This and that on this and that...[exhibit A]

Xenophobia: their shame, our shame

I read in one of the dailies that some folks who had just been repatriated from South Africa by the government, at some hefty cost it must be said, were ‘caught’ trying to sneak back to the (once-upon-a-time) rainbow nation. Apparently, so incensed was some mob at Biwi that it wanted to mete out instant ‘justice’ to these ingrates. Our reformed police intervened, thankfully. Since then, several of these stories have popped up in our papers, attended rather bemusingly by acerbic editorials denouncing these Malawians who have dared to even think of going back to the land where they were so brutally terrorized. The anger is misplaced I venture to say. What should incense us should not be the apparent idiocy of these people, but rather the state of our nation. What is it about Malawi that is so reeking that folks would rather put themselves in mortal danger elsewhere than hang around here? The fact of the despair that drives some of the most energetic of our people-who should be contributing in our economy and not building up foreign ones-into unwelcoming and resentful slums thousands of miles away is what should scandalize us. Not their jumping on free buses back to the land of ‘necklaces.’ Xenophobia is much our shame as it is South Africa’s.

And by the way, why are they being detained? True, their decision to quickly make the U-turn and head back from where we had spent some considerable fortune to ‘save’ them was always bound to offend the sensitivities of some. But it’s not an offence to get on a bus and travel to South Africa. Even if you happen to have a shattered jaw from the unforgiving blow of a demented xenophobe. If there are some who want to go back to South Africa, let no one stand in their way. This, by the way, should make us rethink the whole repatriation thing. Were we really repatriating folks who wanted to be back? Was this thing being forced on people? Not that we should turn our back on compatriots stranded elsewhere. But this experience should teach us something about circumspection.  Maybe if we had been calmer and measured in our response, we would have come to the conclusion that the number of people who wanted out was not as high. We might as well have decided that our intervention could have been more impactful if delivered right there in the camps in South Africa. Maybe by trying to improve the apparently deplorable conditions there for our people?

And talking of camps, there still are camps in chilobwe/zingwangwa, chikwawa and nsanje, no? A reminder of those devastating floods now months ago.  We seem not to be in any hurry whatsoever to ensure that these Malawians are more permanently resettled. It can’t be right.  The fact that they met their fate here at the hands of Mother Nature as opposed to them shanty townships in Zwelithini’s kingdom at the hands of his rowdy impis does not make their plight any less urgent.

What’s our nation’s most pressing need?

Him whom President Obama likes to refer to as the Baptist preacher once spoke of the ‘fierce urgency of now’.  The core of the preacher’s rallying cry that late August day  was that the equal treatment of the black man was the most pressing issue that faced the American nation at the time and its resolution could no longer be pushed down the menu of national priorities. I am keen student of our nation’s policy documents, especially those of the macro/overarching ilk. The MGDS for instance. And going through them, I often grapple with this question ‘what is our nation’s most pressing need?’ What challenge have we identified as commanding the fierce urgency of now, the resolution of which cannot be postponed to the tenure of the next political administration? I ask myself these questions because I sincerely wonder if we will be able to climb out of this hole of despondency unless we ask ourselves that question…forget about priorities within priorities. Am asking about THE priority…

Conversations with Moses… ‘The Federal Republic of Malawi?’

I agree with you that federalism in the strict sense of the concept may not be a panacea for our political problems as its most fervent proponents would have us believe. The politics of regions and ethnicity in Malawi needs a more nuanced understanding. There is nothing scientific about our borders. They, like our state boundaries, were drawn up by the colonial powers without regard to any ethnic configuration whatsoever. Regionalism is not, therefore, an inevitable consequence of the regional boundaries that we have but a socially constructed phenomenon that fortifies and feeds into our patrimonial politics. Accordingly, there is absolutely no guarantee that folks from the 3 regions will not retreat into their even small sub-ethnic cocoons once the regional boundaries were done away with. So for arguments sake, if the Northern Region was to become an autonomous region, it wouldn't be long before the minority tongas, nkhondes, nyakyusas (you can add the many sub-ethnic groups that inhabit the region) started complaining of being excluded from the political process by the region’s majority ethnic group. Insidious fault-lines have got a way of being conveniently peppered over by the uniting presence of a common cause and or enemy. Closer to home, the tragic case of South Sudan should offer us all a sobering lesson. Against the mainly Arabic and Islamic political forces of the North, the darker peoples of the South found it easier to band together and demand their independence. But once the same had been secured, the thinly veiled ethnic fissures were to spectacularly explode. Folks who had hitherto fought side by side against a common enemy turned their weapons against each other in brutish slaughter. Now the very existence of their nascent state has been imperilled. My point is, folks from the 3 regions should not be naive enough to think that their own desired politically autonomous regions will be utopias and free from tribalistic rancor.

