"Don't buy City Press! Don't buy!"

Yesterday’s City Press (23 August 2015) is the perfect expression of everything I cannot stand with the current state of journalism in South Africa and why I believe print media will continue its slow, torturous and somewhat deserved spiral into the abyss of forgotten things. The lead story, about Mbuso Mandela’s latest scandal, lies prominently across its front page, accompanied only by a speculatory insert on who leads the running to act in the national police commissioner’s place when she is inevitably suspended sometime later this week (I’ll give you a hint: it’s not not her 2.I.C) and who else is also in the running (another hint: every other deputy commissioner).

Of course, no edition of this once proud people’s paper could be complete without an episode of Who Wants To Be President? The weekly telenovella about which palace stooge is likely to succeed the incumbent Chief Jester-In-Chief, aka #1, aka Showerhead, aka The Worst Idea Anyone Has Ever Had. Almost one and a half pages dedicated to such asininities as hypothesized presidential scenarios, which include a Gwede Mantashe/Jeff Radebe (and vice versa) presidency.

Apart from the half page MTN ad on page 5, there’s also a small piece about DA financial mismanagement in the Western Cape (running out of money is financial mismanagement finish and klaar!). And also buried into a corner of insignificance on page 6 is a really important story about a young man named Speech and the significance of his victory in Ward 30 of the Nelson Mandela Metro.

Let’s begin with the Mandela story. Oh, but where to begin with that tho?

How about rape culture? Yes, let’s start there. Now, far be it for me to dictate to women and to exercise my privilege as a man to tell women what to speak up about and against. To stand here and lecture women on what is acceptable reportage when telling stories that affect other women would be a gross violation of the trust I hope to engender as an ally. So I won’t do that. I believe that my job as an ally is to share information and ideas about what it is we as men are doing that makes life harder for our fellow humans, and to present alternative ways of engagement with women especially, and with us all in general, that are non-threatening and foster trust and congenial relations between man and woman, and between man and man. So it makes my job that much harder when the front page of one of the most popular Sunday papers leads with a story on a rape accusation with the following sub-header:

“Madiba’s troubled grandson says sex was consensual. Club staff say (sic) the two behaved like lovers”

Now I have the utmost respect for Ferial Haffajee. No, I lie. I have the utmost respect for what she represents: a woman of colour in a position of power. I don’t think I have much respect for her as a person. I have never met her, so I cannot conclusively say I don’t respect her at all. There may be some baseline qualities about her that I may yet come to respect were I to meet her in person, but as a public figure she does not inspire much more than indifference from me. I do, however, find myself disheartened and disappointed to find that a woman editor would sign off on a story on rape written by a woman journalist that proudly perpetuates such elements of rape culture as those espoused in the sub-header. There is more in the story that offends me, but I will not dwell on those. I do not wish to say more about the actual incident itself as I wish to reserve my comment until after the dust settles. Whenever that may be.

No really, but who wants to be president of this shithole tho?

Look, I love this country. I love this continent. I just hate what it’s all become. (Although I remain hopeful of what it yet may be.) But must we be subjected, week after week, to speculation and conjecture from anonymous sources and wild inferences from trigger-happy journos over who may or may not be the next president of the republic? Is this a bukkake circle jerk and are we the piggy in the middle?

Does anyone actually even really care at this point? Were ANC acolytes and sycophants not at pains to reassure us that they don’t vote for the president but for the party, so what difference does it make to us, the general public, who the president of the ANC is if it’s going to be the same party in power anyway? We hear of which faction is backing which candidate but has anyone ever found out why? I mean, apart from the assumed tribalistic and pseudo-idelogical grounds (like, referring to the SACP as communists is irony and oxymoron wrapped up in ALL OF THE LOLZ!) You know what I would like to know about all these candidates? What are their policy positions? What discussion documents have they written for circulation in the ANC? Where do they stand on the issues that really matter? But, I know, ain’t nobody got time for that? Amirite?

