South Africa

My work is a bit complicated. The best way to describe it is that I explore race, politics, and social movements in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. I wrote the following recently, which mostly involves the issue of race in the United States. I hope you will find it to be of some interest:

We are beyond race.
That is the comfortable little myth that many of us white folks like to spew to make ourselves feel better about a history that clearly indicates that we are not at all beyond race. These people (We?) like to believe in an accelerated curve, a Whiggish and inexorable belief in improvement on the one demonstrable blotch on our national escutcheon, that has somehow innoculated us from centuries of reality. The candidacy of Barack Obama allows even those who do not, will not, support him to claim perfectibility on the one issue about which Americans have been sadly, tragically, imperfect.
Unfortunately there are times when reality kicks us in the teeth, or at least ought to. What to make, after all, in this supposedly color-blind society, about the fact that our misguided drug wars disproportionately effect African Americans? What does this tell us about our racial myths, and more importantly, how we deal with them?
Many of us are wary of decisions, supposedly race-neutral, on, say, voting rights in light of America’s still demonstrably not race-neutral policies. Many of us are wary of claims that we live in a time when race is no longer a factor, because of the relative successes of Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas and Barack Obama. Indeed, we are wary precisely because of the facile ways in which we allow the prominence of a miniscule number of black Americans to substitute for a real discussion of the country’s racial past.
Conservatives call such concerns “race hustling,” a phrase notable only for its cynicism, vacuousness, and, yes, racism. And yet how many other issues in American history actually manage to sustain as relevant without actually being relevant? Issues that do not matter fade into obsolescence. This one continues to vex precisely because it matters. Would that we had an honest discussion about it, as Obama has done more honestly, and more frontally, than any American in the country’s history has undertaken.

We can pretend that it does not matter. In fact nothing has ever mattered more.

If this is self indulgent, or if it strays from my mandate of discussing and commenting on African politics, I am truly sorry. I hope this will help establish my bona fides on this issue.

[Crossposted from the Foreign Policy Association Africa Blog and dcat.]

This just in: Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi is mostly concerned with the interests of Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi is threatening to file suit to prevent the passage of a law that will make the position of chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal House of Traditional Leaders permanent, thus forcing him to choose between his position as part-time chair of the house and his job as a national Member of Parliament. But wait — there is not just self interest, but also hypocrisy at work: Buthelezi initially championed the legislation when he thought it would allow him to consolidate his power without consequence. If there is a politician with the capacity to become a Big Man in South Africa, it is Buthelezi. Thankfully he does not have a broad enough power base to use as a springboard to national leadership.

Recent shakeups at the South African Broadcasting Corporation have revived what seem to have become perpetual controversies over perceived government encroachments on the SABC’s independence and pressure to adhere to a party line. Perhaps the question should be what role the government should play in the media at all. After all, every government tries to shape and twist and spin and control its image in the media. And other than the ubiquitous concerns over the attempts to control the news at SABC, South Africa has a free and vibrant and boisterous media culture. Even SABC has tremendous press freedom compared to most other state broadcasting arms in the region (admittedly this may not be the most edifying framework of comparison).

At the same time, SABC provides a vital service to South Africans, especially those masses without access to satellite television or M-Net, or who rely on the radio, and one wonders if simple privatization is not too facile an answer to the dilemma. Obviously in an ideal world SABC could operate as a parastatal organization with no interference. And hopefully that will be the end result once some of these latest issues blow over and once the ANC truly realizes that the cost of a free country is a free media. But it does seem to be a mistake to conflate interference, real and perceived, in the operation of the various outlets of the SABC with something more dire in South Africa.

Anyone who has traveled in South Africa and talked politics with people has heard something along this lines: This country is just like Rhodesia, and under black rule we’re going to turn into Zimbabwe. This sort of “When We” alarmism, equal parts racist tripe and romanticized fatuousness is also common among expats around the world and among former colonialists of a certain age. It was thus refreshing to see that Jeremy Cronin, in his Chris Hani Memorial Lecture, addressed this question directly. One need not ardently support the South African Communist Party (I do not) to find a great deal of merit in Cronin’s cogent argument that whatever South Africa’s problems, it is not likely to follow the path of Zimbabwe.

[Cross-posted at the FPA Africa Blog.]

Times are certainly strange in South African politics in a post-Polokwane world. After all, where else could a non-violent, indeed, from a constitutional vantage point rather smooth, inter-party leadership transition lead to what is effectively a lame-duck political status for many of those in power across the country at the national, provincial, and local levels? Indicative of this strange set of curcumstances, Thabo Mbeki, whose handling of the Zimbabwe crisis only served to damage further an already crumbling reputation, caved in his support for the controversial Scorpions crime-fighting unit largely because of pressure from Jacob Zuma and Zuma’s supporters and that organization will soon disband unceremoniously.

Clearly Mbeki is aware of this status, as is Zuma, and to their credit, neither man is pushing too hard in the face of realities: Thabo Mbeki is still the president of South Africa; he will not be a year or so from now. Zuma knows that this gives him leverage, but so far he has been loathe to use it too obviously. It remains to be seen whether this tenuous situation can hold. And the standard caveat applies: If Zuma goes down on corruption charges, the whole dynamic of the game changes overnight. Zuma knows this. So too does Thabo Mbeki.

Recent revelations that Nelson Mandela is still on the United States’ terrorist watch list (a list he never belonged on in the first place) does not exactly inspire confidence in America’s handling of its foreign policy, its approach to terrorism, or its grasp of African policy, does it?

[Crossposted at dcat.]

At the Council on Foreign Relations Andrew Meldrum, a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and former Zimbabwe correspondent for the Guardian, discusses (via podcast) the Zimbabwe crisis and South Africa’s role in it.

Jacob Zuma’s reputation appears to be enjoying a fairly significant renaissance. He has even made Time magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People,” an irredeemably silly exercise that nonetheless is an indicator of Zuma’s rise as a potentially serious player not only in South African politics, but perhaps continent-wide and globally. Now if only those corruption charges would disappear (along with the nasty aftertaste from those rape charges) Zuma might be in great shape.