Medialternatives

For Desmond Tutu, the 1989 Peace March was a “tipping point”, for Allan Boesak, it “wasn’t about getting permission, it was about marching for peace come what may”. Those who were in the front of the 30 000 gathering which became the last “illegal march” under apartheid, at least in the minds of the majority of people who were there — a supreme act of defiance against the regime of FW de Klerk — appear to contradict today’s revisionists who at once focus on the failure of the government to suppress the march as evidence of the man’s noble intentions (which had yet to manifest in tangible policy) while writing off an act of insurrection by Cape Town’s Mayor at the time, Gordon Oliver.

Oliver is a Unitarian and thus his views are not readily given the kind of credit they deserve, at least as far as the Anglican Church is concerned. I attended today’s commemorative event hosted by St Georges Cathedral and was swept up in the highly emotional interfaith service which appeared to unite various strands of the Abrahamic tradition. From a Call to Prayer by Yusef Ganief which utilised the supreme acoustics of the venue, to the closing hymnal of Birkat Khohanim, a Judaic paeon to Peace sung by Jessica Thorn, the whole event struck a raw nerve. I was simply and elegantly brought to tender tears by the Cape Cultural Collective, after a candid speech by the Cape Flats’ Cheryl Carolus who surely embodies the youthful rebellion of the time?

It is easy to forget the kind of political will which exemplified itself in People’s Power and which made the United Democratic Front (UDF) such a revolutionary force in South Africa. One can always slip into neat semantics of the kind which gets people Nobel Peace Prizes and forget the fortitude and determination which marked the crowd of “students, business people, domestic workers, civic and political activists; of every race, faith, age and class”, some of whom had witnessed the Purple Rain debacle ten days earlier and the chaotic start of a defiance campaign spurred on by an all-white election, and a velvet revolution which was occurring in Eastern Europe (which would result in the End of the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall).

South Africa was thus in the midst of its own purple revolution when progressive religious leaders got together and realised they had better do something or we would end up with yet another tragedy, the likes of which South Africans are all too familiar. Soweto 1976, Sharpeville, Boipatong. This country has its share of massacres.

In fact, an online biography written by Tom Wooten details the circumstances in which Oliver became involved in an ‘illegal march.

“Several days before Gordon’s inauguration, seven “terrorists” were shot by government police in the Cape Flats township of Guguletu. An outpouring of grief and anger from the black community ensued, which culminated in a massive memorial service … as the service concluded, Archbishop Desmond Tutu encouraged the mourners to join an illegal protest march that was to occur the following week. Gordon didn’t give this request much thought until he was approached by a reporter, who asked him if he planned to join the protest. Gordon quickly and confidently made up his mind, replying that he would indeed join the march. “It wasn’t an issue of ’should I’ or ’shouldn’t I,’” he remembers, “it was just the right thing to do.”

“The next day,” according to Wooten, the Cape Times “ran a huge front-page headline reading “Defiant Mayor to March.” Gordon’s phone rang nonstop all day. Even some of his fellow progressive City Council members were appalled that he planned to openly break the law. Nonetheless, Gordon held his ground. “I’m merely upholding council policy,” he told his fellow councillors

Oliver apparently assured the council that the march would be peaceful, although truthfully, he had no basis on which to give this assurance.

“When the phone calls subsided, Gordon set to work ensuring that the march would be as peaceful as possible. First, he met with Cape Town’s Chief of Police, a gruff no-nonsense Afrikaner whose orders came directly from the national government. Gordon pleaded with him not to break up the march, insisting that the demonstrators would remain peaceful if left unprovoked. The chief listened to Gordon, but made no promises. Then, Gordon met with the UDF march organizers, and ensured that they would deploy uniformed marshals to keep the crowds under control. Gordon had done his best, but the march’s outcome remained far from certain. “

Wooten says: “Gordon was overwhelmed with joy when tens of thousands of demonstrators poured peacefully fourth from St. George’s Cathedral and for once, the government riot police merely stood by and watched. Gordon walked among the marchers, and the crowd parted ways for him as he made his way to City Hall. When he arrived, Gordon addressed the crowd with a megaphone from his office balcony. “Today,” he exclaimed, “you all have the freedom of this city!” From the crowd, Gordon heard overjoyed cries. “He’s our Mayor!” someone shouted. Another one called out “This is our city!”

