Republican win part of the movement to the right

It is easy to be shocked by Donald Trump’s victory in the American elections, but it was probably something that should have been easy to predict, writes Ryland Fisher.

It is easy to be shocked by Donald Trump’s victory in the American elections, but it was probably something that should have been easy to predict. There seems to have been a pattern over the past few decades where the Republicans occupy the White House for two terms (eight years) followed by the Democrats for two terms.

Bill Clinton (Democrat) served from 1993 to 2001, George W Bush (Republican) from 2001 to 2009 and Barack Obama (Democrat) from 2009 to 2016.

If all goes according to script, the Democrats should win again in eight years, even though that might be too late because much damage can be done in eight years.

There is, of course, the possibility that Trump might not stand for a second term because of his age. He turned 70 on June 14. If Trump does not stand, it would give the Democrats an opportunity to try to reclaim the White House earlier - it is exceedingly difficult to unseat a sitting president in the US.

 

There are some people who wonder why we should be concerned about American politics. The reason is that the US remains the most powerful nation in the world and if they cough, we often catch a cold.

But there are also disturbing trends that could be applied to the South African political scenario.

The first matter for concern is that there seems to be a trend for the world to become more conservative. We have seen this with the Brexit vote, when Britons voted to leave the EU as a way of trying to keep immigrants out of their country.

Trump’s unexpected victory could be seen as a continuation of what happened in Britain and what is happening in other parts of Europe where people are turning on people perceived to be immigrants.

After all, his campaign was built on keeping people seen as ”others” out of America. He appealed to working class white people who felt their jobs were under threat because of immigrants.

South Africa is no different. We have seen xenophobic violence based on the desire to keep out people perceived to be ”others”.

We have also seen how people have interpreted employment equity legislation and black economic empowerment in narrow terms to deprive others of employment or economic opportunities.

A few years ago, when I was conducting interviews for my book Race, I spoke to Carel Boshoff, one of the founders of Orania, and he said they were doing in Orania what most people were doing in South Africa anyway: wanting to live and work with people who look and sound like them.

I never understood or agreed with what he said, but there is some merit. Most people feel comfortable with people who look and sound like them. Those who interact with people across racial and cultural boundaries are very much in the minority.

This could be an explanation for what is happening throughout the world where many people seem to be retreating into the laager. Part of this is economic - including holding on to jobs - but it could also be cultural.

Please note that I am not trying to make excuses; I am merely trying to understand what is going on.

Another parallel between the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory is how surprised pollsters and experts were by the results. Until Trump won the required 270 electoral college votes needed to become president, most experts were still hoping his opponent, Hillary Clinton, could stage a late fightback.

What this probably shows is that pollsters and experts often construct theories based on what they would like an outcome to be.

In South Africa, experts have written off the ANC many times and, while the ANC lost a few major metros in the last municipal election, it is probably still too soon to predict the end of South Africa’s oldest political organisation.

I believe that, despite its internal turmoil, the ANC can probably still win the next general election, even if with a reduced majority.

The only people who can determine the outcome of elections is the electorate and, quite often, experts and pollsters are out of touch with them. In a country such as South Africa, where most potential voters are poor and do not have access to basic services or technology, it is difficult to determine how they will vote. Pollsters in South Africa probably don’t reach the rural poor who form a significant part of our electorate.

If there is one positive to come out of Trump’s victory, it is that progressive people throughout the world must realise how difficult it is to convince people to be accepting of others and how difficult it is to make people live in harmony.

The task of creating a socially cohesive society is never-ending. We cannot just talk about living in harmony; we need to do it.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in Weekend Argus on Saturday 12 November 2016)

It's very simple: once an activist, always an activist

I sometimes jokingly refer to myself and others from my generation as “expired activists”. The reason for this is that many of us decided after the ANC was unbanned and Nelson Mandela released in 1990 that it was time for us to step aside, to raise our families, pursue our careers and generally just catch up with all the stuff that we missed out on during the years we were engaged in Struggle.

This week, as I watched the protests in Pretoria against state capture and in support of our Finance Minister who had earlier been accused of fraud, I could not help thinking about whether the “expired activist” tag was appropriate.

I’ve realised that, while I might want to expire myself as an activist, I doubt that activism would allow me to expire.

As I thought about this, I received a call from an old friend and comrade, Mike Mulligan, who used to be SRC president at the University of the Western Cape more than 30 years ago. Later, we would be involved in civic structures in Mitchells Plain where Mike still lives.

“I’m still in Mitchells Plain and I will remain here,” he said, “I can never turn my back on the townships.”

We had a long conversation about the meaning of activism and concluded that “once an activist, always an activist”.

“The nature of your activism might change, but it is not something that will ever leave your system,” said Mike. He said he had no respect for people who confuse activism with vandalism and destruction.

I found myself agreeing with most of what Mike was saying. One of the main reasons I became a journalist and an activist when I was young was because I wanted to change the world for the better.

Over the years I have realised that, while I am still committed to changing the world, my definition of world has changed. My definition no longer means the whole world. It is often restricted to one or two people because I have realised that if you change one person’s world, they could go on and change other people’s worlds.

My thinking about activism – or rather my own activism – was provoked by one of the students who I have been teaching journalism in Khayelitsha on Mondays. He asked me whether it was possible that people of my generation betrayed the youth of today because we left the Struggle incomplete.

“You thought that democracy meant freedom,” said the young man and this got me thinking.

He is right. We did think that winning the right to vote meant that we were now free. We did not draw the distinction between political freedom and economic freedom. We assumed, wrongly I must admit, that having a democratic government would mean an automatic improvement in the lives of poor people. We never expected that members of our new government would be more interested in lining their own pockets than serving the people.

One of the other mistakes we made was that we thought, because the ANC leadership was returning from exile, that those who had assumed leadership roles in their absence, should step aside. What we failed to realise is that leadership is dynamic and that when leaders are removed or move on, others step into the breach. In many ways, the internal leadership were now our real leaders and, at least, there should have been some compromise around who and how our country, and more specifically the liberation movement, was going to be led.

We should never have allowed the United Democratic Front to shut down because of the huge support it enjoyed among a wide variety of South Africans, something that the ANC has never been able to achieve. In many ways, the UDF could have played the role of bringing people suspicious of the ANC closer to the once-banned organisation.

But the biggest mistake we made was to say that the Struggle was over and we could now focus on living our own lives. This was to be expected, in some ways, because the Struggle had been intense and all of us who had been involved probably needed a break.

What has happened in the past few years, apart from watching the unravelling of our society, is that many of those who stepped aside in the early 1990s have now raised their children, achieved in their careers and made their money. Not everybody, but quite a few.

This means that you now have a whole group of people who have huge political experience, who have free time and who are reasonably well-resourced.

Many of these kinds of people were seen at the protests and at the “People’s Assembly” in Pretoria this week.

Many of those who support the status quo are not in the same position. They still depend on patronage to survive and will not speak out for fear of losing their jobs or whatever government business on which they can lay their hands.

Faced with the injustices still prevalent in post-apartheid South Africa, it is difficult for me to expire my activism. I am forced to continue my commitment to activism but this time my activism is different. It is mainly through my journalism where I hope to raise issues that should concern us as a society and hopefully encourage others to engage with these issues in a way that will contribute positively to the development of our country.

I hope to do this no longer as someone who is committed only to the liberation movement, but instead to the liberation of all South Africans irrespective of which political parties they support.

Once an activist, as Mike Mulligan said, always an activist.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 5 November 2016) 

Leaders need to listen, and act decisively

The #FeesMustFall movement is a manifestation of a broader unhappiness about the direction our country has been taking, writes Ryland Fisher.

