How do we pay tribute to our fallen musicians?

When I heard the news early on Monday morning (23 February 2015) that well-known Cape Town singer Zayn Adam had passed away, I resisted the temptation to do what we normally do in these situations nowadays: go onto social media to see what people are saying.

The reason is that I wanted to reflect for a moment on this man with the beautiful voice who had given me so much joy through his music. I must have heard him sing "Give a little love" dozens of times, but every time he sang it, it was special.

Zayn had a special kind of voice, one that did not grow old with him and, even though he became frail at times over the past few years, his voice remained beautiful, especially when he sang ballads. There were so many songs that had previously been sung by others that he had made his own.

He passed away at the age of 68 in a Groote Schuur hospital bed early on Monday morning after a short illness. He was buried according to Muslim rites on Monday afternoon.

He had done well in recent months and had been booked to do a few major shows over the next few weeks, including a reunion with his bandmates in Pacific Express, one of the Cape's top bands in the 1970s, at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival next month, and as a supporting act to overseas artist PP Arnold next week.

Whenever one of our talented musicians die in South Africa, I always think about how we don't really appreciate them while they are in good health and in their prime. Too many of our musicians die penniless with their families struggling to pay medical bills and funeral expenses.

I decided a while ago that I no longer want to attend benefit concerts for musicians who have fallen on hard times because the nature of our support should be such that our musicians, if they are talented enough, should be able to sustain themselves through their performances and recordings.

Part of the reason for our musicians' struggles could be our obsession with overseas and particularly American music. We tend to think that music is only good when it comes from America. Yet, South Africa has some amazing musicians who could teach the Americans a thing or two.

But if you go into any music store, you will find more sales of American music as opposed to South African music. If you go to clubs and theatres, you will find people support overseas artists and productions more than they support local productions, unless of course, the locals do cover versions of American music.

We also seem to appreciate our artists more once they have "made it" in the United States of America.

Government does not help either, with support for local musicians being almost like an afterthought. A good friend, who has achieved huge musical success overseas but remains committed to South African music, believes that you only have to look at what music our ministers listen to in their cars to understand the problem. He believes that you are more likely to find the music of Beyonce in their cars then, say, Ringo Madlingozi, Vusi Mahlasela or Abdullah Ibrahim.

The best way to pay proper homage to someone like Zayn Adam - and the others who have gone before him, like Mirriam Makeba, Winston Mankunku, Robbie Jansen, Basil Coetzee, Brenda Fassie, Sipho Gumede and Hotep Idris Galeta, among many others - is by making a commitment to support local music.

This does not mean that we should not support foreign music. However, we need to support our musicians by attending their shows and buying their music. Otherwise all our kind words on their passing will be nothing but platitudes.

• Monday, 23 February 2015

Is there an increase in racist incidents in South Africa?

Whenever I am interviewed on television or radio, I inevitably get asked whether there is an increase in racist incidents in South Africa, given the prominence such incidents are receiving in the media nowadays.

My reply is always that I do not believe this is so. Racism and racist incidents have been with us forever, before, during and after apartheid. And just because something is not reported in the media, does not mean that it does not exist.

Maybe there has been a change in attitude in the media with regards to the reporting of racist incidence. Or maybe more people feel comfortable about approaching the media to report on racist incidence of which they might have been victims.

One of the things that many people forget is that the media can only report on things that they know about. If nobody tells them about a racist incident, then they are not likely to report on it.

So, when someone notices that the media is beginning to report prominently on racist incidents, they could be encouraged to come forward and relate their own stories.

It is of course good that the media are reporting more and more about racism in our society. My observation over most of the past 20 years of our democracy has always been that we are trying to pretend that racism no longer exists in our country.

This is understandable, in some instances. For instance, we went from a situation of serious repression and social engineering based on legally-enforced racism, to one of reconciliation. Make no mistake about it, apartheid was an evil system and it is understandable that many South Africans - especially those who could have been perceived to have benefited from it - would want to move on from apartheid.

However, not talking about racism and pretending that it does not exist, did not make it disappear.

The only way to deal with racism is to make people aware that it exists. We need to look at its roots and discuss ways in which we can make sure that it does not happen again.

Only once we have successfully dealt with racism can we hope to see a decrease in racist incidents in our country.

• 19 February 2015

A lesson from Jakes Gerwel: What it means to live in peace with each other

Something that Hein Gerwel, son of the late Professor Jakes Gerwel, said at the renaming of Vanguard Drive in his father's honour has convinced me of the difference between leaders of Gerwel's generation and the ones we have today.

Hein said his father's last words to him and his mother, Phoebe, was that they must learn to live in peace with each other.

This notion, of all of us living in peace with each other seems to escape our leaders and political commentators today. It is no longer about what we can all do to create a better life for all our people. It is more about how we can ridicule others and minimise their contribution so that I and others who agree with me can benefit.

We are still a year and a bit away from next year's local government elections, but I am worried that, as we come closer to this event, politicians and their followers will become more virulent in their outburst, without due concern for the consequences of their actions.

When Gerwel spoke about his family members living in peace, he could have also spoken about society in general. Trying to live in peace with each other does not mean that we have to necessarily agree with everything that everybody else says, but it does mean that we have to respect their right to say it and not try to break it down just because you disagree with their politics.

If our politicians learn to treat each other with respect, it might permeate down to their members and our society could eventually learn to respect each other more. We need to accept that sometimes, even if only sometimes, somebody with who you normally disagree might have something sensible to contribute to a particular debate.

Tolerance: the lesson of Madiba's life

The rain poured down unexpectedly and heavily in the city centre of Cape Town yesterday morning, on a day which the weather forecasters said would be sunny with temperatures reaching up to 30 degrees centigrade. It was probably, I thought (and I am not religious at all), the gods crying for Nelson Mandela.

My emotions have been up and down over the past few days. There have been moments when I have felt that we should celebrate – especially the end of 95 special years on earth of a special human being – but there have also been moments when I have felt that I just wanted to bawl my eyes out.

Even in death, Madiba has had this up-and-down effect on me and, I suppose, the rest of the world.

Madiba has always been my hero, even when he was on Robben Island and I was a youngster growing up on the Cape Flats. To have been editor of the Cape Times when he was president of our country, and to have to interact with him on a regular basis, was something that I could never have dreamed of when I was younger.

In many ways, Madiba has been all things to all people. It has been amazing in the past few days to witness people paying tribute to Madiba while completely rejecting the African National Congress, the party that he served as a loyal servant for most of his life.

Madiba is on record as saying that he will go the Pearly Gates and immediately inquire about the local ANC branch. This seems not to have put off the millions of people throughout the country and the world – including the opposition Democratic Alliance – who continue to idolise our country’s greatest son.

