Pleasantly surprised by local gangster movie

It was with great apprehension that I agreed to go and see Noem My Skollie (Call Me Thief) the other day. I am not a fan of movies dealing with so-called coloured people on the Cape Flats because they inevitably glamourise gangsterism and related societal illnesses, such as drug dealing and other criminal behaviour.

But I was pleasantly surprised, not that it is a pleasant movie. In fact, the four of us who went to see it were traumatised afterwards because the movie is very intense. There are some graphic scenes that are justified because of the harshness of the reality that is being reflected.

This movie is once again a sign that South Africa’s movie-making skills can be up there with the best in the world – if only they are supported properly.

Noem My Skollie is based on the true story of writer John W Fredericks, who survived a two-year prison sentence by telling stories to the inmates and, in the process, avoided being caught up in the notorious prison numbers gangs.

The movie, set in Athlone on the Cape Flats in the early 1960s, features a host of local actors, some in minor and walk-on roles, but the stars are Dann Jacques Mouton and Austin Rose who play the young and the older leading character, AB.

Apart from the acting and the beautiful cinematography, what I liked about the movie was that it dealt sensitively with many themes that are still pervasive on the Cape Flats, such as the role of women, and especially mothers, how poverty is often linked to criminal behaviour and how different people choose different survival routes, despite being in almost the same situation.

Of course, the cinema where we went to go see the movie was far from full – I counted less than 20 people – and I don’t know if this is just a sign of the times, because fewer people are supporting movies, or whether it is because some people are, like me, apprehensive about seeing another Cape Flats gangster movie.

Noem My SKollie is much more than just a gangster movie. It should be compulsory viewing in schools not only on the Cape Flats but throughout South Africa to assist children who might be considering a career in crime.

I suspect it will probably pick up quite a few awards in the next few months. They will be well-deserved.

Commitment to Constitution is key to SA's transformation

One of the things I enjoy doing is to interact with people in corporates throughout the country on a regular basis. These are people from all demographics: young and old, white and black, men and women, etc. The thing I enjoy most is listening to the bright minds that exist in our country, their commitment to making a difference in society and their proposals to do this.

It is clear to me that South Africa has some great minds and some more than average leaders at a corporate level.

But I have also interacted with many people at different levels of government who have impressed me with their views and their commitment to making our country a better place for all who live in it.

Why, I often find myself thinking when I interact with these great minds, is there a perception that our country is leaderless, idealess, clueless? The answer, I suppose, is really simple. The example set by government and those in political leadership in our country is not the best in the world and, unfortunately, many people only look at our political leadership and base their judgments on our country on what they see in this regard.

There is not a day that goes by when I do not cringe as newspaper headlines expose more wrong-doing, more thoughtless statements and more bad decision-making by the people who we have elected as our national leaders.

While affording politicians the necessary respect, I have given up a long time ago on depending on them to affect proper change in our society.

I have realised that change can only really come from the ground up. The results of the recent municipal elections, in which the ruling ANC lost a lot of ground, is part of the response from ordinary people that they have had enough.

They have had enough of living in a society where we are no longer shocked by corruption claims against senior politicians and in which those with power and money, which they access because of their power, flaunt their newfound wealth in complete disregard to those who are struggling to make a daily living in an increasingly more depressed economic environment.

The discussion should no longer be about whether the ANC will ever be able to regain the greatness it once had or whether the DA will be able to capitalise properly on the ANC’s weaknesses and become a truly representative majority party.

The bigger question is how we keep on track the project to transform our country.

The problem is that the more the ANC messes up, the more excuses it creates for people who don’t want our society to transform properly. They hide behind excuses such as “black people can’t govern” or “black people can’t lead” and they base this on the wrong-doings of ANC leaders.

One of the things about transformation is that when black people succeed, they succeed as individuals. When they fail, they fail on behalf of an entire section of our population. And for the post-1994 generation, when I use the word “black”, I use it in the way it is written in our Constitution and include Africans, coloureds and Indians.

There are different ways of responding to the troubles in the ANC. The one is to just cry and hope for the best. The other is to realise that our country is bigger than any individual or political party. There are more people in South Africa, and the world for that matter, who want us to succeed than those who want us to fail.

While we should allow the ANC to continue with their internal soul-searching, which I doubt will deliver anything new or amazing, it is important that people in civil society who have the best interest of our country at heart, to show their displeasure at every opportunity when they spot wrong-doing among our political leaders.

What we saw in Johannesburg this week, when ANC members protested against their own organisation, is a sign that our democracy is busy maturing. The ANC is no longer the underground organisation in exile which needs to keep a tight rein on all its members. It needs to modernise its practices to take into consideration that it is now a ruling party who is accountable not only to its members but also to the people who vote for it.

The ANC needs to start learning some lessons from the organisations and leaders that were aligned to the United Democratic Front, where democracy from the bottom up was a key ingredient of its success.

It is important to note that, while the ANC has an illustrious history and legacy, it no longer has the sole prerogative over the transformation of our society. There are people in the ANC who are only interested in promoting their own well-being and who do not really care about whether our society is transformed or not.

At the same time there are people outside of the ANC, whether in opposition parties or in civil society, who have repeatedly demonstrated their commitment to the transformation project.

The transformation of our society does not depend on individual leaders but on a commitment to the Constitution and the values espoused in it. When we judge our political leaders, we should do it against their commitment to the Constitution which is one document that all political parties agreed upon but which contains many of the values which guided the ANC through the dark days of apartheid.

We need to unleash the collective power and wisdom that is found throughout South Africa in order to take our country forward – and we need to do that irrespective of political allegiance.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 10 September 2016)

Transformation is neither easy nor comfortable

Transformation is about accepting our differences, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, writes Ryland Fisher.

Cape Town - One of the things I realised very early on about the transformation of our country is it is not an easy process and is something most people would prefer not to do, if they had their way.

Transformation is meant to be uncomfortable for everyone and if there is one person who does not feel uncomfortable, then you probably have not transformed enough.

Transformation is about accepting our differences, even if some of these make you feel uncomfortable. Most of us have prejudices, whether they are based on race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or other identity markers. Transformation provides you with an opportunity to address these prejudices.

I am raising these points in a week during which we have seen protests by learners about hair but, as is often the case, it is not only about hair. It is about much more. It is about whether one should follow the rules made by the people who lived in the house first, as has happened just about everywhere else in society.

Even Parliament and most of corporate South Africa live according to rules made by the people who have been there before. Our first democratically elected MPs had a wonderful opportunity to change things significantly in Parliament when they came to power, but they chose to continue with the same practices that had been used for many decades before, some since South Africa became a union in 1910.

Most practices in corporate South Africa were established by the white people who used to own them exclusively and black people who are now in senior positions have followed suit.

When white schools opened their doors to black children in what are still known in some quarters as Model C schools, they continued the traditions they had practised for decades. They set “standards” which did not take into account the experiences of the black children.

They expected them to act and speak like white people. If they could get them to look like white people too, then so much the better.

A few years ago I tried to get corporates to speak about race and culture as part of adapting to a fast-changing society. I realised very quickly while many corporates talk about transformation, it is not something they embrace without reservation. It is more of chore, something they are forced to do when all they want to do is make money.

I was even told by a company executive once that I should not use the word “race” when speaking to his staff. I should rather talk about “diversity” which, in his opinion, was more acceptable.

I have had several mentors in journalism and, I suppose, in life. One of them was Rory Wilson, the then-managing director of Independent Media in Cape Town who appointed me editor of the Cape Times at a time when South Africa was just beginning to change.

Rory once told me he understood that if he did his job properly - and transformed the company in the way he should - he would be out of a job. The problem with most white people in business is they do not think like Rory. For them transformation is necessary to preserve their privileges.

It is not so much about undoing the wrongs of apartheid and creating opportunities for those who never had opportunities before.

For them it is about accommodating black people in what used to be white spaces. But it is not only white people who feel comfortable with white spaces. There are many black people who buy into the myth that white is better.

I remember a few years ago, when I was a parent at The Grove primary school in Claremont and there was a strike in township schools by teachers belonging to the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu). Quite a few Sadtu teachers had placed their children in schools such as The Grove, in the hope or knowledge that teachers at a former white school would probably not go on strike. When I grew up on the Cape Flats, it was not uncommon for family and friends to aspire to be like white people or to accord respect to white people in ways they would never to other “coloured” or black people.

When I was older, I realised at many weddings I had attended over the years, there was always a table for white people “from work”.

This table was placed near the main table and they would be served just after, or sometimes before, the main table.

I have so much confidence in the future of our country based on the actions of young people like these girls. Thank you for making me and others think about what might seem a simple issue, but is something that cuts to the heart of the transformation debate in our society.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 3 September 2016)

Busisiwe Mkhwebane deserves the nation's support

Not many South Africans knew the name Busisiwe Mkhwebane before this week, or before the nominations for Public Protector and the interviews for the 15 people on the shortlist were conducted live on television.

