Why is the media so pre-occupied with Julius Malema?

Why is the media so pre-occupied with Julius Malema? Why do journalists, including myself, write reams and reams about everything he says? I mean, the man is not a public servant. He does not serve in government. For all intents and purposes, he’s just an ordinary citizen, like you and me. But is he?

One of the reasons the media is so pre-occupied with Malema is his perceived influence in the ANC and especially his relationship with our President. Whether this is true or not is not the issue. It is all about perception.

Much has been made of the fact that Malema could have used his position to the benefit of companies with which he is linked. He could have used his influence to help these companies procure government tenders. This is seen as an unfair advantage.

My point is this: is that not what business is about? You use your connections to get work for your companies. After all, a major part of being in business depends on who and not what you know. If Malema is guilty, is this not what everybody in business is doing in any case?

When BEE first became a reality, many big companies rushed to get people on board who had good connections in government. And this is how people such as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Patrice Motsepe and a handful of others, who did not have a lot of business experience, but had plenty of government connections, suddenly became successful business people and, at the same time, very rich.

So, my question again, is what young Julius is doing, in any way different to what his senior comrades have been doing for years?

Even someone like Mac Maharaj, with his impeccable struggle credentials, was recruited onto the FNB board. Was it because of his business acumen? No, it was because he was seen to be politically connected to the correct people.

This is the ugly side of the relationship between government and business. Business realises that government is one of the biggest, if not the biggest dispenser, of major contracts and that is why it is necessary to be close to government if you’re in business.

So, if Malema can help them boost their sales, etc, then business will be interested in him.

So, my point is that if Malema is guilty of abusing his position, then so should those business people associated with him and those government officials who give work to companies linked to him. Just a thought.

I'm ashamed to be part of the media

There have been times when I have been ashamed to be part of the media industry: this week was one of those.

The role that the media played in the virtual destruction of a poor family’s life in the Western Cape this week cannot be overlooked.

Before he became the focus of media attention in the mistaken belief that he had won R91 million in the national lottery’s Powerball competition last Friday, Stanley Philander lived a quiet life in the backyard of a relative’s home in Parkwood, Cape Town. Like so many other Cape Flats families, Philander lives in a Wendy house at the back of relative’s property.

On Sunday, a tabloid ran an interview with the deaf man who works as a cleaner at a Wynberg store, complete with a picture identifying him as the person who had won R91 million. Within hours of the newspaper hitting the newsstands, Philander and his wife had to go into hiding.

I could not believe when I heard on radio how the presenter identified Philander as the winner. Later I could not believe when I saw his picture in a newspaper.
I recalled one of the first stories I did as a young reporter: it dealt with a man from Elsies River who had won a huge jackpot and had to go into hiding as relatives he never knew suddenly came out of the woodwork and everybody else wanted to get their hands on his money.

Two days later, it has been learnt that though Philander had the correct numbers, he had the wrong date on his ticket. Instead of Friday’s date (February 12), his ticket was dated February 16.

One of the basic rules of journalism is that you need to verify information before you publish anything. Clearly, the person who wrote the original story did not verify that the information was correct before deciding to publish. Surely, the reporter should have asked to have a look at the ticket?

In this case, I don’t only blame the reporter and photographer. I also blame the editors who must have salivated at the thought of publishing this “exclusive” story.

The fact that all the other media followed their lead shows the “hunting in packs” mentality that has gripped the media in this country. Just because one media outlet says something, everybody else believes it to be true.

To their credit, the Cape Argus decided to inspect the “winning” ticket, but only a day after they already carried a front-page article on the “lotto winner”.

Now that their “scoop” has been proven to be untrue, it will be interesting to see if anyone in the media industry will take responsibility for their actions. Will anybody apologise to the family for invading their privacy and effectively destroying their lives?

I think not. We are not known to take responsibility for our actions in an industry where we thrive on trying to make sure that everybody else accounts for their actions. Somebody in the media industry owes Mr Philander and his family a huge apology.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site on 16 February 2010)

Lessons from India

Before I went to India, I was warned that it could potentially have a life-changing impact on me. And it did.

Days after I returned from Mount Abu, via Ahmadabad, Mumbai, Doha, Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg, I am still struggling to get to grips with what I had experienced and how it has changed my life, I think, forever.

I went to India to attend the Call of the Time Dialogue, an initiative of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. It was held at Abudhan, the headquarters of the Brahma Kumaris, and a beautiful and peaceful campus called Gyan Sarovar high up in the mountains.

