Mbeki's AIDS denialism explained

The latest London Review of Books contains a fascinating article in which Hillary Mantell reviews two important books dealing with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa. Discussing especially the work of Didier Fassin, When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of Aids in South Africa, Mantell tries to make sense of the HIV denialism of President Thabo Mbeki and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Is it really as "irrational" as all the white folks say it is?

Money quote:

But consider what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been trying to do: to legitimate the memory of individuals, and at the same time to produce an official version of the past, one that everybody can sign up to. In its hearings, different realities collide. ‘Reconciliation’ is a project poised between remembering and forgetting, and the problem (or so it seems to me) is that in the case of South Africa memory, personal or collective, is often accompanied by crippling shame; whether you have been victim or victimiser – or cannot agree which role you occupy – you are ashamed to have lived under apartheid, to be the relict of such a system. Shame is what makes forgetting most urgent, and also what makes it impossible. And the virus has arrived to intensify stigma; South Africa, for so long a political untouchable, so far off the moral map, is ravaged by a disease which from its inception has been identified with sexual shame.

Fassin says: ‘The South African government and maybe society as a whole push away the intolerable,’ and try to select an alternative truth; and what is intolerable is not only the disease itself, but its stigmatising representations. Mbeki has accused the West in these terms: ‘Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust.’

The question is: how does one deal with this shame - our hangover from apartheid? President Mbeki seems to deal with it by not dealing with it at all: in other words, through denial. But surely there is another way? Surely, following Biko perhaps, one can begin to face and challenge the shame to begin to imagine a life without it.

Without dreams of another way of being in our world, all that is left is shame and blame. And on that path one is surely doomed to remain a prisoner of the past for ever and ever?

What is (really) wrong with our media: Juan Duval Uys and Badih Chabaan

The ANC government has been bashing the media, arguing that they are part of the dark forces out to destroy the ANC and hence also the country. According to Frank Chikane, Director-General in the Office of the President, the media does not know how to work with the government – unlike the Dutch Reformed Church who has always brown-nosed government and therefore knows how to be good lapdogs.

Of course we have learnt many years ago from the apartheid state that when one is in trouble the easiest way to divert attention from one’s troubles is to create a bogy man and the media seems to do for the moment. I suspect compared to other healthy democracies (therefore not the USA), our media is rather complacent and benign. Imagine what a torrid time President Thabo Mbeki would have been given by the British Press for saying and doing the things he does.

For me the real problem with our media is that many journalists are far too credulous or lazy and therefore do not question even the most preposterous assertions made by known charlatans - as long as it will sell newspapers.

This morning in the Cape Times (and now also carried on News24), for example, a story about disarray in the National People’s Party (the creation of Cape Town con business-man and city council member Badih Chabaan) quotes as facts several assertions made by Mr Chabaan. The introductory paragraph boldly states:

Two leaders of the National People's Party have been expelled, the party's financial accounts are to be audited by KPMG and its new leader, Badih Chaaban, is to lodge complaints of embezzlement against some members.

The newspaper also publishes without comment or question claims by Mr Chabaan that he had two members of the party followed while they were meant to be recruiting members in George and that instead of meeting members, the two were seen in a local nightclub.

Now, I will bet at least one month of my salary that no KPMG auditors will ever see the books of this new party, that a complaint of embezzlement will never be followed up, and that no one was ever hired to follow the two members of the party in George. Over the past two months almost none of the claims made by Mr. Chabaan have come true and most claims have been shown to be outrageous lies. Why would these claims be different?

Yet the Cape Times publishes these wild assertions as if they were true. One must also remember that Mr. Chabaan had hired another charlatan of note, Juan Duval Uys (pictured), as his media liaison officer. This is a match made in heaven: two epic shysters finally get together to tell the most outrageous lies to the gullible media.

Mr. Uys has long entertained and bamboozled the media with completely false but sensationalist claims about his “hugely popular” Gay and Lesbian Alliance. Every time he made a new claim it was patently obvious for all of us with more than two brain cells that these claims were completely false. If, say, Mr. Juan Duval Uys claimed to be the head of a Gay and Lesbian organisation with hundreds of thousands of members and no one in the gay community has ever met anyone being a member, one would think the media would at least put such claims in scare quotes.

But no, everything these guys say is reported as fact and worse, never followed up. No one at the Cape Times is going to phone Mr. Chabaan in two weeks to ask how that KPMG report is coming along and at what police station embezzlement charges were laid.

And in a month or two Mr. Chabaan or Mr. Uys will hold a press conference and claim to have met Jesus Christ in a bar in Putsonderwater and that Jesus had told them that Helen Zille is the anti-Christ and, lo and behold, the next day it will be reported as fact in the Cape Times.

In that sense Mr Chikane does have a point when he complains about the media. The only time the media shows any scepticism or any eagerness to follow up claims is when government representatives make those outrageously false claims. What Mr. Chikane is asking for is that the same leeway given by the media to shysters like Chabaan and Uys should also be shown to the ANC. If that had happened, we would all now have believed that HIV does not cause AIDS and that dear uncle Thabo needs a third term to save South Africa.