In addition, like DD Phiri, I have grave doubts about the viability of micro-states within a federal Malawi. Size can be a determinant for the viability of a state. Several political science scholars, for instance, have surmised that several African states have struggled to develop because they are simply not viable as states due to their tiny geographic size. Why? Well, the tinier the state the less likely it is that it will have the resources with which to take off and sustain itself development wise. That is why, perhaps [and holding all things constant!] Malawi would have been much better if it had been part of the larger states of Zambia, Mozambique and or Tanzania. So folks who want the North to be a micro autonomous state within a federal Malawi should ask themselves some tough question: is the region viable as an autonomous state? Does it have the resources with which to develop itself in a sustainable fashion? How and from where would the state government raise the revenues to meet its social-contract obligations to its citizens? The same can be asked of all the regions in fact. If one pays some sober attention to these questions, then one realizes that the matters of size of Malawi vis-a-vis the viability of a federal state as raised by DD Phiri cannot be cast aside with the casual indifference of some of the supporters of federalism.

That said, the debate about federalism and the rather surprising traction that it has gained is symptomatic of deep seated disaffection with the status quo. I personally believe that the grievances of folks from the Centre and North (at least for the time being) are not without justification. They are worth paying attention to before they find expression in more destructive forms. But maybe a Federal State may not be a way to go. We could start by ensuring that power really devolves to the lowest levels possible through decentralization. If say district/town/city councils had more say in the provision of social amenities such as roads, hospitals and education together with the control over relevant resources, then maybe some regions would not complain of being denied development. We could also introduce another tier of political authority at say provincial level they way they have in South Africa. Given the right conditions, these provincial governments could counter the central government. We should also reform our electoral system by requiring a President to be elected by an absolute majority.  If a President knew that he needed more than half of the voters to vote for him to stay in power, then I doubt if he would govern in a manner that was only pleasing to an enclave of his tribesmen. An electoral system which made it extremely difficult for one party to govern without a coalition would for these reasons also be preferred.

P.S. Isn't it amazing that we the colonized peoples continue to struggle with the legacy of colonialism decades after our supposed independence? From Iraq to Sudan to the tiny state of Malawi, the evidence suggests that we will continue to pay for the folly of straight-line maps drawn by imperialists without any regard to 'nationalistic sensitivities'.

