THE TRAGEDY OF JACKIE SELEBI’S DEATH.

TOPIC: THE TRAGEDY OF JACKIE SELEBI’S DEATH.

At the height of Jackie Selebi’s unimaginable personal pain, political humiliation and judicial conviction, whilst he was behind bars – lonely, ill, abandoned by the world as he had come to know it, and almost despairing of life itself in a Pretoria jail – I wrote a tribute to him under the title “The tragedy of Jackie Selebi”, which appeared on Politicsweb of 07 February 2012.

In the article, after lauding Selebi’s great, undoubted personal qualities and immeasurable contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle, I pointed to his glaring failings, flaws and his fall-from-grace tragic situation of being a jailed criminal in democratic South Africa he fought so hard and for so long to bring about.

Writing and saying something positive at the time about Selebi was frowned upon and seen as fraternizing with the criminal, Mafia world of alleged mobster Glenn Agliotti.

I ended the article by declaring that Selebi was “…like one of those deeply flawed but transformational heroes from Thomas Carlyle’s “On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History”.

I further quoted Carlyle when he declared about his heroes that “…their heroism lay in their creative energy in the face of difficulties, not in their moral perfection”.

I was reminded of this quote from Thomas Carlyle today upon hearing the sad breaking-news announcement on radio of the passing on today of Ambassador Jackie Selebi, which news was broken by Lindiwe Zulu, the Minister of Small Business Development.

Today, in the wake of Selebi’s death, it has again become commonplace to sing praises to Jackie Selebi, although his bitter haters retain their loathing of him as before.

As in life, in death Selebi is becoming a divisive figure, with the divisions to continue in debates about the essence of his legacy.

Immediately following the news of Selebi’s death, Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with messages of heartfelt condolences and commiseration, on the one hand, but also with messages expressing hardnosed ambivalence about the legacy of Selebi, as well as with outright condemnation of his moral standing in our society, owing to his conviction by our courts for corruption, on the other hand.

The vehemence and tone of some of the condemnatory messages following the death of Selebi caught me by surprise, given that Selebi’s body was hardly cold. Some of the condemnatory messages sounded as if they had long been prepared, memorized, rehearsed and canned for this specific, sad occasion, like a dagger which is kept sharpened and at the ready for the right moment. They sounded like they were ready-made and were just re-heated in the micro-ovens of political hatred and racial bigotry for today’s instantaneous public propaganda consumption. There was surprising but unmistakable velvet elocution in some of the condemnatory message on radio broadcasts, and some boastful and self-indulgent cadence, in the mist of death.

If death is often a surprise and always comes unannounced, how come the Jackie Selebi haters’ condemnatory wailing appeared so effortless and flawless?

It is this harsh and unforgiving nature of some of the vindictive messages about the departed Selebi, which flooded radio stations, Twitter and Facebook, that reminded me of the memorable words of Ossie Davis, the African American who delivered an historic eulogy to one of America’s greatest all-time heroes, the venerable Malcolm X:

“There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain – and we will smile. Many will say turn away – away from this man, for he is not a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the black man – and we will smile…And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we honor him”.

Of course like Jackie Selebi, Malcolm X had been involved in and caught doing crime. And like Selebi, Malcolm X had done jail term. And like Malcolm X, there are those who now do not want us to utter a single good word in the direction of the deceased Jackie Selebi; and, yes, there are those who want to convince South Africans that Selebi was nothing but a demon, a monster, a subverter of our criminal justice system, a mobster even, and an enemy of the black man and the founding, constitutional values of democratic South Africa – and nothing else. They want us to turn away – away even from the presence of Ambassador Jackie Selebi’s memory.

Many of the Jackie Selebi haters and defilers will ask as to what it is the ANC, ANC Youth League, the Tripartite Alliance and our country’s mass democratic movement find to honor in this stormy, controversial, bold but ultimately broken and tragic captain.

And we too should smile.

They want us to celebrate only Jackie Selebi’s fall from grace, his criminal conviction, the utter humiliation of serving jail time for corruption, his physical withering away, literally, as a result of a terminal disease.

In his tweet on the passing on of Selebi, one of South Africa’s favorite puppets, Chester Missing @chestermissing wrote:

“Jackie Selebi has passed away? RIP. Matter of hours before someone in the DA tells us it’s a ploy to keep out of jail.” (The Citizen, 24 January 2015, page 4).

But it is simply not true that Comrade Jackie Selebi’s long, heroic life was completely devoid of positive meaning, of any catchet.

This blue tissue of a lie is being spread around the world by the haters.

And there are those with hearts so full of fury, of savagery, of hatred, of vindictiveness, and of absolute lack of compassion, even in the event of death, who demand forgiveness for themselves but dare not forgive others like Selebi. They are the hard men and women of South Africa’s national, everyday life, lurking around every corner in our country, waiting to do character assassination on those they intensely loath, and capable of being moved only by their narrow ends of life, by their selfish interests.

But did many of these defilers of the memory of Jackie Selebi – these Jackie haters – get to meet him in person, to speak to him, to touch him, to see him smile, to listen to him and to greet him with a handshake, to see him in love with Ann Selebi, to see him doting on his children?

I also believe that if these haters and defilers had had such an opportunity, they would know why we too honoured Jackie Selebi during his life, and are honoring him upon his tragic death. In fact, some of us had the good sense and fortune to honour him during his darkest hour, when he laid prostrate and sick in his jail cell in democratic South Africa, two years before his death.