But all that is about to change, as Advocate Mkhwebane was chosen this week as their favoured candidate by the ad hoc parliamentary committee tasked with finding a successor to Thuli Madonsela, whose seven-year term comes to an end in October.

One can only hope that Mkhwebane will dominate the headlines over the next few years – as Madonsela did – for all the right reasons. The job of Public Protector can be a lonely one and there are always pressures, political and otherwise, to do one’s work in a certain way. Sometimes the pressure is overt, most time it is subtler. Madonsela’s life was even threatened at times.

But the credibility of the Public Protector’s office is important, more important than the individual who occupies the most senior seat in the organisation.

I attended the Top Women awards function in Johannesburg last week where Madonsela received a lifetime achiever award and she spoke about how accepted the award on behalf of all of her staff. She said that, while her name appears on the reports her office issues, it is the result of the work of many people in her office.

Mkhwebane will go into this job with concerns about her close links to President Jacob Zuma, a concern which has not been substantiated by any of her critics.

I don’t believe it is a legitimate concern because we have in recent times had a few examples where people alleged to have been close to the President, or to have had strong ruling party leanings, have shown their independence and professionalism.

One such example is Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, who was viewed very sceptically when he was appointed in September 2011. Since then he has shown that he has more loyalty to the senior position he holds in the judiciary than to any individual or political party.

He even delivered the damning judgment in March where he confirmed the powers of the Public Protector and ordered the President to “pay back the money”.

There was also concerns about Mogoeng’s strong Christian religious beliefs and that these could influence his judgments. So far, he has shown that he is guided only by the Constitution and not by loyalty to persons or to religious affiliation.

Another example is the chairman of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), Glen Mashinini, who defied his critics by delivering probably the most important election of post-apartheid South Africa so far – the municipal elections of 3 August in which the ANC lost significant support.

There were concerns about whether Mashinini, who was also alleged to be close to Zuma because he previously worked as an adviser to the President, would be able to preside over impartial, free and fair elections. The strong showing by the opposition in the municipal elections seem to have waylaid those fears. One wonders if this would have been the case if the opposition did not do so well.

What the above examples show is that there are people who are able to rise above personal and political allegiances and do justice to the office to which they have been appointed. This is what is expected in a democracy. One should judge people based on their professionalism, skills and experience, and not on their political allegiances.

Opposition leaders who criticise the ANC for “cadre deployment” conveniently choose to overlook these and other examples. They choose to focus on the cases where people will political connections have not been able to perform their duties. This is right but we also need to acknowledge the instances where “cadre deployment” has benefited society.

In a country like South Africa, where we have a divided history, we all carry political and social baggage. We all have to perform our duties despite this baggage.

It is not at the same level, but as a journalist who had a struggle background, there are many people who doubt whether someone like myself can ever be objective. But throughout my career, my commitment to journalism has always outweighed my commitment to people or politics. I have often written critical pieces about friends who have done wrong, even when it pained me to do so.

It is possible to focus on the job at hand and not allow one’s baggage to interfere.

After all, even Thuli Madonsela came from an ANC background and there were concerns at the time of her appointment about whether she would be able to perform her duties objectively. She showed that she was able to do so and inspired many with her bravery as she went up against the most powerful people in our society.

If Mkhwebane is accepted by parliament and becomes our next Public Protector, which seems a formality, then she deserves all our support as she navigates a very tricky road of keeping politicians to account. Civil society will have to be vigilant and keep her to account.

We have to thank Madonsela for raising the profile of the Public Protector over the past seven years. Let’s hope that the office will grow even stronger under the next incumbent.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 27 August 2016)

Memories can be deceiving: the things we never discuss about the UDF

Memory is a tricky business and the older one gets, the more difficult it becomes to depend on one’s memory. As we celebrated the 33rd birthday of the United Democratic Front (UDF) yesterday, I have been surprised by the unspoilt memories many people have of what was a glorious movement.

But it was not without its faults and there are many questions around the UDF that many of us who were involved refuse to entertain. We prefer to only visit the good memories.

The UDF was a broad coalition of organisations launched on August 20, 1983 in opposition to moves by the apartheid government to introduce self-rule for coloureds and Indians while fine-tuning laws about how black people were governed in South Africa. It is so easy to forget 1983 was still a time of homelands where blacks were supposed to govern themselves and that they were not welcome, by apartheid decree, in most of the major metros in South Africa.

The UDF fought against this and brought together the most diverse group of organisations – from supposedly liberal groups such as the Black Sash, a group of white women who picketed outside Parliament regularly, to trade unions and youth and community groups which often aligned themselves with the then-banned ANC. But the UDF also included church and sports groups and even the odd stokvel.

From the start, the UDF did everything big. Its launch, inside and outside the Rocklands Civic Centre in Mitchells Plain, attracted about 15 000 people from around the country and those in attendance were treated to the spectacular political oratory of leaders such as Dr Allan Boesak, Aubrey Mokoena, Helen Joseph, Sister Bernard Ncube and others.

 

In the mid- to late-1980s there was a real buzz in the Western Cape and especially in Mitchells Plain. There was a feeling that most people supported the UDF and, as such, the Struggle. This feeling was based on the huge rallies the UDF organised and the success of publicity stunts such as the million signature campaign. But it was also based on the support protest marches and other activities generated, especially from 1985 onwards.

This is partly why, when the ANC lost the first democratic elections in 1994 to the National Party in the Western Cape, there was intense soul-searching about where things had gone wrong – surely the people who supported the UDF would naturally also support the ANC.

The ANC’s leaders, recently returned from exile, had of course in their wisdom decided the UDF should be closed down because it was merely a proxy for the ANC and no longer needed to exist now that the “real leaders” had come back home.

With hindsight, this was probably a short-sighted decision. While elements inside the UDF supported the ANC, the front as a whole remained non-aligned and had a specific purpose, which was redefined over time, to oppose apartheid reforms.

This did not justify the ANC making an assumption the support the UDF enjoyed would naturally gravitate towards it.

The UDF could have played a major role in effectively “softening up” people for the ANC. They could have been people’s first interaction with non-racialism, leading to an easier acceptance of the ANC, especially if the UDF was not going to contest elections.

There were also significant differences between the ANC and UDF. One of these was that they operated very differently. The ANC, as a banned organisation, operated clandestinely from neighbouring countries and overseas. The UDF operated on the ground in communities throughout South Africa and had established a culture of democracy. In fact, we used to joke about being “demo-crazy”. All decisions of the UDF were discussed in a bottom-up manner.

ANC-supporting activists within the UDF were torn between these two styles of operation: one where decisions were taken mostly by consensus and the top-down style of the ANC, necessitated by security fears.

A question many people have refused to ask, let alone answer is: how popular was the UDF really?

Why did the huge attendance at political rallies, especially in the so-called coloured areas, not translate into votes for the ANC?

Rallies can be deceptive and are often just shows of support meant to intimidate your opposition. But if you have 100 000 people living in a community and 10 000 people attend your rally, you still have90 000 who may or may not support you. You will only know how they feel after election day.

A few years ago I worked in Ghana where, ahead of national elections, the ruling party spent a lot of money on billboards, adverts in newspapers and on radio and television and I attended, a few days before the elections, a huge rally which attracted at least 100 000 people.

It was an impressive show of support. Unfortunately, it did not translate into votes and they lost the election.

The moral of this story is that you should never judge your support based on attendance at rallies but rather on the feedback you receive when you do door-to-door work in communities.

The other question people rarely ask about the UDF is how much non-racialism existed in its structures and whether this was effectively transmitted into the diverse communities in the Western Cape and South Africa.

In the Western Cape, because of the nature of the population, it was natural the UDF would operate strongly in so-called coloured areas, but it also operated in African and white areas.

It was not uncommon for hundreds of activists to go into an area on a Saturday or Sunday morning to sell Grassroots community newspaper or talk to people about signing the million signature petition. The activists were drawn from all areas of the Western Cape and appeared to operate without any visible tensions and divisions.

But one thing we never asked ourselves at the time was how much of this non-racialism we experienced was accepted by the communities we came from. Was the so-called coloured community, for instance, comfortable with all this interaction with blacks and whites? The same could be asked of the white and black communities with relation to the others who we accepted in the spirit of non-racialism.

We cannot dismiss the damage caused by apartheid and colonialism which forcibly separated our communities, forcing us to live apart, study apart and date and marry only people who looked like and sounded like us.

Trevor Oosterwyk, the ANC’s election co-ordinator in Mitchells Plain in 1994, told me when I interviewed him for my book, Race, that he took the rejection by Mitchells Plain voters personally and realised while activists like himself had adopted a “black” identity, they had not taken their community along with them on this journey.

I agree and disagree with Oosterwyk. I think we also need to look at how much acceptance of non-racialism there was in communities that had been separated from each other for decades, no centuries.

