1. The NNP (New National Party) have hired Juan Duval Uys as their media liason.

Mr. Uys has been accused of being behind the SA Male Prostitute blog, where a male prostitute named Skye provided details of his liaisons with famous South African politicians and sportsmen. Skye’s disclosures would either be slander (if false), or a gross invasion of privacy (if true). But that’s not all. Uys is also alleged (a word that must precede any mention of him, in any context) to be Neil Watson, the man behind Crime Expo South Africa, a website that attempted to paint the gloomiest picture of SA possible, often using dodgy stats and false testimony to do so. The website has since been suspended, due to allegedly containing abusive content.

Having said that, I suppose the NNP wouldn’t see any of this as a problem.

2. New Contrast

New Contrast used to be – and sometimes still is – a fine local literary journal. They have, however, allowed their domain registration to lapse, and it’s now the home of some fine link-spammage and advertising for mortgages and other tawdriness. I’d provide the link, but I fear I may be putting money in the pocket of Juan Duval Uys by doing so – it’s journalname.org if you want to check it out, though.

In a further indictment of our literary culture, the burgeoning local-lit site Book.co.za links “New Contrast” in its sidebar.

.org registrations cost $8.99 per year.

3. And, yesterday in Parliament, an opposition MP was thrown out, then today suspended, for asking of our Health Minister whether she was convicted of theft in 1976, while working in a hospital in Botswana. I’ve heard the recording of the session, and many of the news reports don’t do justice to the extreme intolerance for debate demonstrated by the Speaker, a member of the ANC majority. As you’ve no doubt read elsewhere, there are various significant concerns regarding the Health Minister – not least that she may be utterly insane. More prosaically, she may have jumped the queue for a liver transplant, which she needed due to her alchoholism. She may also be a kleptomaniac. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the new liver is taking strain, but I have no new news on her (alleged!) acquisitive tendencies.

Anyway, I think asking for confirmation of these allegations of theft is a fair question for an opposition MP to put to the Health Minister. If not such questions, it’s unclear what the opposition is supposed to do.

This peculiar relationship stems, in part, from a deep confusion between the various conceptual elements that make up a modern “democracy”. Most democracies tend to subscribe to a loose set of Liberal values (most notably, the idea that people themselves, rather than simply their votes, are equal in worth), but these values are not required for a democracy. Similarly, the common commitment to various rights is not an essential feature of democracy.

Democracy is perfectly consistent with dictatorship, so long as the dictator in question was voted in freely and fairly. So why is it that the blurring of these definitions has become so commonplace in modern political discourse? One suggestion could be that it’s an attempt to avoid the negative connotations of Liberalism, as it seems that many hold the confused view that Liberalism by definition involves an impersonal and uncaring social order, or that Liberalism by default comes packaged with the most explotative forms of capitalism. But these are other strange blends of ideologies or stances that don’t, in fact, need to be blended at all, even though it’s of course true that capitalism tends to be bundled with liberalism.

So do these concepts tend to be blurred because people just aren’t paying attention, and they sincerely believe that democracy = individual equality, or that liberalism = capitalism? Or is this rebranding of democracy a subtle – and sinister – way to introduce policies that may otherwise not enjoy the majority vote if more clearly defined? For the US example, democracy comes bundled with an antipathy to rights inequalities, so strongly patriarchal states would rarely be credited as being democratic. Accreditation as a “democracy” also seems to be bundled with the requirement to be pro-American (as opposed to the alternative: supporters of terrorism).

And on Saturday, here in South Africa, the recently elected Mayor of Cape Town had chairs, bricks and stones hurled at her by people allegedly wearing the T-shirts of the State’s ruling party – the same party that fought so hard for democracy, and for whom a key complaint against the National Party government had been that their voices were silenced through force and intimidation. Has our democracy then so quickly become just like that of George Bush, where – regardless of whether you were elected democratically or not – unless you do and say as some bully wants, that bully will attempt to stone or bomb you into submission?

Something we didn’t think of during the conversation was that perhaps complaint can itself be characterised as a course of action, albeit on the very thin end of the wedge. If you complain loudly and for long enough, perhaps someone with more energy will take some action. Or perhaps that’s one way in which we justify never doing anything ourselves, in that there’s always some hypothetical other who will take on the battle for us.

The same argument used against those who say “my vote can’t make a difference” can be re-deployed here – and we can perhaps say that the avoidance of action in terms of remedying the things that piss us off will invariably result in nothing changing, or in things changing at a far slower pace than they otherwise could. Unfortunately, the voting argument is quite possibly a bad one, as pointed out by Levitt and Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics. Perhaps it’s simply true that the vast majority of us can’t make a difference, and resignation – whether Stoic or not – is the only rational option.

I’ve been telling myself for years now that despite all evidence to the contrary, my activity in the classroom does help in effecting change. But thinking about last night’s conversation, I realise that regardless of this belief’s truth or falsity, there is a potentially deeper problem – one involving logical consistency, a principle I espouse at every opportunity. The problem relates to one basic lesson I teach my students: that unless there is evidence for a belief, that belief should usually be discarded. And I frequently fail to see students take the full significance of the material I introduce them to to heart – they typically pay attention for just long enough to pass their exams, and when I meet them a year or two later, nothing seems to have had a lasting impression.

Of course there are exceptions, and every teacher will tell you of the small proportion of good students who allegedly make it all worthwhile. But if the proportion is small, perhaps it’s the case that my intervention made no difference, and that these students would always have come around to “my” way of thinking in any case – making the lasting and major effect of my teaching the hordes of disgruntled students, resentful at having been forced to sit through these abstract lessons while they could have been learning how to make money faster.

So I don’t know. I’ll probably keep on trying for a good while still, but that’s perhaps more due to my own apathy in being reluctant to shake life up by engaging with alternate careers. And then, it’s quite possible that the same frustrations will recur in any alternate career in any case. The simplest solution may well be for me to learn to simply complain, whether or not I intend to perform any actions. But part of me – the most convincing part – says that doing so will mean capitulation to the ignorance of the day. Capitulating may make me a more popular teacher (or person), but if I were to do so, I could no longer imagine having myself as a friend…

1. I have many more issues with the ANC’s candidate, who appears to be a moron, than with her party.

2. I have many more issues with the DA as a party, who appear to have steadily forsaken their Liberalism, than with their candidate.

3. Grindrod (the ID’s candidate) has the misfortune of a possessing a physiognomy that makes him appear utterly untrustworthy (and also makes you wonder whether he’s quite done with causing playground squabbles).

Assuming that the personality, rather than the party, is likely to have the most impact on a mayoral level, I suppose it will come as no suprise that I’ll be voting DA.