As our outstanding musician Sipho Gumede would sing, “when the hour is dark, friends are few”.

So precise. So true.

Deeply anguished to observe that it seemed that at that darkest hour of Jackie Selebi in a jail cell, even his long-standing ANC comrades of many decades seemed cowered by the shrill public opinion and calculated calmny around Selebi and seeming to have abandoned him for good, as if he were a skunk they did not want to touch in public, not even with a bargepole, I wrote in my ‘The tragedy of Jackie Selebi’ that:

“It is of no little political interest to note that to date, there is no major ANC and government leader who had publicly supported Minister Mangena’s mercy call.”

This was after the former president of AZAPO and former Minister of Science and Technology in the previous Thabo Mbeki government, Masibudi Mangena, went public with a Pretoria News article calling on South Africans to show mercy and have Selebi released from jail, on account of his terminal illness.

Ossie Davis and the progressive American community were able to soberly evaluate the enduring and ever-lasting positive contributions to America’s politics, racial tolerance and world peace of Malcolm X, despite the latter having dabbled in crime in Harlem and having spent several years in jail as a result.

Today we can all see that fifty years after the assassination of Malcolm X, history has largely vindicated Ossie Davis’s eulogy to Malcolm X and its correct historical portrayal of the eminent and enduring Malcolm X as “our Prince”, who has found a first-rate place of honor in the pantheon of America and the whole progressive world’s all-time heroes.

South Africans also should be able to do the same regarding Jackie Selebi and his huge, ever-lasting contribution to the emergence and consolidation of democratic South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and in line with all of the immortal Freedom Charter’s clauses, without a single exception.

In doing so, we shall not be denying that Selebi was like Thomas Carlyle’s “flawed heroes.” We shall be merely affirming, as Thomas Carlyle wrote, that we know that we and our own world are morally imperfect and thus incapable of producing morally perfect individuals, such as many Selebi haters and defilers seem to have unreasonably expected Jackie Selebi to have become.

This is not too big an ask. I truly believe that we should not be afraid to publicly declare, from rooftops and treetops, loud and clear and into the chambers of eternity, that Comrade Jackie Selebi was and remains one of our freedom and democracy struggle’s immortal, heroic “Princes and Princesses”.

I believe that history will be kinder to Selebi and will ultimately judge that 80% of his life was dedicated to right, ennobling causes for the benefit of freedom, democracy and the unity of South Africa, Africa and the world, and that only 20% of his life, which tragically got him imprisoned, was dedicated to unworthy ends which resulted from a lapse of his moral and ethical judgment, and from unpardonable fraternization with the base criminal underground.

Most importantly, all South Africans, even those who deeply despise Selebi, in death as in life, should be able to marshal at least a modicum of human decency – African Ubuntu – to commiserate with his grieving family, close relatives, as well as with members and leaders of his long-time political home, the African National Congress (ANC), and especially his grieving, doting and dutiful wife, Ann Selebi.

The remarkable strength, commitment, dignity and sheer human doggedness with which Ann stood by her ailing and frail husband, Jackie Selebi, to the every end, is truly moving and remarkable. She was like the Bible’s Hannah to Jackie Selebi, right to the last minute of the latter’s life. Theirs is an unheralded great love story born in the burning crucible of the ANC’s struggle for freedom and dignity in South Africa. It stood the bitter and back-breaking tests of time. Only death could conquer it. And maybe not even death should rejoin in its momentary triumph over their love life.

Watching Ann Selebi on TV as she stood or sat every day silently by or behind her husband as he attended his court case, reading about her as she visited him at the Pretoria prison, and lastly as she nursed her terminally ill husband after his parol and release from prison, I was often reminded of these touching words of Jennifer Homans, the loving and dutiful wife of Tony Judt, the great, towering American Jewish philosopher and historian, which appeared in The New York Review of Books of 12 March 2012, under the title ‘Tony Judt: A Final Victory’, and which are worth quoting at some length, as they assist us to articulate the tragedy and pain of Ann Selebi as she watched life flowing out of Selebi, her husband and the man she loved dearly.

Wrote Jennifer Homans about Tony Judt:

“I was married to Tony Judt. I lived with him and our two children as he faced the terror of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was a two-year ordeal from his diagnosis in 2008 to his death in 2010…When Tony was diagnosed with ALS, he knew he would die, soon. He knew before any doctor told him; and he continued to know it even as we pursued every possible alternative explanation and cure. He knew it because it was happening to him every day: hands, arms, legs, breathing passed out of his control with terrifying speed. It was difficult to keep up a dizzying and exhausting time of doctors and tests and determination; of anger, grief, desperation, and love…As he grew sicker, he became understandably more fearful. There was too much he couldn’t control in the outside world; everything from electrical outlets for the breathing machine (batteries fail) to his wheelchair (power operated but he had no way to steer it) and – not least – the unbearable goodwill of people who didn’t understand…He took grim refuge in his study, his sickroom, his closed, safe prison cocoon that would house his deteriorating and entrapped body”.

Jennifer Homans was, in a morbid sense, – sorry for the unintended pun -, somehow luckier to observe “…the unbearable goodwill of people who didn’t understand.”

Unfortunately, Ann Selebi had and has to deal with the truly “unbearable”, horrifying, openly-expressed ill-will of Jackie Selebi haters and defilers, who are in a party mood over Selebi’s death, and who do not want to understand anything about the terminal illness which ravaged her husband, and who even this late afternoon are asking as to why Jackie Selebi didn’t die much earlier or few days after he was paroled, in a puzzling, macabre public display of hatred and bigotry.