Gordon Oliver is really the man in my mind who deserves a peace prize. Although present at the commemoration, he was out-gunned by Dan Plato the current Cape Town Mayor, and thus no words of deep reassurance of historical reason emanated from the lofts, but surely it was he who single-handedly liberated the streets of Cape Town by refusing to comply with the State of Emergency which outlawed public gatherings? I dare say the state would have been at a loss to explain what occurred when Oliver gave the go-ahead for the march and the state security forces found themselves unwilling to countermand the Cape Town police services which as we all know, would have fallen directly or indirectly under the Mayoral aegis.

At least this is how I, as one of the 30 000 rabble who marched, wish to see the event. Not “faith in a trusting president” as true believers such as Mary Burton, chairperson of the Black Sash would have it, which makes it all seem like a quaint Saturday morning picnic, an outing in which an all-seeing and all-knowing politician, casually gives the go ahead to a bunch of compliant lackeys one of whom happens to be the liberation theologian Allan Boesak, and the rabblerouser for peace, Desmond Tutu?

Saying FW did it, “because the people trusted him”, makes the struggle and defiance campaign all too easy. The tension between white officialdom and black clergy way too trite. The apartheid state was never that trusting nor pliable. No it was resilient, fortified by kragdadigheid and the certainty that God himself was on the side of the Afrikaner and nothing short of a revelation from on-high, or as some Jews might have it, a burning bush suddenly appearing in Adderley Street and talking truth to a modern Moses, could sway such conviction.

No, Ms Burton, doing so relegates not just our sense of the period but our strength of conviction to the puerile and adolescent. Perhaps somebody needs to give the Unitarians and the former President a call to find out exactly how different Christian perspectives influenced events? Again, there were more than one or two Jews and Muslims (as well as other faiths) involved in the picture. The historical record will surely support such conjecture.

In Tutu’s version, the defiance campaign made the Peace March go-ahead on Gordon’s authority, a fait accompli, an act of skilful defiance which lead directly to the events which saw the release of Nelson Mandela. In Mary Burton’s mind, as well as the minds of more than a few participants at the ceremony, FW de Klerk waved his magic wand in order to make things happen, as if the President was some kind of Hollywood producer bankrolling the struggle and paying for his share in the proceedings with the Nobel billions. Is this theological point/counterpoint or simply product placement of the worst order? Some might see the ruckus as mere wish fulfilment in a canon of popular memory that is slowly disappearing, but I doubt whether the truth of the matter is likely to be revealed without considerable chest-beating and bleating about necessary “sacrifices” and humility in the face of so much which is evil.

NOTE:: De Klerk waved the prohibition against illegal marches during a press conference held the night before the event, allowing the march to proceed unimpeded by security legislation. The point is moot, since there was no attempt by the organisers to gain permission, bar the personal intervention and pleading of the mayor, which can be seen by subsequent arrangements made to accommodate future “illegal marches” so organisers would not have to “ask permission”. There’s your flaming gun. The government capitulated. Slaves do not ask permission from their masters to be free.]

http://davidrobertlewis.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/wikipedia-%E2%80%93-home-to-white-supremacists-and-the-christian-rightwing/

Wikipedia anonymity breeding racism?

WIKIPEDIA, the online encyclopedia has become a haven of neo-conservative tinkering and revision of history under apartheid. A recent internet debate (archived here), shows the mindset of a generation which has grown up without direct knowledge of the apartheid system yet hankering after a period in which a minority white government ruled over a black majority denied the franchise.