Another boot-licker shows contempt for the people

Sandile Memela, spokesperson for the ministry of arts and culture, is at it again, attacking those handy old scapegoats, the non-government media and the so called “coconut intellectuals” for being too critical of the government. Writing in the Mail & Guardian, Mr. Memela seems to suggest that the private media and all the black commentators and intellectuals should follow the government line set by His Masters Voice and the Government Communications Service.

He argues that by criticizing the President and other (black) leaders, the media is racist because it perpetuates or further entrenches racist views about the ability of black people to govern.

Ironically, since 1994 - especially with the advent of Thabo Mbeki to the presidency - the media have created a sociocultural context in which it becomes possible to show disdain and utter contempt for legitimate African political leadership. This is displayed in the coverage of the Manto Tshabalala-Msimang story. The single-minded purpose is to get the public to internalise racist thinking about blackness as what colonialism has always portrayed as meaning unfit to self-govern.

Say what? I think what Mr. Memela is trying to say is that we should not criticize President Mbeki or Minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang because if we do we would be showing contempt for something called “legitimate African political leadership”. I think this implies that once a Minister is appointed by the President, we have no right to criticize that leader (if he or she is black) because if we did, we would really be undermining the legitimately elected leaders of the country. And we would also really just be showing what nasty racist pigs we are.

But this is not all. Mr. Memela got his knickers in an even bigger knot because:

more and more people are asking themselves about the media’s commitment to bolstering confidence and trust in government.

These statements show a rather embarrassing lack of understanding of the nature of a constitutional democracy and the role of the media and intellectuals in such a democracy. It scarily assumes that it is the role of the media to bolster confidence in the government or act as praise singers for the President and his cronies.

But the media has exactly the opposite duty in a democracy based on respect for the dignity not of the self-important leaders but of those people who are rather more important in a democracy – the voters.

The media has a duty to report on both the good things and the bad things that happen in our country, both the good things and bad things our leaders do, so that we as the voters can decide whether we want to vote for this government again the next time we have an election. The government does not have a divine right to rule and therefore does not have a right to be bolstered by the media – regardless of their actual track record.

To suggest that the media should lie to the electorate so that they do not present negative images of black people, is to show contempt for the very people that are supposed to be at the heart of the government’s concern.

In a democracy trust and confidence is earned by leaders and should not manufactured by state media who hear or see no evil and try to mislead the people by claiming that they have a patriotic duty to bolster confidence in the government.

It is a sad day when a government spokesperson inadvertently shows such contempt for the masses of our people and argue with such a utter lack of shame in favour of boot-licking and a suppression of the facts that should influence the choices we make come the next election.

Political literacy lessons....

Jacob Zuma's tax problem....

The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) yesterday ruled that the right to use loans interest-free is ‘gross income’ which ‘accrues’ to a taxpayer and that one must therefore pay tax on that benefit. This means, amongst other things, that people who receive bribes and then claim that those bribes were not bribes at all but merely interest free loans from friends, may have a tax evasion problem.

During the trial of Schabir Shaik much was made of the fact that the more than R1 million that Shaik gave to Zuma was a loan which Zuma was intending to pay back. But experts showed that if interest were to have been charged on these loans Zuma would have found it impossible to pay back the money. In any event the Court found that the "loan agreement" presented to it was fake and that the money was indeed given as a bribe.

If Zuma is charged again his legal team will have to think carefully about how they explain the fact that Zuma received this large amount of money from a convicted fraudster and why he has not paid any of it back - with or without interest accruing.

If they claim this was a loan to Zuma and they cannot show that the loan was serviced by the accused or that interest was being charged on the loan, they may convince a court that Mr. Zuma was not guilty of corruption, but they will then face a charge of tax evasion.

But if the money was not an interest bearing loan and it was not a non-interest bearing loan, it must have been a donation. Why would anyone donate more than one million Rand to a friend in a very influential position. Why would such a person accept such a donation? Surely it is difficult not to assume that the "donation" was given and the money taken because the arrangement was mutually beneficial to the two men.

Sisulu lost the plot

I have always liked Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. She seemed intelligent, hard-working and, for a cabinet minister, not without a modicum of wisdom and compassion. Her recent statements on the N2 Gateway fiasco have been so astoundingly stupid and arrogant that I have now changed my mind.

In Parliament on Monday she threatened to remove protesters from Joe Slovo informal settlement from the housing waiting list.

If they choose not to cooperate with government, they will be completely removed from all housing waiting lists.

There are so many things wrong with this statement that it is hard to know where to begin. Section 26 of the Constitution says that everyone in South Africa has a right of access to housing and that the state has a duty to realise this right progressively, given the available resources. Moreover section 33 of the Constitution states that “everyone has the right to administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair”.

This means that neither the Minister nor her officials can legally remove anyone from a housing list that is supposed to give people a shot of accessing housing, without a fair hearing. I can direct the “honourable” Minister to the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Permanent Secretary, Department of Welfare, Eastern Cape, and Another v Ngxuza and Others.

When the Eastern Cape government unilaterally cancelled the disability grants of thousands of residence, the SCA in that case slammed the Eastern Cape government and declared their actions illegal. Writing for the Court, Justice Edwin Cameron commented that the province had:

Conducted the case as though it was at war with its own citizens, the more shamefully because those it were combating were the least in its sphere ... The applicants formed part of a group of South Africans with the least chance of vindicating their rights through the legal process.

