The play: Much Ado About Nonsense Cast: Makgoba, Van Onselen, Davis, Pityana, et al
Verdict: New cast, old script. A political farce in two instances
Critic: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert
It is necessary to put this two-act political farce into the proper perspective. It was performed at smaller, lesser-known venues (I know that universities and organs of civil society hate to be described as such, but in the larger scheme of things, this happens to be true).
So far, our heavyweight political impresarios have not decided to produce this farce at our country’s premier political theatre in Cape Town. If anything, they seem to have avoided the performances and even indirectly tried to tone down the script and restrain the exuberance of the players. Should this farce attract box office attention in Cape Town, then I am afraid the whole country will become involved in the kind of political theatre we have been struggling to get away from since 1948. (Good-bye democracy, reconciliation, human rights, tolerance, and so on.)
The material on which this melodramatic farce is based is not usually the stuff out of which great political theatre should emerge:
Example 1: A university dispute Whether Professor William Makgoba had cooked parts of his CV, or whether “the 13” had used reprehensible means to find this out, and Makgoba’s counter-accusations that “the 13” had acted unethically as employed professionals, are matters that would not normally exercise the mind of a court, or an independent board of inquiry too much, nor would it set the community alight.
I must say, if “the 13” wanted to prevent Makgoba from succeeding Professor Robert Charlton as vice-chancellor of Wits University, they certainly went about it in the most ponderous and ham-handed way. Charles van Onselen is a provocative, stubborn, single-minded and principled individual. He is also a friend and an extraordinarily good historian. But he must be a useless politician. If he wants to play politics, he must take his medicine like a man. Charles, just remember what Kissinger said about university politics: “It’s so vicious because there is so little at stake.”
I don’t know Makgoba personally, but I accept that his qualifications are genuine and that, from all accounts, he has proven himself as a competent academic. I certainly would have been as pissed off as a snake if some fellow academics had come at me like that. But he certainly said, and did, some kinky things before, during and after the event, that bear very little relation to his qualifications as a scientist.
Example 2: A civil society dispute It is not unreasonable to question how a panel has appointed members to a commission and whether, or why not, the commission has performed adequately in the first few months of its existence. It has often happended here and elsewhere, and is bound to happen again.
However, Dennis, you could have been more understanding of Barney’s dilemma. If anyone should know, you should, that the Government of National Unity has been appointing commissions, boards and task groups, left, right and centre with impressive terms of reference, low budgets, no infrastructure, hog-tied by red tape and a built-in performance crisis. It is easier to deliver toilets in the veld than human rights under the current circumstances. No point in sticking your thumb in Barney’s side before he can get his act together. A bit moedswillig don’t you think?
Out of such meagre offerings exploded a political farce that is nothing but much ado about nonsense. The general response to the two instances shed more light on the brittle nature of our community than on the validity of the statements that precipitated it. Themes and sub-themes emerged totally unrelated to the sense of the original statements. Those who were nursing grievances, hate or guilt rushed forward to pour out their passions in public.
What was more than depressing was that the script that emerged for this farce was boringly familiar and totally unoriginal. I had thought (and I still do) that the whole point about our transition was to get away from this kind of political theatre. It could be much tougher than the best intentioned of us ever anticipated.
Consider some of the themes
l Makgoba’s idea, often stated before, during and after the event, that Wits had to be transformed to capture “the African essence” of a university. Methinks this was a powerful motivating factor that got “the 13” out of the trenches to try to head Makgoba off at the pass on the way to Charlton’s job. Not all that surprising, either, come to think of it. The idea that a university should reflect some political, religious, cultural, racial/ethnic “essence” is not new.
I must say, I was surprised that someone with Makgoba’s obvious intelligence and learning should be taken in by such nonsense. Wherever and whenever the powers that be had tried to create a special political, or other, “essence” for a university, the consequences have been dismal and the university has suffered. Consider the previous regime’s attempts to create Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaner, English, Coloured, Asian universities. Does Makgoba really wish to identify himself with this mode of thinking? And, by the way, this kind of intellectual disease is not confined to black or white South Africans or even to the African continent. Think about these historical examples:
l In 1339 the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris prohibited the reading of the works of Occam. This was evidently in protest against Occam’s demand that logic be recognised as a branch of philosophy separate and distinct from theology.
l Only a few years after the ban on Occam’s work, the University of Paris progressed to book burning. In 1346, on papal demand, the university deprived Nicholas of Abrecourt of his mastership of arts and, after burning his books, compelled him to retract his errors before the whole assembled university.
l The philosophy of Descartes was banned at the University of Marburg in 1653. (One year after van Riebeeck landed!)
l In 1423 King Frederick William I of Prussia expelled the philosopher and mathematician Christian van Wolf, and threatened to hang him, because Wolf’s philosophy supposedly encouraged desertions from the army.