Yet the suffering, pain and endurance test which married women like Jennifer Homans and Ann Selebi are made to go through when they are impelled by circumstances to become the only pillar of support in life on which their terminally ill, famous husbands depend, should move us all when they are visited on white, privileged American women like Jennifer Homans, as well as when they are visited on black African women like Ann Selebi.

Our humanity should demand nothing less from all of us.

Even in his death, the Selebi haters are demanding a pound of Jackie Selebi’s flesh, in a baffling necrophobic outburst against even the remaining mortals of Jackie Selebi, not bothering to wait for their burial.

Haters will always do the hating best.

In a nation which boasts about its world-acclaimed national capacity to forgive the horrendous crimes and sins committed during apartheid by racist regimes of the time, this hatred for and vindictiveness by some amongst us towards Jackie Selebi – this stoic unpreparedness to forgive Selebi’s lapse of moral and ethical judgment, even for a moment of silence, even if posthumously so – does take one’s breath away. Totally.

Many Britons openly celebrated the death of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. It would seem some amongst us will be throwing braai pool parties this coming weekend to celebrate the news today of Jackie Selebi’s death.

This is really the tragedy of Jackie Selebi’s death.

It damns the cruelty and false pretense of our key national trait – the readiness to forgive past sins, only selectively so, apparently, and evidently only if you happen to belong to the race group with a particular dose of melanin.

This should not be so. This is the worst imaginable discrimination in a democracy.

Is this because Selebi was black, whilst the majority of the leaders who committed crimes against humanity under apartheid to uphold white racial superiority and were forgiven for their steering political roles in enforcing it were white, that our sense of forgiveness is so choosy, so discriminatory?

It makes you ponder.

Even those of us – many bitter Jackie Selebi haters – who do not have an idea of what Ann Selebi went through from the moment Selebi collapsed upon hearing the news that the Supreme Court of Appeal had upheld his conviction for corruption, right through to Selebi’s hospitalization and incarceration and release from jail by parole, right to her daily administering dialysis on him every day, several times a day, to the loneliness she felt as she and Selebi were trapped in the Waterkloof house and haunted by Selebi haters and the media, unable to do normal daily family walks befitting a paroled convict, we should at least soften our cruel hearts a bit by reading what similar terror Tony Judt’s wife went through during his last two years as he also battled a terminal disease.

We can let go our manufactured anger and self-righteousness against Jackie Selebi, now that he is no more.

How Tony Judt and Jackie Selebi died from a terminal illness is a fate none of us – including implacable Jackie Selebi haters – should wish on their worst enemies.

This is especially so because Jackie Selebi, like Malcolm X and Tony Judt, had contributed so much to the cause of human freedom and progressive political thought in his country, which for centuries suffered white racialist colonialism and Apartheid’s legislated race-based discrimination.

In my Politicsweb article mentioned above on Jackie Selebi, which even then attracted its own barbaric hoards of Jackie Selebi haters and unrestraint nasal scorn in the comment section, I wrote the following about arguably Selebi’s singular, greatest contribution to democratic South Africa and the precious freedom we all enjoy today:

“Alongside former Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, former Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo, and the ever intellectually irrepressible former Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad, Selebi was at the forefront of re-integration of South Africa into the fold of community of nations following the end of apartheid in 1994…He was also at the forefront of the international community’s sterling efforts to develop post-Cold War normative standards in such diverse diplomatic fields as human rights, nuclear disarmament, conventional chemical weapons, anti-landmines treaty, WTO negotiations, WEF annual Davos meetings, and the Geneva-based WIPO’s intellectual property protection efforts…Jackie Selebi was SA diplomatic pioneer of great note, and arguably post-apartheid South Africa’s most successful multilateral diplomat so far.”

There is nothing that has happened since I wrote the Politicsweb article ‘The tragedy of Jackie Selebi’, which would make me re-assess my opinion of Selebi’s great contribution to democratic South Africa’s globally-respected and admired diplomacy.

Today the huge diplomatic spear of an eminent global multilateralist has fallen.

But, hopeful, his tragic death will make the claque of his bitter haters and defilers to mellow a bit, so as to hopefully allow it the much-needed opportunity to slightly re-assess Jackie Selebi’s legacy in less judgmental and less damnatory, even if not wholly positive and constructive, terms.

This would be the final victory of Jackie Selebi, the South African freedom and democracy struggle’s Prince of Tides, to borrow from the title of Pat Conroy’s moving, eponymous novel.

And that would also be our nation’s best epitaph to the great and heroic contribution which former National Police Commissioner and former Interpol President Jackie Selebi made to our abiding and ongoing national Freedom Agenda and our National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

RIP our Prince of Tides.

——-END——–

15th Cedia blog
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
25 January 2015

Written by:

Mr Isaac Mpho Mogotsi
Founder and Executive Chairman
Centre for Economic Diplomacy in Africa (CEDIA)
And
SEDIA Research NOT FOR PROFIT (NPC)
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IS CYBER SPACE THE MOST RACIST THING?

IS CYBER SPACE THE MOST RACIST THING?.

IS CYBER SPACE THE MOST RACIST THING?

IS CYBER SPACE THE MOST RACIST THING?.

IS CYBER SPACE THE MOST RACIST THING?

Topic: IS CYBER SPACE THE MOST RACIST THING?