A controversial article about an incident of unrest equivalent in scope and political fallout to the 1960s Kent State shootings, at the prestigious University of Cape Town during the 1987 State of Emergency was narrowly voted out after right-wingers gained the upper hand, deleting the piece as being “not significant enough to warrant an article.” Despite criticism of systemic bias by two contributors, one of whom confirmed “accusations of censorship at the time”, the view that the incident was “just another storm in a students’ teacup to protest a military cross-border raid” has prevailed.

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THE weird apartheid time-warp which kept Derek Wilson in the Argus newsroom for thirty years has finally ended. South Africa’s worst critic, who never made it out of the eighties conceptually, and refused to embrace transformation, either in his choice of words, or material for review, has been forced into retirement.

Ringing changes at the Independent Group have also seen David Hill, editor of the Group’s community papers leave, and dare one say John Scott could be the next “old fogey” to be pushed into the twilight?

Wilson is best known for his complete and utter failure to recognize the anti-apartheid movement, and the cultural boycott called by anti-apartheid activists in defiance of government laws segregating South Africans into race groups. Defying calls by cultural workers for whites to not participate in the regime which created separate amenities and apartheid arts structures, Wilson insisted on covering the whites-only opera, even while blacks and so-called “coloureds” were forceably prevented from attending venues such as the former Nico Malan.

Wilson, forever the newsroom queen, also coined the term “artsy fartsy” to relegate much of what he wrote to the corridors of parochialism, and white infantilisism as his readership consistantly insisted that Aviva Pelham and Alvin Collison were the “beesknees”, all the while refusing point blankly to attend any art event which actually transgressed boundaries and the borders in the townships.

It is a wonder of the modern world that Wilson’s reign of terror against anything which smacked of the unconventional or radical, continued well into the 21^st century, and that he was not forced to retire earlier. Having absolutely no grasp of criticism, or the theories which underpinned much of the anti-establishment counterculture which arose, first as an antidote to apartheid institutions, and later as a reaction both to the democratic election and the approaching fin ‘d ciecle, Wilson insisted on ignoring most of South Africa’s youth culture.

Forever the cumudgeon and mother grundie of rock ‘n roll, Wilson would routinely spike copy that was anywhere near critical of the colonial institutions which created a stulted and stuffy Cape. It is beyond belief that hacks at the Argus never realized the man was obviously suffering from senile dementia or Alzheimers and can only recall a smattering of notables in his ignomineous and shy career.

There is a little shop of apartheid horror with a gothic bookshelf, forever emblazoned with the collected works of Pieter Willem Botha. For so many victims of a racist conflict that claimed the lives of countless youths, both black and white, PW Botha represented the ideology of a cruel and inhumane system.

It is pointless trying to rehabilitate the paragon, although a mere mortal, a post-mortem will show that he was heartless, but had been kept alive with science and logic — the strange wonders provided by a daily dose of opiates, heroin and methamphetamine, dispensed by the likes of Dr Death and the Truth Commission. Wouter Basson or someone resembling him, is said to have eaten PW’s liver, before rigor mortis set in, andd to have proclaimed that it was infused with the intoxicating blood of the poverty stricken masses.

If Madame Tussard were alive, she would no doubt put up a wax-work effigy of the eternal apartheid ghost, or perhaps a brown-shirted werewolf sans silver bullet, a National Party vampire without a stake through a deep chest cavity, next to the followers of Hitler and Stalin. Yet compared to these two megalomaniac fascists, PW was lame and impotent. He is also rumoured to have suffered from a strange malady associated with intermittent bouts of flatulance and priapism a permanent erection of the penis whenever ‘Die Stem’ was played.

Although a Nazi sympathizer, PW failed in his master-plan to create a nation of Bantustans cooking up separate development within the context of a bizarre ‘tricameral’ parliament that excluded Africans, and merely implicated other ethnic groups in the aegis, administration and final control, of the apartheid system.

PW Botha’s supreme gift then, to all of us, was the formalization of an absurd ‘rule by proxy’ created by the drunkard, John Vorster. He is also credited with the ‘total onslaught’ strategy against communists, Jews, anarchists, gypsies and homosexuals. If members of Botha’s cabinet, were not brainwashed power addicts and hypnotized control freaks, then Botha must have picked up a herion habit as a young boy, in the SANDF.

