Dogs *can* look up (Photo credit: caribbeanfreephoto)
THE DOG DEBATE DEBACLE
I reflected for a while if I would? should? post my opinions on our President’s latest PR faux pas – my conscience was pricked by my local radio station, Cape Talk, speaking about their ‘Lead South Africa’ campaign, whereby we are constantly exhorted to lead our country, with small acts on a personal level, or larger efforts on a civic and national level. The idea is we can all do our little bit, perhaps by starting a social upliftment programme, or paying our TV licence fees, obeying the rules of the road, or consciously try to no longer be racist. Despite 18 years of black/majority rule, South Africa is still a deeply divided country, divided by race. Sure, there has been progress and perhaps in another two generations we will be genuinely colour-blind, but we’re not there yet. So: does my article help or hinder?
If there was a prize for getting PR/communications wrong, our Presidency would earn a gold rosette with red ribbons. But maybe I’m being naive. Maybe the President’s spokesman is using Machiavellian tactics, because the President’s recent statement about dog ownership being a White “thing” and not part of Black Culture has certainly distracted the nation from the ongoing enquiries into the wild excess of unauthorized spending on the President’s Inkandhla residence,at taxpayers’ expense. Nobody is talking about Inkhandlagate any more – the airwaves and the front pages are seething with howls of protest about whether Whites do or do not pamper their pet dogs and ignore the plight of their fellow humans – Black Culture, you see, espouses the worthy concept of Ubuntu (see definition below) whereas us Whities are too busy taking our dogs for walks, or dashing to the Vet with our ailing canines to worry about ailing humans. Yes, well – no, fine: as we say in South Africa.
So what is Black Culture about, in the year 2012? Does it mean being upwardly aspirational, driving top of the range 4×4, wearing designer clothes, living in multi-million rand mansions, flying business class and sporting a weave – is this behaviour compatible with the principle of Ubuntu? Nobody says a word about the excesses of the black elite, nobody questions whether this zealous embrace of luxury and capitalism squares up with the tenets of Black Culture. And if somebody does – and here am I, an old white woman – how dare I comment on these issues? Play the Race Card immediately! Do not collect R200, do not pass GO …. etc.
Or is Black Culture about being a traditionalist? Living a rural, patriarchial lifestyle, observing traditional ceremonies? Our President is a polygamist, with four wives. In his Zulu heartland he wears animal skin clothing when he participate in traditional ceremonies. Fine – he has every right to do so. But when ‘in town’ he’s in designer suits, and canny enough – at rallies and meetings – to be up on the stage, dancing and singing traditional Struggle songs, to the delight of his followers. Our President is a Populist, and he knows what his constituency likes.
One gentleman waxed magisterial on the airwaves, telling us that dogs owned by blacks were purely regarded as hunting dogs, and not pets. Now this is true, if we are talking about dogs owned by rural black people. But what of the urban black people living in cities, in the townships, who own dogs – clearly, they are not owned for hunting purposes. And, as an aside, how many times do we not receive appeals from the SPCA/Animal Anti-cruelty/People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals begging us to donate money to ease the plight of the starving, diseased, neglected and abused township dogs? Hmmm?
Then again, a black lady, living in a Joburg suburb indignantly phoned in to report that she loved her five dogs, walked them often, and that dogs as pets is indeed a Black Cultural “thing.” Two sides of the same coin.
And let’s not even get onto the subject of farmers riding in their bakkies with the dog in the cab and their workers in the back. A farmer phoned in to say it was for the workers’ protection – a vicious guard dog would attack the workers, if loaded into the back with the men. Yet another listener sarcastically texted the radio station to say: six workers squashed into the cab, and one Pekingese in the back of the bakkie. I don’t think so. As I said, the debate rages on.
Amidst all the uproar, it has been suggested that what the President was trying to say was:we should care more for each other, according to the principal of Ubuntu, and put people first. Fair enough. But if this is the case, why on earth did he not simply say so instead of playing the ugly and divisive Race Card?
