South Africans are like Pentecostals. We repeat a word, a phrase, an acronym over and over until it has lost all meaning and simply becomes part of our belief system. In the process, we fall into the trap of thinking the word speaks reality into existence.
Will Ace “step aside”? My dictionary says that phrase means “to withdraw or resign from an important position or office”. It should be clear by now that the secretary-general of the ruling party has no intention of doing so. By giving him 30 days to make what should have been an instant decision, or face suspension, his party’s council gave him more than enough time to do what the cartoonist Zapiro sketched the other day: “sidestep” this halfhearted attempt to bring a big man to book.
What do we learn from this once-great liberation movement? A contempt for organisational discipline and a finger in the face of the justice system. We should not be surprised that children and young people are learning from this disdain for public institutions and disregard for public accountability. In 2020 alone, the wanton damage to university property at one Durban institution was estimated at more than R27m and close to R1bn in the 2015-16 student protests. When your leaders disregard the rules of decency and any respect for the law, then expect such destruction of sites of higher learning.
Will former president Jacob Zuma “appear” for his long-awaited reckoning at the state capture inquiry, chaired by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo? That was the word of choice parroted by one news outlet after another. It took the brilliant young legal mind, advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, to straighten out the relevant words for the record: “We do not ask for his appearance; we ask for his punishment.” Words matter; why should high-ups make the pilgrimage to the Nkandla homestead to beg the big man to “appear” before a commission he instituted as president in 2018?
We do not learn. Not too long ago we discovered that the often-repeated slogan, “radical economic transformation” (RET), was none of those words, as it came to be associated with a faction of ruling party politics. As with other terms, RET was conjured up by a public relations firm in London as, one economist put it, “an ideological smokescreen to mask the rent-seeking practices of the Zuma-centred power elite”. We fall for these word games every time.
One of my studied deceptions is the word “decolonisation”. It was carried with so much fervour among students and, for the most part, given considerable support by university leaders. What promised a radical and necessary revisioning of the university curriculum turned out to be a dud word. Our five-year research project on the take-up of this vital word within 10 universities showed how institutions defang radical initiatives while appearing to embrace them (the book is called The decolonization of knowledge, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
When a key word such as decolonisation is wielded without any specific content, we found academics filled the void with meanings of their own, ranging from simply good teaching to academic development (that is, overcoming knowledge deficits among black students from a dysfunctional school system) to an African example in the curriculum here and there.
In an instant, a word that signalled radical intent is normalised within university speak. Why do academic teachers do this? Because the radical meaning of the word decolonisation is intimidating and so they give it meanings that fit within their ideological and professional comfort zones.
This week we learnt about another “stray bullet” that took the life of a young boy inside a shack. Think about it. The two media words are meant to convey the idea that a bullet intended for another purpose wondered off-track and strayed into the head of a child. There are no such things as stray bullets. Shots fired are intentional and they kill, whether it is a gangster in gang wars or children in the same area or a shot from a police revolver.
One more thing: what exactly is Magashule expected to “step aside” from? Inside his party are any number of corrupt people, from mayors to municipal managers to provincial cabinet ministers, many accused of serious crimes. They are defended by party seniors, accompanied to courts by ululating crowds and given flight cover by one of the most ridiculously named bodies of our times, the Integrity Commission. Integrity, says my trusted online dictionary, means “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles”.
Sidestep that.
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