The country we love is not an empty landscape, it is flesh and blood. We should act accordingly

Patriotism has not always had a good name. Much like religion, the highfalutin among us tend not to want anything to do with it. It’s a thing for the lower classes, the humble souls who struggle to know what to do with their lives. They can go wave their flags for entertainment. That should keep them out of mischief.

Blame it on Samuel Johnson, the Englishman who lived some three centuries ago. His pronouncement on patriotism is all that many people know about the subject. “Patriotism,” he said, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” It’s short, pithy and therefore unforgettable. The comment makes it sound as though patriotism is a bad thing. It’s often thrown around almost as an insult or an indictment.

But Johnson — described as “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography — was apparently referring to what he regarded as false patriotism, or chest-thumping, flag-waving jingoism.

An authority on the subject, he also wrote: “A patriot is one whose ruling passion is the love of his country. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there’s no enemy; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is himself terrified.”

I quote Johnson’s pronouncements to try to locate patriotism in the South African context — it is such a wide subject and it is not easy to get one’s arms around it.

What does it mean to be a patriot in the new South Africa? What does it take to be a good (or bad) patriot? What are the measurements, the obligations, the duties and responsibilities? These are some of the questions we should be grappling with.

If patriotism is about love of one’s country it means, by extension, warmth and affection for its people. For without people, a country is not worth its name — it is just a wide expanse of earth with no particular significance.

One would think that a true patriot in the South African context should be somebody who wholeheartedly loved and embraced all its people without any distinction or discrimination, be it on the grounds of race, class or sexual orientation. That may be a big ask for some. But who said being a South African would be easy? Oftentimes people express love of country while they show nothing but contempt or hatred for its people, or some of them anyway.

And judging by our pathologies, it would seem very little patriotism, if any, reigns in this country. Patriots evidently wouldn’t steal from each other, or kill one another. South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. It’s no different from a war zone. Homicide is a big cause of death, especially among males. And we spend a fair amount of our income building walls and converting our homes into prisons, to stop other patriots from stealing from us and even killing us.

Our politicians wouldn’t lie, loot or breach the constitution if they regarded themselves as patriotic or took the concept seriously.

Obviously patriotism doesn’t imply something akin to a little nirvana on earth. Such a country doesn’t exist. But it suggests people who live in the same country and call it their home should at least show a degree of tolerance and understanding towards one another.

Sometimes we view other people either as enemies or the source of our problems. We often think we would get on nicely with our lives if only we were left alone. But to be a citizen of a country is like being joined at the hip with complete strangers. You can’t get by on your own. You have to do your bit, whoever you are and wherever you are, to create a tolerable society.

One often wonders why some South Africans, for instance, are filled with love for complete strangers from Europe or other parts of Africa — which is a good thing — but at the same time show an aversion for some of their compatriots who happen to be of a different colour.

Perhaps South Africans on the whole are still struggling with the notion of identity. We’ve been rudderless for a while. Are we one people or a collection of different nationalities who happen to inhabit a single geographic area? And where in the political cosmos do we belong?

Thabo Mbeki, always a keen student of these issues, tried to position South Africa at the centre of Africa. The country almost became a voice for the continent and its diaspora. But there was a backlash, not only from certain sections here at home but from other African countries that regarded South Africa as an upstart trying to claim a leadership role on the continent.

But maybe we should first put our own house in order. After all, charity begins at home.