“But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me to make one respectable person!” Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland.

INTRODUCTION.

In her article of 23 January 2012 entitled ‘What is the most racist thing that has happened to you?’, the Star’s veteran journalist, Helen Grange, quotes me as saying:

“Also, I have never experienced anything like the racist rants from the bloggers to my Politicsweb articles on DA’s Lindiwe Mazibuko and Helen Zille.”

So it was with great interest that I read the SACP general secretary (GS) Blade Nzimande’s article “It’s time to confront  cyber-racism”, which appeared on Politicsweb on 13 January 2015.

Nzimande should be complimented for his courage and willingness to confront this difficult issue of the intersectionality of technology and social media, on the one hand, and socio-pathologies like racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, on the other, as well as the intentionality of cyber racists and bullies to abuse others and the cyber space afforded to them.

It is a matter that has exercised my mind, and troubled me deeply, from the day my first article appeared on Politicsweb in December 2011. Since then cyber racism and bullying against me as a Politicsweb’s occasional contributor has not just rained on me in the comment section of Politicsweb. It has poured cats and dogs.

I therefore cannot agree more with Blade Nzimande, my fellow dialectical materialist, when he states that “indeed cyber racism is rife today.”

This is so, so true.

One nevertheless hopes that Blade Nzimande would understand that many amongst South Africans would rather they did not confront the pressing challenge of cyber racism specifically, and indeed broader societal racism in general. Some amongst us seek to play ostrich when faced with this debate they find uncomfortable.

In this context, this is what The Citizen’s Martin Williams recently wrote on 10 December 2014 in that daily, under the title ‘There’s no “us” and “them”‘:

“Race, race, race – it’s being shoved down our throats. After a survey showing most South African whites don’t think apartheid was a crime against humanity, there has been an onslaught against white denialism. If you are white and you say you are not racist, you are in denial. If you are not overly racist, you are subliminally racist. If you challenge the survey, you are being defensive. No escape. The logic is circular and self-fulfilling. You can’t penetrate this shield by citing your own experience.”

It is not quite clear what Martin Williams means when he states that “…there has been an onslaught against white denialism.” What is undeniable is that there has indeed been racism denialism by some white South Africans, perhaps most infamously epitomized by Steve Hofmeyer’s offensive statement that blacks were the architects of apartheid.

Whilst Nzimande’s article correctly sets out the broad, general principles and parameters of the issue of abominable cyber bullying, racism, sexism and discrimination of all kinds, and invites us to debate the matter further, I shall confine myself to providing concrete, lived examples of how I have been subjected to unremitting cyber bullying and outright cyber racism on the comment section of Politicsweb, in reaction to many of my articles published by the esteemed online journal.

I hope that in doing so, I shall not only honor Nzimande’s timely invitation to us to engage in this important debate, but that I shall also enrich the debate further.

I do concede that I have myself in turn been called an online “racist”, in response to some of my articles and comments on Politicsweb. This for me is another, more complicated example of how cyber racists and bullies seek to cloth themselves in the hallowed gowns of cyber victimhood, whilst they are and remain cyber bullies and perpetrators of online racism, and certainly the initiators of these deplorable pathologies.

And what is more, unlike bloggers on Politicsweb’s comment section, I always posted my comments under my names, and not under the cover of nom de guerre, or some one or other anonymity.

And this is an important distinction to draw as well, in the context of discussing cyber racism and cyber bullying.

What has puzzled me no end, as my interview with the Star’s Helen Grange indicates, is why I have been subjected to cyber bullying and racism in particular by bloggers who pretend and assume that they are advancing the cause of Helen Zille’s Democratic Alliance (DA).

This is not to accuse either Helen Zille or the DA of cyber bullying and racism. Not at all. Nor is it to accuse either of hiring a rented “cyber mob” to do their dirty work online against one of their constant critics. Far it be from me to level such an accusation.

This is however my attempt to show how some who fancy and project themselves as admirers and defenders of the DA or Helen Zille allow themselves to impermissibly lapse into undisguised and misguided cyber racism and or cyber bullying, without being called to order by leaders or representatives of the DA.

This should not stand. Because, as Blade Nzimande states, “indeed cyber racism is rife today.”

At no point during the many online racist or misanthropic attacks by these racist cyber trolls on my person and articles have I seen a single instance when the DA leadership or card-carrying members join the fray to distance the party and themselves from these online racist bullies, whom at one point I was impelled by the brutality of their offensive online attacks to characterize as “the vile racist scumbags” and “drunken racist howlers” and “racist online lynch mob.”

It is obviously impossible to write here about each and every instance when I felt a victim of cyber bullying and racism on Politicsweb’s comment section.

But I shall use the example of one, anonymous, and particularly vicious “Sad Days” Politicsweb blogger, who has been a real, consistent persecutor of my Politicsweb online persona. I easily view “Sad Days”, whoever he or she is in real life, as my chief online racist tormentor by a long shot.

I shall share some of “Sad Days” online racist provocations directed at me just to affirm and underline the veracity of the general point Blade Nzimande was making in his article about the need to confront cyber racism headon. But Politicsweb’s “Sad Days” stands out as arguably the chief admirer and praise-singer of DA’s Helen Zille, occasionally in such offensive panegyrics for Helen Zille, which bother either on Helen Zille’s alter-ego or doppelganger, possibly done so to confuse Politicsweb’s readers as to the true identity of “Sad Days”, whilst painting Helen Zille in bad light.

