Ben Turok exits parliament with honour

Veteran ANC leader Ben Turok recently announced his retirement from Parliament. This decision comes after a long and consistent role in progressive politics.
 
Why an article focusing on Turok and the milepost he has reached? There are more flamboyant characters saying farewell to the hallowed halls of parliament and its green benches. Unlike notable figures such as Kgalema Motlanthe and Trevor Manual, Turok has continually functioned in more behind-the-scenes roles. His exit is also interesting because it comes when the ANC faces stronger opposition to its left, when left-leaning views such as those held by Turok are sorely needed inside the broad church that is the ANC.
 
Born in Latvia, Turok arrived as a child in SA in the 1930s. He went on to train as a land surveyor and was drawn towards politics. In his mid-twenties, he joined the Congress of Democrats (COD) in the Western Cape in 1953, becoming a full time organiser. In 1955, Turok stood trial for treason, but the charges were later withdrawn. In the fifties, Turok worked as a trade unionist, was as a national official of COD and partook in the drafting of the Freedom Charter. As an MK operative, Turok was arrested in 1962 for sabotage and subsequently served three years in prison before going into exile.
 
Despite this longer history, it is his work in recent times when he has served “in both political and academic capacities for the ANC” that captures attention. Turok made a salient contribution to fostering a culture of debate and reasoned discussion on policy in the ANC in the last 20 years.

Since the unbanning, Turok has been a campaigner for a stronger stance on economic transformation within the broad forum that is the ANC. In the early nineties, using his Institute for African Alternatives, he worked to set up local development forums. These forums were mechanisms for increasing power from below, inviting communities to set their own development priorities. But these structures were abandoned – we all forsook them. We took “the line” that centralised political mobilisation was needed for the 1994 elections and that, thereafter, ward committees should be used to discuss local development needs.

 
Turok has continued to promote ideas, thinking and debate through his journal, New Agenda. The journal provided information about democracy, explored continental issues, carried union leader interviews, and looked more closely at strategies such as beneficiation and industrialisation. These debates helped to sustain democracy. They continued to highlight the difference between economic growth – an increase in economic output – and development, which Turok says means “an improvement in the human condition”.
 
However, New Agenda remained within defined parameters. It broadly tracked alliance debates. However, it gave little space to radical voices beyond the alliance camp, those heretical and provocative voices that could have warned leaders and officials of dangerous future scenarios that they would rather not think about. It also did not sufficiently showcase struggles on the ground nor properly analyse the role of civil society activism in driving policy change.
 
Turok has reflected deeply on how the ANC, at the point of transition, adopted a “conservative” approach to economy change. He has noted that although this was not what the country needed, he could see that there were reasons this position was adopted. He told the Financial Mail: "It was a very tense time. Our grip on power seemed provisional. One had to take into account the environment, which included the fact that the Soviet Union had told the ANC that it would not continue helping it."  
 
He has held on to his basic criticism over the years. He argued in the African Communist last December that “the ANC government has been rather cautious in the implementation of economic policies and has pursued orthodox economic policies. This has led to stalling in some key sectors of the economy”.

Turok remains a critic of the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy, a policy which reduced the budget deficit but which failed to generate jobs. Referring to Gear, Turok argued that the ANC had two strands: “the one was a progressive agenda of redistribution; the other focused on budget austerity and macro-economic stabilisation, and the latter won out.”

Turok’s departure from parliament is not without controversy – but certainly with his integrity intact. He received a grilling from fellow ANC parliamentarians after he chaired a committee that found Dina Pule guilty of breaching the code of conduct for MPs. Last November, the ANC also rebuked Turok after he walked out of parliament to avoid voting for the Protection of State Information Bill.

It is an irony that, as the old stalwart bows out, tired and bruised, Dina Pule has made it back on to the ANC’s electoral list. A sign of changing times, generational shifts as well as a change in culture as the ANC completes the change from movement to party in power.

Although he steps out of formal politics, Turok has not thrown in the towel. Indications are that, through his writing, he will continue to engage us on the need for progressive economic policy that will help South Africa overcome inequality and unemployment.

Frank Meintjies

OP trial sparks discussion of 'Intimate Partner Violence'

The Oscar Pistorius trial provides the opportunity to highlight the issue of intimate partner violence. It again highlights the need for greater public awareness of this issue, its prevalence and how it takes place.