The point I am trying to make is that, in politics, we often believe our own propaganda and we could have been misled by the apparent support for the UDF and the non-racial culture we all were desperate to adopt.

In some ways, one can only be truly non-racial if we operate from level playing fields, excuse the cliché. As long as we have situations where there are still townships inhabited mainly by poor so-called coloured or black people and suburbs inhabited by mainly white or middle-class people, we will struggle to inculcate true non-racialism.

When everyone has equal access to opportunities, whether in education, housing, employment, sports or wealth creation, then we can start talking about living in a non-racial society. Non-racism does not appear to be a priority for people who are poor and who have to worry about where their next loaf of bread is going to come from.

History has a way of repeating itself and I have long ago learnt politicians especially do not learn from our past.

But if activists from yesteryear reflect honestly on the UDF and share their reflections with current activists, we might find solutions to some of the issues bedevilling politics and our society today. That is, of course, if we allow these reflections to interfere with the good memories that we treasure.

(First published in the Weekend Argus on Sunday 21 August 2016)

Commemorating three important days

This week we commemorate three important days in the history of South Africa, both of which have had a profound impact on our reasonably-young democracy, and a third day which should have had greater impact.

The first is the 33rd anniversary of the United Democratic Front, which was formed at the Rocklands civic centre in Mitchells Plain on Saturday 20 August 1983. The UDF was a coalition of organisations opposed to apartheid legislation and played a key role in the ultimate dismantling of the apartheid state. However, as soon as the ANC leadership returned from exile, they disbanded the UDF, something which many people still feel was a mistake.

The UDF started out in opposition to attempts by the government of PW Botha to enforce “self-government” for people who were not white in South Africa. It ended up imagining a society that was markedly different in character to what most of us experienced under apartheid.

The second commemoration this week is the fourth anniversary of the massacre of 34 mineworkers who were protesting for higher wages. They were killed on Thursday 16 August 2012 on a koppie outside Marikana, in the town also known as Rooikoppies in North West province, a few kilometres outside Rustenberg.

While the formation of the UDF was a celebration of unity among those opposed to apartheid at a time when repression was intensifying in South Africa, and ultimately had a positive outcome, the Marikana massacre remains the most serious blight on post-apartheid South Africa and, four years later, no one has been charged or brought to book for the killings.

Ironically, the Marikana massacre happened a day after Trevor Manuel, then Minister in the Presidency responsible for the National Planning Commission, had handed over to Parliament the report on the work done by his commission, in the form of the National Development Plan. This is the third important day that we should remember this week.

The NDP went on to be adopted by most political parties and drew positive responses from civil society and business. It sketches the kind of South Africa we would all love to live in by the year 2030, “a future we would all want and deserve”, according to Manuel.

Manuel’s handover speech was littered with words such as “patriotism”, “commitment”, “goodwill”, “build” and “a better future”. The people who were killed at Marikana and the families they left behind must be wondering what Manuel was talking about.

For them, South Africa has become worse and not better over the past four years.

But in a week when there have been heightened emotions around Marikana, and the lack of action with regards to justice for those who were killed, it is important to reflect also on the UDF and the NDP. Both promised to build a non-racial society in which opportunities would be open to all.

In some ways, the UDF declaration, which formed almost a vision statement for the alliance of organisations, was written at a time when we had no idea whether we would ever overcome apartheid and what life would look like afterwards.

The NDP is a post-apartheid document and based on interviews and discussions with, according to Manuel, “thousands of South Africans from all corners of the country, from all walks of life. We received comments from individuals and organisations and engaged with government departments, provinces, municipalities, state-owned enterprises and agencies”.

 The NDP talks about tackling poverty and inequality based on faster and “faster and more inclusive economic growth, higher public and private investment, improving education and skills, greater use of technology, knowledge and innovation and better public services all leading to higher employment, rising incomes and falling inequality”. 

All of this, of course, means nothing for the victims of Marikana and their relatives. But it could mean something to others who, like them, are trapped in poverty.

It is a crying shame that, 22 years after we became a democracy and voted for the first time, the living conditions of many poor people seem to have deteriorated.

This is why there is ongoing service delivery protests throughout the country and that is why so many people broke with tradition and voted against the ANC government at the recent municipal elections.

If government is serious about addressing the ills in our society, then they could do worse than revisiting their commitment to the NDP. It is a great plan, but South Africans are known to make great plans. We often fail in the execution.

The NDP deals with just about every aspect of our society and, based on a diagnostic analysis, it provides ways in which we can act in a practical manner to make our country the great place we all know it can become.

Just imagine if, in a few years, our next Wayde van Niekerk or Caster Semenya comes from Marikana. But this will only happen if opportunities are created, in line with the vision spelled out in the NDP.

The best way to remember those who lives appeared to have been lost in vain is to build a better society, one that benefits the majority and not just the few, as our society still does at the moment. In a few years’ time, and sooner rather than later, we should be celebrating Marikana, because it should be a much improved place and its residents should no longer have to fight for decent wages.

We should try to build something positive out of the grief of Marikana, but that will not happen while the government appears not to listen to what the experts have suggested in the NDP and what many ordinary citizens are crying out for on a daily basis.

(First published as Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 20 August 2016)

We are all touched by matters of life and mortality

Death is not something most of us want to talk about. For many it is a five-letter swear word that should only be whispered and preferably out of earshot of anyone else.

But death is a reality and, as the saying goes, it is the only thing, apart from taxes, which is certain in life.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I attend more funerals than weddings and more 50- or 60-year-old birthday parties than those celebrating coming of age.

Every time I attend a funeral or memorial service, I think about my own life and mortality. As one gets older, one realises that one has lived most of one’s life already and one could be in the final half or quarter or even year of one’s life.

When I hear person after person extolling the virtues of the deceased, I can’t help but wonder what people will say about me and whether they would have anything nice to say. Vanity is a strange thing and, even if you would not be able to hear what others say about you after you die, you still want them to say nice things. Not that it matters at that point.

I have interviewed quite a few important people over the years, including many politicians, and when I ask them about their legacy, they often say that they don’t believe in personal legacies but rather the legacy of their political organisation.

This is a lie, of course. I believe everyone thinks about their legacy at some point, because what you leave behind could have an important influence on those who come after you. But also, we all have a legacy, whether it is negative or positive.

I have been thinking about death and dying for most of this week, since the husband of one of my wife’s friends passed away on Saturday and the sister of one of my friends passed away on Wednesday.

But I have also been faced this week with the reality of cancer sufferers who struggle on despite, in many cases, fighting a losing battle.

It is one of the strange things in life that no one has yet found a cure for cancer which is a non-discriminatory disease, in many ways. Cancer does not mind whether you are black or white, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or unfit, straight or gay.

When it strikes, it strikes decisively and a life that could have been perfect up to that point, often changes for the worst. I have been confronted too many times with cases of friends or associates who discovered that they had cancer and they were gone in a few months.

Even those who survive longer will tell you about the pain and discomfort of chemotherapy which may or may not help to cure your cancer and prolong your life.

Yet not many people, myself included, bother to do much research into cancer unless it affects us directly or indirectly.

It is like we know that, in many cases, cancer causes death and we would rather not talk about anything related to death.

We have lost some amazing people to cancer and we will still lose many more, unless somebody finds a cure which, at this point, seems very distant.

But knowing you are going to die does allow you to plan and, in some cases, it gives you time to seek forgiveness from anyone you might have hurt or offended when your health was better. It also gives people who love you the opportunity to spend time with you before your health deteriorates to such a point where you are unable to focus on what is happening around you and you are only focused on dealing with your pain.

One of the inane things that people always say when they sympathise with someone who lost a loved one is that they understand or share their pain. Pain is difficult to share. It is often very personal and even those closest to you cannot completely share or understand it.

I suppose it is easy to write about and talk about death if it is not happening in your home, to one of your closest loved ones.

It is easy when it is not you or people very close to you who are counting their last days and trying to numb the pain of cancer by using morphine.

It is easy to say that, even in death, one must look for the positives when you are not the one who has lost a loved one who might have shared your bed for most of your adult life.

Death, whether is expected or sudden, is never easy. More than 30 years after my mother passed away, I still think about her a lot and I can still see her face in my mind. I often think about how much I would have wanted her to see my children grow up and the influence that she would have had on their lives. My father passed away years after my mother so at least my children had the opportunity to interact with him.

I have no intention of dying soon, but life and death are unpredictable. So how would I like to be remembered? As someone who tried to make a difference in the world and who, despite his many flaws, tried to be the best person he could be.

Death is inevitable and that is why one must live life to its fullest and try to enjoy every minute while one can. This, of course, is easier said than done.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 13 August 2016)

Let's really get behind our team at the Olympics

In the excitement about the local government elections on Wednesday, it was easy to forget that one of the world’s greatest sporting events was kicking off this week. The Olympic Games happen once every four years and remain one of the greatest measures of sporting excellence.