Yet again, as in the case of The Spear of the Nation – remember that uproar in 2012? – it’s a case of worlds colliding in a mammoth Culture Clash; never mind the Mayan end of the world, we have cataclysmic upheavals of comparable scale. Enough of all this unpleasantness, I must leave you now, to go and consult with my pampered cat as to what she would like for dinner.
Thanks to Wikipedia: Tutu further explained Ubuntu in 2008:[5]
One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.
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MEMOIR : LIFE MAGAZINE & LEON TROTSKY –by A M Smith ©
Browsing through Old Friends from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg, sparked several thoughts in me. While eating my breakfast this morning I was reflecting how, when you’re a kid, you seldom understand the context of events. And when I was young nobody ever explained context to us – we were supposed to be seen and not heard, and constant questions were not welcomed or tolerated.
Continuing this train of thought I remember reading LIFE magazine and an article on the death of Leon Trotsky. Somehow the blurry black and white photos remain a fading memory to this day. Quite why the article made such an impression on me, I can’t explain. Perhaps because the man was murdered, and my Dad’s murder mysteries were my reading resource.
Considering I lived in a remote backwater of the dying British Empire, it was a miracle I even had a copy of LIFE magazine in my hands at all. There were no bookstores in the country. Granted, the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland had bookstores, but they stocked only religious or educational materials.
The expat community subscribed to a wide range of British and American magazines , which trundled slowly over the ocean, via the post, and fell into our eager hands many months after publication. The magazines were greedily consumed and then circulated around the district on a rota. Each magazine had a list pinned to the cover, with the names of the recipients. You were honour bound to read the magazine quickly, and then send it on to the next name, perhaps with a few magazines from your own hoard. If the next recipient lived fairly close by, you sent your gardener with the precious bundle – on his bicycle if he owned such a luxury, or on his feet if he didn’t.
But if the next recipient lived on a far distant tea estate, you would take your bundle up to the Sports Club on your weekly visit, and pass it over to the next person. Or ask another member to do you a favour and act as go-between and postman. Everybody obliged. The magazines were a link to the outside world, to civilization, to HOME. That mythical , longed-for Paradise, over the ocean. Far, far away from Nyasaland*, in tropical Africa.
So: when I read about the death of Leon Trotsky in Mexico all those years ago, the news was not by any means fresh, given the magazine circulation system. Our family didn’t subscribe to LIFE, we were merely on the rota. I had absolutely no idea who Leon Trotsky was, or his political importance. I probably knew where Mexico was, because I collected stamps and often used my small atlas to locate mysterious, faraway countries.
I’ve resisted Googling the death of Leon Trotsky, because I want this to be a memoir. One detail I do recall: he was stabbed to death with an ice-pick. Of course, I’d never seen such an item. It wasn’t common in tropical Africa. Ice cubes – yes, we had those. But ice-picks? No.
Neither was Communism – in the early 1950s which was when I probably read the article, mentioned in colonial Africa. Adults in my tiny world generally didn’t talk about world politics and events. Cut-off as we were from the rest of the world, our only source of news was the crackly, wavering broadcast news from the BBC in London, which tended to focus on the Home Counties plus a little international news. Most of which I ignored anyway. Assuming I could hear anything at all. The radio reception varied from poor to terrible.
I grew up in a vacuum so far as news and culture was concerned. Boarding school didn’t help much in this regard either. Sequestered as we were, and listening to our portable radios being (a) strictly controlled and (b) tuned to the Hit Parade from Lourenco Marques Radio in Portuguese East Africa*, I was a complete ignoramus. Youngsters today have an enormous exposure to global events and global culture. When I think how little I knew about anything as a young adult, it’s amazing I have survived this long, from such a scanty launch pad.
Yet here I am, in my senescence, surrounded by the digital, electronic world. It’s nothing short of astounding how much the world has changed in sixty five years in terms of communications and life-style. And you know what? I love living in the early 21st century!
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Filed under POLITICS, PRESENT & FUTURE, SOCIAL COMMENT
Tagged as 1950s culture, Leon Trotsky, Life in a British colony, LIFE magazine, life on a tea estate, LM Radio, Mozambique, Natalie Goldberg, Nyasaland, Portuguese East Africa, tropical Africa