When members of Parliament left the Medium Term Budget speech of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Wednesday afternoon, they might have seen the debris in Plein Street, which was the aftermath of clashes between police and students demanding “free, quality, decolonised and Afrocentric education”.

The MPs might also have seen the bricks strewn in the road and they might have noticed a smashed window at a Roeland Street furniture store, the unfortunate victim of an angry crowd. They might have encountered some students who stayed behind after the protests, having managed to avoid the police and blend in with the public.

And surely, they would have noticed the huge police presence outside Parliament - including several armoured vehicles and all manner of firearms - all meant to protect the people inside Parliament from those trying to be heard.

They might also have seen near the entrance to Tuynhuis the rolled up barbed wire, which had earlier been used to block off Parliament from protesters.

As I was walking up Plein Street on Wednesday afternoon, when the action had shifted towards the railway station, I could not help thinking about what happened in the past few months to get us to this point and whether all this could have been prevented by more decisive leadership.

I also thought about what our politicians, the leaders we elected to represent us in Parliament, think about all of this.

Would they be prepared to accept that something has gone wrong in our society? Would they be prepared to admit what has gone wrong? Would they be prepared to accept they might have played a role in fomenting what is happening, if only because they have become completely out of touch with our society and do not have a clue how to address the real (and literally burning issues) in our society? Or would they blame everyone else, a stance which appears to be the norm for South African politicians?

While the politicians and invited guests were sitting inside Parliament, listening to the minister of finance desperately trying to stave off a credit downgrade, and giving him a standing ovation, the students outside were determined to make sure that their issue, free education, remains a serious priority for the government.

It is highly unlikely that those inside Parliament would have heard the commotion outside as students engaged in running battles with the police.

But it is really about whether they are able to listen beyond the noise generated during protests.

What is happening in education is a manifestation of a broader unhappiness about the direction our country has been taking, especially over the past few years.

There is a perception that the political elite are more concerned about lining their own pockets and sorting out their friends and families, at the expense of the majority. This has resulted in disdain for the law and constitution, unless it helps to further the agenda of this political elite, and what has been seen as abuse of compliant state resources while trying to undermine those state institutions where the incumbents are trying to fulfil their constitutional obligations.

I do not support violence, especially not in a constitutional democracy. But what if important voices are not being heard in a democracy? What methods should be used to force those with power to listen?

Our political leaders can no longer pretend it is business as usual in South Africa. We can also not pretend what we are seeing is a sign of a maturing democracy. A maturing democracy is one in which we are able to argue and disagree and then move forward, based on consensus or a majority decision. What we have seen in the past few months, related to the student demands, has been indecision, which has the potential to set back our hard-won democratic gains.

I am glad the students took their protests to Parliament, because that is where the power lies to change their situation, positively or negatively. Vice-chancellors of universities work within budgets and other constraints and cannot reasonably be expected to deliver on free education without serious input from the government and, possibly, the private sector.

Protests need to move off campus, but at the same time the students need to find ways of convincing sceptical members of the public that they remain committed not only to their cause but also to the cause of turning South Africa into the great country we all know it can become.

We need to be able to see their protests within the context of improving our country and not just as another demand for something free, without anyone taking any responsibility to deliver something in return, an approach we are good at in South Africa.

It was interesting that the finance minister, who was excluded by the president from the committee meant to find solutions to the education crisis, was the one who accepted the students’ memorandum. However, we will need more than symbolism to avoid the shutting down of universities, a move which could have devastating effects on the country and the economy.

Let’s see what our leadership can deliver, otherwise I’m afraid what happened outside Parliament on Wednesday will become the norm and our “mature democracy” will descend into chaos from which we might not be able to recover.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 29 October 2016)

Officials should pay for fighting unwinnable cases

I’ve always believed in doing the right thing as opposed to doing the legal thing. I have too often seen the law being used as a way of justifying things that should never have happened and that could have been sorted out by using common sense.

And before I get accused of promoting lawlessness, let me explain by using some examples.

One of the ways in which the government is trying to transform our economy is through using legislation like Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment and the Employment Equity Act. Most companies, in my humble opinion, will do just enough to comply with the legislation, not because they agree with the need to transform our economy, but because they it as hindering their ability to make money. They will hire black people and pay them huge salaries to occupy non-decision-making positions with fancy titles.

More recently we have seen how high-profile individuals, including our President and the one-who-should-not-employed-by-the-SABC, have used the courts in order to challenge legal decisions with which they do not agree. We have also seen how Parliament has interpreted legislation in ways that made them comfortable, even if it went outside the bounds of the law and human decency.

And this week, we have seen how the Finance Minister has been charged with what, on the face of it, looks like a trumped-up charge and one that has no reasonable hope of success. It is clear that the charges against the Finance Minister is part of a campaign to get rid of him.

Government spends billions of rands on legal costs every year. Part of it is for legal advice, but part of it is to pay lawyers and advocates, and mainly Senior Counsel, to defend them in court. It would be interesting to see an analysis of how government’s legal costs are spent and how successful they have been in court.

The reason for this big spending on legal costs, in my opinion, is linked to managers not being able to make decisions to do the right thing. Quite often, it is also about finding lawful ways of doing stuff that should not have been done in the first place.

Ultimately, what we call government, the private sector or civil society consists of people who are all prone to making mistakes. Those in government can probably afford to make bigger mistakes than others because they have more resources to defend themselves in court in the case of mistakes.

So, you will often find people rushing to court and, if their application is turned down, they consider an appeal or an approach to the Constitutional Court, until all their avenues have been exhausted. But often, they know at the beginning already that they have no hope of succeeding and are merely delaying the inevitable.

This, obviously, amounts to wasteful expenditure because it is money spent while suspecting what the outcome would be.

One hope, and this is courtesy of the Public Protector report on Nkandla and the ruling in the SABC8 case, is that so-called public servants will in future be held to account for wasting public resources on flimsy legal cases. The Public Protector of course ruled that the President had to pay personally part of the costs for security upgrades at his Nkandla homestead, while executives and managers at the SABC were ordered to explain why they should not be held liable for legal costs in the SABC8 case.

Before I continue, let me hasten to add that I am no legal expert. My legal knowledge is mainly restricted to an understanding of the law as it impacts on newspaper publishing.

But even with my limited knowledge, I can’t help thinking that there is a potential challenge to be made against the abuse of power displayed by the head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Shaun Abrahams, who appeared to have spent millions of rands on an investigation looking for dirt on the Finance Minister, only to finally charge him with what appears to be a misdemeanour at best or worst, depending on your perspective.

The same Abrahams has also spent millions on court challenges in an attempt not to prosecute the President for corruption charges.

What will happen, I think aloud, if the Finance Minister is found not guilty and the President is found guilty? Will Abrahams be forced to resign? And will he be held personally liable for the millions of public money that he has wasted on pursuing what appears to be a political agenda.

Will Abrahams be personally held liable for the billions of rands lost to the economy because of his pursuit of the Finance Minister? Will he do the right thing and apologise to the nation for the harm that his decisions have caused?

The time has come to draw a line in the sand and to say that the days of using the courts to determine the outcome of political battles and as a tool of incompetent so-called public servants, is over.

Before going to court, those in government (but this could also apply to corporates or civil society) should ask themselves whether what they are trying to pursue is right – in terms of our Constitution and in terms of the greater values of liberation for which so many sacrificed. If the answer is ‘no’, then it is probably not worth pursuing in court.

