Mind your undiplomatic language
October 27 2013 at 10:44am
By Prince Mashele and Obed Bapela Comment on this story
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You are here: IOL / SundayIndependent / Mind your undiplomatic language
REUTERS
President Jacob Zuma and Malawi President Joyce
Banda. Photo: Reuters
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To Zuma, Malawi represents the worst of Africa and a city
named after a white man the best of what is un-African,
writes Prince Mashele.
In his memoir You Must Set Forth At Dawn, Nigerian author
Wole Soyinka alludes in melancholy vein to “the stressful
bane of the mere act of critical thought within a society
where power and control remain the playthings of imbeciles,
sycophants and predators”.
When we suggested previously that Jacob Zuma was a
ruralitarian whose unrefined mind posed dangers to our nation, some people
protested.
Last Monday at Wits University, Zuma said: “We can’t think like Africans in
Africa. It’s not some
national road in Malawi. This is Johannesburg.” This was a clumsy attempt to
persuade the people of
Gauteng to pay for e-tolls.
Among the blacks who were in that academic hall at Wits, there certainly must
have been African
students from outside South Africa.
These students were told by a black president, who himself spent decades
enjoying the hospitality of
African countries during apartheid, that their countries were inferior.
During apartheid, whites used to regard South Africa as a European outpost on a
dark continent, a
white island of civilisation in a vast ocean of African barbarism.
In Zuma’s mind, Malawi represents the worst of African backwardness, and the
city named after a
white man, Johannesburg, represents the best of what is un-African.
This is precisely what successive white racist regimes in South Africa wanted
blacks to think.
In other words, Zuma is a living example of the success of the occident in
colonising the minds of the
African people.
As Steve Biko aptly observed: “The traditional inferior-superior black-white
complexes are deliberate
creations of the colonialists.”
There is thus a sense in which we must feel sorry that Zuma’s mind is what it
is; his is an
unconscious display of the successes of the white man’s art in mental
engineering.
But we must dig deeper to understand the fuller meaning of Zuma’s statement at
Wits University, that
we must not “think like Africans in Africa”.
Given that he is a president, it is impossible not to call to mind the
diplomatic implications of Zuma
despising the African condition.
Even long before the next AU summit, some among our ambassadors on the African
continent will
probably be summoned to explain precisely what Zuma meant by saying, “It’s not
some national road
in Malawi”.
Other African heads of state are not stupid, they will not buy the “quoted out
of context” mantra of The
Presidency, a phrase taken seriously by only Mac Maharaj.
Whatever our ambassadors may say, they will not succeed in reversing the extent
to which Zuma has
dented the image of South Africa.
We must not forget that, in 2008, we witnessed a dangerous wave of xenophobic
attacks perpetrated
by black South Africans.
To the victims of this dark chapter of our recent history, Zuma’s use of Malawi
to ridicule Africa can
only reopen the wounds of xenophobia that were yet to heal. These Africans must
be wondering:
what has happened to the African renaissance?
As Zuma limps from one verbal blunder to another, the Africans he despises are
reminded of the
political drama of Idi Amin, that fool who once said: “Sometimes people mistake
the way I talk for
what I am thinking.
“I never had any formal education – not even a nursery school certificate.”
Beyond Africa, Western leaders can only smile wryly, revelling in the spectacle
of a black president
who thinks Johannesburg is not an African city.
This brings us back home, to ponder the identity confusion twirling in Zuma’s
head.
When he looks upon the black people of South Africa, what does Zuma see? Black
Europeans? People
who must not think like Africans in Africa?
What of the leopard skins Zuma wears occasionally when he marries yet another
wife? Is it the case of
a European lion wearing an African skin?
What about Zuma’s frequent recourse to African culture in defence of polygamy?
Is this a mere trick in the book of someone who wants to be like King Solomon,
that sordid king in the
Bible who had 700 wives and 300 concubines?
All these questions are thrown open by Zuma’s call for South Africans not to
think like Africans in
Africa.
He clearly does not think of himself as an African. If he does, he most
certainly does not conceive of
himself as being from Africa.
Where exactly does Zuma think South Africa is? Does he have any idea of basic
geography?
Are we suffering the consequences of a lack of formal education, or the absence
of a nursery school
certificate?
When Kenyan literary giant Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote his book, Decolonising the
Mind, few would have
counted Zuma among those whose minds needed decolonisation. We now know.
The tragedy, though, is that Zuma is older than 70; the chances of him learning
anything new are
extremely limited, especially regarding the more sophisticated matters of
identity.
The question is: what must South Africans do? Should we listen to Zuma, and not
think like Africans?
Well, Mr President, it is impossible for us not to think like Africans – we are
Africans.
The dazzling lights of Johannesburg will never change the reality that
geography and history tied our
fates inextricably with the lot of other African countries.
South Africa is as much an African country as is Malawi. Johannesburg is as
developed as it is, not
because white colonialists wanted Zuma to enjoy smooth roads; the modern
amenities of the city
were meant for the exclusive enjoyment of whites.
Mr President, you may not have the opportunity to know that, under white rule,
the white citizens of
Johannesburg were never made to pay for the use of well-tarred roads. Today,
the so-called free
people of South Africa are forced to pay for e-tolls.
What, then, must be done?
The best thing South Africans can do is not to ignore Zuma; they must teach him
the history and
geography of this continent.
Part of the free historical lesson to be delivered to Zuma is that the people
of Malawi, the ones he is
insulting, toiled underground, day and night, in the mines of Johannesburg,
building the very city that
Zuma today feels proud to own.
There is hardly a country in southern Africa whose citizens did not build
Johannesburg.
And by the way, the e-tolls that Zuma is forcing us to pay will also affect the
Malawians he thinks
have nothing to do with e-tolls.
Beyond just educating him, the people of South Africa must tell the whole world
that Zuma does not
reflect us. His limitations are not ours. Black people in South Africa are not
like Zuma.
If we do not disown Zuma, the black people of South Africa run the risk of
being painted with the same
brush, as a bunch of ignorant people who do not know where Africa begins and
ends.
If the African people of South Africa were to be identified with the way Zuma
thinks, the collective pride
of the nation would be shattered beyond repair.
This is a situation we cannot afford as Africans, living in Johannesburg or
Lilongwe.
Soyinka was indeed correct: critical thought cannot stand the pain of
imbecility when it is in power –
be it in Nigeria or the rest of the African continent.
*Mashele is executive director of the Centre for Politics and Research and a
member of the Midrand
Group
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