A FAMOUS GROUSE

INTERNATIONAL interest in the elections may be picking up, but recent headlines suggest however that the world’s media houses remain largely fixated on the country’s first democratic poll and Nelson Mandela’s presidency. 

Typical examples include “‘Free at last’: When South Africa voted in democracy, kicked out apartheid” (Al Jazeera), “South Africa marks 30 years since apartheid ended” (The Associated Press),  “Remembering the day freedom was born, South Africa celebrates 30 Years of democracy” (Forbes Africa), and “South Africa remembers an historic election every April 27, Freedom Day” (WFDD). 

Correspondents who’d reported on that occasion were now dusting off old notebooks and yellowing scrapbooks to revisit the purple-prosed thrall of that day. 

It was not all fuzzy warmth, though; the nostalgia is leavened by what we may crudely term “the gat”; the failures that followed, the disillusionment and the dashed hopes of millions. As one American public radio station asked listeners, “30 years since the end of apartheid, is South Africa still an emblem of democracy?” ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Thus the task of “nut-shelling” or condensing the history of the post-apartheid decline, one that has largely been ignored by Western media, for younger audiences perhaps more enthused by pronouns and other issues in the culture wars. One common feature of these reports appears to be a determination to put as much distance as possible between this quagmire of failure and the ANC. It’s almost as if 30 years of mismanagement, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, sloth and ineptitude count for zip simply by dint of the fact that the ANC are simply not the country’s old white rulers. 

Nothing else matters — apartheid is alive and well; it simply refuses to die, and that’s that.

To be fair, though, there are instances amid the grudging dribble where a critical eye has been directed towards the ruling party. As one report put it, “While the damage of apartheid remains difficult to undo, the ANC is increasingly being blamed for South Africa’s current problems.”

Gosh. You don’t say.

The veteran journalist Mike Hanna had a fair stab in chronicling how the rot had spread. It started, he suggested, in 2005 when then-president Thabo Mbeki attempted to rid himself of his compromised deputy, Jacob Zuma, who was facing rape and corruption charges. That all ended rather badly, with Accused Number One going on to lead the ANC, oust Mbeki and eventually becoming president of the country. Hanna writes:

“Mandela’s old comrades were rooted out of their positions by the Zuma loyalists — among them was Terror Lekota who’d been serving as the ANC’s secretary-general. I spoke to Terror in Polokwane straight after he’d been voted out of his position. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘The ANC is dying. Belief in nation has been lost in belief in faction and self-interest. The giants of the past have been replaced by maggots whose concerns are not country, but self.’”

It was not only the old guard who have been busy here. Younger hacks were hard at it as well. The BBC World Service’s Nomsa Maseko, for instance, was not old enough to vote in 1994, but this hasn’t stopped her from sharing memories of that day. Her report, alas, reads as if it was written for those who had only arrived on the planet yesterday. Either that, or it’s South African History for the Severely Challenged.

The National Party, we are told, “imposed legal segregation along racial lines, known as apartheid, meaning ‘apartness’”. Anti-apartheid activists were known as “comrades”. Bars in “residential areas” are known as “shebeens”.   

Even so, and importantly, Maseko does identify a growing problem, one that will surely impact on public life, and that is the increasing tendency to dismiss the franchise as irrelevant. 

She quotes one Tasneema Sylvester, a 38-year-old mother of three and a shack dweller, as saying: “Thirty years of democracy means nothing to me, there's nothing to celebrate. I won’t bother voting this year because I don’t see anything that the ANC claims to have done. I don't have a job, no clean running water, no toilets. I am angry and hopeless.”

Maseko claims that Sylvester’s story “reflects a much wider truth in South Africa today — the vast gap between the haves and the have-nots”. 

I’d argue that it’s also indicative of a wider gap in voter education. Can it be that, after years of voting for the ANC and seeing no improvements to their lives, people would now abandon the ballot altogether? Do they not believe other parties could make a difference? That this is fundamental to a democratic electoral system, and that it is permissible to vote for change? 

It could of course also be said that it’s a democratic right not to vote. But then, if that’s your choice, well, stop with the moaning.

Falling standards

The Guardian, meanwhile, dug deep into its archive to revisit its coverage of that day in April 1994. This from their correspondent in Cape Town, Jonathan Steele: “With cheers, tears, and a multitude of hugs, the flag of white rule in South Africa was ceremonially lowered last night, three and a half centuries after the first European settlers landed near the Cape of Good Hope. With it ended the last act in the decolonisation of Africa and the end of the dream of a European empire which would stretch, in Cecil Rhodes’ phrase, ‘From Cairo to the Cape’.”

Steele, it seems, had a thing for flags. The old standard, he noted, “incorporated symbols of imperialism and settlement but there was no African element”. He wasn’t much impressed by the one that replaced it, either. It was designed by “a multiparty committee”, he wrote, and “is not beautiful. It is like a letter Y on its side in six different colours, and South Africans are already calling it the Y-front”. The sentiment was echoed by Albie Sachs: “It’s a mess,” the struggle veteran was quoted as saying.

This is all rubbish, of course. The flag was not designed by a committee, but by a single individual: Fred Brownell, then with the bureau of heraldry in the department of arts and culture. 

He was given the job after a drawn-out national contest in which more than 7 000 entries failed to produce anything worthwhile. It was a difficult commission: design a flag to unite a nation, and do so in just one week. Brownell’s bold design, startling as it may have first appeared to those more comfortable with the staid rags fluttering about in the northern hemisphere, is now one of the world’s most recognisable brands.

Voter fraud

One election memory that perhaps won’t be revisited is the tale of how Nomaza Paintin, then aged 51, became the first black South African to vote in April 1994. She did so in Wellington, New Zealand, which is ten hours ahead of South Africa. What’s more, she claimed she was Nelson Mandela’s niece and had fled apartheid with her family when she was a child.