Lest we comfort ourselves that this was all part of the distant past, it is well to remember that only in 1916, Bertrand Russell was removed from his post at Trinity College Cambridge after being convicted under the Defence of the Realm Act for his pacifist beliefs. And during the 1930s and early 1940s at many German universities, the academic senates, or various bodies of the faculties, spoke out and made solemn pronouncements in support of the Fuhrer and his policies, endorsing measures to attain Aryan purity by means of academic purges. And then, of course, came apartheid and now Makgoba.
“African essence”? “Afrikaner essence”? “Aryan essence”. Black Consciousness, White Consciousness? Sound familiar? It is not difficult to make funny places of our universities — but then, are they still universities? If anything, history tends to show that it is the task of a university to never stop questioning such nonsense if it wishes to survive.
Of course, Professor Makgoba, I agree that our universities are in great need of transformation, but precisely because of the previous regime’s attempt to impose some political “essence” on them in the past. You can’t be serious in wanting to transform them into some new racial or political “essence”. By the way, I notice you are already taking flack for having settled with nine of your 13 accusers, and that some of your camp followers accuse you of betraying “transformation”. Ah well, nothing is as fickle as the support of omniscient and self-righteous professional undergraduates. As I said to Charles, if you want to mix in politics, you must take your medicine like a man. Congratulations on being appointed Research Professor — I sense that is where you are comfortable. You seem to be a pretty useless politician yourself. Good for you! You know, I wrote all this stuff about universities 21 years ago for an academic freedom lecture at Rhodes University. Isn’t it depressing?
Another Makgoba exotic (which no doubt speeded up “the 13’s” trot to the pass to head him off), is the idea that one can rewrite history in order to make oneself, or a group that one identifies with, feel better or good. You know, that blacks discovered maths, the wheel or Mad Cow Disease — that kind of thing.
I know this is all the rage at some American universities in Cultural Studies Departments, where some Afro-Americans and members of other excluded minorities indulge in it. But alas and again, it is all old hat. There have been English, Israeli, Arab, Muslim, Japanese, Afrikaner, Croat, Serbian “historians” who have reconstructed the past in order to make themselves and their friends feel better about the present and the future.
By the way, Professor Makgoba, old Eugene Terre’blanche of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging is one of the best “feel- good” history makers around. The man is an artist. Like you, he sometimes dresses up funny to make the point. I think you look better. I remember in 1958 in the Cango Caves they turned the lights off and a voice boomed: “The history of South Africa began with the arrival of the white man in 1652.” I must say I felt more ridiculous than better at the time.
If one believes, as I do, that history tends to go back a long way, then one is comforted by the fact that the “feel-good” variety of history has a short shelf life. It can do a lot of damage in the meantime though. Think of the history taught by Christian National Education — it may even have helped to create Makgoba’s “feel-good” variation in response.
Quite frankly, I don’t care a damn who discovered numbers, as long as I can understand them enough to get to my appointments on time. Which raises the question: “Who discovered time?” That should get some “feel-good” historians shrieking through the S-bends for the first self-serving answer. I can heartily recommend Charles van Onselen’s The Seed is Mine. This is brilliant South African history. It has just been published and I devoured every page of it. What’s it about? Among other things, about racism and race relations in South Africa.
Then Barney’s thing about white liberals being racists. Oh dear! Oh dear! Are liberals racists because they are white? Can a black be a liberal? Are such liberals racists? Are black liberals secretly white racists in disguise? It’s all such utter nonsense. It is entirely possible that some liberals can be arrogant, insensitive, overbearing, patronising, condescending and even racist. But so can some communists, nationalists, Episcopalians, not to even mention some Muslim fundamentalists, or black ecologists with wandering squints.
I have chaired forums where people who profess to be liberals have been extraordinarily condescending to blacks, and I have seen blacks respond with a fatal combination of confidence and ignorance. Is being confident and ignorant an exclusively black characteristic? No, some National Party cabinet ministers excelled in it for years.
But this sport of generic racial labelling? I had hoped that it went out with the previous regime. They perfected the art of “you blacks” and “we whites”, even enshrined it in law. I was labelled a White Afrikaner Liberal and because of that accused of being a traitor to the tribe, a useful idiot to the communists, (the communists called me a capitalist pawn), a kaffirboetie, and so on. As the preacher in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 says : “There is nothing new under the sun”.
But Barney, this generic labelling business is not your bag. If it is, then, as Themba Sono says: The previous regime has been successful beyond its wildest dreams. I am convinced you’re not into this. However, you certainly managed to flush out some cranky camp followers in your bit of theatre with Dennis.
Some palefaced ululaters jumped the picket line and prostrated themselves with self- flagellating confessions of primordial guilt. Another one with a straight face suggested that we South African men of the white variety are gender-determined and paradigmatically disposed towards racism. I would give her one out of 10 for the effort and tell her to read an elementary introductory textbook on neuro- biology if I were you.
Enough said. What has “the essence of a university”, “feel-good history” and “generic racial labelling” got to do with the two sets of statements? I don’t know, but somehow, they inspired a farce that developed a career of its own. May it be short-lived, and may this kind of political theatre play to dwindling audiences in out-of-town venues. However, if I apply a crude cause and effect logic to the statements and the consequences, this could turn out to be a bit of a pious wish.