A famous South African brand of flour claims that it is too fresh to flop. But to the chagrin of the brass at the SABC, whiteness and fluffiness don’t necessarily stave off deflating, fizzling, ignominious failures.
Working off a British recipe, the national broadcaster was presumably hoping that its Great South Africans campaign would culminate in a warm, saccharine brownie of nation-building. Certainly, it expected traces of icing sugar here and there, and no doubt a sprinkling of nuts on top; but two weeks into the televised debate, the final confection was declared unpalatable and scraped off into the compost bucket.
SABC CEO Peter Matlare, dabbing with his apron at the last streaks of egg on his face, suggested last week that the voting process had been flawed, and that the second batch required broader voter participation. ”Each and every South African” needed to know about the initiative and take part, he said.
If one weren’t talking to a corporation, it would be tempting to remind amateur chefs (or amateur social engineers, in this case) about not going into hot kitchens. But to a corporate consciousness (”mind” is too charitable and human a word) problems are not indicators of complexity. They are targets to be eliminated.
And so back we go, presumably this time into the heartland, knocking on shack doors and climbing over farm gates, to get a truly representative list. At least, a truly representative list that has The Big Fella at number one and the correct ideological spread in the lower ranks. And for God’s sake get that Ramaphosa out of there before people start thinking unclean thoughts about successions. Oh, and any chance we can get Jean-Bertrand Aristide in? No? Come on lads, you’ll think of something. After all, you’re patriots, aren’t you?
Perhaps this is unduly cynical. The results as they emerged were, after all, enough to get even the most benign and non-confrontational of citizens talking about purge-by- committee, and one didn’t need statistics on voter demographics to see a poll overwhelmingly influenced by conservative, middle-aged, white Afrikaners.
But even this minority lobby was not necessarily accurately represented. The presence of Eugene Terre’blanche and Hendrik Verwoerd no doubt provide ammunition to those who indulge in racist stereotyping about Afrikanerdom (white English-speaking pseudo-sophisticates being the most pernicious in this regard), but they almost certainly overlook the possibility — indeed, the likelihood — that those names were products of a deliberately cynical and preposterous vote from young Afrikaners, whose rejection of homogeny and simultaneous patriotism still needs to be acknowledged; a form of ideological spoiled vote by people who reject the format and participants of such a poll. Steve Hofmeyr almost certainly owes his inclusion in the original list to a demographic that sees him as the village idiot. It is an affectionate vote, but a searing one, too.
However, none of this is relevant to the central flaw in Mr Matlare’s plan. The fact remains that the general public knows nothing about anything, least of all its own motives and desires. This list, our pantheon, our yardstick to which we can aspire and from which we can understand where we have come from, is too important to be left to that public to generate. Some things are just too important to be left to democracy.
Indeed, it seems peculiar that our ideological minders should have credited us with so much wisdom, given the undisputed fact (oft reiterated by them) that Bantu education all but wiped out knowledge and learning for many generations of South Africans. Is it sensible to ask the ignorant to create their own curriculum? Surely this is nothing more than historical outcomes-based education, doomed to be as disastrous as its wicked academic sibling?
Frankly, the SABC is reaping what it, and all other media operators, is busily sowing. The sanctification of celebrity, the praise of vanity and avarice, the rehabilitation of vulgarity and ignorance, all have resulted in a populace unable to distinguish appearance from worth, and asking a wider demographic for its contribution would simply produce a more depressing result, reveal even more fully the ghastly effects of media- and politics-induced amnesia. Talk to grassroots and you get mud on your nose: Mr Matlare should be ready to hear that great South Africans include Moses, Robert Mugabe, and Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens.
This is not a criticism of South African culture or South African judgement. Indeed, compared with the British poll conducted in 2002, South Africans looked like conscientised activists. Perhaps no other country in the West is as saturated with media and opinion as the United Kingdom, and the results of the BBC campaign suggest a direct link between intensity and idiocy of media content on the one hand, and public ignorance and superficiality on the other.
Phantom of the Opera warbler Michael Crawford ahead of Queen Victoria; David Beckham ahead of Sir Thomas More and William Blake; typist JK Rowling two places behind Geoffrey Chaucer: this was evidence enough that the intellectual and cultural flaccidness of the masses has little to do with their socio-economic status. That the late Princess Diana — the patron saint of lowbrow sentimentality — was third on the list should be the final indictment of democratic opinion.
So how does one negotiate a list that cuts to the heart of the matter, that ignores lobbies and egos, and recognises worth and endeavour? Shall a hundred in 10 fields thrash it out, without pay, and under order to include only five living South Africans? The result would cause outrage and disappointment: vanity and tribal allegiance would demand no less.
Poet TS Eliot (who would no doubt crop up in the low 90s alongside Chuck Norris if the United States ever launched a Great Americans poll), asked his god to teach us to care and not to care. A meaningful list, drawn up with empathy and wisdom and foresight, would go some way in teaching us to care and not to care. And perhaps, to paraphrase Norris’s companion again, to return to where we started from and know it for the first time.