Dialogue beats lyrics

14 September 2011 - 02:20 By S'Thembiso Msomi
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ANCYL president Julius Malema, and ANC stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela outside the court where he appeared for singing the 'Dubul'ibhunu (Shoot the Boer)'. File photo.
ANCYL president Julius Malema, and ANC stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela outside the court where he appeared for singing the 'Dubul'ibhunu (Shoot the Boer)'. File photo.

We live in "a time that is between times - a land that is between two lands," argued the Rev Bongani Finca last week.

The concept, the Presbyterian Church minister said, is derived from the Book of Exodus, when God was liberating His people from Egypt and leading them to Canaan, the Promised Land.

"There is the land of Egypt from which they have definitely departed. There is the land of Canaan at which they have definitely not arrived. And for 40 years they lived in between times, and in between lands," he said.

To Finca, South Africans find themselves in a similar situation today.

"There is, in my view, a South Africa from which we have departed, a regime that we have conquered, an old order that is behind us. But there is a new South Africa we have not yet entered. A new South Africa for which we continue to long, to yearn and to strive - the New Land of our dreams.

"And in between these two countries there is this time and place we are now - a land that is not the same as the land from which we departed in 1994, yet a land that is not yet the land of our dreams - a land between the two lands, a time between the two times."

Finca, who is also the Eastern Cape electoral officer, was delivering the annual Tiyo Soga Memorial Lecture in the former Transkei.

Soga, who died 140 years ago at the age of 42, was a pioneering African intellectual, missionary and celebrated composer of hymns.

His Lizalis'dinga Lakho, Thixo Wenyaniso (Fulfil Thy Promise, O God Of Truth) remains widely popular - well over a century after its composition.

But it was a court ruling over another song - whose composer remains unknown - that drove home Finca's point for me.

Equality Court judge Colin Lamont's ruling that the liberation struggle song Ayesaba Amagwala - which has now become known as Dubul'ibhunu (Shoot the Boer) - constituted hate speech and that ANC members are banned from singing it "at any public or private meeting" has typically divided South Africans, largely along racial lines.

Did it really have to come to this - a court giving a judgment on what is essentially a political matter that could be resolved through persuasion and dialogue?

Perhaps the only positive from the case - brought against ANC Youth League president Julius Malema by Afrikaner pressure group Afriforum - is that it may force a review of the constitutional validity of the Equality Act.

Legal experts have long argued that the hate-speech provisions of the 2000 Act were too broad and not in line with section 16 of the Constitution.

As for promoting reconciliation, the case has the potential to bring about the opposite, as both sides dig in their heels.

As we saw outside the court soon after judgment was heard, enforcing the ban on the song is going to be virtually impossible.

Yes, Malema and other ANC leaders might stop singing it out of respect for the interdict, but who is to stop scores of their supporters from doing so at political rallies, funerals and other ceremonies?

The courts are a legitimate avenue for individuals and groups who feel that their constitutional rights have been infringed upon.

But the courts cannot substitute dialogue as a vehicle to help us migrate from what Finca describes as "a land in between lands" to a South Africa the nation committed itself to building when it adopted the 1996 Constitution as the supreme law of the land.

Nkosinathi Biko, the son of the late Black Consciousness Movement founder, Steve Biko, recently asserted that much of the socio-political tension we experience today is due to the fact that we were too quick to give ourselves such glowing labels as "rainbow nation" without first having a frank conversation about our past and what we envisage our future to be.

Political dialogue - and not the courts - helped us cross our Red Sea in 1994. Surely it is through dialogue that we can successfully navigate our way to our Promised Land - a South Africa where no "minority" or "majority" will feel "fragile".

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