Manto's scores own goal

http://feedvalidator.org/images/valid-rss.png
Manto’s own goal

We keep dogs at the gate to warn off evil and to alert us to its presence. We do this irrespective of whether we believe them [dogs] to be an omnipotent talisman [talisperson?] against an irrational Fate; or whether we accept the flaws of these gentle creatures and work around them.

Dogs and their associated assistants, like the goose for instance, that lives across the road from me and that I hear from time to time indicating real alarm, are essential, and good; and we should always love them and often do. That is why, it seems that everyone, not just so-called” animal-rightists, was so enraged at the behaviour of a rural man who cut off a Siberian Husky puppy’s head with a chainsaw in a fit of rage. When the sawman died this week, soon after the event in some bizarre oxymoronic “karmic” “accident”, the country exploded in a frenzy of hate that I am certain violated constitutional safeguards against hate speech. [This was a catharsis I believe but it is not the subject of my blog.]

No I am concerned with Mrs Manto, and her rage and what she has achieved.

At the moment every ‘dog’ there is, is alerting us to the approach of those dark forces that have so frequently threatened and violated our past. We sit on the abyss of a cliché. “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” I have observed so often now I am sure I have I become a cliché too nonetheless, the fact that the cliché is a cliché does not cancel out the truth that the cliché once revealed, with stark renewed clarity at that time.

The cliché lies tucked inside is the current drift to authoritarian responses, not only here but elsewhere too; from Obama’s apparent threat that he’d nuke Pakistan, to Putin’s thuggish behaviour with his neighbours and his great attempted Land grab; to the home front with this strange business of Mrs Madlala-Routledge…the former acting and deputy Min: of Health.

In Marxian terms we are witness to a global phenomena: the classic reactionary response to any progressive movement. In addition we have also been witness this past few weeks to an hysteria generating global mini-market-meltdown that has freaked out the nouveax riche; and has boatyards in exclusive neighbourhoods suddenly looking like used boat lots in a fire sale. The razzmatazz surrounding this minor stock market reverse has papered over the nastiness of the whole affair, in much the same way that the razzmatazz of the recent national strike covered the passage of the new censorship laws.

However while we are distracted from the right hand by what is happening in the left, others noted the expulsion of a senior level party member from her post and from, presumably, whatever the so-called “Structures” were from which she emanated. I refer to the peremptory, almost arbitrary sacking of the former Deputy Minister of Health, and the battery of inconsistencies, evasions and accusations revealed from the act.

And the inconsistencies continue…Hard line stuff from Mrs Manto T…M…[The Minister of health]. Not only has she bullied a younger and some say more talented competitor from her side view; but she is now going to test this subtle drift towards a new authoritarianism by suing a newspaper that has published material that confirms the growing public perception that Mrs Manto T-M is a nasty person.

In fact the Minister has presented a wonderfully imperious battery of responses that are inherently feudal in construct. In addition, Mrs Manto behaves pretty well according to form… This is classic “madam power” behaviour run riot. Madam can do this because she has that kind of power.

A recent Australian survey apparently established empirically recently [according to radio reports] that which we have always known. Bullying behaviour is a routine route to the top [or near top] … Consider Dick Cheney… sorry he's a stereotypical male bully... we'll try someone else with balls of steel. Probably Mrs Thatcher could be a ‘damm demanding woman’. Hilary Clinton has a reputation for being a serious ‘psycho –bitch’, along the divaesque lines of a Madonna in full fury.

It doesn’t stop at the top either; like for instance there was a string of psycho boss women, more than i can remember and adoringly the crazy lady ho produced and directed my performance as Nietzsche back in 2000… [love you Ava’ rishus. We must do it again sometime.]
When i finished that i understood why Nietzsche went mad and how his sister hijacked his work.
So: why the danger? It is simple.

We do not want our leaders to behave this way.

I doesn’t matter who we are or what team we support. We don’t like it. Listening to the airwaves during the week it was hard to remember many callers who were really cool about either Mrs Manto or the late Mr Matthysen [sic] former late dog murderer.

