Played for a fool by foreigners who saw our weak spots, we parrot their race-baiting insults
Whether it’s because of an inferiority complex or the lack of internal consensus among ourselves on critical issues affecting the country — it’s difficult to put a finger on it — South Africans often seem keen to give more weight to the views of foreigners than to our own judgment. Sometimes we live to regret it.
If you want to sell something good or bad to a South African audience, get somebody to bark it from London or Washington. The message seems more credible when it emanates from such exotic places.
Woza Albert!, the political satire fronted by the brilliant duo of Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema that imagines the second coming of Christ at the height of apartheid, decades ago played in front of a sparse audience at the Market Theatre. Then it went to Edinburgh and London, where it received rave reviews from the British press. On its return to the Market, one could hardly get a seat. Everybody wanted to be in on the act, so to speak. It had received international validation; it therefore must be good.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo soldiered on for years in the obscure halls and villages of KwaZulu-Natal, singing isicathamiya or ngomabusuku, a type of music that urbanised black folk didn’t care for. That is, until they were “discovered” by Paul Simon. Now we’re oh so proud of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and celebrate and savour every one of their achievements like they’re our own. It took a foreigner to make us treasure that which is ours.
Even apartheid and its apologists craved international, particularly Western, acceptance. The system survived for so long because the Nats knew they had friends in Western capitals who, although disapproving of the crude aspects of the system, were keen to keep it in place as a bulwark against communism. The Info Scandal, which ultimately brought down prime minister John Vorster, showed the government was prepared to go to any length to curry favour with international public opinion. It was only when the anti-communism gig reached its sell-by date with the collapse of the Soviet Union that the West pulled the rug from under apartheid’s feet.
No wonder, therefore, that perhaps the biggest ruination in the new SA was caused by foreigners — our beloved Gupta family. This is not to suggest things were going swimmingly before their arrival, or that they could have caused such devastation on their own — they had a willing lickspittle in no less a powerful figure than the president of the country — but the fact that they could walk in and insert themselves in the country’s power structure, thus enriching themselves beyond words, is simply stunning. Our jaws are still on the floor.
They came unannounced and empty-handed. They left involuntarily in a blaze of publicity on board their own jet probably brimming with the country’s treasures. A few weeks ago, they bankrolled a multimillion-rand wedding in their native India. Our money is being put to good use. Here at home schoolchildren are drowning in pit latrines.
But if all the Guptas did was hollow out our institutions and burgle our National Treasury, perhaps we could live with that. Money can always be recovered. But they did more than that. To sow utter confusion and to cover their tracks, they poisoned the well. It will take a while to repair the damage they’ve caused to our national discourse or, more importantly, to the fabric of our society.
Again, they seemed to have accurately read the South African psyche. To achieve their odious goal of setting up South Africans against each other, they turned to Bell Pottinger, a foreign entity.
The PR company immediately went to work, delving into the country’s soft underbelly: race. And it came out with gems such as “white monopoly capital”, “radical economic transformation”, “Stellenbosch mafia” and many other insults that had begun to sink and disappear into the sands of time. That toxic sludge was prepared and dispatched to Jacob Zuma’s acolytes — the ANC, the youth league, the women’s league, Kebby Maphatsoe’s MK veterans and prominent individuals in the party who are now against Cyril Ramaphosa. Their mandate was to spew the bile, racist and unvarnished.
French filmmaker Pascale Lamche also unwittingly contributed to the toxicity of our discourse. She produced a documentary on how the Special Branch tried to destroy Winnie Madikizela-Mandela by planting false stories about her in the media. One of the officers in charge of covert strategic communication, or
Stratcom, was quoted as saying that at one time he had about 40 journalists working under him. He didn’t mention their names. Now any journalist who writes anything the unthinking mob mildly disapproves of is labelled Stratcom.
White monopoly capital, radical economic transformation, Stratcom and many other such insults are now part of the ever-expanding glossary of the looters and their apologists — a potent arsenal in their fightback campaign. And they don’t care about the consequences of their actions. In the words of Nomvula Mokonyane, “if the rand falls, we will pick it up”. A society that took years and many sacrifices to knit together — 1994 was the gratifying culmination of that project — was unravelled in one fell swoop.
Bell Pottinger is no more, but in a sense, it is ruling from the grave. That is perhaps the Guptas’ abiding legacy to this country. The view from the skyscrapers of Dubai must be enthralling indeed.