They should also ask themselves whether, in the event of it not being successful, they would be prepared to pay the legal costs out of their own pockets. Again, if the answer is ‘no’, then they should probably stop immediately.

It is time to start doing the right thing, as oppose to the legal thing. But what do I know; I am not an expert.

(First published in the Weekend Argus as a Thinking Allowed column on Saturday 15 October 2016)

The complete interview with Njongonkulu Ndungane

In the latest installment of Conversations With Ryland Fisher, former Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, reflects on 20 years since becoming bishop, 20 years since becoming Archbishop, 50 years since being released from Robben Island, and the state of the South African nation.

Protesters are fast alienating their support base

In the Twitter generation where #EverythingMustFall, it is probably appropriate to describe our current situation as “It’s complicated” which is one of the options one has when describing one’s relationship status on Facebook.

The education crisis which is currently engulfing our tertiary institutions can be resolved, even though it appears that everyone is shouting past each other and no one is really listening to what everyone else has to say.

It does not help when poorly-trained police and security get involved in trying to defuse what has become an increasingly volatile situation at universities throughout the country, but especially in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

It also does not help when race gets dragged into what is essentially an economic issue and when students appear to be shifting their goalposts and appear to be determined to only go back to classes once their demand for “free, decolonised education” has been met.

The scenes that we saw playing out on campuses the past few weeks has been disconcerting to anyone who wants to see our democracy succeed and lives improve for the majority of South Africans.

As a parent who comes from a working class family and who put three daughters through university, I support the call for free education, even though it is based on my personal situation more than what can realistically be afforded by government.

My daughters did not qualify for student aid or bursaries so we had to do it the hard way, paying tens of thousands of rands every couple of months in order to make sure that they could remain at their chosen educational institution.

There are a couple of things that bother me about the FeesMustFall protests, but I have been struggling to verbalise these for fear of being seen to be reactionary. This is probably the same dilemma faced by students (black and white) who support the call for free education but do not want to lose an academic year.

The main thing that concerns me about FeesMustFall is not where the money is going to come from to pay for free education. Where there is a will there is a way, and government will probably just reprioritise their spending to make it happen, if this is what they decide.

And this is precisely what worries me. South Africa is a complicated country at the best of times and providing free education to university students is but one of our concerns.

While we have (had) some world-class universities in South Africa, our primary and secondary school system leaves much to be desired. I have not seen much of a link between the university students’ demands and education in general.

I also worry about things such as housing and job-creation which, many would argue, should probably be more of a priority than education.

But more than that, when I was introduced to activism as a youngster more than a lifetime ago, I was trained that all our struggles are interlinked and that was why we had to occupy activist positions in student, youth, community, worker, women, sport and religious organisations, among others.

When students protested, their hand was strengthened by the fact that they had the support of workers and community organisations.

I don’t see this happening now and it appears almost as if the students are fighting a battle on their own. Even the support that was generated last year when parents stood up in support of the students’ demands seem to have faded.

There are probably some of the more militant students who would want to hold out for as long as they possibly can in the mistaken belief that all their demands will be met if they protest long enough.

But part of engaging in militant activity is knowing when to strike and when to withdraw. If you continue too long, you run the risk of alienating part of your support base.

A few months after I became a journalist at a small paper in Cape Town called the Cape Herald, we went on strike for better pay. We discovered that our white colleagues, with the same experience as us, were earning more than double in most cases.

The strike, which started in our newsroom, quickly spread throughout the country. Management finally gave in and agreed to increase our salaries significantly. We decided to go back to work because our primary demand had been met. However, some colleagues in Johannesburg and Durban decided to remain on strike because management had not met some of the other demands that we had added to our list.

The result of all of this was that our union became divided and much weaker, thereby strengthening management’s hand. The union took years to recover after this.

My feeling is that, despite the heightened emotions and the passion that the students feel for their cause, they cannot afford to fight blindly and run the risk of alienating people who might have been sympathetic to their cause.

There needs to be some pragmatism in order to save the academic year and allow students the space to regroup and continue their fight.

You cannot run roughshod over people and force them to support you. When we were engaged in the Struggle against apartheid, we did not force the world to support us, but we engaged people to win their loyalties, even though it sometimes took long to do so.

The students need to understand that you cannot have free education at all costs, and in the process destroy universities.

Like I said, I was nervous about thinking aloud on this topic, because now I am probably going to be branded as a sell-out. But insults and names have never stopped me from expressing how I feel, especially about issues that affect this country that all of us love so much.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 8 October 2016)

Against the odds, we're producing good journalism

Because of the work of dedicated journalists we are able to take informed decisions about the serious matters that affect us, writes Ryland Fisher.

I spent the first part of this week in the company of a group of very experienced people within the media industry who constitute the judging panel for one of the most prestigious journalism competitions in the country. We were engaged for two days, considering close to 1 000 entries in various categories.

I walked away feeling good about our beleaguered media industry, one that has been plagued by a range of issues, including juniorisation, retrenchments, ownership contradictions and management inefficiencies.

Despite all of the above and more, I was glad to see that the quality of journalism in South Africa remains high. Yes, there are problems, and we still make too many mistakes, but that we saw so many high-quality entries means somebody somewhere is getting something right.

Journalism is not a profession most sane people would follow willingly because many people view journalists with a sense of suspicion.

Many people have a love-hate relationship with journalists. A few years ago I was asked to contribute a chapter for a book on dealing with the media for young sportsmen and also to speak to some of them. I remember warning them about how sportspeople often use the media to advance their careers but then want to turn on the media when they are famous and the media expose their wrongdoing.

As a young journalist who was committed to the Struggle against apartheid, I was put under pressure by so-called comrades who wanted me to report in a certain way. For instance, if I attended a mass meeting of 500 people, they would want me to say that 1 000 or more attended. They also wanted me to only write negative stuff about people who appeared not to be supportive of the Struggle and only positive things about people who were active in the Struggle.

I never succumbed, arguing my commitment to journalism was based on my commitment to certain basic human values, such as fairness and justice, and that is what attracted me to the Struggle in the first place.

In many ways, I have been vindicated over the last 22 years of democracy, where we have seen former Struggle heroes commit serious crimes or loot the public purse and some people who might not have been supportive in the past assisting the transformation of our society in great ways.

It has been a long time since I have done active journalism, in the form of investigations which I used to enjoy as a young journalist (nowadays I write columns and do interviews which are not very dangerous).

I can only imagine the pressures young journalists face in a situation where politicians are no longer driven by a desire to change society for the better, but mostly by their egos and attempts to improve their bank balances and standards of living.

In many ways the stakes are much higher now than in the anti-apartheid days. We did not care much about money in those days. Nowadays, it is difficult to find anyone who cares about anything other than money and they are prepared to go to great lengths to defend their “right” to have as much as possible.

It is against this background that journalism in South Africa, no, possibly journalism in the world, needs to be judged and observed.

When you have small newsrooms being prepared to spend time on serious investigations, often working way beyond what most people would consider normal hours, and when their investigations bear fruit, there is nothing more satisfying.

I don’t think I was born with ink in my blood, but I am sure it was injected into me at a very young age. I knew from primary school that I wanted to be a writer. Now, journalism is a part of who and what I am and probably will be until I am no longer able to move.

It can be a thankless profession, especially when you expose excesses and abuses by people who consider themselves powerful.

Most journalists do not write because they want recognition. They merely want to tell the truth. But, if the entries that we saw in the awards competition this year are anything to go by, then there is a need for many journalists to take a bow because without their contribution, our society would have been in the dark about so many issues. Because of their work, we are able to take informed decisions about the serious matters that affect us.