It was an amazing experience with people from about 26 countries, all grappling with how we can turn the world into a better place for all.

All of us who attended were asked to practise a vegetarian and non-alcoholic diet for a week or so before the dialogue, something I admit I only practised a few days before I left for India.

Since leaving India, I have stuck to the diet and intend to stick to it.

It is not based on anything spiritual, which was the nature of the dialogue, or suddenly being an animal lover. It has more to do with the fact that I saw so much poverty in India, yet people get by and even share what little they have.

I realised too that one does not have to kill animals to sustain humanity. The Indians, the world’s most populous nation, sustains almost all their people on simply vegetables.

I want to see how long I will be able to sustain myself on a vegetarian diet.

I was also moved by how the Indians, despite their poverty, display so much pride in what they do. I hardly saw anyone beg, apart from one or two street children, but the majority of Indians would rather try to sell you something than beg.

It’s difficult not to use stereotypes, but many of the Indians with whom I interacted seemed to be natural sellers or bargainers.

Most of the shopkeepers followed a routine. As you walk past their shop, they invite you in, ask you to sit down and offer you something to drink. Then, in case you’re in a shop where they sell linen or cotton, the shopkeeper would unroll and unveil one after the other piece of material, in an attempt to get you to buy something.

I’m a softie, so it was easy to convince me to buy. I felt guilty that this man had shown so much hospitality and determination that I ended up buying much more than I intended.

I also could not resist having him make me a suit, which he promised to deliver within 48 hours and did within 72.

One day, I was walking with two colleagues and we were stopped in an alleyway by a shopkeeper who I had met a few days before. He asked us to come into his shop because he had some “new things” to show us.

My colleague asked him for something specific, which he clearly did not have but he said he did. He asked us to wait and disappeared, leaving three strangers all alone in his shop. He came back a short while later with the required item, and more.

We realised afterwards that, while it was strange and trusting that he left us alone in his shop, we had met him outside in the alleyway and his shop had been standing open and empty at that point.

So much poverty, I thought, but poor people in India do not appear to be taking advantage of other people’s honesty. If this had been South Africa, I thought, the shopkeeper would never have been able to leave his shop open and alone. He would have had to lock it every time he wanted to go anywhere.

As I walked through one of the villages in Mount Abu, I realised that I never felt threatened by anyone, despite all the poverty. And yet, in South Africa, some of us blame the high levels of crime on poverty. There must be another reason for all the crime and violence in South Africa, I found myself thinking.

India is chaotic and disorderly at times, but somehow things seem to work. There are some places, however, where the chaos is overwhelming. One such place is Mumbai Airport.

From the minute we landed at Mumbai, I knew that we were in for a special, if not pleasant experience.

First, we had to wait inside the plane for about 15 minutes after we landed because there were no stairs and when they arrived, they were faulty. Once we got outside, there were only two small buses to take a planeload of passengers. Once the two buses had left, the rest of us had to wait another ten minutes for more.

Inside the airport, the chaos continued. As far as we could see, there were no clear signs indicating where you had to go.

A colleague and I were looking for international departures and were told it was upstairs, but we could not find a lift or stairs. We finally found a lift in a passage and when we got out on the top floor, there were two doors, one, guarded by a policeman, let to the outside. The other was marked “staff access only”. We asked the policemen where we could find international departures and he pointed us through the “staff access” door.

What greeted us on the other side was more chaos, with almost no seating for people before going through immigration. Only on the other side were there proper restaurants and sitting places.

I had arrived at Mumbai at about 10.30pm and had to wait for a connecting flight to Doha until 5am the following morning.

When we finally boarded our flight, on time, we had to wait about 50 minutes for a vehicle to push the plane out of the parking bay. As a result, I missed my connecting flight from Doha to Cape Town and had to reroute via Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg, arriving home about six hours later than planned. In the process, I lost my luggage but I am not going to complain about that.

I think the time I spent at the dialogue, where I learnt a lot about patience and thinking positive thoughts, helped me deal with the chaos at Mumbai Airport and the rerouting of my flight.

I believe that, if ordinary Indians can deal with their many problems without resorting to violence or anger, then why should I get angry about things over which I had no control in any case.

People who know me well know that I can sometimes have a short fuse, so if I stick to this lesson from India, it will have changed my life profoundly.