I have been wondering over the past few days what it was about this Communist, leader of the ANC’s military wing umKhonto we Sizwe, and, by all accounts, rabble rouser in his youth (he used to regularly break up the opposition’s rallies, according to people who knew him then) that made him so special.

What probably made him so special is the fact that he has always had Ubuntu, he has always and would do everything in his power to help people. The other thing is that he was never afraid of change or changing his views.

Yesterday morning I received an email from a friend who pointed out that British Prime Minister David Cameron – who last week described Mandela as “a hero of mine” and announced that flags at 10 Downing Street would fly at half-mast in honour of Madiba – had once belonged to a right-wing student organisation that had initiated a campaign to hang Mandela and others like him.

I could not help thinking about why some people keep on harping on about the past, especially at this time when we are mourning the loss of Madiba, even though I understand that in South Africa, the past is still very much with us.

But to want to persecute Cameron based on what he did in his student days was a bit out of line, I thought. We all did stupid stuff when we were students.

I was among many who felt betrayed when the ANC co-opted the homelands and discredited “coloured” and “Indian” leaders immediately after the organisation was unbanned. When the Nationalist Party, which had been responsible for killing so many of our people in defence of Apartheid, eventually disbanded and joined up with the ANC, it was not unexpected but I still felt disgusted.

Yes, you can say that politics is all about numbers but there was something about Madiba’s values in all of this, including the ability to embrace people who might have been on the other side of the fence – or even worse, the other side of a gun barrel – from you.

I have been honoured for the past year or so to edit easily the biggest book that will ever be produced about Nelson Mandela, called the Mandela Opus. His passing last week has given us an unexpected but probably fitting final chapter for the book.

For the past few months I have been traversing the country speaking to people about their relationship with Nelson Mandela and I have never experienced anyone who was so universally loved.

The lesson that many people I interviewed will take out of Madiba’s life is his humility.

The lesson that I am going to take out of Madiba’s life is to try to be more tolerant of people who might be different to me and whose history and background might not be the same as mine.

However, I remain mindful that embracing Nelson Mandela need to go much further than embracing an individual. It needs to extend to embracing the values that he held dear, including a commitment to non-racialism and non-sexism and a commitment to a more equitable society, one in which everyone would have equal access to opportunities and to basic requirements such as housing, education, justice and safety and security.

Embracing Madiba’s values are not easy for most people because our natural inclination is not to be non-sexist and non-racist. Our natural inclination is not to seek out people who are different to us and befriend them.

But if we really and truly want to keep Madiba’s legacy alive, we need to embrace these values in more than words. We need to live them. Otherwise Madiba and his values will soon become a thing of the past. DM

(First published by the Daily Maverick on 10 December 2013)

Media transformation: Still a difficult issue, after all these years

The recent spat involving City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and some of her staff, over transformation and the political allegiance of the paper, probably indicates that, at least, we have moved on from the challenges that I faced as an editor in those early days of South Africa’s transition. But it also shows a worrying trend in our society where decisions are made more on the basis of political allegiance than what is good for a particular industry.

In the mid-90's I became one of the first black editors of a major newspaper in South Africa. I guess I could have substituted “major” for “formerly white-owned and controlled” because that was the reality of South Africa’s media industry at the time. In many ways, it was merely reflecting a society that was only then beginning to change.

In those days, my major challenges revolved more around how to make sure that I change the demographics of my newsroom without upsetting the white reporters, who were in the majority by far. I felt that changing the demographics was important if I were to produce newspapers that more accurately reflected our society.

Haffajee is right in her assertion that she will not tolerate black or white racists. She is also right about her paper’s focus on the president and the ruling party, because of the important and prominent role they play in society.

Of course, I would have done one or two things differently.

I would never have made this issue public, as Haffajee did, but I suppose that is the danger of belonging to the Twitter generation. In our eagerness to express ourselves quickly and in less than 140 characters, we sometimes don’t think through what we are about to tweet.

Most newspapers or media houses, as is the case with most businesses in South Africa, have transformation issues. Often, each and every group (whether based on race, religion, gender or other conveniently divisive measures) feel discriminated against. Most feel they do not have enough access to resources and opportunities, while other groups do, and that this limitation of access is purely based on group dynamics.

I have also often seen, in more than 30 years in the media industry, that cries of racism can sometimes be the last refuge of incompetents. People of dubious ability often use race dynamics to hide their own imperfections.

Unfortunately, in the case of City Press, they have an editor who could be perceived to be “not black enough” by some people, no matter how much Haffajee might protest.

I have the same problem. I have always and still describe myself only as a black South African, but it is amazing the number of people who more and more look at me in a puzzled manner, as if I have not taken a proper look at myself in the mirror lately. Many of these people who question my blackness are people who we once used to consider as progressive, but they seem to have forgotten the teachings of Steve Biko which drove many of us through the struggle years.

I suppose almost 20 years of democracy is enough time to redefine some people’s identities.

But I digress.

The main reason I would not have taken City Press’s issues public is because, as editor, you are supposed to have the back of your reporters. One of the first things I learnt is that you defend and protect your reporters publicly, even though you might smack them privately. If you engage with them in a public fight, you tend to lose some of your moral authority as an editor.

I have always believed in the power of persuasion and I have never subscribed to the dictum that the editor is always right. If you are able to persuade me, then I would be prepared to change my views, even though there are certain lines that, like Haffajee, I draw in the sand. I don’t think anyone will ever be able to convince me to abhor racism, sexism and other -isms less than I do at the moment.

Now that the genie is out of the proverbial bottle, it is important to deal with the issues that have been raised by the City Press reporters instead of just dismissing them and expecting the reporters to “lump it”.

City Press, as should other newspapers, needs to understand why some reporters, who are supposed to operate within the boundaries of fairness, if not objectivity, can feel that their own publication is not fair towards a particular political party or a politician.

City Press needs to satisfy themselves that, indeed, their coverage has been fair and unbiased. They can only do this scientifically and not based on perceptions, even though perceptions are probably very powerful, especially where politics and politicians are concerned.

My humble advice, especially to the journalists who have questioned Haffajee’s agenda, is to set out to produce the best journalism that you possibly can and to try to cover our society in as comprehensive a manner as you can.

If you report on society properly, you will discover that it will include reports about the good and the bad done by politicians and political parties. You will probably find that your focus will be more on the ruling party because, well, they are the ruling party.

But to be fair, the DA is the ruling party in the Western Cape and, even in that province, they are not put under the same microscope as the ANC. Maybe there is some merit in that criticism, not necessarily only towards City Press but to the media in general.