I mean it’s pretty damn ironic that the ANC once led a chant of “Don’t buy City Press! Don’t buy!” when the City Press is doing a bang up job of advertising their succession plan and feeling out the mood of ANC members on the list of possible candidates for the top job. Hell, I think at this point the ANC ought to start paying City Press a fee for campaign management services and sundry.

And the DA should pay them for sweeping their misdeeds quietly under the carpet – like a dinner guest dropping unwanted food under the table while retaining a cool visage. Such softly-softly language they use – “cash squeeze”. Andisiwe Makinana is a great journalist and her integrity comes shining through in the first paragraph of her piece on how the Western Cape government is basically working public servants like slaves. You’d never think the DA in that part of the country would ever have to apply austerity measures. Aren’t they the ones always gaaning aan about how wonderful they are with the numbers and how prosperous all the places they are in charge of have become in the last 20 years? I really wanted to know more about this story. As a data analyst, I like to see numbers and comparisons and trends and things when I read. I think readers would benefit greatly from even the most rudimentary quantitative analysis about things like a “cash squeeze”. And I think South Africans, and indeed all people the world over, should demand more of such analyses when it pertains to public finances especially. But the amount of space allocated this story was enough for only one number of any real import: R68 000. No other numbers are provided to compare with this single, lone figure. Which detracts from the consequence of the story and frankly leaves it performing the part of space-filler – which is an insult to the talents of a journalist of Makinana’s stature. But with the mood of the entire paper being intrigue and speculation, it falls on the reader to ask questions that I’m pretty sure the reporter did ask, but the answers to which could not fit the small space allocated. Space taken up by a gigantic picture of Jeff Radebe, ironically gesturing with his hands to indicate size. It’s the second image of #1’s BFF in as many pages. Surely we could have done without seeing his face twice?

On the next page, the repetitive use of an image of the same person is done with such poetic dexterity.  But to get to that, you have to go through a long column headlined “The playlists of SA’s top leaders”. A column inspired by the recent publication on social media of Barack Obama’s Spotify playlist. None of “SA’s top leaders” were interviewed of course, and the entire thing is pure supposition (not even hearsay). But it’s news. But I digress…

The repeated image I alluded to is actually a single picture of Mandla Faltein (affectionately known in KwaMagxaki and Veeplaas, in Port Elizabeth as Speech) standing in front of a UDM campaign vehicle, his smiling face proudly prominent on the poster and the t-shirt he has on, both announcing his candidacy for the 19 August by-election in Ward 30. Speech did what was once unthinkable this past weekend and wrested the ward encompassing those two townships from the clutches of the ANC. His win is of course significant for a number of reasons, chief of which is the following quote from the man himself:

“We beat the ANC at their own game. They no longer conduct door-to-doors which is what made the difference for us in this election. All they do is motorcades, driving around in fancy cars in front of poor people, speaking on loudhailers and chanting slogans, hoping people will come and vote. But little did they know that time is gone. People want substance and tangible objectives.”

The profundity in the statement is self-evident. It is an allegory of the macrocosm, which the City Press would distract us from with talk of succession and the tabloidization of the very real societal pox that is rape. That is, unless you make it to page 6. I’m impressed I did, seething as I already was with frustration. But I could go no further.

Review: May I Have This Last Dance

Over the past two decades many black families of the Eastern Cape have gradually reclaimed their history. Across the province known affectionately by its diaspora as Ephondweni (literally “the province”) or Emakhaya (literally “our homes”), many prominent families from Tsomo to Xhonxa to Mxhelo have erected impressive stone monuments to their ancestry - some tracing their lineage as far back as 300 years and more. AmaXhosa and many other African language speaking peoples rely heavily on oral traditions such as that of iimbongi, as well as also what is known as ukuzithutha. More than mere “praise singers”, as the crude translation will have us believe, iimbongi are custodians of oral history of the highest echelon akin to the griots of West Africa or the Anglo-Saxon heralds of medieval times. Ukuzithutha is a heraldic practice through which each Xhosa speaker is able to trace her ancestry by poetically reciting the succession of male ancestors in her lineage up to and including the ancestor from which her clan derives its name. Some fortunate families are able to continue this poetic recitation to include those who came after the clan name ancestor up to the present generation of family elders.