It is “Sad Days”‘ cyber infatuation with Helen Zille, as I shall demonstrate below, which riles, whilst he/she never hesitates to raise his/her left hand to plunge a racist cyber dagger against my online person.

And this is what makes “Sad Days”‘ cyber racism and bullying particularly so dangerous, offensive and intolerable – this insistence on his/her part that he/she is the great admirer and defender of Helen Zille and the DA, under the cover afforded by cyber anonymity.

Some of the DA leader Helen Zille’s utterances and attitudes on the cyber space have not been particularly helpful themselves either, and may have unwittingly given cover, if not succor, to the kind of cyber bullying and racism that emanate from the likes of Politicsweb’s “Sad Days”. I shall also demonstrate this below.

To the best of my knowledge, Helen Zille or the DA has not once called “Sad Days” to order on the comment section of Politicsweb for such an atrocious defence of the DA and its leader, on account of his/her cyber racism and bullying.

This is the tragedy of it all.

Unless Helen Zille or the DA was playing possum at some point in the recent life of Politicsweb, which thing I think is beyond either, quite frankly.

PART ONE

Politicsweb blogger “Sad Days”, like many online and anonymous bloggers, who abuse cyber space for some nebulous and perfidious ends, would do well to recall these words of one of Germany’s foremost authors of the 20th century, Gunter Grass:

“Even if an author eventually becomes dependent upon the characters he creates, he must answer for their deeds and misdeeds.” (Quoted by John Irving, International Herald Tribune, ‘Grass’s (sic) shocking revelation? Not really’, 7-8 July 2007, page 8).

Ideally, this pearl of wisdom of Gunter Grass should become cyber space’s guiding motto.

But alas!

Here are some of the examples of the cyber racism and bullying I am talking about from the side of “Sad Days”:

Reacting to my Politicsweb three-part article “The Sorry State of South Africa’s Opposition Parties”, “Sad Days” posted this comment to my article on 05 March 2014 at 20:02:

“Isaac talks cr@p and loves to have a dig at the DA at every opportunity – what’s more, he can’t write – I am sure Sepedi and Seswana (sic) also uses (sic) full stops. This is basic stuff for anyone wanting to write. If he writes better in his home language, then he can do that on a forum that is read by people who read those languages. I suspect however, that he writes just as badly in his own language as he does in English.”

What is interesting about this statement is that it is itself written in very bad English grammar, as indicated by the bracketed “sic”. If we therefore studiously followed “Sad Days”‘ own recommendation, “Sad Days” himself/herself should not post comments on Politicsweb, because of his/her poor English grammatical form. But do we want to be that pedantic? Really? Secondly, my alleged “non-fluent English”, as “Sad Days” called it, arrogates to him/her the right to decide that my first language cannot be English, as if a black African and Ghana-originated British Ambassador to South Africa with the surname Boateng cannot claim English as his “home language.” It is deliberate racist profiling, which must be rejected with the stale-dog-vomit-covered contempt it deserves. And “Sad Days” decides that because he/she reckons I am “anti-DA’, he/she should shaft me aside to some corner where writing happens only in the black African languages of Sepedi and what he/she calls “Seswana”, another bad spelling by someone claiming supremacist knowledge of sorts. Evidently, if you follow the logic of “Sad Days”, Politicsweb must be the platform used only by those who can command the British Queen’s lingua franca flawlessly. And it is not difficult to suspect what “Sad Days” thinks will be the skin colour and race of such a group of people.

No wonder this long-running attitude of “Sad Days” regarding my “home language” had earlier led to another Politcsweb blogger, Kevin Vollenhoven, to post this thoughtful comment to my Politicsweb article ‘Helen Zille and the “professional blacks” slur’ on 05 January 2012 at 08:26, in reaction to the sustained cyber bullying and racism that was perpetrated by the likes of “Sad Days” at the time:

“Only one commentator responded to the substance. This maybe makes the point about how people still look at your name, your colour and then decided whether they will listen to you. Tongue in cheek, I still think there are rather still many of our citizens who cannot take smart darkies who can string more than two words together. To them, we should be groveling like the ‘Uncle Thom’ slaves…”

In the same comment above on 05 March 2014, “Sad Days” permitted himself/herself to release this pathetic panegyric directed at the DA leader Helen Zille, in reaction to my constructive criticism of Helen Zille’s leadership of the DA as the country’s official opposition:

“Zille is probably the most visionary leader SA has had in decades, so to go on about the DA needing visionary leadership is just total nonsense. To say the DA is in crisis when it has never been so powerful, is again the words of someone who is pretty clueless.”

On 05 January 2012, in reaction to my Politicsweb article ‘Helen Zille and the “professional blacks” slur’, “Sad Days” posted this praise-singing about Helen Zille:

“It takes a politician of Zille’s magnitude to have the courage to confront such important issues in South Africa.”

Earlier in the same comment, “Sad Days” had written the following about me:

“For someone who is desperately trying to be politically authoritative about Helen Zille, I do wish he would at least learn to spell her name correctly”. This whilst “Sad Days” had misspelt the black African name of another DA-supporting and Helen Zille-admiring blogger on the same thread, who sought to tie my arguments in cross-hairs, a matter I pointed out to.

Very interestingly, here is how Helen Zille, in her 02 March 2014 Daily Maverick article, complains about misspelling of her name by a tweep on Twitter:

“Then there is the ubiquitous ‘F’ word. “Zile (sic) fuck you” is one of the milder tweets I received on this subject – I was tempted to reply “Not until you learn how to spell my name” – but I resisted.

