Requiem for a dream: falling in, and out, of love with ANC
Apartheid is not the only pain we have to contend with now, writes
T could all be so simple / but you’d rather make it hard / See loving you is like a battle / and we both end up with scars / Tell me who I have to be / to get some reciprocity / See no one loves me more than you / and no one ever will
When I came home almost exactly 18 years ago, Lauryn Hill’s Ex-Factor played a constant loop in my head. I put it on when I got up in the morning, I brushed my teeth to it, I pressed “play” in my car and it came on, I got to work and played it in my headphones as I clicked away at my computer, I fell asleep to it. I lived in a fog, wrapped in a delicate blanket of misery, and this song was my soundtrack.
I was in love and in the throes of a horrible break-up with a boy who was impossibly good-looking and hopelessly complicated. It was a torturous back-andforth process (as break-ups tend to be when you are 23) and this song was my solace.
And because we have all been there and understand the pain of it, I will risk the melodrama and say: in the past few years, as I have grappled with events in South Africa and with the conduct of the ruling party, I have often looked back at my 23-yearold self.
In Marikana there has been no justice, no truth, no peace
On some days, as I have scanned the headlines, I have felt as though I am walking away from a dramatic love affair in order to save myself, even as I am uncertain about what I am walking towards.
So forgive me, but it does feel like I am breaking up with the boy I love, the one who has loved me the most and for the longest, the one who has intoxicated me with his brilliance and his pathos. It is hard to imagine life without him, even as it has become impossible to live with him.
This contradictory impulse is most acutely apparent among those South Africans who feel betrayed by and indebted to the ANC.
I was born in exile and spent my earliest years as part of an ANC community. Perhaps this is why it feels so raw. The ANC put food in my belly, a pen in my hand and paper on my desk. The ANC gave me the tools I have used to make my way in this world.
So the long, slow slide into this moment on the cusp of elections, 20 years into our democracy, has felt heart-wrenching and deeply hurtful. And I don’t think this feeling is exceptional.
Indeed, my story is the story of many, many South Africans and not just those who left the country. The ANC clothed us and raised us. No one loved us more than the ANC and we can’t imagine that any party ever will. In South Africa, history is not distant, so we remain torturously in love with the idea of the ANC and what it did for us, even as we bemoan what it has become.
Is this just a silly game / that forces you to act this way? / Forces you to scream my name / then pretend that you can’t stay? / Tell me who I have to be / to get some reciprocity / No one loves you more than me / and no one ever will
Public protector Thuli Madonsela opens the Nkandla press conference by gazing at the camera and reminding us, in her whispery voice, that she is the makhadzi — the aunt who serves as a buffer between the ruler and the ruled.
She says the makhadzi “enhances the voice of the people while serving as the king’s eyes, ears and conscience”. He ignores her “at his own peril”, she intones.
She is saying, patiently and with steely eloquence, that she is still in love. Her voice shakes. This is hard. She is asking who she has to be to get some reciprocity. No one loves the ANC more than she does and no one ever will. I watch her throughout the gruelling session, alternately composed and shaken, angry and hurt. It occurs to me that we are all Thuli.
We are all standing on the edge of a pool of tears, fighting fiercely for what we love. Wondering when they are going to get it, wondering why we still try, wondering how it would be possible to ever stop trying.
I watch her and wish that the miners who were shot down at Marikana had her persistence on their side. I wish they had her savvy and her determination working for them. Instead, the