For the Minster to think that she has a right to unilaterally take away the rights of the very citizens who elected her into office is a shameful disgrace. What has happened to that much abused phrase “innocent until proven guilty”. I assume Mr Jacob Zum and his supporters are as we speak preparing statements of outrage about this abuse of power by the Minster.

But the statement of the Minister is shockingly disrespectful of the Constitution in another way. She seems to suggest that individuals will be punished and their rights expunged if they fail to cooperate with the government. But the Constitution guarantees for everyone the right to freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of conscience, which means we have a right, yes a right not to agree or cooperate with the government.

The Minister’s statement speaks of an arrogance that has sadly become all too pervasive among government officials. It reflects an attitude that government knows best and that ordinary people should just shut up and follow government orders – no matter how detrimental those orders may be for a particular individual.

The people of Joe Slovo are not stupid. They do not trust the government because the government has already lied to them regarding the first phase of the N2 Gateway Project. People were promised that they will be moved into the new houses, but this did not happen because they could not pay the high rents being charged.

The erstwhile neighbours of those poor unfortunate souls are now being promised that they will be returned to the permanent structures to be erected on the cleared land, but these structures, we know, will be showcase housing for the benefit of Fifa and the tourists driving from the airport, so they will cost a lot of money and will therefore not be affordable to most of the Joe Slovo residence.

The Minister knows this, her officials know this and the protesting residence know this too. No wonder they are protesting and no wonder they do not want to cooperate. Only people without any self respect agree to cooperate with a government hell bent on taking away your rights.

Steve Biko

I am reading Steve Biko's I Write what I Like and am deeply impressed by the writing. The more I read the more I think that he would not have been happy with the John Hlophe's, the Christine Quanta's, the BEE types which now so litter our political landscape. And what would he have made of President Thabo Mbeki whose vitriolic attacks seem to display a lack of pride and confidence - exactly the opposite of what Biko stood for.

Affirmative action for women or discrimination against poor men?

So why can’t the government provide women with pensions from age 60 and men only from age 65. Is this not a legitimate form of affirmative action sanctioned by section 9(2) of the Constitution?

The Pretoria High Court heard yesterday that the Social Assistance Act which provide for women to start receiving pensions at age 60, but men only at age 65, discriminated against poor men. People who qualify for old age pensions are by definition poor – whether they are male or female, so the argument is that this act discriminates against men on the basis of their sex and their economic status.

The state argues that it is appropriate to treat men and women differently when dishing out pensions in order to correct past injustice. This is because women:

share a combination of characteristics that makes them more vulnerable to poverty than men. The age differentiation recognises this susceptibility and is aimed at eradicating the structural and systematic causes of women’s poverty.

Of course section 27 of the Constitutions states that everyone has the right of access to “social security, including, if they are unable to support themselves and their dependents, appropriate social assistance”, but also states that this is subject to the availability of resources.

In the Khosa case the Constitutional Court found that the provision in the Social Assistance Act that prevented permanent residence who are not South African citizens from accessing old age pensions contravened the equality guarantee, read with section 27 of the Constitution and ordered the State to extend pensions to permanent residence – even though it might cost anything between R250-R650 million.

Given this judgment, it might appear that the men in this case should have an excellent chance of winning their case. But I am not hundred percent sure that they will. The cost involved to provide all deserving men with pensions from age 60 would be around R2.7 billion, a sizable amount in anyone’s book.

Will the Court order the state to take on such a huge extra financial burden or will it argue that the resources just are not available to do so? I am not so sure it will be so bold and at the same time it will be extremely reluctant to take away the benefit now given to women between the ages of 60 and 65 because that would look like punishing the women.

Moreover, if this is presented as an affirmative action measure to assist women who have been previously discriminated against, then the state will have a better chance of justifying the different treatment because it is quite easy to satisfy the test for affirmative action measures. All the state will have to show is that the measures are targeting a disadvantaged group, are reasonably capable of addressing past discrimination and will, in the long term help to achieve true equality.

The interesting issue here on which the case may well turn, is that the real suffering here is not based on the sex of those complaining, but on the basis of their economic status. They suffer because they are poor men who have no other way of supporting themselves. But economic status is not one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination (like, race, sex and sexual orientation) explicitly listed in the Constitution. The Court can find that poverty is a status sufficiently similar to those grounds explicitly listed, and that it could therefore form the basis for a claim of discrimination.

But this would be a bold thing to do in a capitalist society in which the government is following neo-liberal economic policies because many government policies in effect discriminate against the poor and would then become constitutionally suspect.

The government lawyers appearing before the Constitutional Court are often badly prepared and do not always present cogent and rational reasons for the government policies. If this was the case here, the men still have a chance to win, but I would not be particularly confident if I was them.

Dali Mpofu should rather not dabble in constitutional law

It’s a good thing Dali Mpofu, Group CEO and Editor-in-Chief of His Masters Voice also known as the SABC has stopped arguing constitutional law cases because he obviously has no clue of how to interpret the Bill of Rights.

In his letter announcing the SABC’s resignation from the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) he argues (quite correctly) that at the heart of our Bill of Rights is the protection of human dignity and that most rights flow from the understanding that peoples’ human dignity should be respected and protected.