That is why the bizarre outpouring of rage this week over Mr Matthysen is such a frantic “dogalarm”, and this strange public bitch-fight between two power seeking women was another. Neither was cool.

Now: logically the President was right to fire the ‘Routledge woman. She was out of line, doing her own thing. When you accept a job at any level you also accept its terms. The time for opposition to policy is when you are formulating it and negotiating it. When it is set, it is set until it is reformulated, in the light of changes that may have been unforeseen earlier, for whatever reason. If you don’t like it then don’t take the job.

With regard to HIV and Aids, which is the heart of the matter here, the ghost at the table quite literally, the core problem is that out President is reaching a critical stage in his responses to this pandemic and it is a stage none of us want to know about or accept.

It is not the President who is in denial it is those who believe that something can be done about HIV and Aids.

He has to admit, to himself at least, that his policy of downgrading support for Aids [which I suspect is a lot less downgraded than the furious relevant HIV lobbies would have us believe] is not founded on denial. This is a convenient crutch. It is founded on rational grounds in which an outcome is reached that is politically untenable.

People will die of this ‘HIV… event’ irrespective. The President knows that the more he attempts to solve the problem, the unavoidable probabilities suggest it will become more virulent, volatile and unmanageable… For whatever reason action equals petrol on burning flames.

This contested virus is currently incurable and it is increasingly obvious that little research is still going on at the Mega-Pharma-corporation level to defeat it…. simply because there is no money in it. The short term prognosis for finding a cure is not promising, the long view is even dimmer.

This means that the most likely solutions will prove to be expensive palliatives simply putting off the inevitable.

That’s harsh. How can a President tell us this… He can’t. The late Robert Kirby believed the President was too cold a person to feel remorse. He once compared our leader to Heimrich Himmler. I do not.

I do believe that he is so focused on his ideological purpose that a few million deaths are simply part of the cost: “collateral damage” as they say in the movies. This Aids thing was not in the plan. He doesn’t want to have to tell us that those AIDS people cannot be allowed to subtract effort from achieving the Revolution. No that would make him and his Party less popular, and his party needs to retain power because it is the Party of Ideology and the ideological sub-text is slowly peeping out and like all ideologies its intentions are not exclusively honourable.

Thus: as I discussed in my notorious “Manto 1 de Lille 0” blog last year the president has put a Pit Bull in place to deal with the problem of Aids. The second question arising therefore from this current hate-affair between two powerful ladies is “does the Pit Bull know it is a Pit Bull?".

In my blog [August 2006 Manto 1 de Lille 0] I supported the President’s position in that I can empathise with the Solomon style dilemma he faces. As a caring, moral and ethical man he knows he must care for those who are broken and hurting. As a rational manager with extremely limited resources [appearances notwithstanding]he has chosen to withhold resources from dying people in order to assist the living more.

This is the moral choice: does one take desperately needed resources from the many to deliver Pyrrhically to the few… the struggle against the Dispossession inherent in Apartheid was against that principle of the few feeding off the many. How does one rationalise that which you once railed against.

Our President’s dilemma is that both his “hounds” forgot their roles and forgot they were playing “good cop- bad cop” Mrs Manto Tshabala-Msimeng [sic] forgot she was bad cop and Mrs Madlala-Routledge forgot she was only supposed to play “good cop”. Both fell out of their roles.

And because she was the more senior guardian here Mrs Manto is the one who has kicked her ball into her own goal and now we have to face a stand off that could well bring us to the edge of that abyss which we would prefer not to explore.

In their enthusiastic support for the good cop many players are being mauled. The Sunday Times’ curious decision to publish random material purporting to demonstrate that Mrs Manto is a boozing bully was trumped by a declaration that another medical supporter of Good cop was a convicted criminal; and then court appearances follow in search of injunctions against the Sunday Times.

And suddenly we face a test. Do the new censorship amendments now prove to have their intended/unintended effect? Does Mrs Manto’s Constitutional right to dignity and privacy not trump The Media’s alleged freedom of expression in the public interest. This is soon to be tested.