THE FOLLY OF ROMANTICIZING DESPOTS

Ngwazi Dr H. Kamuzu Banda, as our founding president preferred to be called was rather quite an enigmatic a figure. For someone who lorded over us for some good 3 decades, it is simply incredible how little Malawians ‘intimately’ knew the man. This was not an accident of course. It was all part of a carefully designed persona, steeped in mythical obscurity, meant to keep Malawians in check. So successful was this project that most Malawians at the time grew up believing that any dissident whisper would be picked up by the walls and trees around them and somehow waft in the gentle breeze into the mighty Ngwazi’s ears at the opulent Sanjika Palace. The Ngwazi literally defined life as they knew it. Heck! Dr Banda owned everything they surveyed! Including, naturally, the very piece of earth on which their tiny and sorry feet were planted. And so it was generally in this spirit of things that May 14 was plucked from thin air and declared to be a public holiday in celebration of the great leader’s birthday. No one was of course bold enough to interrogate the historical accuracy of the ‘birthday’ claim. Well, at least not openly. Only idiots tempted fate in that fashion during those days. But like much of the Kamuzu symbology, the ‘birthday’ was done away with in the euphoria that engulfed the country at the dawn of the so called 2^nd republic in May 1994. So strong was the anti-kamuzu sentiment at that time that anything seen as dismantling of his dark legacy was wildly cheered on regardless of its merit. So Kamuzu’s name on public infrastructure was quickly scrapped off and replaced with something else. Never mind that in the intervening years the infrastructure itself was allowed to rot away in neglect. Prisons notorious for holding the Life President’s political enemies, real or assumed, were shut down in an exuberant display of presidential populism. The fact that the prisons held other non-political prisoners who would then need to be transferred and crammed into already over-stretched correctional facilities was hardly mentioned to the new man in charge. If it was, then it must have contemptuously been waved away. The trajectory of public benevolence was quickly reversed. The people, who for years had been forced to part with their hard earned chickens, or if they were lucky just eggs, as gifts for their Kamuzu, now found themselves at the receiving end of presidential charity. Soon they were being showered with new K50 notes at public rallies. That was, of course, if they were lucky enough to hold on to one in the mad scramble that usually followed the ‘donation.’ How people never saw the debasement in money being thrown at them for it to be fought for like one would do with bananas at caged apes is beyond me. It is fair to say that with each passing year during the first decade after the reintroduction of multiparty democracy, the coldness towards Kamuzu somewhat thawed. What was to follow during the subsequent 10 years, however, would have made the Orton Chirwas, the Atati Mpakatis and the Gadamas of this world turn in their graves.

On the face of it, it is rather difficult to understand Bingu’s morbidly enthusiastic embrace of Kamuzu. This is particularly so if one believes the claims that Bingu himself made that he had fled the country in the 1960s, fearing for his life, after policy disagreements with Dr Banda. One would thus think that he was just as better placed as anyone to make the correct call about Dr Banda’s legacy. The simplest explanation for Bingu’s rather strange behaviour was that it was all politics. He was in the middle of a fierce feud with his mentor and political patron Bakili Muluzi over who would be calling the shots in government post 2004 and wanted to find a political foothold to sustain himself. Since conventional wisdom had it that Muluzi’s bastion of political power was the Southern region, Bingu’s overtures to Kamuzu must have been a shrewd move to endear himself to the latter’s kinsmen in the centre. And so began the most comprehensive project to rehabilitate Dr Banda. His name that had so unceremoniously been knocked off several public buildings and facilities was restored in the splendour of a presidential decree. The project to construct his mausoleum, in respect of which the UDF administration had shown only a modicum of cosmetic interest, took off with gusto. An imposing statute of the former head of state was unveiled. There was even talk of the former President’s official portrait hanging side by side with that of President Mutharika. Bingu even went to the ludicrous extent of prefixing the former head of state’s title before his own name.  And of course, the dubious ‘birthday’ was reintroduced as a public holiday. How Bingu ended makes one wonder, of course, if the motivation for the cozying up to the Ngwazi was just a cunning political move or whether it was a result of some sincere admiration on his part of the first President’s ways. His impatient references to the need for public ‘discipline’, in response to charges of autocracy, and his authentic bemusement at our opposition to the same had an eerie sound of someone who was truly nostalgic about the darkest days of Kamuzu’s reign. 

To date, the romatincism of Kamuzu has continued unabated. There are no signs that the current administration will change tack and radically depart from the course set by Mutharika. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been celebrating the Ngwazi’s ‘birthday’ this year, would we?

That Kamuzu was a pioneering nationalist cannot be disputed. His role in ‘developing’ the country certainly needs to be acknowledged. But we wrong ourselves if we merely stop there. We need to remind each other that his was a particularly repressive regime that visited some of the most colourful atrocities on the people he was supposed to be serving. The many whose promising lives were snuffed out by his pervasive security apparatus should not be forgotten. The thousands of Jehovah’s witnesses who were exiled from their country for simply refusing to buy party cards should not be shoved aside in our rush to ‘honour’ Dr Banda. We owe it to the many nameless ones who spent uncertain and terrifying nights behind the walls of Mikuyu Prison to tell the whole story. And of course we must not forget folks from the ‘dead north’ who were victims of systemic purges from both the civil service and educational institutions every now and then. The list of the egregious human rights violations that this ‘great leader’ committed against ‘his people’ is depressingly long one must say. But it would do his admires no harm if they refreshed their memory by looking at it and the stark reality that it represents.