Mama Connie Manise Ngcaba’s memoir, May I Have This Dance (Face2Face) is an attempt at augmenting the oral record of history, which often overlooks the intimate details and achievements of family members other than the patriarchs of the family. The book opens with a family tree spanning four generations, beginning with MaNgcaba’s parents and the parents of her husband of sixty years, the late Bro Sol Ngcaba. It closes with a family constitution, complete with a vision and a mission, as well as descriptions of the various organisational structures and committees the constitution is meant to give life to. It’s a modern extension and a formalisation of an unwritten code of conduct amongst Xhosa families. It gives shape to what is currently a loosely configured organisation of the extended family structure and provides clear objectives and responsibilities to individual members of the broader family and the family structures on which they may volunteer to serve.

Far from being some dry family  text or manual, this is a story of one woman’s 85 year-long journey. She describes the carefree days of her childhood, safe in the loving cocoon of both her immediate and extended families growing up in the hinterland that is the former Transkei where she was born, to her present position as the matriarch of a family that has made an indelible mark on not only the East London community that is now the family’s home, but also on the greater South African community at large (her fourth son, Andile, was the first director general of the Department of Communications during Nelson Mandela’s presidency). The story is written in a very simple and easy style that traces a deceptively linear arc. This belies the complex nature of real life, which is often much more nuanced than any work of fiction.

There’s a particularly enthralling passage where she describes the nightly ritual of bathing her children. By the time they had all arrived – six in total – the Ngcaba’s had been allocated a “nice, four-roomed house” in Duncan Village, East London through MaNgcaba’s state of employment as a nurse in the local clinic. By then her first-born son was nearly a teenager and the youngest of her six children was but a toddler. She tells of how the feat that was bath time in the Ngcaba’s Bashe Street home was successfully accomplished through much conscientious effort and inventiveness on the parts of both her and her husband, Bro Sol. Through a system of improvised devices and a laissez-faire attitude with regards to getting the kitchen floor flooded by four boisterous boys in two zinc bath tubs, the Ngcaba’s were able to accomplish this and come out on the other side with a fascinating story to tell. Juxtaposed against the time later in her life where she was detained for 3 months for assisting her community in those heady days of apartheid resistance, MaNgcaba’s story is at times comical while also awe-inspiring and even tragic. This is the essence of MaNgcaba’s memoir – a fascinating story of modest origins that has led to equally modest, though immeasurably impactful, outcomes. It is ultimately a story of triumph.

There are many clues that make it clear that this is not the work of a literary scholar or a budding biographer, such as the brevity of the chapters, the concise sentence structure and minimal use of metaphor and other sophisticated language devices – all of which confirm the MaNgcaba’s unyielding pragmatism. It is, however, a succinct archive of a piece of history that is often lost to many families. In this she does not only her family a service, but renders a service to posterity. MaNgcaba’s memoir provides a picture of the participation of ordinary South Africans in world events as it spans the two World Wars, the entirety of the apartheid years, and culminates in the birth of democracy in South Africa. Her account shows how all these events impacted on the lives of ordinary folk in general and the Ngcaba family in particular without getting too bogged down in the details.

One of the things the translation “praise singer” misses completely about the task and role of iimbongi is that they do not merely heap praises on their subjects. As custodians of history and truth, they are duty bound to tell the story of the past truthfully, without fear or favour. As such, they operate under poetic license to offend and shock if needs be. MaNgcaba has written a story that does not sugarcoat her experience and makes little attempt to glorify herself or her family. In a way, she has achieved the task of imbongi  and will hopefully inspire other families to record their histories in similar ways.

(edited by Mary Corrigall and published in the Sunday Independent's 8 February 2015 edition)