But then he makes a logical jump: human dignity must trump the right to freedom of expression and newspapers therefore never have the right to publish things that would affect the personal dignity of an important elected representative like our beloved Minister of Health.

We cannot remain quiet while our mothers and our democratically chosen leaders are stripped naked for the sole reason of selling newspapers.

The problem is that Dali – like many lawyers still stuck in the pre-constitutional common law paradigm – confuses the personal subjective dignity of an individual usually protected by the common law and the very different objective constitutional right and value of dignity.

The constitutional notion of dignity flows from the assumption that every individual has an inherent human dignity because he or she is human being. The apartheid government did not respect this dignity because it denied individuals the right to moral agency and thus the right to define for themselves who they are and how they want to live their lives. If one denies people the right to an identity, one denies that the person has an inherent moral worth and thus deny that person her dignity.

Protecting a person’s dignity in the constitutional sense therefore has very little to do with ensuring that important politicians do not have their feelings hurt by the truth - the common law of defamation takes care of that potential harm in appropriate cases. The Constitution, on the other hand, deals with a far more profound and important notion of dignity because it aims at creating a society in which each human being’s humanity is equally respected – whether one is a mother of the nation, an elected official, a homeless DA supporter or even Dali Mpofu.

This notion of dignity is aspirational and deeply optimistic. It suggests that humans are so special that we should respect their moral agency equally so that they can decide for themselves who they are and how they want to live. In short: a society where the equal moral worth of all will be respected.

But we cannot decide for ourselves how to live and who we are, we cannot begin to have moral agency, if we are not informed by the media about what is happening in the world and what our options are. To suppress information of public importance is to treat people like children and hence to disrespect their human dignity.

Politicians and boot-lickers of the powerful and influential who claim that their personal subjective dignity should trump the objective, more profound, dignity protected in the Constitution, are therefore self-serving charlatans hiding behind a completely false understanding of the Constitution.

The constitution protection of the dignity of every person therefore demands that we protect the vigorous, critical and fearless media from interference by self-serving politicians and other higher ups.

What people like Dali Mpofu really seem to think is that the Constitution should protect politicians and others important people from the truth – especially where the truth would reflect badly on that person and may reveal that the person is incompetent, corrupt, dishonest, craven or just plain stupid. Such revelations would obviously be personally hurtful and would affect the persons subjective dignity, but it would have nothing to do with the Constitutional concept of dignity.

To argue otherwise is obviously dangerous and perverting of the Constitution and should be resisted at all cost.

Floor crossing and politics

A thoughtful reader took issue with my post on floor crossing, arguing, first, that the the "argument that, so long as the legislature's procedure is followed, any amendment [of the Constitution] may stand is excessively legalistic" and, second, that my "argument that any attempt to judge the merits of floor-crossing would be an unwarranted involvement of the Court in politics is disingenuous" because no court is above politics.

On the first point: The Constitution is the highest law of the land and in a Constitutional state like ours any law or state action and many private acts that contravene the Constitution will be declared invalid because of this clash with the higher law. For this reason it is rather difficult to change the Constitution and this can only be done in South Africa if a complicated procedure is followed and, for the most part, if at least two thirds of the members of the National Assembly and six of the nine Provincial delegations in the NCOP agree to the amendment.

But those people who made the Constitution did not make it impossible to change any part of the Constitution. I cannot see what is formalistic about insisting therefore that if the correct procedures are followed to amend the Constitution, those amendments should not be testable against other provisions in the Constitution. How can one part of the Highest law be tested against another part of that same Highest law if both parts are of the same height, so to speak?

Also, why should unelected judges be given the power to thwart the will of the people to change the Constitution as expressed by two thirds of its representatives. It would be extremely undemocratic and would fly in the face of any semblance of the separation of powers doctrine to do so. The Constitution itself give the legislature and not the Courts, the power to decide if and how they want to amend the Constitution and the Court cannot take back this power which was given to another body.

If we do not want the politicians to change the Constitution, we should not vote for them. The courts cannot protect us in every situation from our own stupidity as voters and cannot act as a super legislature - that would be rule by judges and once Judge Hlophe becomes Chief Justice you will see how quickly everyone agrees what a bad idea THAT would be!

On the second point: I chose my words very carefully when I said that the Court felt that there was a danger that it would descend into the overt political arena if it declared invalid the amendments to the Constitution.

Of course courts play a political role - both in constitutional and other cases - and I will be the last person to deny this. Courts make decisions that will have consequences for people and these decisions are based on the judges' interpretation of the law. Texts do not interpret themselves and judges have to make choices about what kind of interpretation and hence what kind of outcome they wants. And these choices have legal and political consequences (and the two things can not really be separated in any case).

But judges are not completely unconstrained. They have to try and make decisions and must justify them in ways that will be legitimate and coherent and will not undermine their credibility and influence. For their decisions to have a semblance of legitimacy they must be more than mere party political decisions based on the beliefs of the judges - or at least the decisions must appear to be more than party political choices....

In my post I was pointing out that in the Floor Crossing case the judges felt that there was no plausible reason outside overt politics for them to intervene in the case. The "legal arguments" ran out and all that remained were arguments that in appearance and in reality would be based on specific party political type preferences - and would thus appear to be overtly political. The Judges felt that making such a choice would be bad for their credibility as a court and thus declined to declare invalid the Floor Crossing legislation.

