In growing fear SA cries out for sane voice of Mandela
dispatch.co.za
>>INSIGHT by Xolela Mangcu
DEAR Tata, I hope this letter finds you well. I am not well. Tears came to my eyes as I read news of the imminent arrest of Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya and deputy managing editor Jocelyn Maker. I am not exactly sure whether I was crying for Mondli or for myself or our country, or for you in particular. I was probably crying for all those things, and more. You see, Tata, the foundations of our democracy have never been shakier, the credibility of our justice system never more suspect, the institutions of state never more compromised and our public culture never more hateful as it is now, under your successor Thabo Mbeki.
He has single-handedly taken this country to its most perilous moment. He has become a god unto himself, accountable to no one but himself. He fires, suspends and punishes those who stand in his way. Everywhere I go, people are shaking their heads in disbelief. “What has gone wrong with this man?” they ask.
I will not presume to comment on the legalities of the cases and the dismissals of high-level ANC cadres such as Jacob Zuma, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, Billy Masetlha, Vusi Pikoli, and now Makhanya. These are just the state’s most public victims.
That is what dictatorial regimes do – they isolate individuals and punish them in public in order to demonstrate that they will not tolerate dissent.
You know from your experience, Tata, that power knows no limits. Stalin showed us that not even the most loyal comrades were beyond the gulag.
Power jails, power silences, power banishes and power ultimately kills those who are a threat to it.
The reflexive instinct to punish takes over all faculties. Public perceptions and consequences be damned. For a while there have been rumours that the wolves are circling around Makhanya. I do not think there is a journalist more hated by Mbeki’s regime than him. This is because he has dared to expose the depravity at the heart of Mbeki’s government. Now we hear that Makhanya’s and Maker’s cellphones had been tapped.
When news broke that the SABC had a blacklist of certain commentators, I said any state that blacklists its citizens was a step away from assassinating them. Someone called me the other day under the guise of a journalist seeking commentary about the leadership succession race in the ANC. But I could immediately sense that I was talking into a tape. Maybe I am being paranoid. But how could I not be paranoid when there are allegations of links between the highest offices in our land and the criminal underworld.
The very things that were done to us – the reflexive instinct to punish through imprisonment – have become the order of the day in this land right at its birth.
To paraphrase the scholar Achille Mbembe, we have forgotten that this democracy was born at the edge of the grave. I read Justice Malala’s plea in the Sunday Times for ordinary South Africans to stand up and express their outrage. But it is his conclusion that scared me so much: “When, one day, we open our eyes and our mouths, our children will not have a country to live in. This country will be a Zimbabwe because we allowed Mbeki and his cronies to rape it.”
Those of us who can run will, of course, run, if we can get out before the wolves get to us. Yet another writer, Jacob Dlamini in The Weekender, described Mbeki as “one of the pettiest presidents SA is likely ever to know”. This is based on the view that Mbeki uses state institutions to persecute anyone who mildly disagrees with him. In the short space of time since you stepped down from the presidency, Tata, the state itself has become indistinguishable from the individual. This is a disgrace for a country that was held aloft as the beacon of freedom, democracy and justice just a decade ago.
But how did we fall so quickly from grace? Where are the good men and women of the ANC? How could they allow their senses to be deadened this way? How could they connive in the dismemberment of the very project everyone gave up so much for? How could people who were so brave under apartheid just cower under one man? What is it that they know that we do not know?
I am writing this letter, Tata, to say you are our last hope, our only chance. You cannot watch silently while your successor deliberately pulls apart everything you and your departed comrades so carefully put together. Your voice would reverberate across this land, across this continent and across the world. Your voice, Tata, could help avert evils that are certainly going to be visited on the people of this country by a power-mad bunch in the Union Buildings. Your voice could pull this country from certain ruination. Your voice could save our lives.
Regards, Xolela Mangcu
Xolela Mangcu is executive chairman of the Platform for Public Deliberation. This article first appeared in Business Day << |
