Sipho Seepe
no blows barred
In 1993 Donaldo Macedo, a scholar and follower of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, coined the phrase “literacy for stupidification” to describe the inability of many Americans to read the word and the world critically. This incapacity makes people susceptible to political manipulation through big lies. No amount of evidence is likely to shift their reading of the world.
This was never more evident than when a mainly white jury found the four white policemen who brutally beat Rodney King in Los Angeles “not guilty”. Racist thinking blinded the jurors. They saw video shots of King struggling on his hands and knees while being hit repeatedly by police batons. Yet they readily accepted that the savage beatings were, as the defence attorneys claimed, nothing more than a “controlled application of 56 batons” to contain King. This is a graphic illustration of the old adage: the eyes do not see, they merely record while the mind sees to the extent, that is, that the mind can be ideologically controlled.
South Africa has had its own share of the pedagogy of big lies. Apartheid was a system based on a big lie the superiority of the white race. To sustain it, other lies were necessary. The most memorable was the notion that protest by the majority against apartheid was a communist plot it could not be genuine resistance to the apartheid condition since blacks were not sufficiently intelligent.
The irony is that the more ridiculous the lies, the more feverishly they tend to be embraced. To gain support, the regime exploited white fear and anxiety. This fear of the black majority ushered in a siege mentality, a necessary condition for the perpetuation of big lies.
The new South Africa has not been spared the big lies syndrome. Fortunately for the new ruling elite, the conditions necessary for such political manipulation are manifold. One is the blind hope borne of poverty, destitution and illiteracy. For the majority the African National Congress government is the only hope of salvation. Another necessary condition for such manipulation is the successful creation of the myth that the leadership is a custodian of brilliance, wisdom and intellectual invincibility. This has been ingeniously linked to the heroic struggles of the past. Blessed with this history, and the desperate socio-political conditions suffered by the majority, the ruling elite has been able to use a combination of myth and distortion to manipulate the majority.
Pronouncements by the leadership are, thus, sometimes swallowed as gospel truth, with few questions asked or tolerated. This blind faith in the infallibility of the leader saw ANC MPs excitedly cheer the president when he displayed his ignorance by boldly declaring last year that “a virus cannot cause a syndrome”.
A favourite device used in the manipulation I am describing is the unjustified linkage of unconnected political issues.
One instance is the attempt to link a stronger electoral mandate (a two-thirds majority) to speedy and effective transformation and delivery. The past 18 months have shown that the link is tenuous at best. Instead of delivery, we have witnessed growing arrogance and the ruling elite’s willingness to run roughshod over any concerns that might frustrate its agenda.
A second is the shrewd exploitation of the electorate’s impatience for delivery of services. The ruling elite maintained that delivery had been hampered by the fact that people voted for populists and not for individuals with expertise and skills. It was, consequently, necessary to centralise and monitor the appointment of loyal, dedicated, skilled and selfless cadres to key delivery posts. Seductive phrases such as “integrated” and “coordinated” were introduced to hoodwink the electorate into believing that these required more centralised governance.
The result was that, overnight, the people’s right to elect their own leaders was usurped and delegated to ruling party bosses. The implication is that people can be trusted to choose the right party, but they lack the political sophistication to elect their own leaders. This has led to an unquestioning leadership beholden to the party bosses.
Close examination of the new leadership shows that it has not only failed to inspire confidence; its promise of improved services has not materialised. Rather, the dictum “the people shall govern” has metamorphosed to “the party shall govern”. This is most obviously captured by the ANC’s election promise in which the party indicated that, should its elected councillors fail to deliver, the party (not the people) would remove them. In other words, if the councillors or other appointed persons are to be found wanting by the electorate, and the party bosses think differently, there is nothing people can do.
Moreover, the lie taking root in the black community is that education does not matter. Given the history of their exclusion from education, and the fact that many sacrificed their education for the struggle, this notion is emotionally pleasing to the majority. It is, however, dangerous and misguided. For, among other things, it betrays the proud black history that celebrated excellence and valued achievement, especially in education. The celebration and commitment to education in the black community is exemplified by the likes of Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Dikgang Moseneke, Pandelani Nevholovhodwe, Ahmed Kathrada and others, who despite the harsh conditions of prison continued to pursue their studies.
The notion that education (formal or otherwise) does not count is misguided in that it tends to celebrate mediocrity and ignorance. It can only serve the interest of the one-eyed king in the land of the blind. The blind in this case spend much of their time trying to prove that they deserve their positions. Behind their facade of confidence and boisterous bravado is an excruciating sense of inadequacy and insecurity. Dressed in borrowed clothes, they are expected to endorse their master’s voice at all times.
When there is an unquestioning belief in the leadership, the selective use of “truth” can justify the decisions of the master without a murmur from the stupefied masses. The president’s blatant misrepresentations of the report from the Centre for Disease Control in the United States on the efficacy of AZT, of the Frank Kahn and Jan Lubbe opinion arguing that it is impera-tive for the Special Investigative Unit to be included in the arms deal investigation, and of the Constitutional Court judgement on whether the unit could be led by a serving member of the judiciary were highlighted by vigilant members of opposition parties and others in the media.
But the gullible public continues to believe that the president is telling the whole truth, and those who expose his misrepresentations are portrayed as enemies of the president and therefore of the state. If there had been no scrutiny from those who can be critical, the stupefied might have been duped into believing that HIV does not cause Aids.