So, will I go back to India? The answer is definitely yes. There is so much more to see and, who knows, the next experience might be much more pleasant than this one.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site in November 2009)

South Africa's new shame

South Africa, the country that was outcast by the international community for so many years because of its apartheid policies, has a new shame.

It is called xenophobia and this time it is not white people who are oppressing, displacing and killing blacks. It is black killing black. The only crime of the victims is that they are not originally from South Africa, but from other African countries.

A mere 14 years after South Africa ended its race-based policies, in terms of which the white minority dominated the black majority, black South Africans have been going on the rampage, killing close to 50 immigrants from other African countries and displacing thousands.

The violence, which started in South Africa’s richest province, Gauteng, quickly spread to other parts of the country this week.

Some victims have been burnt in the way alleged police informers were burnt in the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s. Scenes reminiscent of those years, when protesters brandishing all kinds of weapons confronted police in the streets, were played out in South Africa this week.

As far as we know, no Ghanaians have been victims of the violence in South Africa, but it seems like no immigrants from other African countries are safe in South Africa today.

Today they could be targeting Zimbabweans, Nigerians or Somalis. Tomorrow they could be targeting Ghanaians.

One prominent politician said it was “brother fighting against brother” in South Africa at the moment.

The irony is that many of the people who are being targeted moved to South Africa in search of a better life because of poverty or conflicts in their country, as is the case with Zimbabweans. Others merely wanted to join in the benefits that came from a liberated South Africa, which has one of the strongest economies in Africa.

Another irony is that, in the dark days of apartheid, when South Africa’s liberation movement fought a violent battle against the apartheid regime, many other African countries hosted the anti-apartheid freedom fighters.

The people from some of those countries, who are now in need of solidarity themselves, are being met by machete-wielding hordes who are chasing them out of the country, back to an uncertain future. That is if they are lucky to escape with their lives.

An even starker irony is that today (Sunday 25 May) the continent celebrates Africa Day or African Union Day, which is meant to celebrate what it means to be an African and the unity of Africans. The events in South Africa this week have soured these celebrations.

There have been all kinds of explanations offered by experts for what has been happening in South Africa. Ultimately, it comes down to South Africa’s black majority, who have been oppressed and exploited for so long, feeling that immigrants from other African countries are taking away their hard-earned economic gains.

This is, of course, not true as many African immigrants are in fact, through creating businesses, helping with job-creation in this country where the unemployment rate is as high as 50 percent in some areas.

No matter what the explanation, no one can forgive the wanton killing of innocent people who are merely trying to improve themselves and their families.

But as not all white South Africans were bad during the days of apartheid, not all black South Africans are bad today. There are many South Africans of all colours who are disgusted by the actions of their fellow citizens.

These people have been making their voices heard in protests throughout the country this week, but have also been helping at centres where displaced refugees find themselves.

The situation in South Africa today indicates the need for more education about what it means to be an African; about the need for tolerance and the need for all of us to live in harmony on this troubled yet beautiful continent.

We should allow a repeat of the violent attacks in South Africa, not anywhere on the continent. Events such as what happened in South Africa this week only serve to give our entire continent a bad name.

(First published in Sunday World in Accra, Ghana, where I was consulting editor in 2008)

Make Africa Day a public holiday

It is Monday 26 May 2008 in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and it is a public holiday. Yesterday was Africa Day, a day that still goes relatively unrecognised in South Africa, and because it was Sunday, the Monday becomes a holiday.

The streets are noticeably less busy, the market is relatively quieter.

Maybe that is one of the problems with South Africa, I find myself thinking, that we don’t see ourselves as part of the African continent and we don’t even see the need to celebrate Africa Day.

Maybe therein lays the opportunity to deal with the wave of xenophobia that has gripped our nation.

Maybe we should make Africa Day a public holiday in South Africa. Maybe then we would be able to focus on its significance. Maybe we could then use the opportunity to start a discussion about what it means to be an African and the need for unity across the African continent.

Maybe we will then be able to deal with the arrogance displayed by so many South Africans who believe that we are better than our brothers and sisters elsewhere on the continent.

Like so many other South Africans, I have been searching, albeit from afar, for reasons behind the xenophobia that erupted this week. I have also been thinking about how one avoids this happening again.

Unlike most of my colleagues in the media, I was not surprised by the attacks. Shocked yes, but not surprised. If one looks at how black South Africans have been fighting for such a small piece of South Africa’s economic pie and how they have even been trying to exclude fellow black South Africans from access to this economic pie, then I am not surprised.