I do not think this decision was unwise. The judges could have usurped the power of the legislature and could have declared the Floor Crossing invalid and this would have given them some cheap popularity with the chattering classes. But how would this have made them any different from Jacob Zuma or his supporters calling for that bloody machine gun? They would then also have become populists. And is that not the very reason we have a Court: to save us form the populists when it really matters....

Floor crossing: don't blame the Constitutional Court

We are now right in the middle of the distasteful spectacle officially known as the “floor crossing window”. It is a sad spectacle that undermines public confidence in politics and it should be changed. This much almost everyone with a modicum of integrity agrees on.

But many people – including some informed journalists – have gone further, blaming the Constitutional Court for not declaring the legislation unconstitutional and arguing that the Court had suffered a self-inflicted wound because of this decision. I, however, am not so sure this criticism of the Court is justified, although I think the Court's credibility did (wrongly) suffer because of their Floor Crossing decision.

It is important to remember that the legislation which legalized floor crossing at national level was in fact two amendments to the Constitution. In the United Democratic Movement v President of the RSA the Constitutional Court made it clear that when Parliament amends the Constitution in the constitutionally prescribed way, these new provisions of the Constitution cannot be challenged because they are in conflict with any of the other provisions of the Constitution.

The Constitution, as amended, must be read as a whole and its provisions must be interpreted in harmony with one another. There is therefore very little scope for constitutionally challenging amendments to the basic law. If Parliament amended the Bill of Rights to scrap the right to property, say, the Court will not be able to do anything about it – as long as Parliament followed the correct procedure in doing so.

Those who challenged the amendments to the Constitution had to argue that the amendments were so far-reaching that they undermined the “basic structure” of the Constitution or that they were inconsistent with the founding values in the Constitution which guarantees a “multi-party system of democratic government” and thus had to be passed by a 75% majority of the National Assembly. But it would be exceedingly difficult to show that the amendments were so far reaching that it basically abolished democracy.

The unanimous Court agreed that the system of floor crossing in South Africa may not have been the best way to arrange our democratic system. However, it argued that this did not mean that democracy itself was being abolished. Where laws prohibited political groups from organizing, promoting their views through public debates and participating in free and fair elections, there would have been a fundamental interference with multi-party democracy and this would have been constitutional problematic.

But floor crossing merely allowed members of Parliament to change parties half way through the life of the Parliament. This is less problematic, say, than the Westminster first-past-the-post system in which all the votes cast in a constituency for the losing parties are in effect wasted.

The Court also pointed out that many parties (including the Democratic party of Tony Leon) argued vociferously in favour of floor crossing during the constitutional negotiations. For the court to interfere with the amendment of the Constitution to allow floor crossing – a politically contentious issue on which parties differed and had often changed their minds – would bring the Court into the overt political arena, which would impinge on the separation of powers principle.

Given this context, I think it is difficult to imagine the Court finding cogent constitutional reasons to declare the constitutional amendments invalid - which does not mean the provisions are good or wise, of course.

The biggest problem with the present system of floor crossing is that it allows two window periods in the life of the legislature for members to change political parties without losing their seats – as long as at least 10% of the parties members in that legislature crosses the floor.

The 10% threshold favours the ANC and disadvantages every other party because nationally more than 27 ANC MP’s of the National Assembly would have to cross the floor to another party to make it valid, while a single crostitute can validly cross the floor from any party with less than 10 members in the National Assembly.

I think the system could be made better if this threshold was lowered to 2%. This would also make the ANC vulnerable to floor crossing and would thus make it more fair. I am also in favour of a 2% threshold for a party to obtain any seats in the National Assembly. This would immediately eradicate all the smallest parties from Parliament and this would be a good thing. Most of these one member parties are formed because their leaders can become party leaders in the National Assembly and thus can acquire more perks. Such a 2% threshold will make it impossible for people to jump ship to one person parties.

In Germany there is a 5% threshold for membership of the Legislature and this has eradicated smaller parties with sharply partisan or narrow interests. Smaller parties in Germany are forced to come together and to build consensus and this moderates their platforms.

In South Africa a 2% threshold will also force parties to form coalitions and to work together - something that might become very important if we want to hold South Africa together and want to make sure that populism and ethic politics do not take hold here.

The votes “wasted” on parties who failed to get the required 2% would then be distributed pro-rata to the other parties. That way, only serious parties with demonstrable support would ever make it to the legislature.

Kenya shows the way

President Thabo Mbeki has a habit of writing ANC Today newsletters about the good news stories of Africa but I suspect he will not refer to the Kenyan example in the near future. You see this past weekend the two oppositions groupings chose their candidate to represent them in the Presidential elections in December.

Both parties had several candidates who had declared their ambitions months in advance and on the weekend each of them got to present their platforms in front of the party faithful who then could choose their candidates in a secret ballot. Democracy in action.

On Saturday we had a huge Nama Choma (a braai with lots of beer) chatting to the local elites, including some judges of the High Court. In between jokes about the drinking and the eating and the fact that some group had lodged a case in the Kenyan Constitutional Court suing Pontuius Pilate, Tiberius and others for the unfair trial of Jesus (really!) we returned to the topic of the election.