 
Setting out his defence at the trial on Monday, 3 Mar 2014, Pistorius argued that he was in a loving relationship with Reeva Steenkamp. If his defence team understood anything about intimate partner violence (IPV), it would have realised that, on its own, a loving relationship provides no clue one way or another. His legal team would have known that most instances of domestic violence occurred in the context of intimacy, love and closeness.
 
Most people are familiar with terms like violence against women and girls (VAWG) and domestic violence. These terms have relevance – both gender organisations and international media reports have drawn attention to the fact that this case takes place against a backdrop of high levels of gender violence South Africa. The beauty about the lesser known IPV is that it zooms in to violence within the love relationship.
  
IPV is rooted in macho culture. According to Soul City’s Sue Goldstein, this culture includes the sense, on the part of men, that they “own” the woman in their lives. 

 In my own social circles, I know a few women who have been beaten up by someone who in every sense was their nearest and dearest. The violent attack came as they shared a home – and, indeed, the love relationship continued on both sides of the rage, the anger and the bruises.

 
Society’s anger against itself often expressed itself as violence against women. This violence does not just manifest in the alleys or the streets or public places; it lives in the home. This location of crime (in the form of attacks on women) in the home usually confounds those with moral and legal authority and interferes with their duty to protect women. Religious leaders, the police and others in the justice system would like to maintain the fantasy of the home and intimate relationships as a refuge against badness and harm.
 
Thus, within a patriarchal society – and as gender justice organisations point out – IPV creates many challenges for the criminal justice system. When faced with this kind of unjust action, many otherwise good policemen seem unable to do their work. Often, for such officials, their lack of knowledge of IPV goes together with a lack of will and motivation to act against the man. That is because they too are often infected by the idea that it is a man’s right to control and discipline “his” women.
 
Ours is also not just an ordinary patriarchal society. It has endured dislocation, instability, racial conflict and deep levels of alienation. On all sides and affecting people from any and every level of society, there is dehumanisation.
 
Where does this anger and madness go? How does it manifest? We don’t have all the answers to such questions, but it is true that much of this anger is expressed in our society as violence against women. In out patriarchal society, the national trauma manifests as attacks on women, in turn causing new cycles of trauma and social dysfunction.  
 
Let’s take a look at some IPV statistics. Researcher Lisa Vetten found, in 1995, that “every 6 days, a woman in Gauteng would be killed by her intimate male partner”. Vetten was also involved in a 1999 study – by the Medical Research Council and two other bodies – which found that approximately half of all women died at the hands of their intimate partners. Ten years later a third study showed a decline in the killing of women. But alas, the main decline was in killings by strangers, friends and acquaintances; by comparison, there was only a negligible drop in the rate of killing by lovers, partners and husbands remained constant. This means, as Vetten said recently: “The most common way women are killed is by the hands of an intimate male partner.”
 
The Pistorius story again throws the spotlight on South Africa’s gun culture. Gun Free South Africa has long called on South Africans to give up their love of guns. It has pointed out that guns are four times more likely to be used against the gun-owners themselves than in successful self-defence. There is also evidence that shows how guns in the home play a role in teen suicides. And from a gender justice perspective, when easy availability of guns mixes with a macho culture, it heightens the dangers faced by women.

In the middle of the voyeurism, the media frenzy and the highly-publicised legal sparring, we should remember that, on the fateful night, a woman died needlessly. We should remember that guns in the home often end up shedding the blood of those they are meant to protect. We should grasp the truth about intimate femicide in South Africa.
 
Even if Pistorius’s version of what happened on Valentine’s Day 2013 triumphs and the lesson related to IPV is ultimately lessened, the urgent and cautionary lesson about our obsession with guns will remain.

Frank Meintjies
(This article first appeared in The New Age newspaper on 7 March 2014)
 

Long Walk to Freedom: the 'powerfully moving' story of Nelson and Winnie Mandela

An ambitious movie featuring towering figures, The Long Walk to Freedom attains success on many levels. Cinematically, it puts South Africa on the map in a way it has not been before. It conveys momentous and background happenings in our turbulent and painful history in interesting and powerful ways.
 