An obsession with the truth and nothing but the whole truth should not be mistaken for vengeance. It’s important to point this out because ever since Kamuzu so called apology for his atrocities in 1996, any attempt to re-open discomforting inquiries about the old man’s time at State House is met with slanderous accusations about the inquirer’s malicious intent.  Milan Kundera once wrote that ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ Celebrating Kamuzu’s ‘birthday’ the way we do now risks consigning his regime’s excesses to some amorphous bin of irrelevance. And that countrymen, will be our ultimate tragedy because whatever constitutional edifice we sought to put in place in 1994 was supposed to ensure that our ‘difficult past’ was never repeated. If we forget this ‘difficult past’ as we are likely to if this travesty of blindly celebrating Kamuzu is not arrested, we are surely ‘condemned to repeat it.’ History, sadly, is often the product of the dominant voices in society. Of those who control the ‘narrative’. Malawians must be wary of their leaders telling it not as it was. We must wake up to the fact that the picture that our politicians try to paint of Kamuzu Banda is one borne out of political convenience. It is an imperfect caricature of the real despot that Kamuzu was and it does violence to the memory of the many victims of his authoritarianism. History, for it to be accurate and authentic, if at all it’s capable of such, must be told in its totality. We must celebrate our glorious past, whatever that means, without smoothening its coarse contours. We need to look at our yesterday in the eye-with all its attendant inconveniences, embarrassment and painful truth- and hold its gaze. We owe ourselves that less. May 14 does not help our memory’s struggle against forgetting. It should hardly be surprising that our corporate struggle against power is similarly in a moribund state. 

Writing the Big Kahuna’s obituary… For Bingu Wa Mutharika (Ph.D?)

Until that moment, April 5, 2012 had been a rather uneventful day. I had been sitting at my rather ancient desk, probably drafting something. I must not have been engrossed in the task at hand because as soon as the tiny red light on my Blackberry started flashing, indicating receipt of a message, my hand reached out for it. It was a Blackberry Messenger message from my uncle. ‘That prophecy must have been ours after all!’ It read. ‘What are you talking about?’ I quickly shot back my heartbeat picking up a pace. But I need not have asked really. For close to 3 months then, the country had eagerly been awaiting the fulfilment of T.B. Joshua’s prophecy. Now T.B. Joshua is a Nigerian teleprophet, who commands quite a significant following especially in black Africa. It is said that in months preceding April 2012 he had prophesied that an octogenarian President from Africa would pass on. I had not personally watched the prophecy as I was no huge fan of the ‘man of God’. The news had reached me nevertheless. The teleprophet was to apparently ‘clarify’ the prophecy, stating that the old man would certainly not be from West Africa. It thus was to be the case that the search for the target of the divine prediction turned Southwards. The most likely candidates were our old but big kahuna Bingu Wa Mutharika and Zimbabwe’s comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe. And so in the months after the prophecy, intense attention had turned to these 2 old men. Each and every public appearance was scrutinized for tell-tale signs and each and every unexplained public absence was fiercely speculated on. And so when I got the slightest inkling that the prophecy might in fact have been fulfilled within our shores, I was understandably….Well.

Anyway, as we all know, it turned out that the President had indeed passed on or about April 5, 2012. After almost 2 days of posturing and astonishing scheming, the ruling party accepted the inevitable. Bingu was declared dead and the hitherto side-lined vice President ascended to the Presidency. She would become Africa’s second female President and Southern Africa’s first.   The political changes that followed then were truly seismic. The DPP, rather harshly, realised that the throne on which it had been perched in fact had marshmallow foundations. The collapse was spectacular. Folks who though not holding any elected public office, had held considerable sway over the tiny republic’s public affairs suddenly found themselves on the peripheral. And concomitantly, those who had been in the unenviable despair of political wilderness just a couple of hours before Bingu’s fall now revelled in new found political glory. Wondering, rather zanily, how they could ever have thought that they were staring at a cynical political cul-de-sac.

