Immortality, rebirth and forked tongues
HISTORICALLY, serpents and snakes represent fertility or a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. The ouroboros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life. This is what was commonly known until the saying “speaking with forked tongue” gained popularity.
Our political landscape is full of people and organisations that want us to understand that they are snakes only as far as representing “rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing”.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) takes the trophy, following its announcement that it shall call for a dissolution of Parliament and call for early elections.
I am certain that its leader, Mmusi Maimane, strongly believes that such a tactic will succeed in both receiving support from Members of Parliament (MPs) and the general citizenry.
They pin their hopes on two themes. First, in the belief that all opposition parties will back the DA’s call in the same way that they supported the no-confidence vote against the president. Also, they believe that, given that about 35 ANC MPs may have voted with them, their “conscience” is still intact to support the latest call.
Second, they believe the populace is so disgusted with President Jacob Zuma to a point of stupor. The DA believes that, as citizens, we have forgotten that throughout its history, especially under apartheid, not once did its forebears call for the dissolution of an illegitimate and criminal parliament – the apartheid parliament.
The truth of the matter is that the DA takes all progressive South Africans and the marginalised voiceless poor for “mamparas”.
They have pinned their hopes in the belief that ours is a “struggle of memory against forgetting”, as Milan Kundera famously said.
They hope we’ve forgotten their silence when the apart- heid army invaded townships and neighbouring countries (including Lesotho and Mozambique) to commit heinous crimes against innocent people, including cats and dogs. Actually, the DA’s ancestors sustained and cushioned the apartheid system and its atrocities.
Maimane and the DA must accept that ordinary South Africans have not forgotten the fact that Tony Leon’s – a former leader and still member of the DA – father, Judge Raymond Leon, killed one of the doyens of our struggle, Andrew Zondo, in his teens.
A Truth and Reconciliation submission by Paula McBride revealed that the judges who passed death sentences were all white, and 95% of those they hanged were black. In the 10 years before 1985, more than 1 000 people were hanged; only 22 of them were white.
Judge Leon sentenced 19-year-old Zondo to death five times for his involvement in the Amanzimtoti limpet-mine attack, but let his accomplice – who turned State witness in return for anonymity – go free.
Summing up his judgment at the end of the trial, he said: “We have not the smallest hesitation in accepting the evidence of the accomplice as true and that of the accused as false beyond all reasonable doubt... extenuating circumstances are not present in this case.” In fact Judge Leon turned a blind eye to apartheid, the suffering of the African majority and the fact that apartheid was declared a crime against humanity.
The apartheid security apparatus could arrest people, torture people for statements and then convict them on the basis of those statements. The judiciary did not question it.
The DA is yet to make a public call for apologies from apartheid judges who were used to legitimise apartheid – that will be just course.
Today, ordinary citizens and those who struggled against apartheid see the DA’s use of the judiciary in the same light as the judiciary was used by the apartheid state.
Mainly because the DA hopes that we have forgotten this important history.
In African folk tales, the stories reflect the culture where diverse types of animals abound. The animals and birds are often accorded human attributes, so it is not uncommon to find animals talking, singing or demonstrating other human characteristics such as greed, jealousy, honesty, etc.
An African proverb says; “The venomous snake cannot be seen in the savannah”. Also, “history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims”. People in history may not always be aware of what motives are driving them, seeking instead to rationalise them in one way or another, but those motives exist and have a basis in the real world.
Maimane and the DA are snakes insofar as they speak with forked tongues.
Their recently founded attitude, of being defenders of justice and the interests of the people, is a façade.
They need to urgently accept that their past actions and inactions are the chromosomes in their DNA. People are neither fools nor scatterbrains.
Many of their judicial challenges may have legitimacy but taking the step to call for the dissolution of Parliament is indeed subversion of democracy. Why not call for a referendum?
A referendum will allow all citizens to finally make their voices heard. Alas, the superiority complex in the DA’s DNA has arrogantly jumped out of its cocoon in the belief they are the conscience and sole voice of the people.
I guess none of us can contest the assertion of Pixley ka Seme in 1906: “I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion”.
It is my belief that South Africans, black and white, who love their country and are committed to unity and prosperity, remain resolute in their duty to realise these ideals!
Maxon is a social and political commentator