Everybpody was deeply interested in the outcome of the two party elections and we speculated on the chances of these candidates against the incumbent, President Mwai Kibaki. This was important, but it was not a life and death fight between some "enemy" and the forces of light.

The contrast with South Africa and the behaviour of President Mbeki and others in the ANC was striking. Perhaps because Kenyans threw out the equivalent of the ANC after more than 35 years in power four and a half years ago, they have matured politically and see the election for what it is: An important but ordinary contest between rival parties.

Maybe we will only be able to have real elections for ANC leaders oncethe ANC is thrown out of power for the first time? Maybe President Mbeki should come and visit Kenya to see how it is done?

On such a visit he may also be shocked by how tedious many Africans in other parts of the world find talk about race and about the "enemies" of Africa in general and Africans in particular. But the ANC needs enemies to quell the enemy within, so we are unfoirtunately stuck with this discourse for time to come.

PS: After writing this post, I read an interesting piece in The Nation, reminding me that the then ruling Kanu party (the equivalent of the ANC in Kenya), broke up shortly after it became the first party in Kenya to have a free leadership election which was soon followed by their electoral defeat. Maybe that is the lesson members from the ANC would take from Kenyan politics?

PPS: I was sitting in an internet cafe with a keyboard that hardly worked when I typed a first version of this post, so it was riddled with typos. I have now fixed it up.

In Kenya.....

I am at a conference in Nairobi so there will be light posting if at all until after the weekend.

Zuma for President?

My slightly tongue in cheek statement a few days ago that, given the behaviour of our Dear Leader lately, a Jacob Zuma Presidency is looking more and more attractive, elicited quite a lot of reaction. After all, Mr. Zuma does often ask for his machine gun and is also no stranger to the inside of our courts so he hardly seems like a suitable candidate for the top job.

The sad fact is that Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki seem to represent the worst the ANC could offer in the line of leadership and also seem to bring out the worst in each other. We always blame President Mbeki for his paranoia and his tendency to spot enemies under every bush while warning us against the Dark Forces out to destroy the ANC, leader of the national democratic revolution.

But of course, although the President started this sad decent into the world of conspiracy theories and victimhood way back when he forced Mr Zuma to declare publicly that he had no ambition to become President, Mr. Zuma has neatly used this atmosphere of suspicion against the President to elicit sympathy from the masses of our people.

Now the two both fan the flames of conspiracy and victimhood in attempts to get the upper hand in the so called succession battle. In the process they are both hurting the ANC and, of course, the country.

In most other democracies Mr Zuma would have been politically dead long ago. Although he has not (yet) been convicted of any crime, his financial adviser Schabir Shaik, has been convicted of giving him a bribe. Yet he Mr Zuma never explained how this does not make him a crook himself. He used to say that he wished he could get the opportunity to tell his side of the story but when he was charged and given the opportunity to do just that, he and his lawyers used the vast resources provided by the state to do everything in their power to prevent him from having to provide his side of the story.

Although Mr. Zuma might never be convicted of a crime, he will remain deeply tainted. As a politician it is simply not good enough to say he has a right to use any means necessary to prevent the prosecution against him from taking place. Reasonable voters must all surely now ask what he has to hide and whether we really want to have a President who is unwilling to explain why he took more than R1 million from a convicted fraudster for whom he did several political favours.

That said, at least he is not Thabo Mbeki. He might have had sex without a condom and might have claimed that taking a shower helps to prevent HIV transmission but at least he has never doubted the link between HIV and AIDS and at least he has not endorsed a Health Minister who believes people must be given a choice between taking anti-retroviral drugs and garlic and beetroot.

So, I will not vote for the ANC while either Mbeki or Zuma leads the organisation, but if I had to choose between the two I am not as sure as I was a year ago that I would choose President Mbeki. Maybe Mr Zuma will listen to advice? Maybe he will admit mistakes and face up to them? Maybe he will show that he cares about the suffering of ordinary people. Maybe he would feel so embarrassed about taking a bribe that he will come down heavily against corruption in government.

Stranger things have happened in politics.

What kind of enemy are you?

I had so much fun lambasting the anonymous writer on the ANC Today website yesterday, that I did not notice the very carefully drawn list of the "enemies" of the "national democratic revolution, the ANC and the masses it leads". Apart from those forces who were opposed to the ANC revolution before 1994, the writer identifies the more devious enemies as follows:

We must also recognise the reality that this situation makes it very easy for some who might have been inspired temporarily to attach themselves to the ascendant revolution to change their positions. This includes those who might find greater comfort among, and in the positions advanced by a necessarily sophisticated opposition to the political vanguard of national democratic revolution, in the aftermath of the victory of the democratic revolution.

It also encompasses those who, for partisan reasons, might find themselves acting in collusion with the ideological opposition forces which would consciously avoid presenting themselves as opponents of the national democratic revolution, while openly positioning themselves as adversaries of the vanguard movement of the national democratic revolution.

Now I am wondering where I fit in. I am surely not one of those "enemies" who feel more comfortable with the "sophisticated opposition" than with my previously beloved ANC and has therefore felt the need to switch sides.

