PATRICK BULGER | Shut up already: silence, ministers talking power to truth

Whether French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire ever told another salon bright spark to “shut up” is not recorded. But you have to concede, even if you are a fan of French Revolution-style liberty, that Voltaire was quite likely the type of annoying individual whom members of the Ancien Regime often told to “Shut the f#$@ up!” Certainly police minister Bheki Cele might have silenced this famous know-all with the double-tap “Shut up, shut up!” he used on one hapless citizen this week.

But South Africans are not the type to admire the emperor’s nonexistent clothing and keep their silence.

Voltaire is widely credited with saying: “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.” This is the opposite of “shut up” and is preferred in free societies because the command to remain silent has to be enforced if it is to have any validity or force.

Voltaire’s supposed mots savants (learnt words) have been used for decades by those who argue free speech must be defended at all costs, a version of “don’t shoot the messenger’’, which is used as an excuse by journalists when someone important reads something about themselves they don’t like. More seasoned reporters tell the aggrieved party the subeditors are to blame, which often helps to defuse the tension. But enough shop talk.

As a journalist whose livelihood depends on it, I’m all for free speech and will defend it (but perhaps not quite to the death) with all other reasonable means at my disposal, especially if I can claim them back as expenses. I’m as disappointed as anyone else to have to accept Voltaire in reality never said the words that have become the cornerstone of liberty and have inspired a thousand loudmouths but which are erroneously attributed to him.

So did Voltaire tell people he disagreed with to ‘shut up’? We’ll never know, but until freedom of speech is removed from the constitution, just saying it is strictly unconstitutional in SA. Or is it?

For all we know, he might have said, “Shut up!”, and if he had done so, who among his adoring throng would have had the nerve to record it for posterity? In this case of a famous misattributed quote, there’s something quite amusing about one of the spoken pillars of free speech being instead a writer’s creation, or mistake.

So take a bow Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868-1956), a British writer who wrote about Voltaire and arrived at the famous phrase by paraphrasing what she thought he would have said. It’s a classic case of “broken telephone”, and an egregious instance of misplaced “tadpoles’’, which is what old subeditors call inverted commas. 

It’s quite a saga, culminating in Hall writing to the publisher of a book of famous quotes and pleading: “The phrase ‘I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it’ which you have found in my book Voltaire in His Letters is my own expression and should not have been put in inverted commas. Please accept my apologies for having, quite unintentionally, misled you into thinking I was quoting a sentence used by Voltaire (or anyone else but myself).” This is according to the website Quote Investigator.

So did Voltaire tell people he disagreed with to “shut up’’? We’ll never know, but until freedom of speech is removed from the constitution, just saying it is strictly unconstitutional in SA. Or is it?

Turns out there’s a time and a place for everything, and there is also context. Take EFF lawyer Dali Mpofu as an example.

He livened things up at the Zondo commission by telling Pravin Gordhan and an advocate to “shut up while I’m talking”. Yes, it sounds bad, but apparently in the Eastern Cape village Mpofu hails from, this is a standard manner of address.

Anyway the Legal Practice Council accepted this argument, so just shut up about it now. There are better ways to tell people to “shut up”. Take the method employed by home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi when he low-tackled the Helen Suzman Foundation recently for having the temerity to take legal action against him in his handling of permits for the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans who are soon to be “illegal’’ in the country they have made their home for years.

Taking his cue from an old PW Botha speech, he intoned in a statement: “There’s a disturbing and growing trend by some NGOs to sabotage the polycentric and policy-laden decisions taken by government by using the courts. This development must be nipped in the bud as soon as possible.” (Polycentric must mean going around in circles.)

He referred to “armchair critics, who have no idea of the sacrifices and deaths of many freedom fighters, while they sat in the comfort of their homes because of the colour of their skin’’.

This is a paraphrase (accurate, I hope) of Cele’s statement to anticrime group Action Society’s Ian Cameron, who dared to raise the minister’s performance in sharp tones at a community meeting in Gugulethu, Cape Town.

“And I’m not going to take any nonsense of somebody who regards me as a garden boy today because you regard me as a garden boy. You come here ... Shut up! Shut up! I sat here, I listened to you talking nonsense. Listen! It’s your time to listen! Sit down and listen young man, or get out.’’ Shades of Voltaire? Not likely, as far as we know.

Last week, during a visit to the scene of the Enyobeni tavern tragedy, Cele blamed the grieving parents there and then for not looking after their children, which is a case of speech that is too free.

Sometimes, “Shut up already!’’ is the only fitting response.