The movie has also generated a great deal of discussion. Even though not everyone agrees with the lines taken in the movie, it reflects a boldness of choice on the part of the director. How to sketch processes that cover a vast period of time; how to present a colossal historical figure; how to represent complex and often fraught social change processes? Director Justin Chadwick chose to make the Nelson-Winnie love story a central theme and the driving force of the movie. From certain vantage points, this strategy can be criticised, but it makes The Long Walk to Freedom (LWTF) accessible and enjoyable to a very wide audience.
 
In the make-or-break role of Mandela, Idris Elba’s performance helps the movie (in significant ways) to crack it. He succeeds admirably in conveying the moods, temperament and presence of Mandela in his middle and later years. In a documentary on the making of the movie, Chadwick says he asked the actors to jettison any worries about accents and copy-cat resemblance to the figure they were playing; instead, they were directed to focus on discovering and transmitting the essence of the characters they played. This helped the lead actors to dilute the sense of intimidation they felt at having to play the ‘huge’ figures of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.
 
The success of this approach shows in the strength of Elba’s performance. Given Mandela’s penchant for reinventing himself, Elba may well have felt like he was being called on to play several distinctive characters in the same movie. He excels as he interprets a Mandela that transforms from new rural arrival to the city, to suave lawyer, to bearded pimpernel, to reflective prisoner.
 
Similarly, Noami Harris takes hold of her Winnie role and gives a star performance. She walks the road with Winnie as the latter changes from “very young” wife to leader and ‘voice of resistance’ during times of intensified oppression and brutal repression – as Winnie travels from innocence to angry leader standing tall on the South African stage.
 
The movie carefully creates the atmosphere and idioms of the different time periods. It is clear that for producer Anant Singh and Chadwick, situation and context matter very much. But they are under pressure – because of the sweep of the movie, they sometimes have to establish the setting very quickly, through the use of a relatively few shots and dialogue. Despite what they achieve – and at several key points the visual articulation is superlative – there are a few gaps or missteps. The Sharpeville segment is awkward and cryptic. “Sharpeville” and the issue of pass laws, let alone the role of PAC, are barely introduced before the gunshots go off and the camera jumps to narrate the international reaction. Also, the movie skips over the early years and the rural world in which Madiba grew up. Chadwick does take the viewer back to Qunu/ Mvezo area at several points in the movie, but many viewers may still miss the significance of the role of rural Eastern Cape played in the making of Mandela.
 
The movie’s excellent portrayal of Winnie Mandela is one of its powerful features. It tells her story, effectively highlighting her largely undervalued contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. The movie shows her brutalisation and radicalisation – and helps us understand her role and position in South Africa today.
 
On the positive side, the movie is no sugar coating and, despite producer Singh working in close consultation with key family members and the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, cannot be said to be politically correct.or providing a sanitised perspective. Viewers are shown the hard edge of resistance and struggle. As activists take up the cudgels for justice, children and family members pay a high price. Mistakes happen and comrades die due to human error when planting home-made bombs. The movie also showed the lax security arrangements that prevailed at Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia – the easy comings and goings of random people that contrasted with measures such as the careful disguises for Mandela and the ultra-secret locations for the revolutionary leader's media interviews.
 
The Long Walk to Freedom foregrounds the remarkable strengths as well as the ‘warts’ of the main characters. It is about heroes, but about flawed heroes. The movie shows how Mandela relied on the advice and insights of senior comrades, and how this mentorship helped minimise the possible negative impacts of his shortcomings. When Mandela said, as he often did, that other leaders should share the credit for success in the anti-apartheid struggle, many people think he is referring to the execution of courageous actions. But he is also referring, directly, to others' contribution to shaping him: to the fact that key comrades helped to balance his thinking and temper his impetuousness. In this regard, the character of Walter Sisulu in LWTF should not only be read literally; it is emblematic of all the key leaders, including Oliver Tambo, who honed Nelson Mandela.    
 
LWTF lifts the veil on Mandela’s promiscuity as he enjoyed the buzz of Johannesburg in the forties and fifties. It also conveys that, even though they had become incompatible, he could have handled his split from his first wife Evelyn with a great deal more sensitivity. Reading between the lines, it was only when he was in prison that he got a chance to think properly about the burdens he placed on his young wife, not just when he went to prison but when he disappeared from family life and went underground. In this regard, author Du Preez Bezrop argues that Mandela simply informed Winnie of major changes in his life; that the young Mandela “appeared to lack the skills needed to comfort his loved ones when they needed assurance”.
 