It’s been 2 years now since Bingu’s rather ignominious exit.  And while his end was greeted with a euphoria reserved for the very worst in our society, one gets the unnerving feeling that time may just rehabilitate Bingu’s soiled legacy. Chipembere had a point when he said that history takes long to deliver its verdict. For indeed, the inherent contradiction in assessing the legacy of a departed President is that to some significant extent, his greatness or smallness is inextricably linked to the performance of those who follow him or her in office. For within 24 months after his passing, folks are asking if he really was as bad as their feelings at his final hour had suggested. True he was one arrogant man, but compared to the flip-flopping we have seen in our tiny republic’s administration since his passing, his arrogance could almost pass for principle. Some of his dreams for the country may have been too vivid even for the country own good, but at least he had some vision that he could articulate.  Quite a far cry from the pettiness and mundaneness that has now engulfed the Presidency. Bingu’s sometimes-resentment towards the West and his whipping up of nationalistic sentiments appeared rather anachronistic and desperate at times, one has to admit. But neither did he have the pitiful naivety of believing that the West epitomised a benign and altruistic santa claus with bags and bags of presents to dole out.

In the 2 years that the son of Chisoka village eternally returned to his people, little has changed for the common man. Public service delivery remains poor; from provision of security to drugs in public hospitals. The refreshing promise to liberalise the public airwaves has dissipated as swiftly as it was made. And the looting from the public kitty has continued unabated. If you thought the days of unelected and powerful patrons were over, you were dead wrong. What has conveniently changed is the colour. The metamorphosis from blue to orange has closed with breath-taking speed. We sure are rocking. But we are not making progress.

Far from it for me to try to rehabilitate the legacy of the dead. But if truth be told, Bingu eloquently makes the case for the law’s reticence in meting out the harshest of penalties for those who fall foul of it. The vagaries of human behaviour indeed make sense of the fiction that the worst of offenders are not yet born. For just when you have sunk so low and you are so fortified in your belief that there is no more sinking to endure, it’s when someone drills even harder and lower. Somehow, just somehow, one gets the feeling that we might have been too quick in writing the big kahuna’s obituary…

Of drum beaters…

‘Chitsiru chinayimba ng’oma, ochenjera navina’ is a Chewa saying. Literally, it means the foolish will beat the drum and the clever ones will dance. But it says a lot about Malawians in general. You see, most Malawians are risk averse. Especially those who lay claim to enlightenment. They know too much for their own good. The economy aint right. No investment can thrive in this environment. Inflation is through the roof and the runaway interest rates should dissuade any clear minded fellow from obtaining a loan from the bank to finance a business project. Knowledge, instead of freeing the creators in us, somehow fetters our imagination. It becomes that thick albatross around our neck that tie us to our average normalcy. So we seek out safe zones and find comfort in there. Nchifukwa chake ambiri timajiwa. Chifukwa pakadafunda…

Take our local politics for instance. Those in elected office have been criticized for being clueless at best and ‘unfathomable idiots’ at worst. Be this as it may, those who supposedly know better will never throw their hat into the ring. They will be content providing an exasperated running commentary on the failings of our politics. Often from a safe distance of their social media accounts and the dim lit corners of drinking joints. So thick is our risk aversion that even when those of recognised brilliance decide to risk it by joining politics, we look at them aghast. Wondering what on earth they are thinking leaving ‘plum jobs’ to join dirty politics. So when Saulos Chilima gets lampooned for stepping aside as CEO of one of Malawi’s leading corporations, one should see it for what it is. Our pathological aversion to anything risky.