Any similarities between “Sad Days” and Helen Zille’s complaints about how Zille’s surname is misspelt by me and by a tweep haranguing her on Twitter? Is rocket science required to hazard an answer to this question? Duh.

But the point is about “Sad Days”‘ unrelenting panegyrics for Helen Zille. Totally in bad taste.

Look at this one in the same comment, where alter ego-tripping and doppleganger-ing between Helen Zille and “Sad Days” are dangerously blurred and made interchangeable by “Sad Days”:

“Incidentally, follow Zille on Twitter – she is very impressive”. (05 January 2012, 08:33)

As if not convinced that his/her Twitter advice was clearly understood and taken seriously, “Sad Days” returned on the same day at 11:33 with this pathetically groveling pro-Helen Zille online comment, written in response to a comment by another blogger calling ‘herself’ “Jane”:

“How old are you that you don’t understand the power of Twitter…it is political gold for a capable politician to be able to interact with her supporters. 100 000 SA citizens want to interact with the hardest working, most caring, most available politician in South Africa. In the old days a politician gave speeches to a few supporters in dusty halls – nowadays, at your fingertips, you can communicate with hundred voters. Maybe you should follow her and you too will start to understand what is going on here http://twitter.com/HelenZille”.

Huh? Is there a scintilla of something of a give-away in this online post by “Sad Days” regarding his/her true identity? An unintended alter-ego revelation? Failed and collapsed Janus-faces?

I wonder.

In reaction to my Politicsweb article “Lindiwe Mazibuko: An Assessment’, “Sad Days” dismissively wrote this about me and the Centre for Economic Diplomacy In Africa (CEDIA) I founded:

“So I guess we have to assume you invented the name of an organization that sounds important and promptly made yourself its ‘executive director'”

Again very interestingly, this is how Helen Zille dismissively wrote about another tweep in her 02 March 2014 Daily Maverick article:

“Take @dayjoyskillz, whose twitter bio describes him as a journalist, or, more pretentiously, a “Creative Partner @E- touch News”.

In the world of “Sad Days” and Helen Zille, ostensibly standing and writing worlds apart in place and time, both @dayjoyskillz and myself share this common trait to want to “pretentiously” hoist upon ourselves bombastic titles that in fact hide some empty-shell organisational existence

But what is striking, and almost unmistakable is the near-similarity in the phraseologies of “Sad Days” and Helen Zille.

Is this all per chance? Or is it some unacknowledged, unrecognised telepathy between “Sad Days” and Helen Zille? Voice-over acting?

But what is wrong, one must ask, under our country’s Companies Act, in setting up a company and making yourself its executive director, if you happened to be the sole member of such a company? Did I have to make “Sad Days”, or his/her publicly declared political hero, CEDIA’s executive director?

It truly boggles the mind, this chicanery of “Sad Days” in cyber space.

But here is what DA’s Helen Zille wrote in her Daily Maverick article of 02 March 2014, under the title ‘If you can’t take heat…”, which article contained nuggets that bear striking similarities to the cyber bullying writing of “Sad Days”.

She (Helen Zille) wrote that “…today I can reach in a single tweet more than double the weekly circulation of her newspaper” (“her” being Carien du Plessis of City Press).

“Sad Days” puts it this way: “…100 000 SA citizens want to interact with the hardest working, most caring, most available politician in South Africa”.

If you take it that City Press’s weekly circulation is between 40 000-50 000, and Helen Zille boasts that she “…can reach in a single tweet more than double the weekly circulation of her paper” (meaning City Press), whilst “Sad Days” counsels that “100 000 SA citizens want to interact with the hardest working, most caring, most available politician in South Africa”, you can see how the lines between the online “Sad Days” and the real Helen Zille get burred and confusing.

Half a dozen of one thing and six of the other?

Earlier on 31 December 2011 at 08:21, “Sad Days” posted this comment to another blogger, in response to my article on Lindiwe Mazibuko:

“Even though I am a man, I have to agree with you about the impressive DA women. In politics, it appears to me that political men nowadays are often disappointments…It is women who simply get on and get the job done. Especially in the DA.”

This is either an acute case of a self-hating man, or one of the worst examples of craven sexism, or just a self-promotional ego-trip across cyber space by a narcissistic self-admirer or self-promoter.

And this desire to declare one’s sex before making a point on Politicsweb’s comment section, so utterly irrelevant to any argument, because it is so deeply sexist, is almost unheard of. It might just as well have been a red herring, quite plausibly.

Whatever the case may be, it is clear Politicsweb’s “Sad Days” blogger is in love with DA’s Helen Zille, and unashamedly so; in the process completely oblivious to Alice in Wonderland’s dictum that “it’s no use…to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”

And being respectable and respectful in cyber space is the first bold act towards renouncing cyber racism, bullying and discrimination of any form.

Or “Sad Days” is oblivious to the words of the old song that kept ringing through Alice’s head like the ticking of a clock, and that she could hardly help saying them out loud, to quote Carroll Lewis:

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle”.

When will Helen Zille do battle with “Sad Days” in cyber space? Can’t she see “Sad Days” is spoiling her “new rattle” by constantly presenting himself/herself as her alter ego? And here, I am not at all advising that Helen Zille should do nothing else but go ratty and throw herself in a hissy-fit every time “Sad Days” goes racially hocus-pocus online.