South Africa has a huge team participating, including in athletics and swimming but also in sport like sevens rugby and soccer, both men and women.

I was reminded of the Olympics on Tuesday – at a time when my mind was only on the elections – when I received an email from a journalist at a major Brazilian newspaper wanting to know my views on why South Africa’s national soccer team was mainly black, with, in his words, “the only white person you can see around the pitch during the practice is the team doctor”.

My initial response to queries like this is normally: “Really? Do you guys have nothing better to write about?” But I did try to respond to explain the strange phenomenon in South Africa where rugby and cricket appear to be more popular among white people and soccer appears to be more popular among blacks.

I suspect that soccer teams will be mainly black for a long time to come, but this is not because whites are knowingly excluded but rather that whites seem to exclude themselves from South African soccer but they continue to support British or European soccer.

I don’t know the reason for why there seems to be a racial divide when it comes to soccer but I suspect it has something to do with soccer being more affordable to play, which makes it more attractive to blacks. When I grew up on the Cape Flats, we often used to make soccer balls out of newspaper stuffed into plastic carrier bags, and we used bricks or big stones to make our goalposts.

You also did not need a smooth surface on which to play, even though that helped. My body still aches when I think about how, as a goalkeeper many years ago, I had to dive to save balls on fields that contained more stones and sand than grass.

I suppose one could do the same with rugby, even though the shape of the ball is different but it is not that easy with cricket. Cricket can be an expensive game, especially for people who have very little.

But the thing about soccer is that throughout the world, it is the sport supported by the working class, whether it is in Europe or Latin America. It is played in many more countries than any other sport. This is why FIFA, the world soccer controlling body, is so popular and so powerful.

Soccer has brought joy to many over the years. It is not known as the beautiful game for nothing and has developed generation after generation of superstars, from Pele and Maradona to Ronaldo and Messi, and many others in between.

I believe that one of the reasons South Africa soccer has not really been supported by whites is because it is not offered as an option at many former white schools. This means that parents do not have to get up early on a Saturday morning to watch their loved ones play soccer, in the way that they have to do for rugby and cricket.

This non-attendance of soccer matches then continues into the period after the children leave school. Support for rugby and cricket starts at school and continues afterwards.

One way of addressing this is of course for more schools to offer soccer as a sporting option. I don’t know why schools do not do this, because it makes so much sense.

After all, soccer is less likely than a sport like rugby to lead to serious injuries and, also, soccer players globally are among the highest earning sports people. So if you want little Johnny to make some money out of sport, which could help you retire early and comfortably, it probably makes sense to encourage a soccer career. Or golf, but that is also an expensive option.

South Africa has not done too well as a soccer-playing nation over the past decade or so and there are all kinds of factors to blame, from bad coaching appointments to players feeling more loyal to their clubs who pay them mega-salaries than to their country where they effectively play for charity.

But it remains an important sport and one that has helped to galvanise our nation in 2010 and could potentially do it again in future.

If our soccer team does not have much hope at the Olympics, our swimmers and athletes do and we hope that they will make us proud as they have done often in the past at these great Games.

After the divisions of the local government elections – when hot-headed politicians destroyed any attempt at nation-building in their attempts to win votes – we can now refocus our attention on the Olympic Games and throw our weight behind Team South Africa.

Let’s hope they make us proud irrespective of the demographics. Ultimately, the Olympics is about pitting the best in the world against each other and if our best soccer players happen to be mainly black, then they still deserve our support.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 6 August 2016)

Don't complain if you do not vote

When you cast your vote on August 3, you should think beyond incessant sniping between the parties, writes Ryland Fisher.

The local government elections were never meant to be about Jacob Zuma, Mmusi Maimane or Julius Malema. They were never meant to be about Nelson Mandela and who has the right to claim his legacy.

The elections are supposed to be about service delivery at the most important level of government, often referred to as the coalface.

When you cast your vote next week, as I hope you will, you should think beyond the posters bearing the faces of political leaders and the incessant sniping between the parties.

It is easy to treat Wednesday as a day to catch up on shopping, watch a television series, or have a braai with family and friends. You should not necessarily exclude any of these activities, but you should spend some time joining the queues at your local polling station to make your mark.

And when you are there, instead of worrying about national politics only, ask yourself whether the people in control of your municipality, or more specifically your ward, are doing a decent job of making sure your rubbish is picked up, your potholes fixed, dealing with crime in your area and the many other things for which councillors are expected to take responsibility.

If not, then maybe s/he does not deserve your vote. If yes, maybe s/he deserves another chance, irrespective of his/her political party.

Ask yourself where your candidate has been in the years since the last election. Have you seen him at community gatherings, has she been part of the neighbourhood watch? Have you seen her at church services, at school sports matches? Or have you seen his/her face for the first time on a poster imploring you to vote for change, or continuity.

Of course, we cannot get away from the national issues, even though this is a local government election. This is South Africa, after all, and everything is always wrapped in everything else.

We cannot wish away Nkandla and its associated problems, or the SABC and SAA sagas; or the DA’s flagrant abuse of Nelson Mandela’s legacy in a cheap attempt to score political points. We cannot wish away that the EFF was formed by someone who was undisciplined as an ANC member and who is now asking us to trust him with running our municipalities.

We cannot run away from the fact our country is still much racialised in the way it was under apartheid, and will probably be for a long time to come.

Every election, those of us who were in the trenches fighting against apartheid have questions about our allegiances and many of us consider whether we should vote at all.

I was grappling with this from the first democratic election in 1994, when I looked at the list of candidates of the only party for which I would consider voting at the time, the ANC. I did not like many of the names on the list because they were people I knew and I knew their weaknesses.

But I thought I had fought so long and hard for the right to vote that I needed to exercise this right. So I voted for the first time at the age of 34 in Kensington, Johannesburg, accompanied by my wife and my daughter, who was a few months old.

Twenty-two years later and my daughter is a beautifully grown-up woman and can now vote for the second time - she voted for the first time in the national elections - and I owe it to her and her generation to continue my voting tradition.

How can I implore them to vote and make a difference to society if I am not prepared to do the same? I know there are people who say one vote does not make a difference, but it does.

If everyone decided not to vote, we would have serious problems and you cannot complain if you did not use your right to vote.

So then the difficult issue: who to vote for? It is not for me, or anyone else, to tell you on whom you should use one of your most precious commodities in a democracy but you need to think about who and which party can make a difference in your life and the lives of the people who matter to you.

At ward level, it is sometimes easier because, if you know your councillor and you know s/he has been working, you would not have difficulty supporting them on that basis and not necessarily based on the party they represent. They could well be independent. Some independents have been known to work very well for their constituents.

It becomes more difficult when it comes to the proportional vote, where you have to choose the party you wish to represent your interests in the council. Your choices do not have to be the same on the proportional and the ward lists. In the Western Cape, we have more than 60 parties contesting the elections. I hope the IEC did not have to fit all their names on one ballot paper in all the areas.

But here is where the national profile of the parties and their leaders become important and you need to look at the performance of parties in municipalities that they’ve controlled before making up your minds.

It is difficult to do this for some parties, because they don’t control municipalities - yet - so you have to consider, based on what they promise, whether they will be able to deliver.

I will be making my mark on Wednesday. Who I will vote for is not yet decided and will probably only be decided when I look at the ballot paper in the voting station. But vote I will, and you should too.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 30 July 2016)

Gangsterism a way of life and death on the Flats

I witnessed my first killing in Hanover Park when I was not even 10 years old. It was a Saturday afternoon and we watched the gangsters “entertain” us in the way they did almost every weekend. Two gangs were chasing each other up and down the street, brandishing pangas, axes and “walking talls” (pick axe handles).

The gangsters did not really make contact with each other. It seemed like they were merely chasing each other, in one direction and then back again. One got the sense that they did not really want to fight, but were merely passing time, as we were doing by watching them.

Then one of the gang members fell and was left behind by his fellow gang members. The members of the rival gang were able to set upon him. They stabbed him, hacked at him, kicked him, hit him as hard as they could and finally left his lifeless body lying in the street.

That was the end of the gang fight, as the gang members blended quickly into the blocks of flats where they came from, no doubt with the gang who had lost a member contemplating their revenge.

We were watching from our kitchen window, like one would be watching a street soccer game. The body lay there for a few hours before an ambulance and police arrived to take it away. In that time hundreds of residents, not directly linked to the gang, had gone up to watch the body. Someone covered it and, if we had lived in the time of cell phones and selfies, pictures would probably have been uploaded to Instagram and other social media platforms within seconds.

I don’t know what happened to the killers but I’m almost convinced that they walked away scot-free, despite the fact that the killing happened in broad daylight and in front of witnesses.

I was not traumatised, because this is what we expected should happen in our township. Watching someone being killed was as natural as being mugged on your way to school in the morning or being terrorised in other ways by gangsters.