If we feel that certain South African groups should not benefit from our economy, then why should we agree that foreigners should benefit.

So I have been shocked by the manner of the attacks and its violent nature. I was not surprised that the attacks happened at all.

I found myself asking why we are such a violent nation. I tried to link this to poverty, but as a Ghanaian journalist pointed out to me last week: “We have more poverty in Ghana, but we do not have as much crime.”

I then found myself blaming apartheid and the way it dehumanised our people, not only the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime and its foot soldiers, but also the atrocities committed in the name of the liberation struggle.

It is probably easier to kill somebody if you tell yourself that you are not killing a human being; you are killing something below a human being.

This brings me back to Africa Day and the need for us to celebrate it as South Africans.

For so many years, we were not part of Africa. Most African countries knowingly and willingly excommunicated the white apartheid regime, and with good reason.

We have only really being made to feel part of Africa for the past 14 years, since we became a democracy.

You still find South Africans would rather travel to Europe or the United States, but not to other African countries. Yes, there is poverty in Africa, but there is also incredible beauty. It is time for South Africans to open up their eyes to the beauty on the continent.

We should actively celebrate Africa Day and being part of Africa. If it requires that our government should decree a public holiday to celebrate Africa, then I would support it.

The message it would send to the rest of the continent is that we are serious about taking our rightful place on the continent. We are serious about being Africans.

Maybe by doing that, we would then be able to start addressing the issues that led to the xenophobia of the past week or so.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site in May 2008)

All of us are racists

Race is not a subject that South Africans talk about easily and readily, and I think that this particularly the case with white South Africans.

The other day I was presenting a lecture on race at what used to be known as Pentech but now is known as the Bellville campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Most of the students in class were generically black, with only three white students in class.

We had what I thought was a good discussion, but I noticed that the white students did not say anything.

Afterwards I was walking to my car and the white students walked in front of me, unaware that I was behind them. One of the white students, a young woman, said to her friends: “I am sick and tired of race. I am sick and tired of people complaining about race. I have also been discriminated against, but you don’t find me complaining.”

I wished that she had said those words in class and then we could have addressed her concerns.

However, she was doing what most of us do in South Africa today: we only speak our minds to people who look like us. As soon as somebody who looks a little bit different joins the conversation, then we change the subject or we review, in our minds, what we want to say.

I have a simple policy: I do not believe in saying behind your back what I will not say in front of you. This means that if I have something uncomfortable to say about you, I would much rather say it to you then behind your back.

Of course, most people are not like that. They harbour feelings about people who are different to them and never let those people know how they really feel.

This is probably why we have not properly dealt with the issues of race and racism in this country. We are too scared to tell each other how we really feel about each other.

When I started writing my book, Race, I thought about the approach that I would use and I realised that if I wanted be effective in dealing with the issues of race and racism, then I would have to deal with the fact that all of us are racists.

But I would not be able to call other people racist without admitting to my own racism. So I start off the book with an admission of guilt, so to say. In the introduction, I say that I am a racist and that most South Africans are probably racists. I then outline how our racist history has groomed all of us to become racists.

It is a long introduction and the following is just a small excerpt:

But if I am a racist, I am not a passive acceptor of my racism. I am prepared to admit to my racism and I am doing my best to fight against it. Like the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe that it is important to admit to one’s faults, in this case racism, before one starts to deal with them.

Failure to admit to one’s faults will mean that one will probably die with those faults.

The difference between me and the people who are not prepared to admit to their racism is that I will probably overcome my racism at some point in my life. The people who are not prepared to admit their racism will probably remain racists until the day they die.

I realised that I had to take this step, make this confession, to create a comfort zone for people to begin a conversation about race and, in some ways, to reclaim the term “racist”, a term that has too often been used as an intimidating, threatening and abusive weapon.

You cannot have a conversation if one party is threatening and intimidating the other. However, you can have a conversation if both parties are prepared to admit to some faults.

I saw how effective this approach could be in my interactions, particularly with white people. Whenever I have admitted to my racism, they have also been prepared to admit to theirs. And then we were able to have a conversation about why we were all racists.

At a Centre for Conflict Resolution event in Cape Town the other day, one of the members of the audience asked me why I thought it necessary to create a safe space for whites to engage in this debate, bearing in mind that whites have oppressed us blacks and benefited so much from apartheid.