The good thing that can come out of what is going on at City Press at the moment is that the media industry will take an introspective look at their role in society, not only in relation to the ruling party and the president, but at how we report on a society in transition.

It is clear to me that the media has failed in many ways in that task. What the City Press incident can do is to provide us with an opportunity to address that and in the process we might be able to benefit everyone, including the media industry.

However, we will not be able to do it if we think that this issue is only about City Press and that other editors can get away by smirking in glee that it is not them who are involved.

This incident is giving us an opportunity to really put a microscope on the entire media industry. It would be good to see if Haffajee, as well as all the other editors in our country, are up to the challenge that this opportunity presents. DM

(First published by the Daily Maverick on 20 October 2013)

Denis Goldberg: Rivonia Trial's 'Baby' turns 80

The selflessness of Denis Goldberg, even in celebrating his birthday, is a reminder that that the struggle against Apartheid was never about personal enrichment or entitlement, but always about improving the lives of the majority of South Africans.

On Saturday night, I was privileged to be among a reasonably small group of people, including many from overseas, who gathered in Hout Bay, Cape Town, to celebrate the 80th birthday of Denis Goldberg, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial in 1964. He served 22 years in prison before being released in 1985.

For someone who had sacrificed so much so that South Africans could eventually gain their freedom, the event was relatively low-key with no celebrities, big businessmen or high-ranking politicians present. The only politicians I observed were former minister of arts and culture Dr Pallo Jordan and ANC MP Ben Turok.

While the occasion was meant to celebrate Goldberg’s special day (his birthday was on Thursday 11 April), it was more about the Kronendal Music Academy, of which he is a patron, and included several performances by students of the academy.

The students showed what can happen in a divided suburb like Hout Bay if people set their differences aside to work together. Hout Bay is a unique suburb in Cape Town because one has to cross a mountain to gain access to it. But the suburb is also racially divided, with the village and the valley being mainly white and rich, with Hangberg being mainly coloured and Inzamo Yethu being mainly African.

The academy’s jazz band has already travelled to Germany, a trip made possible by Goldberg’s close association with that country, and two students from “shanty town in Hout Bay” (Goldberg’s words) have been accepted to study music at the University of Cape Town.

Goldberg, in a very short speech which was surprisingly devoid of politics, said he made no apology for turning his birthday party into a fundraiser for the academy. He had asked all guests, instead of birthday gifts, to make donations to the academy. On Saturday night, he announced that the 150 or so guests had donated about R70,000 to the academy, enough to pay the salaries of a few music teachers.

“When I was a small boy, I was given socks and hankies and now I have too many! So please, no personal gifts, make a donation to KMA instead,” he wrote in his invitation.

The Rivonia Trial started in November 1963 and ended in June 1964, when Goldberg was sentenced to life imprisonment with seven others senior ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki. Apart from Mandela and Goldberg, the only surviving Rivonia trialists are Ahmed Kathrada and Andrew Mlangeni.

Kathrada sent an email to Goldberg, apologising for not being able to attend his birthday party and pointed out that, at 80, he still remained the “baby” of the Rivonia trialists.

The selflessness of Goldberg, who gladly played second fiddle at his party to the young students of the music academy, displayed a characteristic that is sadly become almost non-existent in our society today.

He chose to spend his birthday party – others will still be held in Germany and London later this month – with close friends and people associated to the projects that he now promotes, such as the music academy and a psychiatric practice in Gauteng.

He chose to promote these projects instead of focusing on his own achievements.

Speeches were not made by political associates, but rather people who have been involved with Goldberg as friends over the years, including Hillary Hamburger, who has been helping to organise lecture tours for him in Europe, and Lynn Carneson, who spoke about how her dad, Fred Carneson, had recruited Goldberg to the SA Communist Party. Fred had been the general secretary of the SACP and an editor of the original The New Age newspaper.

Goldberg’s contribution to the struggle was acknowledged in a special 40-page publication containing articles written by people who had been influenced by him over the years. They included South Africa’s ambassador to Germany, Makhenkosi Stofile, SACP deputy general secretary and Deputy Minister of Transport, Jeremy Cronin, and former Rhodes University journalism professor, Guy Berger, who had been imprisoned with Goldberg at Pretoria Central Prison, where white political prisoners were sent under Apartheid, while their black counterparts were sent to Robben Island.

I could not help thinking on Saturday night that the ANC and the government had missed an opportunity to pay proper tribute to someone who had made a huge contribution to the struggle which was led by the party when it was still a liberation movement.

We are almost 20 years into our democracy, but already there is a generation of young people who are not aware of the sacrifices made by people such as Goldberg so that they can enjoy the freedoms they enjoy today.

South Africans have very short memories and that is why it is necessary for us to record the stories of people such as Goldberg and the other Rivonia trialists, along with the thousands of people who supported the struggle throughout the years.

The best way to pay tribute to someone such as Goldberg is to make sure that his legacy lives on way beyond his 80th birthday. Young people need to revisit what drove people such as Goldberg to sacrifice in the way they did, without any guarantee that we would one day achieve our freedom.

Goldberg and others like him were driven by a desire to see a non-racial, non-sexist and more equitable society, something that we still have not achieved and will probably not achieve for a long time.

Our leaders need to continuously recommit themselves to these goals and remind themselves that the struggle was never about personal enrichment and entitlement. It was always meant to be about improving the lives of the majority of South Africans.

It will be a pity if we lose the commitment to these ideals as we lose people such as Goldberg, as we inevitably will.

Happy birthday Denis Goldberg. I hope when I turn 80, I will be able to reflect on a life lived even half as well as yours. DM

(First published by the Daily Maverick on 14 April 2013)

Johnny Issel: What he meant to me

The first thing I did when I heard last Sunday that Johnny Issel had passed away was to listen to my vinyl of Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier. I thought it appropriate because this was the theme song of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the early 1980s and Issel was a founder member.

As I listened to Marley singing about “If you know your history / Then you would know where you coming from / Then you wouldn’t have to ask me / Who the heck do you think I am” I could hear the voices of Kay Jaffer and Mike Evans urging people to attend the UDF rally in Rocklands, Mitchells Plain, on August 20 1983.

I found myself reflecting on what John James “Yacoub” Issel (born August 17 1946, died January 23 2011) meant to me and many others of my generation. But I also found myself thinking about the significance of the 1970s and 1980s and the impact of those two decades.

Issel was a larger-than-life character in many ways. He was the founder of the UDF, even though he was banned at the time (like he was for most of the 1970s and 1980s) but he was so much more.

Most of the people who joined the struggle in the Western Cape in the 1970s and 1980s were influenced in some way or other by Issel.