Despite everything that is going on in our industry, it feels good to be a journalist.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 1 October 2016)

We allowed our heritage to be hijacked by braai day

Most of South Africa’s public holidays are carefully thought through and meant to create opportunities for us to commemorate or celebrate important events and issues in our complex society. That South Africa has more public holidays than most countries in the world is probably an indication of this complexity.

I am not going to discuss the religious public holidays which should be controversial in a secular society, which we are supposed to be, but maybe that is a topic for another discussion.

Of course, it is in the nature of a capitalist society, which is what we are (sorry South African Communist Party), that people will seek to make money out of any opportunity and public holidays offer such an opportunity. So, National Women’s Day becomes less about the important event on 9 August 1956 when 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings to protest against pass laws, and more about facials and pampering women.

In the same way Heritage Day, which we celebrate next Saturday, 24 September, has become known in some quarters as national braai day as part of the commercialisation of what is meant to be an important commemoration of who and what we are as a nation.

I used to get angry at this blatant commercialisation until I asked myself a simple question: What am I doing about it?

In the same way, when people complain about the commercialisation of National Women’s Day, I ask them what they are doing to celebrate the day in the pure form that was intended.

We are very good at complaining in South Africa but we are often not good at providing solutions or, when we come up with viable solutions, we do not implement too well.

For instance, at the moment everybody is upset with the President and wants him to resign for a variety of reasons, but I have yet to hear how this could be done in a practical manner, bearing in mind all the complexities in our society. But this column is not meant to be about serious matters of state. It is about more important stuff: our identity.

One of the things that make South Africa so beautiful, apart from its natural beauty, is the fact that we have such a diverse population with influences from around the continent and the world. Within this context it is difficult to find anyone who has only been exposed to any one influence. Many of us have revelled in being exposed to many of the influences that are available in our society. All of these influence shape who and what we are.

Yet most of us do not do enough to explore the history and origins of these influences, whether they are based on religion, culture, race, geography or any other factor. When we explore them probably, we often realise how similar we are despite attempts to make us think that we are all so different.

Heritage Day gives us the opportunity to explore the influences on our society and their roots, but also the things that make up our different identities, including music and food. And this brings us back to braai day. (Note that I do not use capital letters so as not to give it any significance).

There are many people like me who do not support braai day, because we feel it is a perversion of what is meant to be a celebration of our heritage. Those who support braai day argue that it is a part of our heritage and they are probably right.

The solution is not to complain about it but to either embrace it or do something that is bigger and better and more in line with what the day is meant to celebrate. And this is where our propensity for complaints without offering solutions becomes an issue.

We cannot say that braai day should stop. It has become an established brand over the past few years and that is why, mistakenly, some people associate 24 September only with it and not with Heritage Day.

Those of us who feel strongly about our heritage should accept the challenge thrown down by national braai day and find ways to reclaim our space. We need to create opportunities for us to celebrate our heritage and our identities in creative ways, ways that will also grab the attention of the public and encourage them to do the same.

Where are the festivals, big and small, the seminars and symposiums, the heritage walks, the heritage quizzes, the opportunities for people to explore their heritage and identity together with others?

There is just not much of a buzz created around our heritage in the same way as around braai day. I don’t know who should take responsibility for this. In South Africa we like to blame government when things go wrong, but we often don’t take responsibility ourselves.

So before you start complaining about national braai day, ask yourself what you are doing about it or what you can possible do about it. And then just do it, to paraphrase a famous sportswear brand.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 17 September 2016

Video - The Complete Interview With Baleka Mbete

In this latest edition of Conversations with Ryland Fisher, we talk to Baleka Mbete, the Speaker of the National Assembly and National Chairperson of the ANC. 
She talks freely about her inspirations within the ANC, maintaining discipline in Parliament and whether or not she is protecting the President. She does not speak freely, however, about her presidential ambitions.

Pleasantly surprised by local gangster movie

It was with great apprehension that I agreed to go and see Noem My Skollie (Call Me Thief) the other day. I am not a fan of movies dealing with so-called coloured people on the Cape Flats because they inevitably glamourise gangsterism and related societal illnesses, such as drug dealing and other criminal behaviour.

But I was pleasantly surprised, not that it is a pleasant movie. In fact, the four of us who went to see it were traumatised afterwards because the movie is very intense. There are some graphic scenes that are justified because of the harshness of the reality that is being reflected.

This movie is once again a sign that South Africa’s movie-making skills can be up there with the best in the world – if only they are supported properly.

Noem My Skollie is based on the true story of writer John W Fredericks, who survived a two-year prison sentence by telling stories to the inmates and, in the process, avoided being caught up in the notorious prison numbers gangs.

The movie, set in Athlone on the Cape Flats in the early 1960s, features a host of local actors, some in minor and walk-on roles, but the stars are Dann Jacques Mouton and Austin Rose who play the young and the older leading character, AB.

Apart from the acting and the beautiful cinematography, what I liked about the movie was that it dealt sensitively with many themes that are still pervasive on the Cape Flats, such as the role of women, and especially mothers, how poverty is often linked to criminal behaviour and how different people choose different survival routes, despite being in almost the same situation.

Of course, the cinema where we went to go see the movie was far from full – I counted less than 20 people – and I don’t know if this is just a sign of the times, because fewer people are supporting movies, or whether it is because some people are, like me, apprehensive about seeing another Cape Flats gangster movie.

Noem My SKollie is much more than just a gangster movie. It should be compulsory viewing in schools not only on the Cape Flats but throughout South Africa to assist children who might be considering a career in crime.

I suspect it will probably pick up quite a few awards in the next few months. They will be well-deserved.

Commitment to Constitution is key to SA's transformation

One of the things I enjoy doing is to interact with people in corporates throughout the country on a regular basis. These are people from all demographics: young and old, white and black, men and women, etc. The thing I enjoy most is listening to the bright minds that exist in our country, their commitment to making a difference in society and their proposals to do this.

It is clear to me that South Africa has some great minds and some more than average leaders at a corporate level.

But I have also interacted with many people at different levels of government who have impressed me with their views and their commitment to making our country a better place for all who live in it.

Why, I often find myself thinking when I interact with these great minds, is there a perception that our country is leaderless, idealess, clueless? The answer, I suppose, is really simple. The example set by government and those in political leadership in our country is not the best in the world and, unfortunately, many people only look at our political leadership and base their judgments on our country on what they see in this regard.

There is not a day that goes by when I do not cringe as newspaper headlines expose more wrong-doing, more thoughtless statements and more bad decision-making by the people who we have elected as our national leaders.

While affording politicians the necessary respect, I have given up a long time ago on depending on them to affect proper change in our society.

I have realised that change can only really come from the ground up. The results of the recent municipal elections, in which the ruling ANC lost a lot of ground, is part of the response from ordinary people that they have had enough.

They have had enough of living in a society where we are no longer shocked by corruption claims against senior politicians and in which those with power and money, which they access because of their power, flaunt their newfound wealth in complete disregard to those who are struggling to make a daily living in an increasingly more depressed economic environment.

The discussion should no longer be about whether the ANC will ever be able to regain the greatness it once had or whether the DA will be able to capitalise properly on the ANC’s weaknesses and become a truly representative majority party.

The bigger question is how we keep on track the project to transform our country.

The problem is that the more the ANC messes up, the more excuses it creates for people who don’t want our society to transform properly. They hide behind excuses such as “black people can’t govern” or “black people can’t lead” and they base this on the wrong-doings of ANC leaders.

One of the things about transformation is that when black people succeed, they succeed as individuals. When they fail, they fail on behalf of an entire section of our population. And for the post-1994 generation, when I use the word “black”, I use it in the way it is written in our Constitution and include Africans, coloureds and Indians.

