering his greying head with that expensive jacket he was wearing, so ashamed to have been caught in the process of committing a shameful crime. He should never have been given a media platform to play down his horrendous action as a "playful tiff".

Strangely, the media behaved as though Nigella was the one in the wrong here. Paparazzi waited outside an apartment she was in to see what "state she'd be in" when she reappeared in public again. And sure enough they noticed she was minus her wedding ring when she did come out. Where was the wealthy Mr Saatchi in all of this? Shouldn't he be the one under scrutiny here? Shouldn't he be the one to appear in public wearing a track suit top with a hoodie to hide his face? We should be asking if he was "brave" enough to show his face at the office. But no, we are scrutinizing the victim here. Somehow life has taught us its ok to assault a woman, it's ok not to intervene because she's not screaming and there's no blood visible. Why didn't anybody check on Mr Saatchi to see if he still had his wedding band on? Does he look worried? Is he pitching for work? If the focus can move away from the victim to the abuser then the accompanying shame will follow. We can tell our friends that we didn't allow James to join us to watch the game because he hit his wife, that we are ashamed of such acts.

There are those who are questioning Nigella's silence in all of this. She has said nothing at all concerning the assault. A word of caution here, Nigella Lawson is a celebrity chef, not a social change activist so it's understandable if she hasn't said anything, for now at least. Lets wait till she's strong enough to do so.

That said, I strongly believe that if your career success depends entirely on being liked by a lot of ordinary people, you automatically carry an unwritten responsibility to those who like you for you. The same responsibility that allowed Tina Turner to authorize a movie about her abuse in the hands of her then husband Ike Turner. I hope at some point, Nigella Lawson will be strong enough, courageous enough to speak out. To tell those ordinary men and women who look up to her that what her husband did was wrong, and he is or should be ashamed of it.

I'm part of a Stokvel, that very South African phenomenon. There's twenty-five of us. In our last meeting two weeks ago, a lady member could not make it and it was said in very hushes tones that her partner had beaten her up. Out of the 16 who were there that day, no one expressed shock at the incident. In fact, the general view was the lady shows no respect to her partner. Shockingly, half of the women there agreed that because she showed no respect to her partner she had it coming. Really? Uyadelela, so beat her up? I am disgusted to think that those mothers and fathers are bringing up their boys to think it's ok to beat up a woman if you have a reason. It's never ok.

The only way the shame and stigma around physical abuse can be defeated is if we speak out. Never making the victims feel ashamed and never being silent because everyone else is silent.See, we can have a "16 days  of activism against woman and child abuse" every year but until we as a society, especially men,  change our thinking about the monsters who live amongst us, our sisters, daughters and mothers will always be victims. It doesn't matter if he's your friend, dad, doctor or CEO, if he's assaulting  his wife or partner he's a monster. Like Mr Saatchi he should be very ashamed of his actions. It's always said that domestic abuse knows no race, class or status. That statement always rings hollow because what the media always shows us is abuse amongst ordinary men and women. This shameful incident, if it can be used as a learning act, should serve to remind us that these monsters are in every family, mine and yours, and should not be allowed to continue unchallenged. They move in the same social circles as us, they are our friends and neighbours - let's stop them.

Thinking Critically

Hi and Welcome to my blog again. Remember when Kenny Kunene and company burst onto the scene? When three-day wedding parties in Durban and nuptials in Mauritius somehow became acceptable? I have to confess, there was something uncomfortable about the whole thing to me but I struggled to put a finger on what was troubling me about it. Like it was with  Zwelinzima Vavi,the General Secretary of COSATU,   the whole consumerist setup didn't go down well with me. Vavi tried then to say something and was labelled jealous, because he doesn't have their kind of  money he wasn't supposed to say anything. And I guess that made a lot of people shut up, because they also don't have the money to argue with such obvious displays of wealth.

This past week I had the pleasure of reading a piece on Achille Mbembe in the Mail and Guardian(June 14,2013). He is a research professor at the Wits Institute for Social and economic Research(Wiser), a thought leader to you and me. In this piece Mbembe says " our lives have been colonized by the logic of entertainment.....we sing, we dance, but we don't think critically. We build cities but they are not cities of the imagination, they are cities of hedonism and consumption ..." I'm totally convinced he's hit the nail on the head. One of the most precious things that was lost when we became free was the ability to question trends without the need to qualify ourselves. In the example above, Zwelinzima Vavi would have been totally free to criticize this consumerism that has arisen,giving rise to other social ills, without having to be called "jealous". He would have been free to argue his point of view and share his thoughts on why it's foreign to our discourse to spend as though money has no significance to us as a people. In other words, critical thinking led the way pre-94 and people's views were respected not for what they arrived driving but for their ideas, not for where they lived, but for their role in the "production of ideas".

