It is generally agreed that South Africa’s violent present can be traced back to its violent past. Then, logically, given our intolerant and dictatorial history, we should be an intolerant and dictatorial people today.
So it comes as no surprise that we have a president who is not exactly famous for tolerating views different than his own. He is not alone. He is a man of his times — past and present.
Those who had the misfortune of playing football with or near what was sacrilegiously called Mandela United will be aware of how even the illusion of power creates monsters. The “club” would reinterpret the rules of the games as it pleased them. Those who dared to suggest corrections or point out that the young women they intended sleeping with might have different plans were put down by the chilling phrase “u-causa iconfusion [you are creating confusion]”. It was the late 1980s equivalent of the Roman emperor pointing his thumb down. The one guilty of causing confusion had had his day.
Our own Man United was not unique. Any township or village caught up in the political mood of the times probably had an equivalent.
Happily, today the intolerance is not as threatening to life and limb as it used to be. Hopefully we will soon be “allowed” to ask questions about how exactly the SACP’s communism differs from others and why women earn equal amounts of money when they play fewer sets of tennis without being attacked.
These days opponents of an opinion would rather smear one than engage with the view they are at odds with. It is a tactic that has worked wonders before. Give a dog a bad name then hang it. Scores accused of being impimpi ended up with their flesh being indistinguishable from the tyre after having a “necklace” placed around their necks. Wits University academic Etienne Mureinik, accused of being a racist, decided to end it all by jumping from the 23rd floor of a hotel near his office.
You would think that people who are able to dissect Das Kapital and dialectical materialism would be able to say more to an argument than accuse the person they don’t agree with of being “an agent of capitalism”. Unfortunately they don’t say why this should be an embarrassment.
It is intolerance rather than the ability to engage that makes erudite and obviously well read men such as Xolela Mangcu and Ronald Suresh Roberts go for each other’s throats instead of helping us analyse and grapple with the challenges of our time.
Surely if your view has merit it will see light of day without the need to attach tags to those you disagree with. People’s words must and should speak for themselves.
And so what if your argument is wrong? Who has never had an opinion proved by later knowledge to have been erroneous?
Perhaps herein lies our collective problem. We are fixated with our own voices and thoughts.
That is why government spin doctors love telling journalists that “the question you should be asking is …”. Not content with having all the answers, they take it upon themselves to provide the “correct” question.
People who call in to radio talk shows love saying those they agree with are “correct” and, by extension, those they don’t agree with are “incorrect”, even if the debate is of things as inconclusive as religion or the possible outcome of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It is no great wonder that high-profile politicians never admit to policy failures. Instead, they keep throwing good money after bad.
This is why it has taken a decade to come up with an HIV/Aids policy that is free of political point scoring. One assumes that this is also the reason we do not have a better policy on the humanitarian crisis taking place across the Limpopo River. It is as though suggesting corrective measures would be a tacit confession that the policy was wrong all along. Ministers would rather distort facts than admit they might have it wrong.
No wonder Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge has became a hero to some. Simply because she told the powers that be she holds a different view.
I wonder what today’s commentators and politicians would say if John Maynard Keynes (another agent of capitalism) were to repeat his famous question: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”