There are different ways of responding to the troubles in the ANC. The one is to just cry and hope for the best. The other is to realise that our country is bigger than any individual or political party. There are more people in South Africa, and the world for that matter, who want us to succeed than those who want us to fail.

While we should allow the ANC to continue with their internal soul-searching, which I doubt will deliver anything new or amazing, it is important that people in civil society who have the best interest of our country at heart, to show their displeasure at every opportunity when they spot wrong-doing among our political leaders.

What we saw in Johannesburg this week, when ANC members protested against their own organisation, is a sign that our democracy is busy maturing. The ANC is no longer the underground organisation in exile which needs to keep a tight rein on all its members. It needs to modernise its practices to take into consideration that it is now a ruling party who is accountable not only to its members but also to the people who vote for it.

The ANC needs to start learning some lessons from the organisations and leaders that were aligned to the United Democratic Front, where democracy from the bottom up was a key ingredient of its success.

It is important to note that, while the ANC has an illustrious history and legacy, it no longer has the sole prerogative over the transformation of our society. There are people in the ANC who are only interested in promoting their own well-being and who do not really care about whether our society is transformed or not.

At the same time there are people outside of the ANC, whether in opposition parties or in civil society, who have repeatedly demonstrated their commitment to the transformation project.

The transformation of our society does not depend on individual leaders but on a commitment to the Constitution and the values espoused in it. When we judge our political leaders, we should do it against their commitment to the Constitution which is one document that all political parties agreed upon but which contains many of the values which guided the ANC through the dark days of apartheid.

We need to unleash the collective power and wisdom that is found throughout South Africa in order to take our country forward – and we need to do that irrespective of political allegiance.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 10 September 2016)

Transformation is neither easy nor comfortable

Transformation is about accepting our differences, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, writes Ryland Fisher.

Cape Town - One of the things I realised very early on about the transformation of our country is it is not an easy process and is something most people would prefer not to do, if they had their way.

Transformation is meant to be uncomfortable for everyone and if there is one person who does not feel uncomfortable, then you probably have not transformed enough.

Transformation is about accepting our differences, even if some of these make you feel uncomfortable. Most of us have prejudices, whether they are based on race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or other identity markers. Transformation provides you with an opportunity to address these prejudices.

I am raising these points in a week during which we have seen protests by learners about hair but, as is often the case, it is not only about hair. It is about much more. It is about whether one should follow the rules made by the people who lived in the house first, as has happened just about everywhere else in society.

Even Parliament and most of corporate South Africa live according to rules made by the people who have been there before. Our first democratically elected MPs had a wonderful opportunity to change things significantly in Parliament when they came to power, but they chose to continue with the same practices that had been used for many decades before, some since South Africa became a union in 1910.

Most practices in corporate South Africa were established by the white people who used to own them exclusively and black people who are now in senior positions have followed suit.

When white schools opened their doors to black children in what are still known in some quarters as Model C schools, they continued the traditions they had practised for decades. They set “standards” which did not take into account the experiences of the black children.

They expected them to act and speak like white people. If they could get them to look like white people too, then so much the better.

A few years ago I tried to get corporates to speak about race and culture as part of adapting to a fast-changing society. I realised very quickly while many corporates talk about transformation, it is not something they embrace without reservation. It is more of chore, something they are forced to do when all they want to do is make money.

I was even told by a company executive once that I should not use the word “race” when speaking to his staff. I should rather talk about “diversity” which, in his opinion, was more acceptable.

I have had several mentors in journalism and, I suppose, in life. One of them was Rory Wilson, the then-managing director of Independent Media in Cape Town who appointed me editor of the Cape Times at a time when South Africa was just beginning to change.

Rory once told me he understood that if he did his job properly - and transformed the company in the way he should - he would be out of a job. The problem with most white people in business is they do not think like Rory. For them transformation is necessary to preserve their privileges.

It is not so much about undoing the wrongs of apartheid and creating opportunities for those who never had opportunities before.

For them it is about accommodating black people in what used to be white spaces. But it is not only white people who feel comfortable with white spaces. There are many black people who buy into the myth that white is better.

I remember a few years ago, when I was a parent at The Grove primary school in Claremont and there was a strike in township schools by teachers belonging to the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu). Quite a few Sadtu teachers had placed their children in schools such as The Grove, in the hope or knowledge that teachers at a former white school would probably not go on strike. When I grew up on the Cape Flats, it was not uncommon for family and friends to aspire to be like white people or to accord respect to white people in ways they would never to other “coloured” or black people.

When I was older, I realised at many weddings I had attended over the years, there was always a table for white people “from work”.

This table was placed near the main table and they would be served just after, or sometimes before, the main table.

I have so much confidence in the future of our country based on the actions of young people like these girls. Thank you for making me and others think about what might seem a simple issue, but is something that cuts to the heart of the transformation debate in our society.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 3 September 2016)

Busisiwe Mkhwebane deserves the nation's support

Not many South Africans knew the name Busisiwe Mkhwebane before this week, or before the nominations for Public Protector and the interviews for the 15 people on the shortlist were conducted live on television.

But all that is about to change, as Advocate Mkhwebane was chosen this week as their favoured candidate by the ad hoc parliamentary committee tasked with finding a successor to Thuli Madonsela, whose seven-year term comes to an end in October.

One can only hope that Mkhwebane will dominate the headlines over the next few years – as Madonsela did – for all the right reasons. The job of Public Protector can be a lonely one and there are always pressures, political and otherwise, to do one’s work in a certain way. Sometimes the pressure is overt, most time it is subtler. Madonsela’s life was even threatened at times.

But the credibility of the Public Protector’s office is important, more important than the individual who occupies the most senior seat in the organisation.

I attended the Top Women awards function in Johannesburg last week where Madonsela received a lifetime achiever award and she spoke about how accepted the award on behalf of all of her staff. She said that, while her name appears on the reports her office issues, it is the result of the work of many people in her office.

Mkhwebane will go into this job with concerns about her close links to President Jacob Zuma, a concern which has not been substantiated by any of her critics.

I don’t believe it is a legitimate concern because we have in recent times had a few examples where people alleged to have been close to the President, or to have had strong ruling party leanings, have shown their independence and professionalism.

One such example is Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, who was viewed very sceptically when he was appointed in September 2011. Since then he has shown that he has more loyalty to the senior position he holds in the judiciary than to any individual or political party.

He even delivered the damning judgment in March where he confirmed the powers of the Public Protector and ordered the President to “pay back the money”.

There was also concerns about Mogoeng’s strong Christian religious beliefs and that these could influence his judgments. So far, he has shown that he is guided only by the Constitution and not by loyalty to persons or to religious affiliation.

Another example is the chairman of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), Glen Mashinini, who defied his critics by delivering probably the most important election of post-apartheid South Africa so far – the municipal elections of 3 August in which the ANC lost significant support.

There were concerns about whether Mashinini, who was also alleged to be close to Zuma because he previously worked as an adviser to the President, would be able to preside over impartial, free and fair elections. The strong showing by the opposition in the municipal elections seem to have waylaid those fears. One wonders if this would have been the case if the opposition did not do so well.

What the above examples show is that there are people who are able to rise above personal and political allegiances and do justice to the office to which they have been appointed. This is what is expected in a democracy. One should judge people based on their professionalism, skills and experience, and not on their political allegiances.

Opposition leaders who criticise the ANC for “cadre deployment” conveniently choose to overlook these and other examples. They choose to focus on the cases where people will political connections have not been able to perform their duties. This is right but we also need to acknowledge the instances where “cadre deployment” has benefited society.

