Why is Joburg’s mayor blamed for a terrible speech that he didn’t make? And what does this say about how we progress to the era of the sound political foundation?
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This article was done for Moneyweb in February. I discover July 15 that half of it (the D2 lecture) evaporated into cyberspace when it got imported here. Beg pardon, of the 270 people who read it and wondered "what?" It did have a point, I think/hope, now reinstated. Denis
A Get-Down Joke Ain't No Joke
The last time that I unpacked my cudgel-set to defend Africa from the slander of the Forward button, I got roundly klapped. That was only a couple of weeks ago. You’d think I’d learn. But whether due to hardening arteries or onset Alzheimers or what, to me there’s something big in coming to grips with what South Africans think of South Africans and how it impacts on getting to a South Africa that we’re contented with.
So here we go again, damn.
The Forward button has been hard at work, not least with “Amos Masondo”, the “Mayor of Johannesburg” making the dumbest most pathetic hilariously painful non-speech in history.
If you haven’t seen this one... well, you will laugh. You can’t help it. The guy on the screen spends 2.36 minutes being the ultimate puffed-up self-important politician behind a microphone, with a hell of a lot in his mouth and a crisp round zero in his head.
Where my sensitivities get a bit twitchy is that this is an African person, with the kind of African accent and the roll of the eyes and so forth that some non-African persons delight in mimicking, before suitable audiences.
If you look closely you will detect that it’s parody, a comedian ripping off hollow pomposity. But if you look lightly, or if you look with eyes that seek grounds for put-downs, you might actually think that this is an actual speech. And you might contemplate departure to one of those Omolandy places that decimated the indigenes.
Moreover, the comedian has a vaguely roundish sort of face, not totally dissimilar to what the vaguely roundish face of Joburg’s mayor might have looked like in the 1980s. And the mayor’s face remains obligingly under-recognisable, by the standards of politicians, so you can easily slap on a sarcastic covering note describing this as Masondo’s answer to “I have a dream”. And, shazam, there it goes, around SA and around the world, making innocent people from Abarzaijan to Zyvolniosc laugh a lot and shudder a bit and thank their gods for delivering them from the holster-shaped continent in the middle of the map.
I think that’s what bugs me about African jokes. Irish jokes and Polish jokes and Van der Merwe jokes, you know are jokes. African jokes are get-back-down jokes. You tell Irish jokes to Irish people. In fact, preferably to Irish people; they laugh the loudest. African jokes get whispered, to approved audiences.
One day, not tomorrow or the day after, but one day when Africa has stood up, like Ireland has stood up, African jokes will be as much fun as Irish jokes. Now, not so much, and the bit that is least fun of all is the grim thing that they say about the tellers of the jokes.
Invariably these jokes are retailed with the purpose of punishing Africa. They punish Africa for failing to realise how much it needs the person who is doing the retailing. This is a person who spends most of his waking life complaining that Africa does not have the requisite capacity, aptitude, go-ahead and morale. Now, in his anger, he seeks entertainment by sabotaging such capacity, aptitude, go-ahead and morale as there is.
Someone is going to get a great PhD explaining that. I have only a question, a serious one. Is it possible to be more stupid? I mean that literally. If Jack says to Joe “you are stupid and your stupidity jeopardises my life, so I do everything possible to make everyone including you look upon you as irredeemably hopeless”, well, we don’t actually know that Joe is stupid, we very certainly know that Jack is.
I’m not saying this just to needle the numbskulls. On the whole those same numbskulls are bright, smart, with-it mense with plenty of their own capacity in other fields of life, when they’re not consumed by rage at their insecurities. They could be, should be, might yet be, quite useful contributors to creating a world where they’re not so consumed.
In which light, let me wind up with a comment on the comment-line, and particularly on the comments that rained – last time the cudgel came out – upon my simple two-sentence syllogism. I said:
Every electorate consists mainly of people with the same three priorities -- a peaceful life, fair taxes, a square deal.
Therefore:
For seriously sound politics, get those people in serious control of the political system.
So every groucher and his aunty dumped the same basic dump: “Where has that happened?” “Where have you seen that?” (I quote from memory, I should say. While 95% of the critics are 100% welcome, the anti-Africa psychopaths are so depressing that I don’t dare look until I’ve had a few beers.)
Well, here’s the answer: it’s never happened, I’ve never seen it. That is precisely the point of D2. It’s not just for displaced palefaces that the newer and the sudden democracies have been a disappointment. They’ve been a disappointment for everyone and the reason is precisely that they have never yet led to a society where the shots are called by the mama with a veggie patch to cultivate, a job to cling to, and two kids to get to school.
The critics seem to think I expect the mama to do a Joan of Arc, swinging a sword at the trenches and storming Luthuli House. No, mense; apply cogitation. When her “rule”, as in “the people rule”, consists of a 1 in 20 000 000 choice for a portrait on a ballot form, that is no “rule” at all. There is nil chance for her interest in a square deal, peaceful life, low taxes, to enter the picture. That kind of vote is a restatement of identity; an ethnic census. You don’t need to tell me it’s a blunt instrument; I tell you that, too.
Our difference is on how to correct it. A bunch of those comments imply that she should go away, be disenfranchised, levitate, disappear... To me those comments are, um, unsoundly founded, shall we say. Rather magnify her vote, and yours and mine, giving us a real weapon to express real wants. Our thinking should work around entrenching and amplifying the citizenship of ordinary people, replacing the elected dictatorship of ruling parties with continuous backstop to our simple interests as headed by the interest in peace. When we the voters come into our own things work better for the mama, you, me, the grouchers, the lot.
In time to come you’ll all be on board one way or another, grouchers too, you or your heirs. Just that “time to come” could be a very long way away but could also be pretty close up. The latter is what I want and that’s why I want you, groucher or other, thinking not easy knee-jerk “Bull. Unheard of”, but “Really? Well there has to be a next step somewhere, let’s look here”. Which, as I think I might have mentioned, would be www.democracyversiontwo.com
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written by http://www.nymetsmall.com , March 22, 2012
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