Will South Africa Be Okay?. Jan-Jan Joubert

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ vulgar, despicable and racist.

      Furthermore, the FF Plus learnt and shamelessly stole from the DP campaign of 1999, as shown by the ‘Slaan terug’ (Hit back/Fight back) slogan. It was a simple, negative, somewhat childlike campaign. Fight back with what? With ten MPs? And do people really still buy such infantile slogans as ‘Now or never’? Is ten seats ‘now’, or is it ‘never’? But this strategy undeniably worked for the FF Plus, so good for them.

      What the FF Plus articulated was a kind of unfocused rage and exasperation on the part of some – and I emphasise some – Afrikaners. It’s a sentiment I won’t pretend to share – it’s fundamentally not how I was raised – but it’s something to which I am regularly exposed by virtue of my work and that I seek to understand to the best of my ability. By openly declaring that I don’t share it, I’m not trying to delegitimise it either. So let’s see how we can try to put this rage into words without identifying with it.

      It is, in brief, the feeling that you are blamed for everything that goes wrong in South Africa while in actual fact you are doing your best to make everything work by personally working hard. It is the feeling that your children will be blamed forever for a past they had no part in. And it’s the feeling that the current government is really incapable of improving the country because infrastructure is collapsing, few new things of value are being created, foreign investors are scared off, domestic investors are chased off, productivity isn’t valued and there is little economic growth, so what will be left after everything has been redistributed?

      If these frustrations, which are experienced by any rational person to a greater or lesser extent, start dominating your political thinking and directing your political choice, they turn into a kind of desperate rage that has found an unexpected echo and the appearance of an acceptable face in the anti-immigrant parties of Europe, the Brexit movement in Britain, and the Trump grouping in the United States. It’s a hitherto unfashionable school of thought which has acquired a voice (and hence votes) and is now becoming cocksure – who knows for how long. A strange characteristic of this grouping is that they have a plethora of platforms they use continuously, and yet they believe they are not being heard. They want to articulate their rage repeatedly, actually blare it out like a car without a silencer, and if you don’t agree with them, they think it’s because you don’t understand them. But you do understand – that’s why you disagree with them!

      While anyone can appreciate the frustrations of such voters, many people get stuck on where the FF Plus votes came from and neglect to ask where those votes are going. What message do they send, and what are the consequences for the future? We Afrikaners have always been good at navel-gazing and articulating what we think of ourselves. But in the process we all too often forget that our behaviour isn’t just a mirror for ourselves. It’s also a window for others. What others see determines their behaviour towards us. We don’t live on an Afrikaner island. Actions have consequences. Where are these votes going?

      What do others see in this Afrikaner voter behaviour? One of the instances of myth-making in which the FF Plus, to their credit, has been very successful is that their behaviour doesn’t offend others. I often wonder where people get that idea from. There are countless examples of behaviour that indeed comes across to others as deeply offensive, but the FF Plus manages to keep quiet about it, or maybe they are so self-centred that they fail to detect it, possibly because that’s not how they meant it. Maybe they simply don’t care what other people think. But communication science teaches us that the transmission of a message (an encoding) occurs in three phases. First there is the encoding, that which you intend to convey. Then the message is sent and decoded on the other side by the receiver. Decoding is how the receiver interprets and understands the message. Actions have consequences.

      Whether or not a message is offensive is defined entirely by the receiver (decoder). For the sender (encoder) of the message to try and define it is already an indication of a conceited lack of understanding. Just as you can’t ask the DA what went wrong with their election message, you can’t ask the FF Plus how their behaviour is experienced by others.

      Here is one example (among many) of such a reality check. A few days before the 2019 general election, the FF Plus held a media conference in parliament about their failed attempt to have Black First Land First (BLF) removed from the ballot paper because BLF discriminates on the grounds of race. Incidentally, in this case the FF Plus is definitely right – it really is a simple issue. What was instructive, however, was how black journalists experienced and reacted to the media conference. They felt it constituted bitter irony, out-and-out opportunism and more than a little dishonesty that the FF Plus suddenly stood up for non-racialism. I’m talking here about the perceptions of people I have come to know across the board as moderate, reconciliatory, non-racialist and informed – their perception of the FF Plus (as little as many FF Plus voters may intend or even realise this) corresponds to how many whites perceive the BLF: as racial bigots. This is also how the decision to vote in favour of the FF Plus is experienced even by moderate black voters and opinion formers – this is how it is decoded, even by someone such as the leading thinker Mondli Makhanya, who was rewarded for his efforts to explain this to Rapport’s readers by being reviled in a follow-up article by one Stephanie van Niekerk from Pretoria. Makhanya probably wonders why he even bothered.

      But all of us write our own future. The FF Plus now has its ten members in the National Assembly and their behaviour will determine its fate, and the fate of its voters in the broader context. Of the ten, several are undoubtedly competent and we can even get excited about two of the newcomers, Wynand Boshoff and Philip van Staden. Perhaps they will make a positive contribution. It will depend on their behaviour. Only then will one be able to finally determine where the votes for the FF Plus are headed. For as the FF Plus may perhaps learn over time, the self-glorifying flames of ‘I vote for my own people’ all too often carry with them the ashes of reciprocity. If you are so keen on hitting, the bigger okes will hit back when they grow sick and tired of the bickering bantamweight – actions have consequences.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4R4QRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgABwESAAMAAAABAAEAAAEaAAUAAAABAAAAYgEbAAUAAAABAAAA agEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAExAAIAAAAkAAAAcgEyAAIAAAAUAAAAlodpAAQAAAABAAAArAAAANgALcbA AAAnEAAtxsAAACcQQWRvYmUgUGhvdG9zaG9wIENDIDIwMTkgKE1hY2ludG9zaCkAMjAxOToxMDow OCAwMzo1MTo0OQAAAAADoAEAAwAAAAH//wAAoAIABAAAAAEAAAZAoAMABAAAAAEAAAoAAAAAAAAA AAYBAwADAAAAAQAGAAABGgAFAAAAAQAAASYBGwAFAAAAAQAAAS4BKAADAAAAAQACAAACAQAEAAAA AQAAATYCAgAEAAAAAQAAHNIAAAAAAAAASAAAAAEAAABIAAAAAf/Y/+0ADEFkb2JlX0NNAAH/7gAO QWRvYmUAZIAAAAAB/9sAhAAMCAgICQgMCQkMEQsKCxEVDwwMDxUYExMVExMYEQwMDAwMDBEMDAwM DAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMAQ0LCw0ODRAODhAUDg4OFBQODg4OFBEMDAwMDBERDAwM DAwMEQwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAz/wAARCACgAGQDASIAAhEBAxEB/90ABAAH /8QBPwAAAQUBAQEBAQEAAAAAAAAAAwABAgQFBgcICQoLAQABBQEBAQEBAQAAAAAAAAABAAIDBAUG BwgJCgsQAAEEAQMCBAIFBwYIBQMMMwEAAhEDBCESMQVBUWETInGBMgYUkaGxQiMkFVLBYjM0coLR QwclklPw4fFj

СКАЧАТЬ