It would take a book to list properly Issel’s involvement and achievements in struggle, and a newspaper article has serious limitations in this regards. So, very briefly:

Issel was born in Worcester and came to study at the University of the Western Cape in 1969 at the age of 23 after he had worked to earn money to study. He joined the South African Students Organisation and very soon became immersed in the work of black consciousness organisations, where he interacted with people like Steve Bantu Biko and Peter Jones.

He later joined the Food and Canning Workers Union where he worked with legends like Oscar Mpetha, Jan Theron and Elizabeth “Nana” Abrahams.

But it was in the 1980s that Issel’s contribution to the struggle had the most impact. He started the decade as founder and organiser of Grassroots community newspaper. Organiser was a strange title for the person who was in charge, but we were very sensitive about titles in those days and CEO, managing director or even executive director would have been a bit of a swearword, especially at an anti-capitalist organisation.

Issel was involved in most if not all of the progressive formations in the Western Cape. He played a role in the formation of the Cape Youth Congress, the Rocklands Ratepayers Association, the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee, the Clothing Workers’ Union, the End Conscription Campaign and two organisations targeting the white community at the time, the Cape Democrats and Jews for Justice. He also worked at some point for the Churches Urban Planning Commission and helped to establish 25 advice offices throughout the Western Cape. Many of those advice offices still exist.

Issel also played a key role in campaigns such as the red meat boycott and the schools boycotts in 1980, several strike support committees throughout the 1980s, the march to Pollsmoor in 1985 to demand the release of Nelson Mandela, and the Save the Press Campaign in the late 1980s.

But while he was promoting legal opposition to the apartheid regime, Issel also played a major role in popularising the ANC in the Western Cape and in South Africa while the organisation was banned.

He was the key driver behind the first public unfurling of the ANC flag at Hennie Ferrus’s funeral in Worcester, which was soon followed by more public displays of the ANC flag. At this time, one could be jailed for at least five years for possessing, let alone displaying, an ANC flag.

When the ANC was unbanned in the early 1990s, it was almost logical that Issel should be appointed as its Western Cape organiser. This time the title organiser was appropriate, because the ANC hoped to tap into his considerable experience of organising communities.

He later became a member of the provincial legislature, before bowing out to join a private company. Later on he left the country, disillusioned with the state of the nation. He only returned a few years ago after suffering a stroke in London.

In the early eighties I was a young reporter at the Cape Herald newspaper, which was owned by the then Argus Group and which targeted the coloured community. One of the first times I met Issel was at a meeting where the Writers Association of South Africa decided to become the Media Workers Association of South Africa, something Issel encouraged.

A few years later Issel and Rashid Seria, who fluctuated between journalism, business and politics, convinced me to leave the Cape Herald, where I was earning a fairly decent salary to go and work for Grassroots for about a fifth of what I was earning.

This was one of the best and worst career decisions I had taken, because, while I was taking a serious cut in salary and leaving the mainstream environment for a “struggle job”, I learnt much more at Grassroots than I would have learnt at the Cape Herald, not only about journalism but about dealing with people.

But Issel influenced me in other ways too. I was a founder executive member of the Cape Youth Congress and remember Issel putting me and other Cayco executive members through three-hour Saturday morning political education classes where we discussed in-depth the writings of people such as Marx, Lenin and Gramsci.

Issel was far from a perfect human being, even though he was remarkable in many ways. His relationship with his family was rocky at times and he had two failed marriages. He was also headstrong and had little patience for people who shied away from working during the struggle. Somehow he managed to get most of us to do things that we would not normally have done.

Attending Issel’s funeral on Monday and interacting with a range of former activists from the 1970s and 1980s this week, I realised that those two decades had a major impact on many political activists, in the same way as they had a major impact on the history of our country.

I found myself thinking about why so many of us look back fondly especially on the 1980s as an exciting period in our lives from which we can learn many lessons for today.

I wondered why someone like former cabinet minister Jay Naidoo wrote an autobiography which focused mainly on his trade union days in the 1980s. I wondered why at Issel’s memorial service in St George’s Cathedral on Thursday night, there was so much focus on his activities in the 1980s and not in the last 20 years or so.

Maybe it is because the 1980s was the final decade of apartheid and there is a feeling that the role played by people inside the country in ending apartheid has not been acknowledged enough?

Maybe we are trying to send a message to the current leadership of our country that there were leaders in the 1980s who had different values, who were committed to the struggle to liberate our nation, because they were committed to the upliftment of all our people.

Maybe all of us are trying to reclaim our struggle credentials and the integrity and moral high ground that come with those credentials.

But maybe it is true that we did things differently in the 1980s. We organised communities along non-racial lines and it was not unusual for groups of volunteers from all over the Western Cape to descend on specific communities on Saturdays or Sundays and knock on people’s doors to talk to them about the struggle.

It was not unusual for coloured communities to show solidarity with African communities and vice versa.

In some weird way, race has become a much bigger divisive factor, especially in the Western Cape.

Maybe Issel’s passing is a reminder of the non-racial society that we fought for passionately in the 1980s and which we still hope to achieve.

(First published in the Weekend Argus on Saturday January 29 2011.)

A birthday with strangers

I have just spent my 50th birthday with a group of strangers in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Well, most of them were strangers until two days ago, but by the time of my birthday on Saturday/Sunday (depending on which time zone you followed), most of them had become close friends.

The occasion was an “International Dialogue for Thoughtleaders in Journalism”, hosted by Images & Voices of Hope, an organisation that looks at the impact of public storytelling and public message making on society. It was hosted at the Seasons Centre for Renewal at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, one of the most restive places I have ever visited.

There were only 24 of us, each having made his or her mark in journalism in some way or other, including Pulitzer Prize winners and Nieman or Poynter Institute fellows, among many others. The participants have their roots in diverse places such as Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Canada, India, Japan and, of course, the United States.

This was the third meeting of the group and the first that I attended, but I have had contact with various people in Images & Voices of Hope since 2003 when I attended one of their dialogues at Peace Village in New York State. In October 2006, I attended another dialogue at Peace Village where I received their Award of Appreciation for Print Media (for Media that Transforms the Public Space) in recognition of the “One City, Many Cultures” project that I initiated at theCape Times.

I have always supported their vision of creating a better world through the use of the media. So when the invitation came for me to attend this conference, I had no hesitation.

I immediately accepted, and had to ask my daughter to postpone 50th birthday celebration that they were planning for me. I once attended a 50th birthday party which was held when the birthday boy (if that is politically correct term) turned 51, so I did not think this was a problem.

I was nervous, because turning 50 is supposed to be a big deal and you are supposed to spend it with your family and closest friends. Even though, I must admit, I felt more nervous about turning 40 than I am about turning 50. Maybe part of it has to do with the fact that I’m much more comfortable in my skin at the age of 50 than I was when I turned 40.