That explains in part why our politics is dominated by those who do not have a litany of qualifications after their names. It is dominated by those who risk big. By the bold ones. They dare to tread even where the matadors fear. They simply take the plunge while we the enlightened ones run sophisticated statistical models to measure the associated risks. And that is why my friends, they, for the foreseeable future, will continue to beat the drum while we, the supposedly clever ones, will continue to wiggle our sorry bums in a stupendous dance…Ha! Chitsiru ndi ndani pamenepa?

As they say, in a democracy people get a government they deserve. Of the people, by the people and for the people. 

It’s NOT just a joke damn it! So get over it…

It seems like ages ago when Max Lucado used to inspire me with his daily devotional messages. I stopped reading them when I abandoned my yahoo! E-mail account through which I had subscribed to his service. And it’s been years too. But somehow, a line from his devotionals has stuck with me. It’s a line I even used when I preached -yes preached- some years ago at Chancellor College. Boy that seems like ages, ages ago…But the line is simply this; “[Insensitive] Words cause wounds that heal slowly.” [Or something along those lines…] I dunno why folks are so bloody careless with their words. I don’t know why even the well-meaning are so reckless with what comes out of their mouths. 

Of course it’s not possible to guard against all verbal slipups in the world. Some words will hurt not because they are hurtful in themselves but because they exploit that sore fragility of the listener. Their insecurity, fears and what not. Against such kind of hurt, perhaps no provision can be made. But there are words that are inherently vicious that unlike the benign word that hurt those already vulnerable, these take some inhumane stoicism to wave away. So make no mistake. Before you let that joke slip or that comment escape your lips, think about the impact it will have on your audience. For many are the words that for all their superficial innocence exploit stereotypes of the worst kind. Racism, sexism, tribalism and all the other isms that continue to inflict so much pain around us. I see it all the time on social media. In conversation with friends. In writings of most respected authors.  It’s a deep seated problem really. It’s diagnosis particularly tricky. Part of it is simply ignorance of course. After all, sensitivities have got a cultural context as well. Looking at a person in a particular way may be offensive to people from a particular culture. For some, it may be that innocuous omission of the prefix ‘please’  from a most sincere request which at the end horribly comes out as a presumptuous command, which may cause offence. Indeed, for as many people as there are on earth, each with their own singular past, so are the possibilities for offence.  And it’s even more challenging because most of the frames through which we process our communication are deeply embedded in our psyche. Lifelong held assumptions about people cannot simply disappear as a result of a lecture on the niceties of courtesy and what not.  

Its complicated business this sensitivity stuff. But that’s no excuse for harsh brusqueness.  A little attempt to know our audience could be a useful starting point. An acknowledgment that our most fundamental assumptions about people may be wrong could also be helpful. And a resistance to the often powerful tendency to rob our audience of their humanity. It’s strange isn’t it, how the golden rule is often trampled on? Do unto others as you would have done to yourself, simply put is ‘see in others the humanity you see in yourself.’ The vulnerabilities that are there in you, that potential to hurt, to tear and bleed exist in the next person regardless of age, sex or any other status as they do in you. If this thought endured at the front of our minds (as opposed to its back), we would cause others less hurt with our words…

EULOGIZING A COLOSSUS; NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA (JULY 18, 1918 ~ DECEMBER 5, 2013) –PART II

Did he sell the blacks out?

Racial discrimination and the domination of the black race in South Africa started with the arrival of Jan Van Ribbeck at the Cape of in 1652. When Apartheid in the form that it existed between 1948 to the early 1990s was introduced, there was already in place systemic subjugation of the blacks by the white imperial forces for close to 3 centuries. What this means is that by the time that Mandela was assuming the Presidency in 1994, this system which structurally and institutionally disadvantaged black people had been religiously enforced for over 3 centuries. It is naïve to expect these historical injustices to have been reversed within the first 5 years of Madiba’s presidency let alone during the negotiation period of the CODESA process. When a task is so ridiculously monumental, one is setting himself up for failure if he decides to do everything at once. Pragmatism dictates that one takes a step at a time. It was President Mandela’s judgment that what South Africa needed after centuries of the injustice of apartheid was a period of reconciliation and a coming together. That he needed to build a nation. This is the task he set apart for himself and one which he executed with amazing grace.