I remember once walking with a good friend past the bus terminus in Hanover Park at night. We were warned not to walk past the terminus, because it was one of those places that could be dangerous even during the day. But we were going to visit two sisters who lived on the other side of the terminus and it is difficult to keep testosterone-driven teenage boys away from girls. Even if their lives were in danger.

Suddenly we sensed that someone was behind us. We both moved out of the way and a guy who we recognised came tumbling in between us, with a knife in his hands. We quickly grabbed him and disarmed him. We asked him what he was doing and he said that his brother had been attacked earlier by the gang that lived across the road from the terminus – I think it was the Mongrels – and he was seeking revenge by attacking anyone in sight.

He pleaded with us, because we had overpowered him, to finish him off. But that was not our intention – we wanted to get to the girls as soon as possible – and we let him go, realising that he was probably not going to stop his “revenge” attacks. He would probably end up finding someone else to attack.

I am often asked how I ended up not getting involved in gangs, and I don’t know the answer, which is probably complicated. But gangsterism informed much of my young life. The people involved in gangs were our brothers, cousins and friends.

Quite often the only thing that determined which gangs you would end up joining was your geographical location. So, if you lived in Solent Court, like I did, you became a member of the Bowa Kids; if you lived in Derwent Court, you joined the Sexy Boys; and if you lived in Soetwaterhof, you ended up in the Pipekillers.

For many youngsters who felt rejected by society, gangs became family, a home where they felt they belonged and they were determined to prove their loyalty and commitment.

What I described above happened about 40 years or more ago, but the situation has not changed much in places like Hanover Park, with the only difference in most cases being that gangsters now brandish guns more than knives.

I no longer live in Hanover Park but I realised how all our lives remain intertwined when someone who lives around the corner from me in Rondebosch got arrested for allegedly supplying guns to gangsters. Without trying to pre-empt the courts, if he is found guilty, his sentence should send a warning that these kinds of activities will not be tolerated.

The gang situation on the Cape Flats is complicated as it is, and will probably never really be sorted out as long as you have people living in economic conditions which are ripe for the growth of gangs.

But people should know that if you sell guns illegally to gangsters, you will be jailed; if you buy stolen goods from gangsters, you will be jailed; if you harbour gangsters and help them to avoid the police, you will be jailed.

We might not be able to change economic conditions overnight, but we can reclaim our communities and make sure that gangsterism is curtailed, if not completely wiped out. There are many amazing people who live on the Cape Flats, but their stories and contributions to society are overshadowed by gangsters who make the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 23 July 2016)

Video - The Complete Interview With Ebrahim Rasool

Ebrahim Rasool on Obama, Western Cape politics, the Middle East

Former ANC leader in the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rasool, was recalled as Premier of the province in 2008. After a short stint as a special adviser to Kgalema Motlanthe, who later became President, and a member of national Parliament, Rasool was sent to the United States as South Africa's ambassador.
His ambassadorship came about because in 2006 Rasool was the only serving politician prepared to meet with an unknown senator from Illinois called Barack Obama.
In this exclusive interview, Rasool talks about his relationship with Obama, his views on American politics, his relationship with South Africa's ruling party - of which he is still a member - and their chances in he upcoming local government elections. He also talks about the work he has been doing in conflict areas around the world and the conflict he sometimes feels between his religious beliefs and being a politician.

Video - The Complete Interview with Jonathan Jansen

Jonathan Jansen on education, Madiba and the Blue Bulls

When Professor Jonathan Jansen announced that he was stepping down as the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS) less than half-way into this second five-year term, it caught many people by surprise. He is leaving the university next month, after taking office less than seven years ago.

But Jansen insisted in an interview this week that his senior colleagues and the university’s council were not surprised because they knew from the beginning that he was going to stay in this position for only seven years.

“I believe that you have seven years in which to impact on the organisation and if you have not made a major impact by that time, you never will. For me it is a wonderful time to make some major changes, consolidate a new team, do some succession planning, and then to move on.

“The seven years have been wonderful, I really enjoyed it, but it is enough,” Jansen said in a wide-ranging interview in which he reflected on his time at the UFS, gave some advice to government on how to sort out the country’s problems, including education and the economy, and also spoke about his respect for Nelson Mandela, his love for social media and his support for the Blue Bulls.

A more detailed article on this interview appeared in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 16 July 2016, but here follows a video of the interview.

Locally, power does grow from the barrel of a gun

An encounter with a KZN induna and his armed henchmen reminded Ryland Fisher why so much is at stake at the municipal elections.

Last week I encountered first-hand how traditional authorities assert power over rural communities and realised why so much is at stake at the municipal elections, to the extent that people are prepared to kill to safeguard positions, as has already happened in some areas.

I was in Empangeni in northern KwaZulu-Natal, interviewing and photographing a psychologist who had benefited from a bursary scheme sponsored by an overseas foundation. With help from this foundation, he qualified and went back to rural KZN where he initiated a project to provide psychological services to more than 550 000 people.

The photographer asked whether we could take a picture of him in a rural setting, so we drove out to a small village, about 10km outside town. We took some pictures at the village entrance and drove further inside to take some more photos, with the backdrop of the rolling KZN hills.

After parking our cars next to a gravel road, we were preparing for the photo shoot when two big 4X4 vehicles pulled up and out jumped three guys armed with what looked like submachine guns and Uzis. I’m not an expert at guns but the men looked ominous. And nervous, which made them more ominous.

A big man (in a physical sense) in one of the vehicles asked us what we were doing there and when we explained, they asked why we had not asked permission from the “tribal authority” before we began taking pictures. We assumed he was the induna of the area because he said he needed to know what to tell people if they asked him why people were allowed to take pictures in their villages.

After much negotiation, under the beady eye of the armed men, they agreed that we could continue with our photo shoot.

Later we saw several blue-light brigade vehicles driving into the town and the photographer remembered he had heard that one of the political parties was announcing mayoral candidates or candidate lists for the municipal elections on that day.

This might explain the twitchiness of the induna and his men. They may have been nervous we were journalists wanting to write a negative story about their village. But even that would not have given them permission to stop us from taking photos and to display their guns in a threatening manner.

The experience left us shaken, even the psychologist and photographer who’d both grown up in rural communities and experienced the power of traditional leaders.

It was my first such experience and I realised why traditional leaders initially opposed succumbing to elected municipal leadership. It would appear that in some of these smaller communities, traditional leaders are considered close to gods. No one questions them and no one does anything without them knowing.

For someone who has always lived in a big city this is difficult to understand. But I understand power is important to most people and the traditional leadership structures ensured people subjected themselves to power. This might also explain why the ANC leadership quickly caved in to the demands of traditional leaders and began paying them after 1994.

In the 1980s, most of us involved in the Struggle never expected payment or positions, but times have changed. With power comes jobs and remuneration. And councillors and traditional leaders earn a reasonable amount of money, especially if one had nothing before.

Things have also changed and most people no longer get involved in politics because they want to make a difference to society. It appears most people get involved because they see some potential benefit for themselves.There are many communities, not only in rural areas, where one cannot do anything without the permission of leaders, some of whom are self-appointed. Naturally, these “leaders” always stand to benefit from whatever happens in “their” communities.

The concept of a “captured state” probably extends to “captured comrades” in a much broader sense. People in public service often put their interests ahead of the interests of the people they are supposed to serve. This is probably why most people in government employment don’t speak out about the problems in society. It is ,therefore, up to civil society organisations and ordinary members of political parties to instil values of selfless service into party and government structures. This, of course, is easier said than done. As a result we will probably have to live with gatekeepers and selfish political leadership for a long time.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 9 July 2016)

Censor-in-chief can't cover up the flaming issues

Hlaudi Motsoeneng has been allowed to step over the line and he needs to be reined in by the people who placed him there, writes Ryland Fisher.

It would have been a good time to write about the significance of the Freedom Charter, which celebrates its 61st anniversary this weekend. It was adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown, Johannesburg, on June 26, 1955 after two days of deliberation by thousands of delegates from across the country, and still has relevance today.

If you were watching SABC News, you would not have known Pretoria was subjected to some of the worst protests we have experienced in our democracy, says the writer. Picture: Oupa Mokoena. Credit: INDEPENDENT MEDIA

But after watching the scenes unfolding in Tswhane, where there was mass destruction of property, apparently after protests about the ANC’s choice of mayoral candidate, I had no choice, but to write about what we are not seeing on the SABC news services.

The reason for this is because, if you were watching SABC News this week, you would not have known Pretoria was subjected to some of the worst protests we have experienced in our democracy. The protests started even before the ANC announced they were bringing in an outsider as their mayoral candidate for this crucial municipality, but escalated soon afterwards.

The ANC initially blamed the protests on hooligans and said there was no evidence members had been involved, and all the parties who’d been implicated claimed innocence. The protests, which appeared to be based on factionalism, quickly spread to several townships in Tshwane.