I should say here that I am entirely on the side of the right to absolute freedom of speech bounded only by the famous caveat relating to shouting fire in a crowded theatre, and subject to normal accepted practices relevant to defamation and hate speech.

I am definitely of the opinion that because the track record of politicians and other public figures is so [regrettably] littered with public abuse, that we [the citizens] their employers [ in the case of elected officials] … the citizens in a democracy … have an absolute right to know what our employees are up to.

I would argue further that this right to know the facts, the evidence and whatever truths are being hidden, completely overrides any right to privacy on the part of an elected public figure. If it isn't already there then loss of privacy should be in the job description for a democratic state. Anything less is a route through secrecy to terror.

I would also suggest that the actual attempt to claim violation of privacy rights by an elected public figure reveals an authoritarian, feudal mindset that is one hundred percent the dark shape in the night against which our dogs clamour. It is democracy’s dark nemesis.

These few months in this time of our discontent is building to be the time when our democracy reveals a different face to the one presented for the past decade now. The problem with denial behaviour is that the truth will always out. It has for instance done so in a curious turn of events this past week when a denialstic silence of another sort was broken; and we discovered a hidden and shameful truth about the men who ran the country in the last bout of authoritarian bluster.

Three old, failed, shambled men stood in the dock this week and confessed to the most mundane of crimes: attempted murder. They pleaded guilty. They pleaded for mercy for foolish uncertainties and overwhelming rage so deep they could not bear it. In a strange act of contrition they were forgiven and somehow a fuse was expiated.

It is this more caring face that our democracy needs to heal the wounds that bind us. Bullying and thuggery are not what we voted for. Pit Bulls versus Corgis were not what the voter ordered. No: this was not what we ordered at all.

The President needs to come out of the closet… if I may misappropriate another cliché. He needs to come clean and admit that he does not want to use valuable resources on fighting an incurable disease.

Those who oppose his position, like the former Deputy Health Minister, and those worthy bit part players from the less commercially oriented components of the Tripartite alliance, need also to come out of the closet and take a stand for what they claim to believe. If necessary they must leave the party and found another and fight for what they believe. The alternative is a slow drift to Zanufication as all parties rely increasingly on lies to promote their intentions..[see my blog “the Zanufication of it all”]

A significant number of people did take a stand for what they believe this week and we all had a rare insight into the sub-texts at play in our evolving new Republic. This was a rare insight into the ideological place our leader has in mind. The much despised Robert [Bob the Roz] Mugabe played this week to an adoring crowd in Lusaka.

It is hard to decide whether the crowd who cheered the man and gave him a standing ovation were all focused on an ideological position so arcane, that its significance was lost on ordinary people, albeit shared by the entire leadership of Southern Africa.

Or was it that people just had to express their absolute admiration for a man who was so committed to revolution that he would go the whole Bakunin route of ripping out the roots of the old in a drive to impose the new order. Any man who will totally trash his own nest and wipe out the future of his people can either be a madman or a misunderstood hero… this week he was the hero. [ and thank goodness it was someone else’s place he had trashed they all breathed in relief afterwards].]

It was significant that no other leader got anything like that level of approval. You also have to admit that it is a weird week when a man who dies after murdering a puppy is sent screaming all the way to Hades pursued by a howling mob, while a man who has arguably abused an entire nation and turned his people’s dreams into nightmares received the Nuremburg salute… the 1936 version.

There is another strange story in the press currently in which a tribe of Papua New Guineans ask forgiveness for the actions of their ancestors. It seems they ate the ancestors of those from whom they sought forgiveness. This relic of human sacrifice reminds us that bullying and thuggish behaviour towards those whom one dislikes is not only common but long standing. This means that it is hardly a weird week when someone who seems to care is trashed and trumped by someone who doesn’t, and someone who doesn’t care at all is idolised.

But the essential needs of a democracy require that caring is, above all things, our most desirable attribute. The alternatives are a return to the known equation of suppression and terror in a blind denial of reality.

Keep on blogging.

NiK’s work can also be found at http://www.editred.com/nicholasjakari