But from the minute I met the conference organiser, who fetched me at Grand Rapids’ Gerald Ford International Airport, I knew that I had made the correct decision to sacrifice a birthday at home for a birthday with strangers.

The welcome I received on Thursday night, along with the four other people who attended for the first time, made me feel at home immediately. And over the course of Thursday night, Friday and Saturday, we discussed our concerns about an industry which all of us love and we shared some very intimate and special insights.

We talked about our values and intentions in journalism and we debated whether it was appropriate or even advisable for journalists to advocate causes. We even made some time for meditation and writing in our journals. I, and all the others at the conference, felt completely at home and felt that we could raise concerns we have never raised elsewhere before.

In the end, I felt this is where I belong, among close friends with whom I have so much in common, even though I had not met most of them until a few days ago.

They even sang Happy Birthday on Saturday night and bought me a very big and calorie-laden cake, but I suppose that is the way things get done in the US. Everything has to be big.

So while I missed my family and friends in South Africa, I found some new friends in Kalamazoo, a place I did not even know existed until a few weeks ago.

Thank you, my new friends, for making my birthday special. I have a feeling that many of you will still be in my life when I turn 60.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian Thoughtleader site in June 2010)

Freedom is still a distant dream

Now that the dust has settled on Freedom Day — April 27, the 16th anniversary of the first time all South Africans voted in a democratic election — it is worth reflecting on what it means to be free, what we still need to do to achieve more freedom and what we need to do to protect the freedom we have.

There was a song we used to sing in Hanover Park in 1976 when we were protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans. Yes, the protests were not only restricted to Soweto and many people were killed all over the country, but that’s another story, the rewriting of our history, which I can deal with in another column). The song included the words: “Freedom isn’t free, freedom isn’t free. You’ve got to pay the price, you’ve got to sacrifice, for your liberty.”

We never took much note of the words of freedom songs then, even though we sang along with gusto. I suppose this is probably why today not many people interrogate the words of the“Kill the Boer” song or “Umshini wami” before they sing it. There is a mindlessness that creeps in when one sings these songs, or any songs for that matter.

I have been shocked when I’ve heard four-year-olds sing “I wanna sex you up” or words to that effect and realise that they heard the song on radio and were just singing along. The same could probably be said of adults.

We used to believe that we would have to sacrifice in order to achieve our freedom and many of us were prepared to do so, because we thought that freedom for all our people would be worth the sacrifice of a few.

Now that we have had 16 years of freedom we are realising that freedom has never really been defined and we are asking ourselves whether the sacrifices made by many have been worth it.

So many sacrificed their lives, on both sides of the divide: from Ashley Kriel, Coline Williams, Anton Fransch, Hector Pietersen, Matthew Goniwe, Fort Galata, among many, to the young white men who were conscripted into the apartheid army to fight a war they did not understand or, if they did, they did not support. Many of their bodies came back from Angola in body bags and the media were not allowed to report on their deaths.

What is the definition of freedom? There are basic human values and expectations that we should support and we should demand as the minimum of a free society.

These values include a belief in non-racism and non-sexism, in fact a total disdain for discrimination of any sort so that we can move towards a more tolerant society.

We should also demand a society in which everyone would have equal access to education, justice, decent housing, the economy and job opportunities. Very importantly, we should demand the right to feel safe in our homes and our communities.

Many of these rights are enshrined in the Freedom Charter, the amazing document that was adopted at Kliptown in 1995 and which remains — or should be — a beacon of what we hope to achieve in our country.

The actions of all our politicians and political parties should be judged against their abilities to deliver on these values and expectations. Many times the ANC government has failed to deliver on these values — and that is sad — but I don’t know whether a DA government or any other would do any better.

The task of those of us who operate in civil society should be to remind our political leaders of the need to deliver on these values. We should move away from blind loyalty to any one political party and instead start judging parties on whether they perform, whether they are able to make sure that we are moving towards the kind of freedom we all desire.

I have no problem with supporting the ANC on one issue, the DA on another issue or Cope on something else. After all, this is what freedom means. The freedom to decide who I want to support politically without fear of repercussions.

Having said all of the above, I am not trying to discount the achievements of the past 16 years. We have made amazing progress as a country, but our country still looks too much like the South Africa of old. We still have too much poverty, joblessness, homelessness and crime.

We have a poor majority who are quickly running out of patience. They are still waiting to see the South Africa promised in the Freedom Charter.

My biggest fear is that if we don’t make a commitment to fight for these values and expectations, then we could lose the freedoms we have gained already.

The fight for freedom is an ongoing fight and the sacrifices many have made have not been enough.

The sacrifices today might be different but they are still important. They could include sacrificing part of your earnings to support deserving charities, getting involved in activities in disadvantaged communities, or getting involved in civil society groups that could pressure the government to deliver on values and expectations.

This is the only way we can preserve and build our freedom.

(Originally published in the Cape Argus on Wednesday 5 May 2010 and in the Marketviews May online newsletter)

Why is the media so pre-occupied with Julius Malema?

Why is the media so pre-occupied with Julius Malema? Why do journalists, including myself, write reams and reams about everything he says? I mean, the man is not a public servant. He does not serve in government. For all intents and purposes, he’s just an ordinary citizen, like you and me. But is he?

One of the reasons the media is so pre-occupied with Malema is his perceived influence in the ANC and especially his relationship with our President. Whether this is true or not is not the issue. It is all about perception.

Much has been made of the fact that Malema could have used his position to the benefit of companies with which he is linked. He could have used his influence to help these companies procure government tenders. This is seen as an unfair advantage.

My point is this: is that not what business is about? You use your connections to get work for your companies. After all, a major part of being in business depends on who and not what you know. If Malema is guilty, is this not what everybody in business is doing in any case?

When BEE first became a reality, many big companies rushed to get people on board who had good connections in government. And this is how people such as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Patrice Motsepe and a handful of others, who did not have a lot of business experience, but had plenty of government connections, suddenly became successful business people and, at the same time, very rich.

So, my question again, is what young Julius is doing, in any way different to what his senior comrades have been doing for years?

Even someone like Mac Maharaj, with his impeccable struggle credentials, was recruited onto the FNB board. Was it because of his business acumen? No, it was because he was seen to be politically connected to the correct people.

This is the ugly side of the relationship between government and business. Business realises that government is one of the biggest, if not the biggest dispenser, of major contracts and that is why it is necessary to be close to government if you’re in business.

So, if Malema can help them boost their sales, etc, then business will be interested in him.

So, my point is that if Malema is guilty of abusing his position, then so should those business people associated with him and those government officials who give work to companies linked to him. Just a thought.