While the country’s capital was burning, the SABC pretended nothing was happening. To the credit of staff at the SABC, they did try to report on the protests, but, in line with the recent policy announced by the chief operating officer at the SABC, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, they were not allowed to show footage of protests. The best they could do at first was to show some talking heads discussing the protests. Later they showed visuals of people congregating, but not really doing anything.

I have previously praised Motsoeneng for being brave enough to impose a 90 percent local content rule for music on all SABC radio stations, something which I still support.

I believe it could revitalise our ailing music industry. I’m not sure if I agree with the same rule for television, but that’s another subject altogether.

I cannot support his decision not to show protests on SABC television channels. I also cannot support his decision to ban the reading of newspaper headlines on television and not to allow open-line call-ins from listeners.

It appears to me to be a knee-jerk reaction to protests against the ANC government. Anyone who has ever been an activist knows you do not stop protests by pretending they are not happening. The only way to deal with protests is to deal with the issues making people unhappy.

For instance, if the protests are about service delivery then the only way to stop them is by delivering proper services.

You cannot stick your head in the sand and hope they go away.

Censorship has never helped anyone. It leads only to ignorance and we all know how dangerous ignorance can be. There are many people who today claim to have been ignorant about what was happening under their noses during apartheid.

We have come too far as a country and too many people have sacrificed for our freedoms for them to be taken away because some people fear dissent.

Instead of trying to silence critical voices, the government and the ANC should be trying to listen to why there is criticism, even from people who are not usually critical. Why are more and more people who used to be loyal to the ANC speaking out about things that are wrong inside the organisation? Not everyone who criticises the ANC is in bed with the opposition.

If Motsoeneng really wants to help the ANC, he should not be trying to censor news and viewpoints. Instead, he should be encouraging discussion between who essentially want the same thing for our country - for it to prosper.

He should be encouraging his journalists to investigate the causes of violence and looking at ways in which concerns can be addressed.

The role of the media in any vibrant democracy is to interrogate what is going on, not only to report on it. This is a role we performed even under apartheid when we were not allowed to report on certain things in terms of the law and not at the whim of someone who thinks he is more powerful than the organisation that he represents or the people he purports to serve.

I agree there are way too many outlets for negativity in the media space. However, the way to deal with this is not to pretend negativity does not exist, but rather to try to understand why it is there.

An adage says where there is smoke, there is a fire. You cannot have so many unhappy people in democratic South Africa without a reason; you cannot have so many people protesting merely because they saw others doing it on television.

There has to be a reason for the protests, not only the ones that those happened this week, but the ones over the past few months which encouraged Motsoeneng to become censor-in-chief.

I am not one of those parrot-style critics of Motsoeneng who believes he should be fired because he does not have qualifications. I believe if you are capable, you should be allowed to do the job, irrespective of qualifications.

However Motsoeneng has been allowed to step over the line and he needs to be reined in by the people who placed him there in the first place, before it is too late and he does even more damage to what should be a prestigious public institution. And to our democracy in the process.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 25 June 2016)

A foreign viewpoint exposes SA’s harsh reality

Ryland Fisher says we should not accept the inequalities in our society, but should work hard in order to truly say we have forsaken all vestiges of apartheid.

I am often asked to speak to groups of overseas visitors. Sometimes they are people interested in investing in South Africa; sometimes students.

This week I spent time with visitors from South East Asia attached to an overseas foundation with which I have been working closely over the past few months.

What was different this time was they asked me to show them around Cape Town and the Cape Flats and they were particularly interested in seeing inequalities, how these manifest and what people are doing to cope with them.

Most of the group are involved in healthcare initiatives in their countries.

I’m not a tour guide, but I realised they did not want a guided tour and I am a proud South African and welcome every opportunity to speak to foreigners about what we are doing right and wrong in our country.

I took them to Khayelitsha, where we visited some health facilities and the newly built Isivivana Youth Centre which will house several NGOs. It is similar to Salt River’s Community House but far nicer.

I also took them to Hout Bay because I have always been fascinated by how three distinct and different communities live side by side and depend on one another for survival there.

I also thought after a day of seeing all the hardship many experience on a daily basis, my guests should also be exposed to the beauty of Llandudno, Camps Bay and Clifton, which we passed on our way back to their hotel in the southern suburbs.

Nothing speaks more about the inequality in South Africa than comparing these beautiful suburbs to places like Khayelitsha.

But first, on the way to Khayelitsha, I decided to show them the Trojan Horse Memorial in Thornton Road, Athlone and the Gugulethu Seven Memorial in what is now known as Steve Biko Street in Gugulethu.

I have been to all these places many times before, but it is different when one is accompanied by people from other countries because they sometimes see things one would not observe.

The questions were many and some seemed strange to a South African hardened over the years by having lived under apartheid. At the Trojan Horse Memorial, some of my guests kept asking me to explain what had happened because they could not fathom that anyone could do what police did on that day in October 1985, when they jumped out of crates on the back of a South African Railways truck and started shooting indiscriminately at youth gathered in the street, killing Jonathan Claassen, aged 21, Shaun Magmoed, 15 and Michael Miranda, 11 and injuring many others.

“What kind of person would do such a thing? This is incomprehensible,” said one of my guests.

My reply was that apartheid was incomprehensible. The same type of questions were asked at the Gugulethu Seven Memorial.

Today it seems weird a group made up of roughly 15 or 20 percent of the population could oppress the majority for so long. They determined where we lived, who we could sleep with or marry, where we could go to school, where we could work.

They determined every aspect of our lives and got away with it for three centuries of colonialism and 46 years of legalised apartheid.

As we walked through a clinic in Khayelitsha and the nursing sisters were telling us about the struggles they deal with on a daily basis, I could not help thinking about how fortunate so many of us are who don’t live in a township like Khayelitsha, even those who live in the suburbs and go to do good work in the townships.

The difference for those who live in the suburbs and work in the townships is they get to go home every night to a place more comfortable than anything you might experience in the township. They can also, at any time decide to withdraw completely.

Those who live in places like Khayelitsha do not have that luxury.

This is their home and they have to make things work there in order to be able to provide their children with a better future.

This might sound like platitudes, but ultimately we all want the same things for our children. We want them to grow up in a decent environment, have a good education and afterwards have access to the best possible employment opportunities.

It is of course much harder if your starting point is Khayelitsha or Mitchells Plain as opposed to Camps Bay or Constantia.

My guests this week could not understand why so many people continue to live in poverty. Many South Africans have accepted this as part of our reality.

But we need to start imagining a reality where things will be different for people in townships such as Khayelitsha, and where the gap between rich and poor is no longer so wide.

Sometimes all it takes is to walk through the townships and commit yourself to working with others to change the living conditions of people. I kept on wondering how many local white people have ever gone willingly into places like Khayelitsha.

My guests told me they had learnt a great deal from me.

I learnt much from them because their realities are different from ours.

I learnt we should not accept the inequalities in our society. We should be working hard to change things so we can truly say we have forsaken all vestiges of apartheid. Otherwise townships like Khayelitsha will always be stark reminders of our dark past.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 18 June 2016)

Government and business need to work together

When the National Development Plan (NDP) was adopted in 2012, it was greeted with a lot of excitement. It was the only document, as far as I know, that was adopted by most political parties, with the SACP being one of the notable exceptions. There was general agreement that Trevor Manuel and his 25 independent members of the National Planning Commission (NPC) had done a sterling job of painting the society that we wished to see in South Africa in 2030.

Since then there has been a perception that not much has happened with the implementation of the NDP. At a conference in Gauteng this week, hosted by Topco Media and supported by the NPC, government representatives were at pains to say that this is not so. They pointed out that the NDP informs all government activities, including their strategic medium term expenditure framework and the priorities outlined by the President in his state of the nation address in February.

They instead pointed fingers at the business community, saying that they are not doing enough to promote the NDP.

I facilitated the two-day conference and, as I sat there listening to speaker after speaker talking about the need for business and government to work together, I found myself thinking: why are they not working together? Is the mistrust between government and business so huge that they cannot work together to turn this country into the place envisaged in the NDP?

I realised that, more often than not, government is only interested in promoting its own interests while business is only interested in the profit margin. Both end up saying what they think others want to hear, and hear only what they want to hear. A lot of the time they end up talking past each other.

Which is why I love someone like Matthews Phosa, who understands government and business and who is still enough of an activist to care about the future of our country and not only care about making profits, even though he is now firmly ensconced in business.

He has no political ambition, having already being the Premier of Mpumalanga and the treasurer-general of the ANC. My sense is that his comments are made honestly and with the best interests of the country at heart.

Phosa, who spoke on a panel with Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba and SA Revenue Services Commissioner Tom Moyane, said the NDP was not a plan for government, but for society and that “we can and must make it work”.