Mbembe further argues that whilst the world has forged ahead in intellectual development and dissemination of ideas, South Africa has witnessed a surge of a different kind. He says post-94, we have have seen the government and other funding agencies focusing on problem-focused research, the so called "real world" challenges. Personally I  think has extended into public life where corruption is now measured only in terms of "how many RDP houses" the stolen money could have built. What happened to us to become so one-dimensional? Does freedom for us only translate into what we can consume, hold, buy or sell? What about the freedom to pursue independent thought, the freedom to appreciate art, the freedom to develop our Cities into thought cities. Recently, when the State Security Bill was being debated in parliament there was such a deafening silence from most of us because for us freedom has turned into RDP houses, commodities, wages and money.

Before screaming that a starving people cannot produce ideas, let me remind you that intellectual development pre-freedom was led by people who had less than they have now. Back then we frowned on the lavish spending of American Rap and Movie stars not based on whether we had a house or not but because intellectual development and the exchange of ideas was not based on how much money one had or not. We knew that we had the moral high-ground compared to those that had so much money and wealth but were morally challenged. Mbembe says we "need to rediscover something in social life that cannot be privatized; that is immeasurable, that is priceless and cannot, and as a consequence, be bought or sold".

That kind of thinking will ensure that political principles like equality, the rule of law, civil liberty and individual autonomy are not eroded in the pursuit of profit or power, Mbembe's words. I miss those days when ideas and the logic of one's words were what mattered. Where if one asked why a University still hasn't been built in Mpumalanga you wouldn't be told of the housing backlog. There would be an appreciation that in building a university, a centre for new and original ideas would be built, and we would be developing a place where someday, the new ideas that emanate from those centres of learning would help in alleviating poverty and thus getting rid of the said housing backlog.

A society that is based on the production of new ideas would respect Kenny and his ilk not for how much money they have, but for their intellectual role in acquiring that wealth, obviously not through hand-outs and tenders. The way people respect Mark Shuttleworth for example, because his wealth comes from "original ideas".  I would love  a society where kids aren't screaming "I gotta get paid" but striving to enjoy the fruits of this freedom that so many fought for. Believe me, being a skhotane, kids who destroy expensive clothing and gadgets to prove how wealthy they are,  in that society that would be so un-appealing to  other kids they would not even wish to emulate them. The kind of consumerist democracy that we have has spawned a society in which people speak in hushed tones of those who have acquired their wealth through heists and bank robberies. Whilst it's cute to hear a kid rapping "I gotta get paid", it's sickening to see so many people today respecting criminals "who got paid" through heists and the like.

Critical thinking should not be the preserve of University Professors and intellectuals, it should start with each one of us, appreciating that freedom is so much more than just consumption, parties and bling. It's the ability to think of social issues in a way that promotes South Africa's place in the global intellectual map.

Begging for Embarrassment

Begging for Embarrassment

There are moments in history when great individuals, organizations and governments are faced with really tough decisions. At that moment in time, deciding one way or another would appear to be giving in to popular sentiment. Failure to take decisive action  ultimately leads to embarrassment. History is littered with such examples. I'll explore some of them below, but the main thrust of my piece here is that our government is facing such a time with e-tolling and the National Prosecuting Authority(NPA).

Students of history will recall that the US were embarrassed by having to pull out of a war in which they went in ill-prepared, ill-advised and a bit cocky if you ask me( Vietnam in around 1963). One online commentator put it this way: US forces fail to be effective in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and others because they lack respect for local culture and people,they rely too much on military might, they lack a  clear strategy or political will. The US forces fought a guerrilla force using the only tactics they know, conventional warfare. Schools of thought still differ today on whether they pulled out voluntarily, or were forced to pull out, or were simply defeated. What is clear though is the US went into Vietnam to help protect French interests(and help stop the spread of communism) but left with their tails between their legs: humiliated and embarrassed by a guerrilla force, internationally and on the home front.