I'm ashamed to be part of the media

There have been times when I have been ashamed to be part of the media industry: this week was one of those.

The role that the media played in the virtual destruction of a poor family’s life in the Western Cape this week cannot be overlooked.

Before he became the focus of media attention in the mistaken belief that he had won R91 million in the national lottery’s Powerball competition last Friday, Stanley Philander lived a quiet life in the backyard of a relative’s home in Parkwood, Cape Town. Like so many other Cape Flats families, Philander lives in a Wendy house at the back of relative’s property.

On Sunday, a tabloid ran an interview with the deaf man who works as a cleaner at a Wynberg store, complete with a picture identifying him as the person who had won R91 million. Within hours of the newspaper hitting the newsstands, Philander and his wife had to go into hiding.

I could not believe when I heard on radio how the presenter identified Philander as the winner. Later I could not believe when I saw his picture in a newspaper.
I recalled one of the first stories I did as a young reporter: it dealt with a man from Elsies River who had won a huge jackpot and had to go into hiding as relatives he never knew suddenly came out of the woodwork and everybody else wanted to get their hands on his money.

Two days later, it has been learnt that though Philander had the correct numbers, he had the wrong date on his ticket. Instead of Friday’s date (February 12), his ticket was dated February 16.

One of the basic rules of journalism is that you need to verify information before you publish anything. Clearly, the person who wrote the original story did not verify that the information was correct before deciding to publish. Surely, the reporter should have asked to have a look at the ticket?

In this case, I don’t only blame the reporter and photographer. I also blame the editors who must have salivated at the thought of publishing this “exclusive” story.

The fact that all the other media followed their lead shows the “hunting in packs” mentality that has gripped the media in this country. Just because one media outlet says something, everybody else believes it to be true.

To their credit, the Cape Argus decided to inspect the “winning” ticket, but only a day after they already carried a front-page article on the “lotto winner”.

Now that their “scoop” has been proven to be untrue, it will be interesting to see if anyone in the media industry will take responsibility for their actions. Will anybody apologise to the family for invading their privacy and effectively destroying their lives?

I think not. We are not known to take responsibility for our actions in an industry where we thrive on trying to make sure that everybody else accounts for their actions. Somebody in the media industry owes Mr Philander and his family a huge apology.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site on 16 February 2010)

Lessons from India

Before I went to India, I was warned that it could potentially have a life-changing impact on me. And it did.

Days after I returned from Mount Abu, via Ahmadabad, Mumbai, Doha, Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg, I am still struggling to get to grips with what I had experienced and how it has changed my life, I think, forever.

I went to India to attend the Call of the Time Dialogue, an initiative of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. It was held at Abudhan, the headquarters of the Brahma Kumaris, and a beautiful and peaceful campus called Gyan Sarovar high up in the mountains.

It was an amazing experience with people from about 26 countries, all grappling with how we can turn the world into a better place for all.

All of us who attended were asked to practise a vegetarian and non-alcoholic diet for a week or so before the dialogue, something I admit I only practised a few days before I left for India.

Since leaving India, I have stuck to the diet and intend to stick to it.

It is not based on anything spiritual, which was the nature of the dialogue, or suddenly being an animal lover. It has more to do with the fact that I saw so much poverty in India, yet people get by and even share what little they have.

I realised too that one does not have to kill animals to sustain humanity. The Indians, the world’s most populous nation, sustains almost all their people on simply vegetables.

I want to see how long I will be able to sustain myself on a vegetarian diet.

I was also moved by how the Indians, despite their poverty, display so much pride in what they do. I hardly saw anyone beg, apart from one or two street children, but the majority of Indians would rather try to sell you something than beg.

It’s difficult not to use stereotypes, but many of the Indians with whom I interacted seemed to be natural sellers or bargainers.

Most of the shopkeepers followed a routine. As you walk past their shop, they invite you in, ask you to sit down and offer you something to drink. Then, in case you’re in a shop where they sell linen or cotton, the shopkeeper would unroll and unveil one after the other piece of material, in an attempt to get you to buy something.

I’m a softie, so it was easy to convince me to buy. I felt guilty that this man had shown so much hospitality and determination that I ended up buying much more than I intended.

I also could not resist having him make me a suit, which he promised to deliver within 48 hours and did within 72.

One day, I was walking with two colleagues and we were stopped in an alleyway by a shopkeeper who I had met a few days before. He asked us to come into his shop because he had some “new things” to show us.

My colleague asked him for something specific, which he clearly did not have but he said he did. He asked us to wait and disappeared, leaving three strangers all alone in his shop. He came back a short while later with the required item, and more.

We realised afterwards that, while it was strange and trusting that he left us alone in his shop, we had met him outside in the alleyway and his shop had been standing open and empty at that point.

So much poverty, I thought, but poor people in India do not appear to be taking advantage of other people’s honesty. If this had been South Africa, I thought, the shopkeeper would never have been able to leave his shop open and alone. He would have had to lock it every time he wanted to go anywhere.

As I walked through one of the villages in Mount Abu, I realised that I never felt threatened by anyone, despite all the poverty. And yet, in South Africa, some of us blame the high levels of crime on poverty. There must be another reason for all the crime and violence in South Africa, I found myself thinking.

India is chaotic and disorderly at times, but somehow things seem to work. There are some places, however, where the chaos is overwhelming. One such place is Mumbai Airport.

From the minute we landed at Mumbai, I knew that we were in for a special, if not pleasant experience.

First, we had to wait inside the plane for about 15 minutes after we landed because there were no stairs and when they arrived, they were faulty. Once we got outside, there were only two small buses to take a planeload of passengers. Once the two buses had left, the rest of us had to wait another ten minutes for more.

Inside the airport, the chaos continued. As far as we could see, there were no clear signs indicating where you had to go.

A colleague and I were looking for international departures and were told it was upstairs, but we could not find a lift or stairs. We finally found a lift in a passage and when we got out on the top floor, there were two doors, one, guarded by a policeman, let to the outside. The other was marked “staff access only”. We asked the policemen where we could find international departures and he pointed us through the “staff access” door.

What greeted us on the other side was more chaos, with almost no seating for people before going through immigration. Only on the other side were there proper restaurants and sitting places.

I had arrived at Mumbai at about 10.30pm and had to wait for a connecting flight to Doha until 5am the following morning.

When we finally boarded our flight, on time, we had to wait about 50 minutes for a vehicle to push the plane out of the parking bay. As a result, I missed my connecting flight from Doha to Cape Town and had to reroute via Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg, arriving home about six hours later than planned. In the process, I lost my luggage but I am not going to complain about that.

I think the time I spent at the dialogue, where I learnt a lot about patience and thinking positive thoughts, helped me deal with the chaos at Mumbai Airport and the rerouting of my flight.

