Enough now: Residents of Soweto took to the streets in June this year to protest against power cuts. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee/AFP
A family feud is brewing, one that threatens ructions if not carefully and quickly managed. The sad truth is there appears to be no quick fix to the lights-out Eskom saga. The problem appears to be unsolvable.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, South Africans were invited to “family meetings”, during which President Cyril Ramaphosa imparted information and tried to keep the nation calm.
I hated them being called “family meetings”. It reinforces the notion of a nanny state that somehow infantilises the public. The use of that term underscores our dysfunctionality as a nation.
Still, in the face of the unseen enemy, the Covid-19 virus that could kill us and everyone we loved, the TV “family” sessions were bearable in that they served a purpose by keeping us up to date with what we needed to do, collectively, to keep ourselves and our neighbours safe.
More recently, “Father” held a family meeting to explain the Eskom horror show and to try to make sense of the dark, disruptive, expensive nightmare we are living through with the constant power cuts.
He failed. We’re more in the dark now than before.
I’m afraid his family chat has served only to breathe on the embers of what threatens to become a full-blown family feud. The collective “we” are cross with “Father” and his brothers, sisters and cousins who are supposed to keep us in the light, to keep us connected.
We are at our wits’ end and there is no respite in sight. We know no good comes of a feud, so “Father”, be warned. There’s nothing new about family feuds; it’s a tradition that dates back to biblical times.
An early story tells how Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve — the first couple in Christian lore — make a sacrifice to God. God favours shepherd Abel’s offering of the firstborn of his flock, inducing a jealous rage during which farmer Cain murders his brother. Biblical history tells of how God then exiles Cain to the Land of Nod, where he is to lead a life of nomadic wandering.
The word exile is an important one when it comes to ousted heads of state, and Africa has a long line of deposed leaders who’ve been forced out of their country.
Think of Zaire’s president Mobutu Sese Seko, who after 32 corrupt years in power was overthrown by Laurent Kabila in 1997. He fled to take refuge in Morocco. Uganda’s Idi Amin’s eight years of rule saw the deaths of up to 300 000 people. Deposed in 1979, he escaped to Saudi Arabia. Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, who was convicted of war crimes for his cruelty and is serving a 50-year sentence in Britain, was captured in Nigeria where he’d fled to. Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose Red Terror reign resulted in the deaths of hundreds of students, intellectuals and politicians, was taken in by Robert Mugabe to live in Zimbabwe.
The list of exiled politicians is long; the tradition of banishment began with Cain. The Cain and Abel row set the tone for family feuds, which are somehow more acrimonious than run-of-the-mill neighbourly feuds, which might be bitter but lack the caustic destruction of brotherly in-fighting. After all, it is easier to inflict maximum pain on someone whose weakest spots you are familiar with.
Social media has made it possible for us to witness, firsthand, the unfolding of the modern-day equivalent of the Cain and Abel story. Think Royal British brothers William, the newly invested Prince of Wales, and the ginger-haired Harry, who are having a full-throttle, public hatefest.
Books — Robert Lacy’s The Battle of the Brothers and Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers among them — provide the minutiae of detail in the ongoing feud. The rift, according to numerous royal biographies, began with Harry dating mixed-race American divorcée Meghan Markle; older brother William disapproved of the speed at which the romance was moving; Harry objected.
The end result? A peeved Harry and Meghan broke royal ties, moved to the United States, rowed with the media, trashed the family to Oprah, called them racist and a lot more.
And we, the willing public, have lapped up every detail on social media, the newspapers, radio and television. It’s all there in glorious technicolour for the world to see.
I suppose for most of us it’s a case of tapping into that age-old adage, “there but by the grace of God go I”. In truth, I’ve never come across a functional family, my own included.
Last week another public family fall-out reached fever pitch and then there seemed to be some rapprochement, the sincerity of which was questioned in the populist press.
Power couple footballer David Beckham and his singer/designer wife Victoria “Posh Spice” had a falling-out with their new daughter-in-law, American heiress Nicola Pelz, wife of their oldest son, Brooklyn.
Nicola told a fashion magazine (it seems it is a customary thing for celebrities to do these days, go public when you’re angry) that Brooklyn’s mum “blanked” her after agreeing to design her wedding dress. I’m assuming the word “blanked” means snubbed. So she went with couturier Valentino. Why do we care?
But we do care. The Beckhams’ Instagram account blew up when Nicola joined the family at the Paris Week fashion show. Forgiveness was in the air, and we love a story in which there is resolution. It’s why we love happy endings at the movies. It gives us hope that the possibility of redemption exists.
Still, there’s something vulgar and tasteless about airing one’s dirty linen in public. But it’s more than that; it’s dangerous. Social media magnifies these moments of strife, amps up the intensity of the slight or transgression. Posts and pictures fan the fire, causing sparks that ignite more ire. The result: sorrow.
Nobody is naïve enough to think that this is new. From the days when information was shared in the town square, at the theatre, in taverns — anywhere public that people met — there was gossip.
There are indeed few functional families in the world, and we South Africans are certainly a particularly dysfunctional bunch at the moment. We’re getting close to being at the end of our tether, something “Father” needs to take into careful consideration.
We South Africans are usually sanguine, and do a lot of hot-air complaining and shoulder shrugging. But the mood is changing. My social media sites are filled with incandescent rage. Dinner party conversation and my version of water-cooler talks (usually the queue in supermarkets or shared conversations in restaurants) are more heated than I’ve known them to be for a long time.
It’s the daily disruption to our lives, with no apparent end in sight. A nation’s fury is building.
Charmain Naidoo is a journalist and regular Thought Leader contributor.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
[/membership]