In a country like South Africa, where we have a divided history, we all carry political and social baggage. We all have to perform our duties despite this baggage.

It is not at the same level, but as a journalist who had a struggle background, there are many people who doubt whether someone like myself can ever be objective. But throughout my career, my commitment to journalism has always outweighed my commitment to people or politics. I have often written critical pieces about friends who have done wrong, even when it pained me to do so.

It is possible to focus on the job at hand and not allow one’s baggage to interfere.

After all, even Thuli Madonsela came from an ANC background and there were concerns at the time of her appointment about whether she would be able to perform her duties objectively. She showed that she was able to do so and inspired many with her bravery as she went up against the most powerful people in our society.

If Mkhwebane is accepted by parliament and becomes our next Public Protector, which seems a formality, then she deserves all our support as she navigates a very tricky road of keeping politicians to account. Civil society will have to be vigilant and keep her to account.

We have to thank Madonsela for raising the profile of the Public Protector over the past seven years. Let’s hope that the office will grow even stronger under the next incumbent.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 27 August 2016)

Memories can be deceiving: the things we never discuss about the UDF

Memory is a tricky business and the older one gets, the more difficult it becomes to depend on one’s memory. As we celebrated the 33rd birthday of the United Democratic Front (UDF) yesterday, I have been surprised by the unspoilt memories many people have of what was a glorious movement.

But it was not without its faults and there are many questions around the UDF that many of us who were involved refuse to entertain. We prefer to only visit the good memories.

The UDF was a broad coalition of organisations launched on August 20, 1983 in opposition to moves by the apartheid government to introduce self-rule for coloureds and Indians while fine-tuning laws about how black people were governed in South Africa. It is so easy to forget 1983 was still a time of homelands where blacks were supposed to govern themselves and that they were not welcome, by apartheid decree, in most of the major metros in South Africa.

The UDF fought against this and brought together the most diverse group of organisations – from supposedly liberal groups such as the Black Sash, a group of white women who picketed outside Parliament regularly, to trade unions and youth and community groups which often aligned themselves with the then-banned ANC. But the UDF also included church and sports groups and even the odd stokvel.

From the start, the UDF did everything big. Its launch, inside and outside the Rocklands Civic Centre in Mitchells Plain, attracted about 15 000 people from around the country and those in attendance were treated to the spectacular political oratory of leaders such as Dr Allan Boesak, Aubrey Mokoena, Helen Joseph, Sister Bernard Ncube and others.

 

In the mid- to late-1980s there was a real buzz in the Western Cape and especially in Mitchells Plain. There was a feeling that most people supported the UDF and, as such, the Struggle. This feeling was based on the huge rallies the UDF organised and the success of publicity stunts such as the million signature campaign. But it was also based on the support protest marches and other activities generated, especially from 1985 onwards.

This is partly why, when the ANC lost the first democratic elections in 1994 to the National Party in the Western Cape, there was intense soul-searching about where things had gone wrong – surely the people who supported the UDF would naturally also support the ANC.

The ANC’s leaders, recently returned from exile, had of course in their wisdom decided the UDF should be closed down because it was merely a proxy for the ANC and no longer needed to exist now that the “real leaders” had come back home.

With hindsight, this was probably a short-sighted decision. While elements inside the UDF supported the ANC, the front as a whole remained non-aligned and had a specific purpose, which was redefined over time, to oppose apartheid reforms.

This did not justify the ANC making an assumption the support the UDF enjoyed would naturally gravitate towards it.

The UDF could have played a major role in effectively “softening up” people for the ANC. They could have been people’s first interaction with non-racialism, leading to an easier acceptance of the ANC, especially if the UDF was not going to contest elections.

There were also significant differences between the ANC and UDF. One of these was that they operated very differently. The ANC, as a banned organisation, operated clandestinely from neighbouring countries and overseas. The UDF operated on the ground in communities throughout South Africa and had established a culture of democracy. In fact, we used to joke about being “demo-crazy”. All decisions of the UDF were discussed in a bottom-up manner.

ANC-supporting activists within the UDF were torn between these two styles of operation: one where decisions were taken mostly by consensus and the top-down style of the ANC, necessitated by security fears.

A question many people have refused to ask, let alone answer is: how popular was the UDF really?

Why did the huge attendance at political rallies, especially in the so-called coloured areas, not translate into votes for the ANC?

Rallies can be deceptive and are often just shows of support meant to intimidate your opposition. But if you have 100 000 people living in a community and 10 000 people attend your rally, you still have90 000 who may or may not support you. You will only know how they feel after election day.

A few years ago I worked in Ghana where, ahead of national elections, the ruling party spent a lot of money on billboards, adverts in newspapers and on radio and television and I attended, a few days before the elections, a huge rally which attracted at least 100 000 people.

It was an impressive show of support. Unfortunately, it did not translate into votes and they lost the election.

The moral of this story is that you should never judge your support based on attendance at rallies but rather on the feedback you receive when you do door-to-door work in communities.

The other question people rarely ask about the UDF is how much non-racialism existed in its structures and whether this was effectively transmitted into the diverse communities in the Western Cape and South Africa.

In the Western Cape, because of the nature of the population, it was natural the UDF would operate strongly in so-called coloured areas, but it also operated in African and white areas.

It was not uncommon for hundreds of activists to go into an area on a Saturday or Sunday morning to sell Grassroots community newspaper or talk to people about signing the million signature petition. The activists were drawn from all areas of the Western Cape and appeared to operate without any visible tensions and divisions.

But one thing we never asked ourselves at the time was how much of this non-racialism we experienced was accepted by the communities we came from. Was the so-called coloured community, for instance, comfortable with all this interaction with blacks and whites? The same could be asked of the white and black communities with relation to the others who we accepted in the spirit of non-racialism.

We cannot dismiss the damage caused by apartheid and colonialism which forcibly separated our communities, forcing us to live apart, study apart and date and marry only people who looked like and sounded like us.

Trevor Oosterwyk, the ANC’s election co-ordinator in Mitchells Plain in 1994, told me when I interviewed him for my book, Race, that he took the rejection by Mitchells Plain voters personally and realised while activists like himself had adopted a “black” identity, they had not taken their community along with them on this journey.

I agree and disagree with Oosterwyk. I think we also need to look at how much acceptance of non-racialism there was in communities that had been separated from each other for decades, no centuries.

The point I am trying to make is that, in politics, we often believe our own propaganda and we could have been misled by the apparent support for the UDF and the non-racial culture we all were desperate to adopt.

In some ways, one can only be truly non-racial if we operate from level playing fields, excuse the cliché. As long as we have situations where there are still townships inhabited mainly by poor so-called coloured or black people and suburbs inhabited by mainly white or middle-class people, we will struggle to inculcate true non-racialism.

When everyone has equal access to opportunities, whether in education, housing, employment, sports or wealth creation, then we can start talking about living in a non-racial society. Non-racism does not appear to be a priority for people who are poor and who have to worry about where their next loaf of bread is going to come from.

History has a way of repeating itself and I have long ago learnt politicians especially do not learn from our past.

But if activists from yesteryear reflect honestly on the UDF and share their reflections with current activists, we might find solutions to some of the issues bedevilling politics and our society today. That is, of course, if we allow these reflections to interfere with the good memories that we treasure.

(First published in the Weekend Argus on Sunday 21 August 2016)

Commemorating three important days

This week we commemorate three important days in the history of South Africa, both of which have had a profound impact on our reasonably-young democracy, and a third day which should have had greater impact.