I agreed that whites have benefited from apartheid and were the oppressors under apartheid, but we cannot have a discussion about race in post-apartheid South Africa and exclude whites from this conversation.

And I believe that whites will not join this conversation unless we create a safe environment for them to join in.

If we continue to accuse and intimidate them, because of their racist past, then they will just retreat into their laager and sulk.

In the locker room of the gym the other day, I heard two young white men talking about BEE and lamenting the proposed exclusion of white women from disadvantaged groups under employment-equity targets. The one said: “I am just going to stay in South Africa until 2010, make as much money as possible and then leave. I can’t continue to live in this country.”

I decided not to confront them in the gym locker room, but this is precisely why we need to talk.

There are too many misperceptions out there, not only among white people, and those misperceptions will continue to influence the way we interact with each other.

If we don’t deal with it now, race will continue to haunt our society for many generations to come. And what better way to start the conversation by admitting that all of us are racists?

(This first appeared on the Mail and Guardian Thoughtleader site in October 2007)

Omar's death, burial evoke contradictions

WHAT happens when a humble man dies? What happens when that man was a cabinet minister in South Africa? What happens if that man was a Muslim?

This was the dilemma faced by the organisers of the funeral of Transport Minister and former justice minister Abdullah Mohammed Omar, who died at a Constantia clinic just after 4 o'clock yesterday morning.

Muslim custom dictates that a person should be buried by sunset on the day of his death, unless he dies too late into the day.

This posed all kinds of problems for people who felt that Omar deserved to have a proper funeral; and for others who felt that, because he was a cabinet minister, he deserved a state funeral.

Within three hours of his death, at 7 am, a hastily put together committee was ready to release details of Omar's funeral. There would be a final greeting at his home in Rylands Estate, as is customary in Muslim culture, followed by a public service at the Vygieskraal Stadium, about 1km from Omar's house.

Ebrahim Rasool, the ANC leader in the Western Cape and the "programme director" at the funeral, explained that this was no ordinary funeral.

"Comrade Dullah was a Muslim, so we are following all the procedures according to the Shariah (Muslim customary law). But Dullah was also a leader of the people and needs to be buried in a proper way. However, Dullah also told us before he died that he wanted to be buried in a humble way. He did not want any pomp and ceremony.

"This is why," Rasool said, "we have walked all the way from the house and Dullah will be buried in a kafaan (Muslim coffin), as any other Muslim would be buried."

Rasool pointed out that President Thabo Mbeki had also walked the distance from Omar's house to the stadium.

Mbeki and his deputy, Jacob Zuma, were at the head of the pallbearers carrying the bier into the stadium.

The tension between the three Dullah Omars (the statesman, the Muslim and the humble person) was felt as the coffin entered the stadium. It is customary for Muslims to share the load and many people had to be prevented from joining in the carrying because the president, his deputy and a host of cabinet ministers were carrying at the time.

In Muslim culture there is no such thing as official pallbearers; all able-bodied men assist in carrying the bier.

There were other tensions. For instance, there were two marquees for very important people. With Muslim funerals there is not normally a VIP tent. Also, because it is customary at Muslim funerals for men and women to be separated, the male and female VIPs had to sit in separate marquees.

But despite these tensions, the funeral was a special occasion with the correct blend of "pomp and ceremony" and humility as requested by Dullah Omar.

Apart from the president, his deputy and almost the entire cabinet, just about anybody who was anybody in South African politics was there, including former president Nelson Mandela, a few of the premiers from all over South Africa, members of parliament, members of provincial legislatures and MECs.

Albertina Sisulu got an honourable mention from ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, as did former ANC Women's League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Among those not mentioned and who were not in the VIP area were former ANC Western Cape leader and disgraced cleric Allan Boesak and former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni.

Rivonia trialists Ahmed Kathrada and Andrew Mlangeni were among the many dignitaries at the funeral.

As is expected at a funeral of this nature, many promises were made. Among these were that "we will not let Comrade Dullah's memory die" (Motlanthe), and "we commit ourselves never to do anything of which he would be ashamed" (Mbeki).

The funeral went some way towards meeting both those promises.

It was a fitting tribute to a man who carried on living in his own house despite becoming a cabinet minister and who, in Mbeki's words, "never sought to appear in television or the newspapers". 

(First published in City Press on Sunday 14 March 2004)