I don't even believe that there is a sophisticated opposition in South Africa - unless one includes civil society opposition groups like the Treatment Action Campaign, of course. Characters in the official opposition (think Theuns Botha and Dougie Gibson) are about as sophisticated as a sheep farmer from Putsonderwater and I would feel very uncomfortable to share a room with them - let alone a party.

But now that I have called the national democratic revolution a load of codswallop, I am clearly also not an "enemy" "consciously not presenting myself as an enemy" of said revolution while opposing the ANC's vanguard role in it.

O dear, I suppose the learned writer forgot to include those of us who are "enemies" of the ANC because we shockingly believe that the aim of political parties in our democracy should ideally be to change (for the better) the social and economic conditions under which especially poor and marginalised people live, while respecting and expanding the rights and freedoms that individuals need to even begin to make important life choices.

We are obviously enemies who, under the guise of supporting social and economic transformation of the masses of our people, wish to limit the power of the ANC to tell us what to think and say and do.

What kind of enemy of the ANC and the national democratic revolution are you?

Maybe a Zuma Presidency wont be that bad...

Given the way the President has been behaving over the past few weeks I am seriously starting to wonder whether Jacob Zuma could be worse. At least we will have more fun with Mr. Zuma as President. Like this advert for the "Mshini Wam" ringtone. Not having dsiplayed much of a sense of humour since his elevation to the Presidency, adverts like this must drive President Mbeki nuts...

National democratic codswallop

I am such a dunce. There I was thinking that in 1994 the opposing parties (ANC and NP mostly) negotiated a settlement which established a constitutional democracy in which both civil and political and social and economic rights would be enforcement by an independent judiciary.

Now I discover on the ANC Today website that we are not living in a constitutional democracy after all but in a “revolutionary national democracy". In an unsigned article ominously titled “A fundamental revolutionary lesson: The enemy manouevres (sic!) but it remains the enemy / Part I” the writer tells us that the ANC is the “primary motive force” of this national democratic revolution.

Of course, the forces opposed to this ANC revolution would never “give up their offensive to weaken, defeat and destroy the ANC”. Unfortunately the ANC had decided to put up with these “historical forces of reaction” and thus the enemy has the cheek to continue “to exist and freely represent their views and interests within our evolving national democracy.” To quote from the document:

Wisely or otherwise [my italics], and by conscious decision of our movement and the masses it leads, our national democratic revolution has deliberately avoided any resort to the “Jacobin option”. It has therefore not used revolutionary force to suppress and destroy its historical opponents, as did the English, French, Russian, Chinese and many other revolutions.

Well, what can one say about a writer who suggests that it might have been unwise not to kill all those who opposed or criticised the ANC? What does one make of the messianic assertion that only the ANC can lead this revolution and that its leaders thus have a duty:

at all times and in all field of human activity, [to] assert and exercise their hegemony as the leader of the process of the fundamental social and national democratic transformation of our country. Both in the field of theory and in practical activity, this united force must act resolutely and successfully to protect and advance its interests.

How does one respond to a writer who seems to think that the legitimate political opponents in our constitutional democracy, a critical media and civil society organisations critical of the ANC are all “enemies” not only of the ANC but also of the “national democratic revolution”? Does this not imply that the ANC – the God anointed leaders of the revolution – would have a right, in defence of this revolution, to prevent the “enemy” from every taking over the state, using all means at its disposal? And what on earth could be “democratic" about such a view?

There are many people in the ANC who are surely embarrassed by this kind of Stalinist rubbish. Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota only last week wisely remarked that in our democracy the ANC will only continue winning elections for as long as it continued to be trusted by the people.

The argument that the ANC, historic and natural leader of the national democratic revolution, must take control of all levers of state power and must “defend” the national democratic revolution at all cost, is a dangerous and anti-democratic argument. It presupposes that democracy is not an end in itself but is only the means through which, in the present phase, the ANC has chosen to achieve the "national democratic revolution".

This means that other important players in a democracy (the press, opposition parties, civil society) who disagree or criticise the ANC, are enemies of the state and only survive and are only tolerated through the benevolence of the ruling party.

Of course, in a true democracy the establishment and deepening of democracy is an end in itself. Parties compete for votes based on their programmes and policies. Sometimes a party wins and sometimes it loses the election. If the opposition wins an election and it believes that the “national democratic revolution” is a lot of dogs bollocks, it has every right to rule the country accordingly – until the next election when its performance will be judged by the electorate.

And of course if one is the leader of the party at the vanguard of the “national democratic revolution”, and if all those who criticise the party are viewed as enemies of the party and the state, this means that the party and its leader are omniscient and never have to face reality or admit mistakes.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Wonder whether our Dear Leader did not have a hand in writing this dangerous, reactionary piffle?

Manto and Mbeki: how far can criticism go?

Are Ministers and the President entitled to a certain amount of respect and deference because of their important positions in our society or should they expect to be subjected to more searing criticism and questioning than the rest of us?

It seems as if the cabinet thinks that members of the Executive are entitled to special treatment and that their credibility may not be questioned . Government spokesperson Themba Maseko said this morning that the Cabinet took a dim view of the "distasteful coverage" of the Minister of Health, particularly the unlawful publication and theft of her medical records from a hospital. "The sacrosanct principle of doctor-patient confidentiality should be respected at all times, and its application could not be dependent on a person's class, position, gender or race."