In her angry Daily Maverick article of 02 March 2014, Helen Zille makes the hugely startling accusation against journalists that it is “…difficult to distinguish the parasite from the host.”

Unfortunately, it gets similarly difficult to also distinguish “Sad Days” – the online parasite – from some of Helen Zille’s host-tweets, in the same way Zille wrote about the difficulty of distinguishing “the parasite” from “the host”, when she referred to some journalists she apparently intensely detests and spectacularly dislikes. This ‘umbilical relationship’ – the relationship of a parasite to a host – that “Sad Days” seeks to insinuate and impugn online between himself/herself and Helen Zille and the DA, is given a morbid colour by this statement of Zille in Daily Maverick:

“The DA, like all political parties, has its ‘dial-a-quote’ brigade who love seeing their ‘anonymous’ spin described as information emanating from ‘senior insiders'”.

Greatly provoked by Helen Zille’s twitter war against her, City Press’ Carien du Plessis, in a tweet of 24 February 2014, posted at 07:04, wrote that @helenzille’s tweets were “…bordering on defamation.”

City Press’ editor, Ferial Haffajee, in turn called @helenzille tweets “…a bad bout of cyber bullying.”

And I level against online “Sad Days”, word for word, the same weathering accusations which Carien du Plessis and Ferial Haffajee, respectively, threw at Helen Zille, for “Sad Days” blogger’s online Politicsweb comments about me and my articles, which “…border on defamation” and are “a bout of cyber bullying.”

Exactament!

So, I say “Sad Days” is a cyber bully. Ferial Haffajee says Helen Zille suffered ” a bad bout of cyber bullying.” So I say “Sad Days” defames me. And Carien du Plessis alleges that Helen Zille tweeted things that “…border on defamation.”

Similarities there too, no doubt, in my humble but subjective opinion. Yes, striking similarities.

Is “Sad Days” one of the DA’s embedded and implanted ‘dial-a-quote’ cyber brigade trolls, about which Helen Zille boasted in her 02 March 2014 Daily Maverick article?

It sure does look, walk, waddle, swim, quack and claque that way, if you ask me, given “Sad Days”‘ endless and relentless panegyrics for Helen Zille and the DA, at the slightest urge, whilst unfailingly taking disgusting and uncalled for digs at any online critic of the DA and Helen Zille, including myself, on Politicsweb comment section, at the slightest fall of his/her hat.

Paradoxes abound.

Why is this online monkey “Sad Days” clinging so tenaciously on Helen Zille’s back, to paraphrase a famous saying? And when will this online monkey be rudely and unceremoniously shaken off and brutally thrown away by Helen Zille? This is not like a matter of a shadow and a tree?

Or is it?

“Sad Days” is undoubtedly a cyber bully, racist and tormentor of great, infamous note. He/she embodies and epitomizes all the worst socio-pathologies of cyber space about which Blade Nzimande wrote. “Sad Days” oozes and breathes subliminal racism.

Sometimes the similarity in the phraseology of “Sad Days” and the real Helen Zille is truly unfortunate, startling and uncanny. In fact it borders perilously on the act of a ventriloquist.

In response to my Politicsweb article ‘Lindiwe Mazibuko: An Assessment’, “Sad Days” bitterly commented, as he/she damned me, in the following terms:

“We all know that when the ANC runs out of ideas, they pull out the race card.” (27 December 2011, 06:58).

This sounds very much like one of Helen Zille’s infamous, tired and befuddled political mantras against the ruling ANC.

On 06 January 2012, at 01:15, “Sad Days” wrote the following about me:

“…people are reacting to you because you speak such cr@p. You are just a bad ANC propagandist.”

In her 02 March 2014 Daily Maverick article, Helen Zille states that “analysis and opinion have been liberated from the self-appointed, self-referential journalistic elite, called ‘political commentators'”.

“Sad Days” speaks of “a bad ANC propagandist”, whilst Helen Zille writes that “political commentators” are “…still stuck in the anti-DA rhetoric of the late 1990s”.

ANC propagandist and anti-DA rhetoric. Two sides of the same coin.

The thought process similarities are persuasive, if not overwhelming.

Needless to say, I have never worked as, or considered myself “a bad ANC propagandist”, whatever that means. In conferring on me this tittle, “Sad Days” merely revealed his/her God-complex syndrome on cyber space.

In her article ‘Zille goes to Twitter War’ of 25 February 2014, the Mail & Guardian’s Verashni Pillay wrote that “things started getting personal when Zille, the leader of the party that preaches non-racialism, surprised everyone by bringing Du Plessis’s (sic) race into the discussion.”

A leader of the party that preaches non-racism surprised “everyone” by bringing someone’s race into discussion? Was she “re-racialising” our national politics?

This is huge. This is momentous. This is phenomenological.

Is it enough of a smoking gun regarding crass cyber racism and bullying? You be the judge.

I was similarly surprised when few years back “Sad Days” brought up my race into the discussion by suggesting that I should rather post my articles not on Politicsweb, because of my alleged “non-fluent English”, and that I should rather post them on fora where people can read Sepedi and “Seswana” (sic).

Again the thought process similarities are persuasive, if not overwhelming.

Alter ego-tripping? Or doppelganger-ing? In the circumstances, these are indeed unavoidable questions that cry out loud for good answers.

The patience of every person is not limitless.

Neither is mine.