Thing is, she was nothing of the sort. She was not related to Mandela and not even South African, but Zimbabwean. New Zealand’s Evening Post reported, “No-one seemed interested in the fact that Mrs Paintin had no papers to show she was a South African citizen and so her vote would not have counted.” (She later told police, “I feel South African.”)

Paintin was celebrated as a public relations coup by New Zealand prime minister Jim Bolger. He was left rather embarrassed, though, at Mandela’s inauguration when he presented a puzzled Madiba with a photograph of Paintin casting her vote. 

It later emerged that Paintin had called New Zealand's chief electoral officer at home and identified herself as Nomaza Paintin-Mandela, insisting it was her birthright to vote. “There is the suspicion that the Paintin case is being taken so seriously because it embarrassed some senior officials who got taken along for the ride along with everybody else,” the Post said.

The matter went to court, where she pleaded not guilty to charges of making a false declaration before a justice of the peace. Her first trial, in May 1995, was abandoned when a teenage boy entered the courtroom and hurled a coin at the judge, smashing his glasses and hurting his eye.

The ANC, meanwhile, expressed support for the imposter, and said in a statement, “We appreciate the efforts and support of Nomaza Paintin during the apartheid struggle.”

Paintin was acquitted on a technicality at her second trial, in August 1995. Officials had neglected to include the words “solemnly and sincerely” in a statutory declaration that she was South African, thus rendering it invalid. The Post reported that her “whoops of joy and laughter filled the court room when she was discharged”. 

Old jokes

Politicians’ attempts at humour often call to mind a favourite New Yorker cartoon: an angel on a cloud in heaven advises a fellow angel, “If you laugh at all of God’s jokes, he’s never going to learn what’s funny.”

And so it was at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association’s black tie dinner on Saturday, a traditionally jovial occasion in which the US president delivers a humorous speech and in turn is roasted by a guest speaker. This is not to suggest, however, that all the evening’s gags and barbs were entirely flat.

Joe Biden used the opportunity to continue his recent attacks on Donald Trump with some satisfactory personal insults. “The 2024 election is in full swing and yes, age is an issue,” he said. “I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.” 

He also neatly turned the tables on his opponent by calling him “Sleepy Don”, a term Trump had previously given the president. It now seemed a fitting backhanded insult given reports of Trump nodding off during the opening stages of his criminal trial in New York, where he is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. 

Less successful, to my mind at least, was Biden’s quip: “Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it Stormy weather.” We could almost hear the groaning inside the Washington Hilton over here at the Slaughtered Lamb (“Finest Ales & Pies”).

Biden did make fun of his own age, although at the expense of the White House press corps: “Some of you complained that I don’t take enough of your questions. No comment. The New York Times issued a statement blasting me for ‘actively and effectively avoiding independent journalists’. Hey, if that’s what it takes to get the New York Times to say I’m active and effective, I’m for it.”

The other speaker of the evening was the Saturday Night Live comedian, Colin Jost. In a reference to a possible election victory for Trump, who boycotted the annual dinner during his term in office, labelling the media “the enemy of the people”, Jost said, “I’m honoured to be here hosting what is, according to swing state polls, the final White House correspondents’ dinner.” Again, age was a natural target. “I’m not saying both candidates are old,” Jost said, “but you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘I could maybe win this thing.’ He’s only 99.”

According to the Guardian, both speeches were well received, with New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, praising Biden for making fun of his age. The newspaper quoted Sununu as saying, “The president made it through the speech so that’s a win for him at such a late hour. It’s never easy as a politician to deliver a joke. We’re not made to be funny. Don’t expect us to be funny. So any time you’re a politician, you get even a slight laugh, that’s a win.”

This, in my experience, is largely true. Although there’s no guarantee of the win.

Funny peculiar

Though decidedly unfunny, PW Botha’s cloddish attempts at humour could at times be quite hysterical. I once attended a National Party reception during the 1987 general election campaign where, bizarrely, Botha was presented with a gold record. 

This was in the days before social media, and some bright spark had come up with the idea of recording the old bastard outlining his “peace plan” for the country. This was then issued on Flexi-disc and handed out, along with a brochure, to potential voters. If I recall correctly, some 20 000 of these discs were pressed and, because the NP bought the lot, Botha was entitled to a receive a gold record, an award usually given to more traditional recording artists.

At some point, several drinks into the evening, a colleague jokingly asked Botha if there was a video to go with the disc, this being the heyday of MTV. Botha looked confused, but an aide quickly responded that, although there was no video, as such, they did have an impressive audio-visual presentation.

“But Denis Worrall’s got a video,” my colleague blithely continued. An uncomfortable silence ensued. I looked on in alarm, fearing an enraged reaction. This was not a subject for light-hearted banter. In what was seen as an embarrassing setback for Botha’s government, Worrall had resigned his post as ambassador to the UK to stand as an independent against then constitutional development minister Chris Heunis in the Helderberg constituency in a bitter and closely fought contest. (Worrall would be narrowly defeated, by just 39 votes.)

Eventually, Botha spoke. “Ja,” he said, “he may have a video but we don’t have Worrallitis.” The party hacks alongside Botha looked at one another nervously. This was utter nonsense, and you could imagine them thinking: what on earth was he on about, was this a stab at humour? Evidently it was, for they then all laughed together in a relieved but dutifully dull fashion. Ha ha. Worrallitis. Very funny. 

Chortling done, one of them then indicated that was it, the funny stuff was over, and we were dismissed and it was back to the cheap wine and the little sausages and bits of cheese impaled on toothpicks.