It is true that public figures do not forfeit their right to privacy just because they run the country - even when they run it very badly like Mbeki and Tshabalala Msimang. Such figures also have a right to expect that what happens between them and their doctors stay private. But the facts in this case seem to suggest that the doctor-patient confidentiality argument is a red-herring.

The Sunday Times on Sunday made very specific allegations that the Minister of Health had been given preferential treatment to enable her to get a liver transplant when she did not qualify for such a transplant because of her alcoholism. In making these allegations, the newspaper did not rely on information that could only have been known by the doctor and his patient.

The newspaper asked questions about the Minister's treatment based on evidence that she was an alcoholic. They also reported that other medical practitioners had questioned whether she had not jumped the queue for the liver transplant. The legitimate question was asked whether her doctors had not broken rules and had not lied to the public when they assured us that everything was above board.

I cannot see how this reporting was in breach of the doctor-patient confidentiality rule unless one interprets this confidentiality rule to be so broad as to prohibit any discussion or speculation about the treatment of a patient by a doctor. Such an interpretation would be absurd because it would preclude the media from ever uncovering any maladministration or abuse of power in cases of medical treatment.

Where this treatment is controversial and perhaps based on abuse of the politicians power, newspapers would have a duty to report on it - as long as they do not report on information that only the doctor and the patient could have shared.

The doctor-patient confidentiality issue mentioned by the cabinet is therefore besides the point. Like the sub judice rule it is being used here to try and shut out any questions about abuse of power and whether the Minsiter really is a drunk and a thief. Interestingly enough, the cabinet did not address the substantive issues, namely whether the Health Minister had jumped the liver transplant queue or not. They therefore never disputed the factual basis of the report but is trying to change the subject - classic tactics if you do not want the public to know what is happening.

The spokesperson for the cabinet also criticised those who suggested that President Thabo Mbeki might have interfered to secure a liver transplant for his Minister of Health and stated that caution had to be exercised when criticising the head of state.

We think it is absolutely essential for South Africans to show a level of respect for the office of the head of state ... If you look at the statement [by the DA], it says the Public Protector must investigate this allegation and the integrity of the office of the president was being called into question ...

This is a complex issue bedeviled by race, but it seems to me also deeply problematic to argue, as Mr Maseko in effect does here, that it is inappropriate ever to question the integrity of the head of state. President Mbeki had denied involvement, but it surely is legitimate to ask the question.

Firstly, we know that heads of state often have little or no integrity - think Richard Nixon or George W Bush. Secondly, we know that President Thabo Mbeki and those in his office has a particularly tortured relationship with reality and "Truth". The President likes to re-interpret it to deny problems and the Minister in his office has on occasion provided answers to questions which turned out to be, well, untrue.

In any case in a democracy where the Rule of Law is upheld, a Head of State cannot expect to get a free pass. I would agree that given our history there might be a need to be sensitive to the tone used when questioning the ethics of the Head of State - calling him a mass murdered might in certain circumstances be inappropriate. But for the President's Spokesperson to suggest that one is not allowed to question the integrity of a Head of State is rather misguided. Is this also part of the attempt to change the topic?

No one is above the law and no one is beyond scrutiny. To suggest that the President is entitled to a free pass because he is our head of state is to question the very basis of our Constitutional democracy - namely that everyone is equal before the law.

Want to sign this petition?

If you feel aggrieved about the firing of Deputy Minister Nozizwe Madlala Routledge, you may want to sign this Internet petition. It won't bring her back but it might make you feel better...

Manto and doctors must sue or else....

The Sunday Times is now being attacked from all sides for publishing the sensational allegations that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang was convicted thief and alcoholic and that the real reasons for her liver transplant (alcoholism) was covered up by medical staff. The National Working Committee (NWC) of the ANC (but not Kgalema Montlante!) issued a statement yesterday attacking the Sunday Times for its "character assassination" of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang. The statement read in part:

“The national working committee views these reports with grave concern, not merely because [they] violate an individual’s right to privacy, but because [they] affect the right of all South Africans to expect their medical information to remain confidential."

But the privacy of the Minister is not really the issue. Surely the statement from the ANC should have disputed the accuracy of the claims made by the Sunday Times. The "character assassination" by the Sunday Times does not stem from the breach of the Minister's medical privacy, but from seriously defamatory statements about her drinking habits and about the abuse of power and corruption by the Minister and her Doctors.

The only way the Minister, the doctors involved and the Hospital can restore their reputations is by instituting a defamation action against the Sunday Times. If the allegations are untrue, they will be able to sue the pants of the newspaper and probably get a pretty penny out of the deal.

If they fail to sue, the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn would be that the newspaper report was correct and that there was corruption involved in the liver transplant. If this happens, the Minister should be fired and the Doctors scrapped from the medical roll.

The Presidency has asked for evidence of wrongdoing before taking action against the Minister. All the proof it may need will be provided by the absence of a defamation suit. But of course, even then the President will not fire the Minister because he will look weak and disloyal if he does. This means he is now probably stuck with a Minister which may well prove to be a thief and drunk and an abuser of her power.

I give the Minister and her Doctors two weeks to institute defamation proceedings. If they fail to do so, I will assume that the story is true.