Among the things standing in the way of the successful implementation of the NDP, Phosa said, were “the poverty of capable, committed and visionary leadership”, “lip service being paid to the NDP”, the lack of a “capable state that is strong on governance” and “deployment of politicians to executive operational positions”. These things, he said, were “hurting our ability to implement the NDP”.

Phosa argued that for economic transformation to take hold in South Africa, we must start treating each other with dignity and respect.

The “most significant outstanding issue on our agenda of liberation” was to deal with the unequal society that we find in South Africa, he said.

“It is clear that government cannot create economic growth and prosperity on its own, and is also clear that the private sector cannot create economic growth and prosperity in isolation.

“Economic growth and prosperity is only possible when all role-players overcome issues of trust and other obstacles to work together in order to achieve a common objective that will bring prosperity to South Africa.”

Phosa said that South Africa could not “cling to the successes of the past to achieve our goals”. He said South Africa needs to work towards being the number one economy on the continent once again.

“We need to decide, as a nation, whether we want to be governed by history or the future that we can create ourselves. Can we continue to blame apartheid while we have the power and the opportunity to shape our future?”

Phosa said that South Africa has “been spared the humiliation that accompanies an investment downgrade in the market – for now. To avoid a downgrade in the future, we must take matters in our own hands and not wait for guidance or humiliation from the rating agencies.”

He drew loud applause when he quoted the Seven Social Sins published by Mahatma Gandhi: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; commerce without morality; science without humanity; worship without sacrifice; and politics without principle.

In all likelihood, the leadership in the ruling party and in government will probably react with anger to Phosa’s assertion that they paid lip service to the NDP. He said he had previously asked the leadership of our country to make the NDP central to all government’s activities and budgets and to evaluate the implementation of the NDP in performance agreements with ministers and senior officials. In his input, Radebe said that they were already doing this.

All the government representatives at the conference proclaimed loudly that they are implementing the NDP. Maybe the problem is in the way government is communicating their progress and their plans. It is possible that they are winking in the dark. But that is probably the subject of another column.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on 11 June 2016)

Cape Flats communities were always part of Struggle

It is difficult for me to accept that it has been 40 years since 16 June 1976 when police shot protesters in Soweto who did not want to be taught in Afrikaans. The first and very dramatic victim was Hector Pieterson, with the picture of his body, brilliantly captured by Sam Nzima, putting South Africa on the front pages of newspapers all around the world for all the wrong reasons.

The protests started in Soweto but quickly led to a nationwide uprising, including intense almost civil war in the Western Cape, in which hundreds more people were killed.

The government-appointed Cillie Commission of Enquiry found that 575 people died throughout the country, with 451 being the result of police action. These figures have been criticised as being way too low.

Why I find it difficult to accept that it has been 40 years is because what happens in that year is still imprinted vividly on my mind. It is like it happened yesterday.

I have previously written about my own story and how the happenings in 1976 was effectively what convinced me as a 16-year-old to throw my lot in with the struggle. It felt like the only thing to do.

It is important to remind ourselves that the protests, while it started in Soweto, did not end there. In fact, it continued in the Western Cape for a long while afterwards. And, like in Soweto, many people were killed and injured in the Western Cape for showing their support for the students’ struggle.

Because there was no television at the time, we depended on the newspapers and word of mouth for our information. As a result, the reaction from students in the Western Cape was relatively slow, with the first real support reported in the last week of June, when students from Langa came out. However, over the next few weeks, students at the University of the Western Cape came out in support as well as students from high schools across the Western Cape, and mainly from what we call “coloured” areas.

There is a narrative which has gained a lot of currency in recent years that “coloured” people, particularly in the Western Cape, never really supported the Struggle and that is why it was easy for the Nationalist Party and subsequently the DA to rule in the province.

But what transpired in 1976 was not an aberration. It was a natural conclusion to what had been happening in the Western Cape politically and a natural forerunner to what was to come in the 1980s with the huge support in the Western Cape for the United Democratic front (UDF) and its subsidiary organisations.

Organisations who supported the Black Consciousness philosophy had been very prominent in the Western Cape in the 1970s, led by people such as Johnny Issel and Peter Jones. It was therefore not a surprise when students at UWC and many of the “coloured” areas decide to come out in support of the students in Soweto.

It was the same Johnny Issel who played a key role in the early 1980s when he pushed for the formation of the UDF and for its launch to be held in Mitchells Plain in 1983. By that time Issel, like many of his contemporaries, had moved on from supporting black consciousness to broadly supporting non-racialism.

Much has been written, and much more will probably be written about why the ANC lost the elections in the Western Cape in 1994. One of the reasons is probably because the ANC has never really bothered to fully understand the people of the Western Cape.

They tried and there was a period, especially when Ebrahim Rasool and/or Chris Nissen were provincial leaders, that they appeared to make headway, but since then it has been mainly downhill. There appears to be an acceptance that the ANC will probably never win the province and the city of Cape Town back from the DA.

I have never really worried about who is in charge politically. All I have always asked is that they dedicate themselves to the project of uplifting the majority of poor people and help to transform our society into one where there will be less inequality and more prosperity.

If the ANC is serious about wanting to win back the Western Cape politically, they will need to analyse why “coloured” people came out in their thousands to support the events in Soweto 40 years ago and why they had so much confidence in the UDF, a confidence that they have not transferred to the ANC.

Maybe they need to start by acknowledging the contribution of comrades in the Western Cape and see those contributions for what they were: part of the process of truly liberating our country and instituting a democracy based on non-racism, non-sexism and other values. It was never about making contributions based on being a member of any racial or ethnic group.

In fact, it was the complete opposite which is something the ANC – caught up in racial and tribal factionalism – is struggling to come to terms with. The best way to pay tribute to the students who gave their lives in 1976 is to continue the non-racialism project in South Africa.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 4 June 2016.)

SA’s economic divides will take long time to bridge

Ryland Fisher says that the Franschhoek Literary Festival reminds him apartheid South Africa in terms of the demographics of the people who attend.

I did not go to the Franschhoek Literary Festival this year. I went last year and it was a bit much.

Like many others, I found it stifling to be in an environment that reminded me of apartheid South Africa, not in terms of the content but in terms of the demographics of the people who attended.

Apparently the situation was not much different this year, if the posts and tweets on social media are anything to go by. Perhaps I will go again in a few years’ time when people have convinced me the demographics have changed significantly. It certainly appeared to be much of the same this year and this might explain why apartheid assassin Eugene de Kock thought he would be welcome.

I don’t think the organisers are to blame, because it is not unusual for South Africans to congregate based on special interests, especially race. The festival appears to be one of those places white people feel comfortable because they are by far in the majority - they are probably in the majority in Franschhoek most other times too.

This realisation - that people don’t really like to get out of their little boxes - hit me many years ago when I was doing research and interviews for my book on race and racism in post-apartheid South Africa.

It was pointed out by one of the people I interviewed, Carel Boshoff junior, a key player in Orania, the white homeland established in post-apartheid SA.

Boshoff said he did not think there was anything wrong with Orania. They were merely doing what most South Africans were doing. Most South Africans, he believed, loved to live, work and socialise mainly or only with people who looked like them and sounded like them.

I thought about this after the interview with Boshoff and reluctantly had to concede he was probably right - those who make an effort to socialise across racial and cultural barriers are really in a minority. But this still did not give him and the people around him the right to establish Orania.

Part of the reason for this phenomenon, of course, is that the majority of people are poor and confined to townships because they cannot afford the transport costs to socialise outside their areas. Most people love to create comfort zones, where you can say what you want to say without fear of contradiction and where you are bound to get nods of approval for views you realise might not have much currency with groups of people who might be perceived to be different to you.

I was speaking to a friend, who owns a number of big retail outlets, and he told me how his choice of branch manager often determined the demographics of the staff in the store. He said when he appointed a Muslim store manager, most of the staff tended to be Muslim. The same occurred when he appointed a Jewish store manager and most of the staff was Jewish. When he appointed a lesbian manager, most of the staff were lesbian.

One of the ways in which the apartheid government divided people was by using language. They also used geographic locations and made sure only people who looked and sounded similar lived in certain areas.

Now we have a democracy, one should be able to argue people no longer need to congregate in these apartheid-defined silos, but integration is made more difficult because, more often than not, the silos in which we operate are also based on economics and in SA, the link between race and class cannot be ignored. I can’t help thinking about these self-imposed and society-imposed divisions when I visit Franschhoek.

Rich people (and in most cases one can probably substitute white for rich) have disposable income, so they can afford to attend events like the festival. Most black people, even those perceived to have money, do not have the same level of disposable income and are hard at work trying to earn a living because they did not have the head-start most whites have in South Africa. I am fortunate that I am able to go to restaurants, theatre and music concerts regularly - sometimes I am invited but most of the time I pay - and I have noticed often how most of the patrons are white and most of the staff are black.