This does not mean, however, that it is illegitimate to inquire whether or not more could have been done to end the economic subjugation of the blacks. This question is particularly imperative when one considers that the Freedom Charter, the ANC’s [and other liberation movements’] statement of core principles committed the organisation to the nationalisation of industry and the redistribution of land.  While most of the charter’s demands found their way into the new Constitution, these 2 core demands were conspicuous by their absence. The ANC has subsequently rejected blanket nationalisation of industry preferring instead to ‘increase state ownership but only in sectors where it deems appropriate.’ See the Party’s 2012 Mangaung Conference resolutions.

There are several things to be said here. First of all, it would appear to me that the Freedom Charter was a statement of aspirations. Goals which those in the struggle movement hoped to see realized. And while this does not in any way lessen the significance of the document, as evidenced by how much it influenced the content of the new Constitution, I doubt if those in the struggle movement thereby irrevocably bound themselves to live by its contents regardless of the exigencies of the moment. It should be obvious, one imagines, that the policy that anchors a struggle movement will often be markedly different from that which informs the hard business of governing a country. Secondly, the ANC took the Charter to a negotiating table through the CODESA process. If all its demands had been forced down the throat of the National Party [as would largely have been the case if the 2 keys demands above had been accepted] then one wonders if the process would still have qualified as a negotiated settlement. We can debate whether the ANC conceded too much ground during the negotiations, considering that the other demands in the Charter were largely basic human rights demands anyway. But what is not debatable is that in any negotiation worth its name, compromise is inevitable. It is worth speculating, however, what would have become of South Africa if there had been a radical departure in economic policy in 1994. Would its people have been better off compared to their current station if the mines and other industries had been nationalised and if the land had been redistributed? How best would this have been carried out? Would the government have been assured of the availability of legitimate force to enforce some aspects of this reform considering that the Police and military formations were still [practically]] largely controlled by the whites? I can only speculate.

This, however, is not to suggest that Madiba’s arm may not have been twisted during the negotiations. Capital in South Africa was largely in the hands of white people and its naïve to think that they would have given it up on a silver platter. They naturally pushed back against the more radical demands encapsulated in the Freedom Charter. This they did with some success. And let nothing detract from the fact that the social and economic condition of the average black man [the overwhelming majority] is nothing less than a scandal. For the majority of blacks, the train has really not left the station. They continue to wallow in abject poverty, stricken by disease and a life of violent crime. This is in sharp contrast to what goes on the other side of South Africa. Where the dizzyingly wealthy, the majority of whom are white but who since 1994 [thanks to the government’s affirmative action and pure corruption] have been joined by a tiny group of blacks, live in opulence behind high-electric-wire-topped- security walls. The situation was starkly captured by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe on December 9, 2013 in his address to the Joint session of South African Parliament commemorating Madiba when he said: “Why then do the majority of the world’s people, the great unwashed, live in abject poverty when a fair distribution of the world’s resources would not even minimise the material comfort of those who wallow in luxury at the top of social articulation? We cannot claim to follow in the footsteps of this inspiring leader when we have these shocking levels of poverty sitting cheek by jowl with fabulously dazzling material riches known to human history.”

It should be fair, in the circumstances, to ask what, if at any, was Mandela’s contribution to this shameful condition? Does he bear any responsibility as a result of his omissions during the transition negotiations and his term as President? All these are fair inquires. What is not fair is to omit the context in embarking on the inquiry. When it comes to South Africa, I do not, with respect, think that it should be permissible for anyone to simply wave Malcom X, Sankara and or Mugabe [you can add your favourite ‘revolutionaries to this list!] and think that they have won the argument.