The first is the 33rd anniversary of the United Democratic Front, which was formed at the Rocklands civic centre in Mitchells Plain on Saturday 20 August 1983. The UDF was a coalition of organisations opposed to apartheid legislation and played a key role in the ultimate dismantling of the apartheid state. However, as soon as the ANC leadership returned from exile, they disbanded the UDF, something which many people still feel was a mistake.

The UDF started out in opposition to attempts by the government of PW Botha to enforce “self-government” for people who were not white in South Africa. It ended up imagining a society that was markedly different in character to what most of us experienced under apartheid.

The second commemoration this week is the fourth anniversary of the massacre of 34 mineworkers who were protesting for higher wages. They were killed on Thursday 16 August 2012 on a koppie outside Marikana, in the town also known as Rooikoppies in North West province, a few kilometres outside Rustenberg.

While the formation of the UDF was a celebration of unity among those opposed to apartheid at a time when repression was intensifying in South Africa, and ultimately had a positive outcome, the Marikana massacre remains the most serious blight on post-apartheid South Africa and, four years later, no one has been charged or brought to book for the killings.

Ironically, the Marikana massacre happened a day after Trevor Manuel, then Minister in the Presidency responsible for the National Planning Commission, had handed over to Parliament the report on the work done by his commission, in the form of the National Development Plan. This is the third important day that we should remember this week.

The NDP went on to be adopted by most political parties and drew positive responses from civil society and business. It sketches the kind of South Africa we would all love to live in by the year 2030, “a future we would all want and deserve”, according to Manuel.

Manuel’s handover speech was littered with words such as “patriotism”, “commitment”, “goodwill”, “build” and “a better future”. The people who were killed at Marikana and the families they left behind must be wondering what Manuel was talking about.

For them, South Africa has become worse and not better over the past four years.

But in a week when there have been heightened emotions around Marikana, and the lack of action with regards to justice for those who were killed, it is important to reflect also on the UDF and the NDP. Both promised to build a non-racial society in which opportunities would be open to all.

In some ways, the UDF declaration, which formed almost a vision statement for the alliance of organisations, was written at a time when we had no idea whether we would ever overcome apartheid and what life would look like afterwards.

The NDP is a post-apartheid document and based on interviews and discussions with, according to Manuel, “thousands of South Africans from all corners of the country, from all walks of life. We received comments from individuals and organisations and engaged with government departments, provinces, municipalities, state-owned enterprises and agencies”.

 The NDP talks about tackling poverty and inequality based on faster and “faster and more inclusive economic growth, higher public and private investment, improving education and skills, greater use of technology, knowledge and innovation and better public services all leading to higher employment, rising incomes and falling inequality”. 

All of this, of course, means nothing for the victims of Marikana and their relatives. But it could mean something to others who, like them, are trapped in poverty.

It is a crying shame that, 22 years after we became a democracy and voted for the first time, the living conditions of many poor people seem to have deteriorated.

This is why there is ongoing service delivery protests throughout the country and that is why so many people broke with tradition and voted against the ANC government at the recent municipal elections.

If government is serious about addressing the ills in our society, then they could do worse than revisiting their commitment to the NDP. It is a great plan, but South Africans are known to make great plans. We often fail in the execution.

The NDP deals with just about every aspect of our society and, based on a diagnostic analysis, it provides ways in which we can act in a practical manner to make our country the great place we all know it can become.

Just imagine if, in a few years, our next Wayde van Niekerk or Caster Semenya comes from Marikana. But this will only happen if opportunities are created, in line with the vision spelled out in the NDP.

The best way to remember those who lives appeared to have been lost in vain is to build a better society, one that benefits the majority and not just the few, as our society still does at the moment. In a few years’ time, and sooner rather than later, we should be celebrating Marikana, because it should be a much improved place and its residents should no longer have to fight for decent wages.

We should try to build something positive out of the grief of Marikana, but that will not happen while the government appears not to listen to what the experts have suggested in the NDP and what many ordinary citizens are crying out for on a daily basis.

(First published as Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 20 August 2016)

We are all touched by matters of life and mortality

Death is not something most of us want to talk about. For many it is a five-letter swear word that should only be whispered and preferably out of earshot of anyone else.

But death is a reality and, as the saying goes, it is the only thing, apart from taxes, which is certain in life.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I attend more funerals than weddings and more 50- or 60-year-old birthday parties than those celebrating coming of age.

Every time I attend a funeral or memorial service, I think about my own life and mortality. As one gets older, one realises that one has lived most of one’s life already and one could be in the final half or quarter or even year of one’s life.

When I hear person after person extolling the virtues of the deceased, I can’t help but wonder what people will say about me and whether they would have anything nice to say. Vanity is a strange thing and, even if you would not be able to hear what others say about you after you die, you still want them to say nice things. Not that it matters at that point.

I have interviewed quite a few important people over the years, including many politicians, and when I ask them about their legacy, they often say that they don’t believe in personal legacies but rather the legacy of their political organisation.

This is a lie, of course. I believe everyone thinks about their legacy at some point, because what you leave behind could have an important influence on those who come after you. But also, we all have a legacy, whether it is negative or positive.

I have been thinking about death and dying for most of this week, since the husband of one of my wife’s friends passed away on Saturday and the sister of one of my friends passed away on Wednesday.

But I have also been faced this week with the reality of cancer sufferers who struggle on despite, in many cases, fighting a losing battle.

It is one of the strange things in life that no one has yet found a cure for cancer which is a non-discriminatory disease, in many ways. Cancer does not mind whether you are black or white, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or unfit, straight or gay.

When it strikes, it strikes decisively and a life that could have been perfect up to that point, often changes for the worst. I have been confronted too many times with cases of friends or associates who discovered that they had cancer and they were gone in a few months.

Even those who survive longer will tell you about the pain and discomfort of chemotherapy which may or may not help to cure your cancer and prolong your life.

Yet not many people, myself included, bother to do much research into cancer unless it affects us directly or indirectly.

It is like we know that, in many cases, cancer causes death and we would rather not talk about anything related to death.

We have lost some amazing people to cancer and we will still lose many more, unless somebody finds a cure which, at this point, seems very distant.

But knowing you are going to die does allow you to plan and, in some cases, it gives you time to seek forgiveness from anyone you might have hurt or offended when your health was better. It also gives people who love you the opportunity to spend time with you before your health deteriorates to such a point where you are unable to focus on what is happening around you and you are only focused on dealing with your pain.

One of the inane things that people always say when they sympathise with someone who lost a loved one is that they understand or share their pain. Pain is difficult to share. It is often very personal and even those closest to you cannot completely share or understand it.

I suppose it is easy to write about and talk about death if it is not happening in your home, to one of your closest loved ones.

It is easy when it is not you or people very close to you who are counting their last days and trying to numb the pain of cancer by using morphine.

It is easy to say that, even in death, one must look for the positives when you are not the one who has lost a loved one who might have shared your bed for most of your adult life.

Death, whether is expected or sudden, is never easy. More than 30 years after my mother passed away, I still think about her a lot and I can still see her face in my mind. I often think about how much I would have wanted her to see my children grow up and the influence that she would have had on their lives. My father passed away years after my mother so at least my children had the opportunity to interact with him.

I have no intention of dying soon, but life and death are unpredictable. So how would I like to be remembered? As someone who tried to make a difference in the world and who, despite his many flaws, tried to be the best person he could be.