Our government is going ahead with the launch of the unpopular e-tolls despite opposition on all fronts. The main proponents of the system argue that the user-pay principle has to be enforced no matter what. Some ministers, like Blade Ndzimande, have gone as far as saying that people who are opposed to e-tolls are those individuals who can afford to pay but don't want to pay. They further argue that OUTA, the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance, is a front of the Democratic Alliance. What they choose to ignore is that, COSATU, an ally of the ruling party has been the voice of the poor in all of this. When the party that should be 'pushing back the frontiers of poverty' is helping advance them, another organization will step in and do their job. The truth is, you would have to be living on Mars to fail to realize that e-tolling is the most unpopular government policy since, well, apartheid. Never has a system garnered so much negativity from so many sections of our society since the advent of democracy in 1994. Even the self-emasculated churches have been stirred to life by the prospect of this system. Which begs the question: who is advising the government on its ill-fated attempts to go ahead with this? The most amazing aspect of this whole debacle is, most of us, the citizenry, are willing to pay, just not to a company that's going to take 70% of the revenue generated out of South Africa. No one in government has put papers on the table and refuted this. Show us that no money from e-tolling is going to foreign companies and I for one, would gladly pay! Any continued efforts towards implementation would be the same as the American government claiming victory in an un-winnable war in Vietnam: embarrassment.

There are very few things as disconcerting and painful as listening to an intelligent individual defending mediocrity. The past few months have seen the Minister of Justice Jeff Radebe defending the indefensible:  Comrade President in Guptagate, and then following that up by defending the recents going-ons in the National Prosecuting Authority. Truth be told, Gupagate would never have happened if the Guptas did not have our First Citizen as a buddy. The less said about the Guptas buying our country the better. Of more or equal concern is the gradual erosion of our trust in the organs that administer Justice in our country. Jeff Radebe says it doesn't matter that the killers of Andries Tatane, captured on camera, are still roaming free. He says it doesn't matter Anene Booysen's killers case seems to be going the same route. He says don't worry that we are spending so much time and money pursuing one of our own, Glynnis Breytenbach when all evidence points to her being a hard-working, corruption-hating, innocent prosecutor. Yes, there are still such individuals in our midst you know. Another one goes by the name Thuli Madonsela. Corruption-hating. Yep. Best appointment Zuma made.  Minister Radebe says our jails are full because  the NPA is effective. Puleeezee Mr Radebe, convicting a house-breaker can hardly be compared to convicting Glen Agliotti or the killers of Andries Tatane. Convicting offenders in high-profile cases builds confidence in the whole system Minister Radebe! The concerned and  informed amongst us know that what causes overcrowding in SA jails are awaiting-trial prisoners, not the convicted prisoners as the minister would have us believe. As the NPA wobbles from one embarrassment to another, I'm left wondering, isn't our government trying to hard to garner embarrassment?

As an unknown student of history once observed: "History teaches, but it has no pupils". Those familiar with the embarrassing defeat of an elite American Helicopter Unit in Mogadishu in 1993 will tell you that however mighty you are, lack of respect and understanding of local conditions will leave you open to a sucker-punch. The movie Black Hawk Down tells the story of how Somalian Militia, armed only  with hand-held weapons of war shot down, not one but two state-of-the-art US Black Hawk helicopters. History taught the US in Vietnam to do their research to avoid such embarrassments but obviously, the lesson was not learned. History teaches, but it has no pupils.

Our government continues to go to court in opposition to OUTA,  clearly disregarding popular sentiment. Mediocre appointments in the NPA continue to be the order of the day. There is a looming threat of a KZN magistrate being appointed to head the NPA, clearly forgetting the embarrassment brought on by the Menzi Simelane saga. Simelane, a man who was proven to have lied under oath at the Ginwala commission was appointed to head the NPA. Really,  Mr Radebe, what lengths will our government go to to ensure our legal structures are emasculated, disempowered and left embarrassed? Clearly someone is afraid of a strong independent NPA. The question is who? Only the guilty are afraid.

It's so sad that every appointment made by the President, Minister of Justice and the Judicial Services Commission will now be viewed through the opaque prism of previous embarrassing appointments. If there's anyone out there who can help, when was the last our President made a clearly well-thought-out, confidence-building appointment? Any guesses, anyone? Our leaders just continue to beg for embarrassment! And we've got another five years of this coming!?!