The TRC and accountability for apartheid atrocities

Lastly, we look at the criticism that Madiba failed to punish the perpetrators of apartheid era atrocities. The argument here is that the TRC with its emphasis on restorative justice failed to accommodate the retributive elements of the penal system. That folks who were responsible for horrible crimes during apartheid should have been hauled before the Courts, tried for their evil deeds and accordingly punished. This argument deserves some sympathy, one must say, seeing as it is that retribution and vengeance remain the legitimate aims of any criminal justice system. Rather simplistically, let me rehash how the TRC worked. Perpetrators of human rights violations were encouraged to come forward and essentially render a full account of their evil deeds. A full and frank account rendered one eligible for a pardon of sorts and immunity from criminal prosecution. The victims would fully participate during the process and were at liberty to either support or oppose the application for amnesty. It’s quite accurate, therefore, that healing and restoration was at the centre of this process as opposed to retribution and vengeance.

Again context matters here. Apartheid was a system that had survived for over 4 decades. It was fully entrenched in the country and literally pervaded every aspect of life. And what more; it had the backing of the law in South Africa. Accordingly some if not a lot of what happened under the system, especially on the government’s side, had the colour of law. Perhaps there would have been a danger of retrospective criminalisation if acts which were lawful at the time were punished at a later date. Secondly, rules of criminal responsibility are such that the criminal justice net would have hauled quite a ludicrously huge number of people into its process. This is so because accomplices [aiders, enablers, procurers, abettors, counsellors] would all have been fixed with criminal responsibility. Considering how pervasive apartheid was one would surmise that there would have been droves and droves of white people being hauled before the courts to answer criminal justice. These were going to be criminal trials on an industrial scale. [Though the struggle movement was also responsible for some atrocities, this pales in comparison to the scale of the government inflicted atrocities on the African people.] Inevitably, this was going to take a racial tinge [of victors’ justice] which was going to affect social cohesion in the long run. But above all, what must be emphasised is that the TRC system was a form of justice. The fact that it sought to restore and heal as opposed to exact vengeance does not make it any lesser form of justice. At the end of the day, retribution and forgiveness are all moral choices and they can be no rational basis for saying that one is superior to the other. Sight must not be lost of the fact that there was full victim participation in the process and that some of the perpetrators were in fact denied amnesty and were eventually prosecuted. In some cases, however, the victims themselves supported the amnesty application. I personally would have loved to see more prosecutions of the perpetrators of the especially heinous crimes. And the fact of the matter is that this is what the majority of the black people would have wanted. Given such kind of pressures, it is amazing that a decision to go against the populist tide can be seen as a sign of weakness in a leader. I should think it takes a particular kind of moral courage for a politician to stand for a position which is unpopular.

The fallible giant…

Let me finish by quoting from Barack Obama’s eulogy delivered on December 10, 2013 at Madiba’s memorial service:-

“Given the sweep of his life, and the adoration that he so rightly earned, it is tempting then to remember Nelson Mandela as an icon, smiling and serene, detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men.  But Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait. Instead, he insisted on sharing with us his doubts and fears; his miscalculations along with his victories.  "I'm not a saint," he said, "unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."

It was precisely because he could admit to imperfection – because he could be so full of good humor, even mischief, despite the heavy burdens he carried - that we loved him so.  He was not a bust made of marble; he was a man of flesh and blood – a son and husband, a father and a friend.  That is why we learned so much from him; that is why we can learn from him still.  For nothing he achieved was inevitable.  In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness; persistence and faith.  He tells us what’s possible not just in the pages of dusty history books, but in our own lives as well.”

Madiba was a fallible human being. Human greatness is never measured by how infallible one is. If that was the case, it would no longer be human greatness but something else. It is the human triumph over monumental adversity that defines human greatness. That unwavering commitment to principle. That simplicity, purity and rawness of righteous desire. To simply be a man. With equal opportunities. Where one’s skin colour is of no more significance in the quest for realisation of one’s potential than one’s sex, tribe, gender or sexual orientation. And the colossal personal sacrifice made to live that principle. 27 years away from what most of us take for granted. “A son denied the opportunity to bury his mother and a grieving father a chance to bury his son.” Shattered family lives… So let there be no mistake. Madiba, the fallible giant, lived his life with remarkable nobility. He did his duty. The world was a better place because of the sacrifices he made in it. And the son of Qunu has rightly earned his place in the ‘pantheons of history.’