Death is inevitable and that is why one must live life to its fullest and try to enjoy every minute while one can. This, of course, is easier said than done.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 13 August 2016)

Let's really get behind our team at the Olympics

In the excitement about the local government elections on Wednesday, it was easy to forget that one of the world’s greatest sporting events was kicking off this week. The Olympic Games happen once every four years and remain one of the greatest measures of sporting excellence.

South Africa has a huge team participating, including in athletics and swimming but also in sport like sevens rugby and soccer, both men and women.

I was reminded of the Olympics on Tuesday – at a time when my mind was only on the elections – when I received an email from a journalist at a major Brazilian newspaper wanting to know my views on why South Africa’s national soccer team was mainly black, with, in his words, “the only white person you can see around the pitch during the practice is the team doctor”.

My initial response to queries like this is normally: “Really? Do you guys have nothing better to write about?” But I did try to respond to explain the strange phenomenon in South Africa where rugby and cricket appear to be more popular among white people and soccer appears to be more popular among blacks.

I suspect that soccer teams will be mainly black for a long time to come, but this is not because whites are knowingly excluded but rather that whites seem to exclude themselves from South African soccer but they continue to support British or European soccer.

I don’t know the reason for why there seems to be a racial divide when it comes to soccer but I suspect it has something to do with soccer being more affordable to play, which makes it more attractive to blacks. When I grew up on the Cape Flats, we often used to make soccer balls out of newspaper stuffed into plastic carrier bags, and we used bricks or big stones to make our goalposts.

You also did not need a smooth surface on which to play, even though that helped. My body still aches when I think about how, as a goalkeeper many years ago, I had to dive to save balls on fields that contained more stones and sand than grass.

I suppose one could do the same with rugby, even though the shape of the ball is different but it is not that easy with cricket. Cricket can be an expensive game, especially for people who have very little.

But the thing about soccer is that throughout the world, it is the sport supported by the working class, whether it is in Europe or Latin America. It is played in many more countries than any other sport. This is why FIFA, the world soccer controlling body, is so popular and so powerful.

Soccer has brought joy to many over the years. It is not known as the beautiful game for nothing and has developed generation after generation of superstars, from Pele and Maradona to Ronaldo and Messi, and many others in between.

I believe that one of the reasons South Africa soccer has not really been supported by whites is because it is not offered as an option at many former white schools. This means that parents do not have to get up early on a Saturday morning to watch their loved ones play soccer, in the way that they have to do for rugby and cricket.

This non-attendance of soccer matches then continues into the period after the children leave school. Support for rugby and cricket starts at school and continues afterwards.

One way of addressing this is of course for more schools to offer soccer as a sporting option. I don’t know why schools do not do this, because it makes so much sense.

After all, soccer is less likely than a sport like rugby to lead to serious injuries and, also, soccer players globally are among the highest earning sports people. So if you want little Johnny to make some money out of sport, which could help you retire early and comfortably, it probably makes sense to encourage a soccer career. Or golf, but that is also an expensive option.

South Africa has not done too well as a soccer-playing nation over the past decade or so and there are all kinds of factors to blame, from bad coaching appointments to players feeling more loyal to their clubs who pay them mega-salaries than to their country where they effectively play for charity.

But it remains an important sport and one that has helped to galvanise our nation in 2010 and could potentially do it again in future.

If our soccer team does not have much hope at the Olympics, our swimmers and athletes do and we hope that they will make us proud as they have done often in the past at these great Games.

After the divisions of the local government elections – when hot-headed politicians destroyed any attempt at nation-building in their attempts to win votes – we can now refocus our attention on the Olympic Games and throw our weight behind Team South Africa.

Let’s hope they make us proud irrespective of the demographics. Ultimately, the Olympics is about pitting the best in the world against each other and if our best soccer players happen to be mainly black, then they still deserve our support.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 6 August 2016)

Don't complain if you do not vote

When you cast your vote on August 3, you should think beyond incessant sniping between the parties, writes Ryland Fisher.

The local government elections were never meant to be about Jacob Zuma, Mmusi Maimane or Julius Malema. They were never meant to be about Nelson Mandela and who has the right to claim his legacy.

The elections are supposed to be about service delivery at the most important level of government, often referred to as the coalface.

When you cast your vote next week, as I hope you will, you should think beyond the posters bearing the faces of political leaders and the incessant sniping between the parties.

It is easy to treat Wednesday as a day to catch up on shopping, watch a television series, or have a braai with family and friends. You should not necessarily exclude any of these activities, but you should spend some time joining the queues at your local polling station to make your mark.

And when you are there, instead of worrying about national politics only, ask yourself whether the people in control of your municipality, or more specifically your ward, are doing a decent job of making sure your rubbish is picked up, your potholes fixed, dealing with crime in your area and the many other things for which councillors are expected to take responsibility.

If not, then maybe s/he does not deserve your vote. If yes, maybe s/he deserves another chance, irrespective of his/her political party.

Ask yourself where your candidate has been in the years since the last election. Have you seen him at community gatherings, has she been part of the neighbourhood watch? Have you seen her at church services, at school sports matches? Or have you seen his/her face for the first time on a poster imploring you to vote for change, or continuity.

Of course, we cannot get away from the national issues, even though this is a local government election. This is South Africa, after all, and everything is always wrapped in everything else.

We cannot wish away Nkandla and its associated problems, or the SABC and SAA sagas; or the DA’s flagrant abuse of Nelson Mandela’s legacy in a cheap attempt to score political points. We cannot wish away that the EFF was formed by someone who was undisciplined as an ANC member and who is now asking us to trust him with running our municipalities.

We cannot run away from the fact our country is still much racialised in the way it was under apartheid, and will probably be for a long time to come.

Every election, those of us who were in the trenches fighting against apartheid have questions about our allegiances and many of us consider whether we should vote at all.

I was grappling with this from the first democratic election in 1994, when I looked at the list of candidates of the only party for which I would consider voting at the time, the ANC. I did not like many of the names on the list because they were people I knew and I knew their weaknesses.

But I thought I had fought so long and hard for the right to vote that I needed to exercise this right. So I voted for the first time at the age of 34 in Kensington, Johannesburg, accompanied by my wife and my daughter, who was a few months old.

Twenty-two years later and my daughter is a beautifully grown-up woman and can now vote for the second time - she voted for the first time in the national elections - and I owe it to her and her generation to continue my voting tradition.

How can I implore them to vote and make a difference to society if I am not prepared to do the same? I know there are people who say one vote does not make a difference, but it does.

If everyone decided not to vote, we would have serious problems and you cannot complain if you did not use your right to vote.

So then the difficult issue: who to vote for? It is not for me, or anyone else, to tell you on whom you should use one of your most precious commodities in a democracy but you need to think about who and which party can make a difference in your life and the lives of the people who matter to you.

At ward level, it is sometimes easier because, if you know your councillor and you know s/he has been working, you would not have difficulty supporting them on that basis and not necessarily based on the party they represent. They could well be independent. Some independents have been known to work very well for their constituents.

It becomes more difficult when it comes to the proportional vote, where you have to choose the party you wish to represent your interests in the council. Your choices do not have to be the same on the proportional and the ward lists. In the Western Cape, we have more than 60 parties contesting the elections. I hope the IEC did not have to fit all their names on one ballot paper in all the areas.

But here is where the national profile of the parties and their leaders become important and you need to look at the performance of parties in municipalities that they’ve controlled before making up your minds.

It is difficult to do this for some parties, because they don’t control municipalities - yet - so you have to consider, based on what they promise, whether they will be able to deliver.

I will be making my mark on Wednesday. Who I will vote for is not yet decided and will probably only be decided when I look at the ballot paper in the voting station. But vote I will, and you should too.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 30 July 2016)