I believe that, if ordinary Indians can deal with their many problems without resorting to violence or anger, then why should I get angry about things over which I had no control in any case.

People who know me well know that I can sometimes have a short fuse, so if I stick to this lesson from India, it will have changed my life profoundly.

So, will I go back to India? The answer is definitely yes. There is so much more to see and, who knows, the next experience might be much more pleasant than this one.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site in November 2009)

South Africa's new shame

South Africa, the country that was outcast by the international community for so many years because of its apartheid policies, has a new shame.

It is called xenophobia and this time it is not white people who are oppressing, displacing and killing blacks. It is black killing black. The only crime of the victims is that they are not originally from South Africa, but from other African countries.

A mere 14 years after South Africa ended its race-based policies, in terms of which the white minority dominated the black majority, black South Africans have been going on the rampage, killing close to 50 immigrants from other African countries and displacing thousands.

The violence, which started in South Africa’s richest province, Gauteng, quickly spread to other parts of the country this week.

Some victims have been burnt in the way alleged police informers were burnt in the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s. Scenes reminiscent of those years, when protesters brandishing all kinds of weapons confronted police in the streets, were played out in South Africa this week.

As far as we know, no Ghanaians have been victims of the violence in South Africa, but it seems like no immigrants from other African countries are safe in South Africa today.

Today they could be targeting Zimbabweans, Nigerians or Somalis. Tomorrow they could be targeting Ghanaians.

One prominent politician said it was “brother fighting against brother” in South Africa at the moment.

The irony is that many of the people who are being targeted moved to South Africa in search of a better life because of poverty or conflicts in their country, as is the case with Zimbabweans. Others merely wanted to join in the benefits that came from a liberated South Africa, which has one of the strongest economies in Africa.

Another irony is that, in the dark days of apartheid, when South Africa’s liberation movement fought a violent battle against the apartheid regime, many other African countries hosted the anti-apartheid freedom fighters.

The people from some of those countries, who are now in need of solidarity themselves, are being met by machete-wielding hordes who are chasing them out of the country, back to an uncertain future. That is if they are lucky to escape with their lives.

An even starker irony is that today (Sunday 25 May) the continent celebrates Africa Day or African Union Day, which is meant to celebrate what it means to be an African and the unity of Africans. The events in South Africa this week have soured these celebrations.

There have been all kinds of explanations offered by experts for what has been happening in South Africa. Ultimately, it comes down to South Africa’s black majority, who have been oppressed and exploited for so long, feeling that immigrants from other African countries are taking away their hard-earned economic gains.

This is, of course, not true as many African immigrants are in fact, through creating businesses, helping with job-creation in this country where the unemployment rate is as high as 50 percent in some areas.

No matter what the explanation, no one can forgive the wanton killing of innocent people who are merely trying to improve themselves and their families.

But as not all white South Africans were bad during the days of apartheid, not all black South Africans are bad today. There are many South Africans of all colours who are disgusted by the actions of their fellow citizens.

These people have been making their voices heard in protests throughout the country this week, but have also been helping at centres where displaced refugees find themselves.

The situation in South Africa today indicates the need for more education about what it means to be an African; about the need for tolerance and the need for all of us to live in harmony on this troubled yet beautiful continent.

We should allow a repeat of the violent attacks in South Africa, not anywhere on the continent. Events such as what happened in South Africa this week only serve to give our entire continent a bad name.

(First published in Sunday World in Accra, Ghana, where I was consulting editor in 2008)

Make Africa Day a public holiday

It is Monday 26 May 2008 in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and it is a public holiday. Yesterday was Africa Day, a day that still goes relatively unrecognised in South Africa, and because it was Sunday, the Monday becomes a holiday.

The streets are noticeably less busy, the market is relatively quieter.

Maybe that is one of the problems with South Africa, I find myself thinking, that we don’t see ourselves as part of the African continent and we don’t even see the need to celebrate Africa Day.

Maybe therein lays the opportunity to deal with the wave of xenophobia that has gripped our nation.

Maybe we should make Africa Day a public holiday in South Africa. Maybe then we would be able to focus on its significance. Maybe we could then use the opportunity to start a discussion about what it means to be an African and the need for unity across the African continent.

Maybe we will then be able to deal with the arrogance displayed by so many South Africans who believe that we are better than our brothers and sisters elsewhere on the continent.

Like so many other South Africans, I have been searching, albeit from afar, for reasons behind the xenophobia that erupted this week. I have also been thinking about how one avoids this happening again.

Unlike most of my colleagues in the media, I was not surprised by the attacks. Shocked yes, but not surprised. If one looks at how black South Africans have been fighting for such a small piece of South Africa’s economic pie and how they have even been trying to exclude fellow black South Africans from access to this economic pie, then I am not surprised.

If we feel that certain South African groups should not benefit from our economy, then why should we agree that foreigners should benefit.

So I have been shocked by the manner of the attacks and its violent nature. I was not surprised that the attacks happened at all.

I found myself asking why we are such a violent nation. I tried to link this to poverty, but as a Ghanaian journalist pointed out to me last week: “We have more poverty in Ghana, but we do not have as much crime.”

I then found myself blaming apartheid and the way it dehumanised our people, not only the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime and its foot soldiers, but also the atrocities committed in the name of the liberation struggle.

It is probably easier to kill somebody if you tell yourself that you are not killing a human being; you are killing something below a human being.

This brings me back to Africa Day and the need for us to celebrate it as South Africans.

For so many years, we were not part of Africa. Most African countries knowingly and willingly excommunicated the white apartheid regime, and with good reason.

We have only really being made to feel part of Africa for the past 14 years, since we became a democracy.

You still find South Africans would rather travel to Europe or the United States, but not to other African countries. Yes, there is poverty in Africa, but there is also incredible beauty. It is time for South Africans to open up their eyes to the beauty on the continent.

We should actively celebrate Africa Day and being part of Africa. If it requires that our government should decree a public holiday to celebrate Africa, then I would support it.

The message it would send to the rest of the continent is that we are serious about taking our rightful place on the continent. We are serious about being Africans.

Maybe by doing that, we would then be able to start addressing the issues that led to the xenophobia of the past week or so.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site in May 2008)

All of us are racists

Race is not a subject that South Africans talk about easily and readily, and I think that this particularly the case with white South Africans.

The other day I was presenting a lecture on race at what used to be known as Pentech but now is known as the Bellville campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Most of the students in class were generically black, with only three white students in class.

We had what I thought was a good discussion, but I noticed that the white students did not say anything.