The legend of the National Party infatuation with a gangly boy from the Paul Roux district in the Free State, ignores his membership of the Ossewabrandwag, a group of foul-smelling brown-shirts, who hated Blacks, and of course, Catholics. PW’s corpse is also said to have the aroma of a camphorated whore from Babylon, in the Free State.

Needless to say, PW the Man, was first elected to South Africa’s national parliament from the town of George in the Southern Cape, as a member of the National Party in 1948. When BJ Vorster resigned in 1978, following alchohol poisoning and his inability to utter anything coherent as prime minister, Botha was elected as his successor by parliament. Botha’s reign steadily descended into a profound form of national psychosis, after successive ‘States of Emergency’ in which a military putsch created by the securacrats Magnus Malan, and Adrian Vlok, installed an effective ‘Junta’ following the Information Scandal.

During the civil war that insued, PW was likened to a Roman emperor, a Nero fiddling with his penis while the townships burnt, until he eventually went stark raving mad, and had a stroke after attacking his own cabinet for selling out to the ‘communists’ and cavorting with prostitutes.

PW will be remembered for his political complexion, with the rubbery consistency of a piece of marbled ham, and sickly sweet complacency of mutton fat. His putrid finger that never crossed the Rubicon, will no doubt rot away in a grave, or be incinerated into dust along, with a classification card marking him as a ‘white’ person, a scion of the human race, whose apoplexy about ‘racial purity’, ‘immorality’ and ‘moral prudery’ continue to entertain millions of South African’s who now flock to the tomb of one of the last great ghouls of modern history.

CORPORATE South Africa has not yet transformed to the degree where we can safely say apartheid no longer exists, or racist behaviour and other forms of racism in the workplace are no longer significant issues. While empowerment deals have broadened from their original elitist and chauvinist aspirations, they have tended to be cosmetic and misrepresent the interests of those “empowered” but with no effective control over management decisions.

Corporate policies continue to reinforce segregation and racial divisions in our society instead of cutting across the colour lines separating us into various racial and ethnic groups. Equal opportunity for example, is still being subsumed under the mantra of “separate but equal” in the strange, twisted logic of the system bequeathed to us by the apartheid regime. What is more, South Africa’s conglomerates have deployed a global strategy which seeks to escape significant empowerment while ignoring the all-important debate concerning equal opportunity and local affirmative action criteria. Diversity remains an ideal spoken about only in the most progressive of boardrooms.

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SOUTH AFRICA is only the second country in the world to adopt the preamble to the declaration of human rights, that goes “We the People…” thus setting as apart from other states that use God or Athiesm, to define their creation. Fundemental to this democratic tradition is the belief in secular humanism and the seperation of Church and State.

Unfortunately the so-called Anti-Terrorism Act aka the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorism and Related Activities Act (ProConDTRA), makes no allowence for the protection of our Bill of Rights against politicians, judges and lawyers — those who would dilute freedom to the status of a tampon-advert.

Then there’s RICA the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act, forcing mobile companies to install snoopware and allowing government spooks to tap into cellphone conversations at will. Our right to privacy is enshrined in article 14 — “Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have ­the privacy of their communications infringed.” No longer applicable?

Then there’s FICA — Financial Intelligence Centre Act that not only makes it harder for druglords to launder money, but also makes it easier for organised crime and big business cartels to locate and harass ordinary citizens, who may be blackmailed or forced into protection rackets etc. Section 14 of our Bill of Rights no longer applies.

Do you trust the people storing information that they are not going to snoop without the authorisation of a judge? Do you trust politicians to protect our rights? Do you trust anybodies word on freedom? Rights are not privileges that can get taken away. But if we are not vigilent, we will forget that we ever had rights to begin with.

Anyone interesting in joining an ONLINE VIGIL for our Bill of Rights, whose 10th anniversary hasn’t been noticed by a nation caught up in the Zuma Saga, post comments below. Maybe somebody will put up a web-page or two?