LWTF gives a sympathetic interpretation of Winnie Mandela. But it does not shy away from the shadow side associated with her. It shows how ‘necklacing’ evolved and was popularised, and proposes that Winnie Mandela had a central role in this evolution. In this regard, necklacing was an angry reaction; but little thought was given to the wider chain of human destructiveness (and self-destruction) that would be unleashed. The ‘flawed heroes’ angle endows the movie with a particular grittiness and provokes deep reflection about the qualities and requirements of leadership, especially in repressive and violent times.
 
It seems that most South Africans who have seen LWTF loved the experience. At the same time, in social media emanating from South Africa, a small but significant number of people complain about the accents of the lead actors; others fume about insufficient acknowledgement of the ANC’s collective leadership. Yet others highlight some factual inaccuracies as compared to historical records. Of course, it is important to remember that a film is a dramatisation (unlike a documentary); the information it contains has to be cross-referenced with other data that forms part of the archive.
 
Writing on Twitter, Author Zakes Mda says he was disappointed, most likely because his expectations of the movie were too high. Using the same medium, Eusebius McKaiser wonders how people can rave about LWTF, given that it contains so many narrative inaccuracies. For Mfundi Vundla, writing in a newspaper column, LWTF erred in trying to cover too large a time-period. It would have had more depth, he argues, if it focused on, say, a ten year period. Arguing that a “biopic on an iconic figure” is not the only way to go in capturing the past, he calls for local movie-makers like himself to be given a chance to give their version of the “liberation narrative”.
 
I believe LWTF should be celebrated. Though not perfect, it is a brilliant effort. Aside from its high production values, LWTF presents the human side of Nelson Mandela alongside the great achievements and extraordinary leadership.  In a move that has strong gender-equity implications, it further provides a compelling re-reading of Winnie Mandela, calling for greater appreciation of her sacrifice and courage.  
 
The LWTF is not without shortcomings. But, despite these, Long Walk To Freedom is impressive and powerfully moving - a film that everyone should try to see.

Frank Meintjies

Mounting a working class agenda can help COSATU rebuild unity

COSATU is fractured, with member unions divided into two camps and leaders hurling angry words at each other. This is a far cry from the unity established at its birth. In this piece, published on the Sacsis website, I argue that COSATU should consider withdrawing from politics with a capital-P. Instead, it should focus on reconstructing the strength of the federation, restoring unity and mobilising on specific issues.

Read my views on this at: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1856.

Frank Meintjies

 

Civil society in SA should have a stronger voice in national affairs

Civil society organisations have a pivotal role to play in strengthening democracy and ensuring inclusive and more extensive socio-economic development.

However, the sector is weakened by fragmentation and lack of a united voice; it is also plagued by a range of problems that erode capacity and sustainability.

Civil society organisations need to work together to ensure they speak in a much stronger voice on key national issues.

And those with power and authority should be more amenable to hearing what they have to say. Read my views on this subject in my article published at: http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/1819.

Minimum wage can advance social inclusion

The call for a national minimum wage is relevant to South Africa precisely because millions of workers are vulnerable and lack basic employment rights.

Vulnerable workers are also mostly unorganised. In general, they are unable to protect themselves from abuse.

I argue that the a national statutory minimum wage has the potential to help stitch together the frayed edges of our newly formed democracy; it can stop slow the descent of larger numbers of workers into the category of ‘the working poor’. 

Read my views on this, published on the Sacsis website, at:

http://tinyurl.com/p3v6x6h

 

Frank Meintjies


 

Contestation over Nelson Mandela's legacy

In the coming years, South African political parties are likely to become embroiled in a bunfight over Nelson Mandela’s legacy. All will want to claim that they, more than most others, are taking forward his legacy.

However, those who want to lay claim to this legacy, I argue, will be caught out if they do so without intensifying their efforts to bring about positive social change.

The poor have an interest in this issue; they want to know whether those who claim to support Mandela’s values are working to end poverty or are merely using his name to bolster their power and appeal.

See my views, expressed in a piece a wrote in July 2013, at: http://tinyurl.com/q7zxdpv.