Afterwards I was walking to my car and the white students walked in front of me, unaware that I was behind them. One of the white students, a young woman, said to her friends: “I am sick and tired of race. I am sick and tired of people complaining about race. I have also been discriminated against, but you don’t find me complaining.”

I wished that she had said those words in class and then we could have addressed her concerns.

However, she was doing what most of us do in South Africa today: we only speak our minds to people who look like us. As soon as somebody who looks a little bit different joins the conversation, then we change the subject or we review, in our minds, what we want to say.

I have a simple policy: I do not believe in saying behind your back what I will not say in front of you. This means that if I have something uncomfortable to say about you, I would much rather say it to you then behind your back.

Of course, most people are not like that. They harbour feelings about people who are different to them and never let those people know how they really feel.

This is probably why we have not properly dealt with the issues of race and racism in this country. We are too scared to tell each other how we really feel about each other.

When I started writing my book, Race, I thought about the approach that I would use and I realised that if I wanted be effective in dealing with the issues of race and racism, then I would have to deal with the fact that all of us are racists.

But I would not be able to call other people racist without admitting to my own racism. So I start off the book with an admission of guilt, so to say. In the introduction, I say that I am a racist and that most South Africans are probably racists. I then outline how our racist history has groomed all of us to become racists.

It is a long introduction and the following is just a small excerpt:

But if I am a racist, I am not a passive acceptor of my racism. I am prepared to admit to my racism and I am doing my best to fight against it. Like the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe that it is important to admit to one’s faults, in this case racism, before one starts to deal with them.

Failure to admit to one’s faults will mean that one will probably die with those faults.

The difference between me and the people who are not prepared to admit to their racism is that I will probably overcome my racism at some point in my life. The people who are not prepared to admit their racism will probably remain racists until the day they die.

I realised that I had to take this step, make this confession, to create a comfort zone for people to begin a conversation about race and, in some ways, to reclaim the term “racist”, a term that has too often been used as an intimidating, threatening and abusive weapon.

You cannot have a conversation if one party is threatening and intimidating the other. However, you can have a conversation if both parties are prepared to admit to some faults.

I saw how effective this approach could be in my interactions, particularly with white people. Whenever I have admitted to my racism, they have also been prepared to admit to theirs. And then we were able to have a conversation about why we were all racists.

At a Centre for Conflict Resolution event in Cape Town the other day, one of the members of the audience asked me why I thought it necessary to create a safe space for whites to engage in this debate, bearing in mind that whites have oppressed us blacks and benefited so much from apartheid.

I agreed that whites have benefited from apartheid and were the oppressors under apartheid, but we cannot have a discussion about race in post-apartheid South Africa and exclude whites from this conversation.

And I believe that whites will not join this conversation unless we create a safe environment for them to join in.

If we continue to accuse and intimidate them, because of their racist past, then they will just retreat into their laager and sulk.

In the locker room of the gym the other day, I heard two young white men talking about BEE and lamenting the proposed exclusion of white women from disadvantaged groups under employment-equity targets. The one said: “I am just going to stay in South Africa until 2010, make as much money as possible and then leave. I can’t continue to live in this country.”

I decided not to confront them in the gym locker room, but this is precisely why we need to talk.

There are too many misperceptions out there, not only among white people, and those misperceptions will continue to influence the way we interact with each other.

If we don’t deal with it now, race will continue to haunt our society for many generations to come. And what better way to start the conversation by admitting that all of us are racists?

(This first appeared on the Mail and Guardian Thoughtleader site in October 2007)

Omar's death, burial evoke contradictions

WHAT happens when a humble man dies? What happens when that man was a cabinet minister in South Africa? What happens if that man was a Muslim?

This was the dilemma faced by the organisers of the funeral of Transport Minister and former justice minister Abdullah Mohammed Omar, who died at a Constantia clinic just after 4 o'clock yesterday morning.

Muslim custom dictates that a person should be buried by sunset on the day of his death, unless he dies too late into the day.

This posed all kinds of problems for people who felt that Omar deserved to have a proper funeral; and for others who felt that, because he was a cabinet minister, he deserved a state funeral.

Within three hours of his death, at 7 am, a hastily put together committee was ready to release details of Omar's funeral. There would be a final greeting at his home in Rylands Estate, as is customary in Muslim culture, followed by a public service at the Vygieskraal Stadium, about 1km from Omar's house.

Ebrahim Rasool, the ANC leader in the Western Cape and the "programme director" at the funeral, explained that this was no ordinary funeral.

"Comrade Dullah was a Muslim, so we are following all the procedures according to the Shariah (Muslim customary law). But Dullah was also a leader of the people and needs to be buried in a proper way. However, Dullah also told us before he died that he wanted to be buried in a humble way. He did not want any pomp and ceremony.

"This is why," Rasool said, "we have walked all the way from the house and Dullah will be buried in a kafaan (Muslim coffin), as any other Muslim would be buried."

Rasool pointed out that President Thabo Mbeki had also walked the distance from Omar's house to the stadium.

Mbeki and his deputy, Jacob Zuma, were at the head of the pallbearers carrying the bier into the stadium.

The tension between the three Dullah Omars (the statesman, the Muslim and the humble person) was felt as the coffin entered the stadium. It is customary for Muslims to share the load and many people had to be prevented from joining in the carrying because the president, his deputy and a host of cabinet ministers were carrying at the time.

In Muslim culture there is no such thing as official pallbearers; all able-bodied men assist in carrying the bier.

There were other tensions. For instance, there were two marquees for very important people. With Muslim funerals there is not normally a VIP tent. Also, because it is customary at Muslim funerals for men and women to be separated, the male and female VIPs had to sit in separate marquees.

But despite these tensions, the funeral was a special occasion with the correct blend of "pomp and ceremony" and humility as requested by Dullah Omar.

Apart from the president, his deputy and almost the entire cabinet, just about anybody who was anybody in South African politics was there, including former president Nelson Mandela, a few of the premiers from all over South Africa, members of parliament, members of provincial legislatures and MECs.

Albertina Sisulu got an honourable mention from ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, as did former ANC Women's League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Among those not mentioned and who were not in the VIP area were former ANC Western Cape leader and disgraced cleric Allan Boesak and former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni.

Rivonia trialists Ahmed Kathrada and Andrew Mlangeni were among the many dignitaries at the funeral.

As is expected at a funeral of this nature, many promises were made. Among these were that "we will not let Comrade Dullah's memory die" (Motlanthe), and "we commit ourselves never to do anything of which he would be ashamed" (Mbeki).

The funeral went some way towards meeting both those promises.

It was a fitting tribute to a man who carried on living in his own house despite becoming a cabinet minister and who, in Mbeki's words, "never sought to appear in television or the newspapers". 

(First published in City Press on Sunday 14 March 2004)