As the country approaches anther general election next year – the sixth of the democratic era – there are curious, though not unpredictable, shifts in posturing under way.
At the centre of our political spectrum, the state is trying to shake corruption and maladministration out of the system.
If we can dislodge the ANC and everything that happened under the presidency of Jacob Zuma from the government we may yet achieve something.
At the book ends there are, at the one end, the politics of revenge, embodied by the EFF, and at the other end are the ethno-nationalists, like Afriforum or Solidarity, white supremacists, like PRAAG, and other ideologically lost bandits.
These fall neatly in line with the latest tactical manoeuvres of rightist forces who now expediently protest against being “bullied”. It would be simply laughable if it were not a carefully constructed political tactic aimed at sanitising our difficult past.
Afriforum kicked off 2018 with an anti-bullying campaign, with particular focus on educational institutions.
“It is important to AfriForum to work together with learners, teachers and parents in making a difference by eliminating bullying in schools,” AfriForum’s Leandie Lombaard said.
In an instant, the very serious issue of bullying was appropriated by the most invidious causes that are deeply embedded in centuries-old prejudice, discrimination and abuse of dominance and privilege – and now being used to deflect attention from historical viciousness and cruelty.
In doing so they are simply manipulating the emotions of gullible, but otherwise decent people.
Bullying at school, and elsewhere, is a serious matter. It cannot be used, however, for political points scoring.
The new tactic, however, is part of how white people of a certain generation and persuasion position themselves as eternal innocents.
This was addressed in a previous column.
This idea that whites, in general, and Afrikaners, in particular, were being bullied was well illustrated in August, following the publication of The Lost Boys of Bird Island, when one (white) Twitter user wrote:
“The Lost Boys of Bird Island is a must-read for white Saffas – especially Afrikaners who believe they are God’s chosen people – who are still in denial about the destruction of the apartheid-era. It left me gutted.
“What do we learn from this and can we ever make amends?”
The immediate response from the right was to construct an elaborate yarn about being bullied. In response to the Twitter user, Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann replied, “Afrikaners are tired of being bullied and criminalised”.
Of course, asking people to accept the role they have played in the injustices of our past, whether it is in the old SA Police, the SA Defence Force or any other apartheid institutions, and how these positions of power have been reproduced, is not a form of bullying.
It is simply part of our constitutional obligations to roll back injustices of the past, and to make our society more just and equitable.
So much, then, for the right wing. Another book end – I am loathe to place it on the left, but let’s do it for the sake of argument – is the EFF.
This column has previously dealt with the EFF’s politics of revenge and rapine. It’s not worth going over these, again.
The one thing that has increasingly stood out is the triumph of the EFF as spectacle.
It is fascinating, in a twisted way, to observe the way that the EFF’s public activities, from parliament to the streets, have become media spectacles involving high drama, rhetoric, brilliant flashes of colour and costumes – vulgar and glitzy, although images of many other public personalities offer similar end-of-empire-type vulgarities.
Actually, the spectacle at the opening of parliament is often an unashamed grotesquery in which we all participate with great glee.
Some of us imagined that post-apartheid SA would be a place of humility, stripped of the excesses and abhorrent racial ordering with its injustices and forms violence.
Today, we are put off by our own excesses.
In so many ways, we, as a society, especially our political elite, have copied the spectacle of classical Greece.
We have emulated Ancient Rome’s orgies (kind of), public offerings and political battles, parades, costumes and extravaganzas.
Anyone who has attended or watched the opening of parliament, any of our political rallies where guns, real or phony, are fired into the air, or the finger-wagging and indiscriminate tub-thumping of our populist politicians may understand the grotesqueries of our times.
It would be nice to dismiss all of this as simply election politics.
But what the EFF and the right have shown is that destruction of personal lives and property is simply collateral damage for their most egregious public and private objectives.
For both forces, this is not simply politics as theatre or spectacle, it is dangerous, it can destroy lives and the spirit of common good.