Unfortunately, this reality will be with us for a long time in South Africa. You might be able to change political power patterns reasonably quickly - especially with democratic elections - but you do not change economic patterns overnight. It will take generations for us to change the ownership of the economy and until that happens, only certain people will feel welcome at events like the literary festival.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 21 May 2016)

No need to fear genuine transformation

The transformation of sport, like the rest of society, is not a choice. It is essential if we are to move forward as a country, writes Ryland Fisher.

A few years ago I attended a function where I could count on one hand the number of people who were not white. I ended up listening to a conversation where someone said words to this effect, very strongly, and almost angrily: “They must leave rugby alone. I don’t care what they say, blacks have never played rugby. They can mess up other sports but must leave rugby to us.”

It was one of those awkward moments when I felt obliged to respond but did not want to risk getting involved in a huge argument, which I did not feel like at the time. I have learnt over the years that you should choose your battles wisely in the hope of winning the war eventually. So I kept quiet but could not stop thinking about what had been said.

I found myself thinking about this again this week when I noticed the vitriol with which Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula’s action against untransformed sports bodies, including rugby, was greeted.

The minister decided four major sports federations could no longer bid to host international events until they had met their transformation targets.

I don’t think people were as upset about cricket, athletics or netball. But in many quarters, “rugby is not a religion, it is much more important”, as a former sports editor at the Cape Times used to say.

Of course there are many myths about the support for rugby from a player and spectator point of view. Rugby, while many would like to believe it has always been played mainly by whites, has actually been played by blacks (especially coloureds and Africans) for many years, especially during the apartheid years.

I grew up having to choose between rugby and soccer. You could not choose both because both were winter sports and were normally played on a Saturday.

At some point I played rugby on Saturday and soccer on Sundays, but this could not be sustained.

We played all over, on the Cape Flats, in the townships and even toured the Eastern Cape where we played mainly in the African townships.

There was huge spectator support wherever we played and we were not even professionals. But we were aware that white rugby, if one can call it that, enjoyed huge corporate support and those were the only people featured on television and radio.

One of the arguments that is always raised whenever there is talk about transformation in sports is: what about soccer?

So, what about soccer? Soccer has never had a problem with transformation. It has never sought to actively exclude the majority of the population, like some people in rugby did.

One of the problems with soccer is white South Africans see it as a black sport, even though it is, by far, the biggest and most profitable sport in the world.

They prefer to support foreign soccer teams but turn their backs on local teams. How many former Model C schools offer soccer as an option? Not many.

And this is part of the reason whites have never really thrown their support behind soccer.

If you have to get up early on a Saturday morning to take your little one for soccer games - as many parents do for rugby, cricket or hockey - then it somehow forces you to develop an affinity for the game.

One of the problems with rugby is it is perceived as a white sport and there are people who are trying to retain that skewed status quo.

The transformation of sport, like the rest of society, is not a choice. It is essential if we are to move forward as a country.

We cannot, 22 years after we became a democracy, still have the sports minister having to resort to heavy-handed tactics to get sports federations to transform.

We also cannot have a situation where the report of the Commission on Employment Equity finds most management positions are still occupied by white men. It shows things have not really changed in workplaces throughout the country.

There are genuinely some people who believe if you embrace transformation, you will lessen your chances of success, whether it be in sport, business, academia or any other sector of society.

I believe people who embrace transformation fully and totally, and not because they are forced by legislation, the minister or a commission, will grow as our democracy grows.

It makes sense, after all, to have a wider pool of talent from which to choose, in the case of sport or academia, and to have a potential wider market, in the case of business.

Transformation should be seen as an opportunity and not as a problem.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 30 April 2016)

Save the ANC by leaving, Zuma

Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg urges President Zuma to step down and allow his party to regain the respect of its members and the voters, writes Ryland Fisher.

Cape Town - Denis Goldberg likes to laugh – sometimes at stuff that might seem strange, like when he recalled how the judge in the Rivonia Trial (he was accused number 3) had sentenced them to life imprisonment instead of applying the death penalty.

“I’m really glad he did not sentence us to death,” he laughed when I interviewed him a while ago.

But this week, in an interview at his Hout Bay home, Goldberg was not in the mood for laughing. In fact, on more than one occasion, his eyes were filled with tears.

“I have spent my lifetime speaking truth to power, but I think I am more nervous doing it now than I was in apartheid times, even though they wanted to hang me then. I see a violence and a roguery within our ranks, I see people in KZN and Mpumalanga, who raised the cry of corruption, getting murdered, presumably by our own people.”

Goldberg, who turned 83 last week, recently joined the ranks of several senior ANC activists who have called on President Jacob Zuma to stand down.

“I am very angry, but this is painful, sad stuff. It is very sad, but I have to call on people to speak up,” he said.

Goldberg described Zuma as “dishonest”.

“He used to be a great leader, he was courageous. Now he has consciously broken the law to serve his own narrow self-interest and not the interest of his people and he has misrepresented his own position.

“He says now that he always intended to pay, but he vehemently said that he did not ask for these things, so why should he pay? He then ducked and dived for two-and-a-half or three years to avoid paying. To now say he meant to pay is an unacceptable apology.

“I believe that if he stands down, the confusion in people’s minds will go away and they will say, ‘That is the ANC that we can respect. While he is there I don’t think we can’. That is my opinion.

“I want him to go further. I want him to admit that he has made mistakes and to stand down and commit to support his successor, as a disciplined ANC cadre. This is what Thabo Mbeki did when he was asked to step down. He made a wonderful commitment to being a loyal ANC member.

“That’s what I would like. Otherwise he is going to be terribly humiliated and why should we humiliate a person who once was a great and courageous leader? I would like him to reclaim his own greatness, his own dignity, because I find it painful to speak about him in the way that I do.”

Goldberg said he had expected better leadership from Zuma.

“For a president who is a hero, I wanted him to say, ‘Enough. Don’t defend me with lies.’ I can’t tell you at which moment he went wrong. I have always admired him and so, for me it is very painful to talk this way. But it is not that I’m betrayed, it is that our movement and our values are betrayed.

“That’s the point really. It is not really about me. There are lots of people speaking out and I’d like lots more to do so.”

Goldberg said one of the differences between the leaders of his generation, including Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, was that the older leaders were principled. “I don’t think we are now.

“Then the only price was freedom. Now, the amount of money people have access to, the way top people live, as against ordinary members, is outrageous.

“There are too many temptations. We live in a society where day after day we are bombarded with comments like ‘you are nothing unless you have a smart car’ or ‘you are nothing unless you have lots of bling’. The notion that you have arrived only if you can splash it about is really powerful.

“We have leaders who live ostentatiously and they get trapped in this. A minister has to defend his president who is doing something wrong because, if he doesn’t, he is going to lose his post. What does he do about school fees for his children if he loses his post? What does he do about his mortgage? What does he do about his fancy car? You’re locked into a world of having arrived and getting a fat salary and so you lose your objectivity.

“Pallo Jordan, Kader Asmal and Dullah Omar were among the few who lived in private homes when they were ministers. It gave them independence, they did not get locked into the notion of ‘I have to keep my job and therefore sell my principles.’ That makes a big difference.”

Goldberg said it was up to ANC members to make sure the president stepped down.

“We must be loud enough, we must make it clear that we will only respect the ANC and vote for it if he stands down. We are hoping that he will stand down, so that we can rebuild for the 2019 elections.

“The ANC needs to be committed to legality, to upholding the laws that we have written. We need to be honest with our people. We cannot go into Parliament and lie.”

Asked why he and others are only speaking out now, Goldberg said he had been speaking out for the last three years, but it was not picked up as a story by the media.

He said many others had raised reservations in private but did not want to speak out publicly.

“But I suppose people are speaking out now because the dam wall has broken. People are saying that this is too much. We have had enough of it.

“Another reason I did not want to speak out was because I didn’t want to be part of the DA attack on the president. I had to finally get to the point where I could say I’m not attacking the president, I’m defending the ANC.

“There just came a point where I could no longer evade my responsibility to speak out. I did this reluctantly because it is an attack on our government, my government and my comrades.”

Goldberg said the ANC would only be able to reclaim its moral authority if it convinced Zuma to step down. “Somehow we need to find the mechanisms to get President Zuma to remove himself because, one way or another, he is going to be removed and that would be humiliating and he does not need that. We don’t need that.”

Despite his misgivings, Goldberg said he was still encouraging people to vote for the ANC.

“I think we have to support the ANC because none of the opposition are really capable of making the major transformation. People must support the ANC but insist on a change of leadership. Vote insisting on a change of leadership. That you have to do through your branches.”

Goldberg said the ANC was at a key moment in its history “which will decide whether this great liberation movement will survive”.

“There is no law that says that the ANC must rule forever and being in power for me only matters if we do the right thing. If we are doing wrong things, what’s the point of being in power?”

(First published in the Weekend Argus on Sunday 24 April 2016)