Nongqause+comparison+shirks+analysis,+Xolela+Mangcu,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 08 June 2006
=‘Nongqause’ comparison shirks analysis of political differences=


 * Xolela Mangcu**

I SUPPOSE that in some ways I subscribe to liberal philosopher John Rawls’ idea of justice as fairness.

Whatever we may individually think of Jacob Zuma’s actions — and I have pronounced on the foolhardiness of those actions — the man still deserves to be treated fairly.

I am just as worried by the media’s mobilisation of elite bias against him as I am by Zuma’s rantings about analysts and commentators. I fear some of our Sunday newspapers have become partisan troopers in the African National Congress (ANC) succession battle.

The latest instalment of this bias came in the form of an article by my distinguished colleague, Achille Mbembe in City Press and the Sunday Times. Mbembe cited Moeletsi Mbeki’s argument that the present crisis of leadership in SA was very similar to the crisis of leadership that led the Xhosas to kill their cattle in 1857. The Xhosa leaders argued that if the Xhosa killed their cattle and burnt their fields, “the dead would rise from the ashes and whites would be swept into the sea”.

Mbembe suggests that Zuma is the modern day Nongqause, the 16-year-old prophetess who spread this suicidal myth. Just like Nongqause’s followers, Zuma’s supporters “are threatening President Thabo Mbeki with God’s wrath”.

I am, however, disturbed by Mbembe’s analysis for a number of reasons. I was present when Moeletsi Mbeki delivered the speech and I could have sworn that the target of his criticism was the government led by his older brother, President Thabo Mbeki. The younger brother listed the litany of problems to suggest this failure of leadership. Fake cures such as garlic and beetroot for HIV/AIDS would be the modern day equivalent of Nongqause’s fake cures. The younger Mbeki also spoke about the problem of 40% unemployment in the country, saying that a ruling party with such a record would have been thrown out of office in any modern western democracy.

What escapes me is how Mbembe could have taken Moeletsi Mbeki’s comments to be a reference to Zuma when there was not even an intimation that he was talking about Zuma.

What is also curious about Mbembe’s article is that he does not once mention Zuma by name, other than to call him umprofeti, which itself seems quite a populist device from such a rational scholar.

Unfortunately, Mbembe builds his argument by appealing to the basest of elite stereotypes, which is a picture of marauding gangs driven more by passion than reason. He paints a picture of Zuma the antimodern, anti-Christ, threatening the cosmopolitan embodiment of modernity, Thabo Mbeki. Through this deployment of historical fiction the individuals and organisations that support Zuma are no longer political agents in a political debate but delusional mobs fitting the description of a millenarian, eschatological movement.

I am not advocating political support for Zuma but simply stating that to dismiss the people mobilising around him as delusional is not only counterproductive but avoids discussion of political differences.

But wait, Mbembe has another seductively attractive proposition to get around this problem of political difference. He suggests that the rational ANC leadership should separate from these delusional mobs.

I actually think some of the most rational analysis of the problems afflicting SA comes from the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party. And given the ANC’s dominance of our political landscape, they provide a useful, internal counterpoint to its rightward shift. The challenge of leadership is not so much to avoid as it is to manage those tensions creatively within the organisation.

I bet that no sooner would the ANC have broken from its leftwing partners than it would have developed other tensions. Would Achille Mbembe then suggest another split? If so, how long would the ANC continue splitting before reaching a point of nothingness?

In the end I am left confused by Mbembe’s article. Was it a deliberate effort to turn attention away from Mbeki to Zuma for the sake of mobilising elite bias against the latter, or could he just not resist the seductiveness of his creativity with Zuma as the central character?

Or did the historical fiction ultimately substitute for political analysis of real political and policy differences?

I think what Moeletsi Mbeki was suggesting, and what Mbembe evades and avoids, is that the problem lies with the whole leadership and not just Zuma. However strongly we may feel about any given subject, it is the duty of public intellectuals to avoid labels and stereotypes, otherwise they become no different from nativist ideologues who silence debate with insults.


 * Dr Mangcu is visiting scholar, Public Intellectual Life Project, Wits University. He is also a nonresident WEB DuBois Fellow at Harvard University.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A212863**

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