Subjected to these unrelenting cyber bullying and racist torments on the comment section of Politicsweb by the likes of “Sad Days”, on 05 January 2012 at 23:03, I snapped and posted this energetic retort:

“My advice to the DA: watch out against these white racist scum that uses the anonymity afforded by online communication to push white supremacist and racially bigoted obscenities and profanities against black people they differ with. And DA, remember, the same racist scum today denies, to one man, that it ever votted (sic) Apartheid parties into power. Tomorrow they will again deny they voted DA into power in Cape Town and the Western Cape. Because they are contemptible cowards, otherwise they would not hide behind the pseudonyms online. They got the trailer-trash and low-life morality of a vile white racist scum we defeated under apartheid.”

Already then, I was underlining what I saw as an emerging and highly disturbing connection being established by trolls like “Sad Days” between their bullying and racism in cyber space, and their ostensible political support for Helen Zille and the DA. And I was calling the DA leadership’s attention to this deplorable cyber space development in the name of the DA and Helen Zille, but to no avail.

In fact, in the morning of 06 January 2012, at 08:56, I posted the following angry riposte to my online racist bullies and tormentors, like “Sad Days”:

“The more foolish among the drunken racist and heckling mob above idiotically but mistakenly believe that they can be white supremacist racists by night (online) and DA and Helen Zille “black-boetie-boetie” pseudo-democrats by day. Thinking that the cover of online pseudonyms is impregnable and unbridgeable they engage in the most shameful and unrestraint intellectual intimidation and online racist bully (sic), hunting online like a pack of unprovoked and hungry wild dogs, for any online critic of Helen Zille, DA, Cape Town and the Western Cape government under the DA. In light of WikiLeaks techno advances, it will soon be possible to expose the true identities of these vile and insufferable online, racist scumbags above.”

For every action, a reaction. Indeed, so eternally true.

On the same morning, on the same day, at 09:56 I posted this deeply critical but cautionary comment on Politicsweb’s comment section:

“The real political scandal in the country will then be that behind this or that pseudonym, it was this Western Cape politician, or that Editor, or this national CEO, or that TV (sic), this Rector etc.”

From these examples I have provided of cyber racism and bullying, as rightly raised by Blade Nzimande in his recent article, it is indisputable that this issue is urgent and vital.

It indeed needs to be tackled post-haste. It certainly cannot be treated as if it is an article of poste restante, for some future collection and resolution, because it can be quietly parked somewhere in an air-conditioned office.

Hell, no. No, no, no!

CONCLUSION

In an outstanding chapter 5, entitled ‘Chrysalis – The Life and Death Of The African Renaissance In A Zambian Internet’, which is an integral part of his must-read book ‘Global Shadows – Africa In The Neoliberal World Order’, James Ferguson makes this vital point about the elite contributors and bloggers of, as well as online discussions on Chrysalis, a short-lived Zambian online African Renaissance publication, which was similar to Politicsweb in several material aspects:

“It is obvious that the discussions of such a narrow and atypical group tell us very little about how Zambians in general have thought about the recent crisis. But they may tell us a great deal about the efforts of some of Zambia’s new elites to remake a national identity that would conform to the economic and political conditions of the new times. They may also perhaps help us to understand why it has been so difficult – and not only in Zambia – to develop viable national identities and ideologies under conditions of actually existing neoliberalism.”

This is a very cogent point James Ferguson makes.

So it is important to remember that the challenges of cyber racism, sexism and other forms of cyber discrimination are not unique only to South Africa. They are as universally prevalent as the internet is globally omnipresent.

It is also worth bearing in mind that these challenges in South Africa obtain in conditions of broad societal transformation and transition under the economically-dominant neoliberal order in our post-apartheid country.

These challenges are also a reflection of national contestations about, and constraints on, the acquisition and exercise of hegemony over society, as well as about the all-encompassing patterns regarding society’s either inclusionary or exclusionary postures – ideologies, identities, freedoms, elite rituals, power manifestations, influence projection and the battles over the broad future trajectory of the country.

They are often nothing more than furious shadow-boxing and positioning in the dark between various elite and class interests dominant in our country’s politics and economics.

Most importantly, these challenges attest to the fact that post-apartheid South Africa too has what James Ferguson calls the ‘Question Mark Generation’ and the ‘Chrysalis Generation’, and that the two generations are in close-combat duel about the correct political and developmental perspective for South Africa’s development going forward.

What is also clear though is that Politicsweb blogger “Sad Days” and his cyber ilk belong to the Question Mark Generation, and not the Chrysalis Generation, of Africa. For them, South Africa “…is a question mark.”

Their despicable cyber behavior is a testimony to this.

And in their varied reactions to Blade Nzimande’s on-spot article ‘It’s time to confront cyber racism’, the cyber racists and bullies need to remember these eternal words of Morocco in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:

“Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun,
To whom I am neighbor , and next bred.”

——-END——-

14th Cedia blog
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
17th January 2015

Written by:

Mr Isaac Mpho Mogotsi
Founder and Executive Chairman
Centre for Economic Diplomacy In Africa (CEDIA)
And
SEDIA Research NOT FOR PROFIT (NPC)
http://centreforeconomicdiplomacy.WordPress.com
Email address: cedia.mail@gmail.com
Cell number : +27 72 912 9311
Pay-Off-Line : Dynamic Thought, Positive Action

NB: ‘SEDIA’ stands for ‘School of Economic Diplomacy and International Affairs’.

(Mr Isaac Mpho Mogotsi’s Profile can be found at http://centreforeconomicdiplomacy.WordPress.com and by clicking on the icons).