Whose weapon?
There's so many different worlds | So many different suns | And we have just one world | But we live in different ones.
Dire Straits | Brothers in Arms
My father, who professed himself a colonial, used to mutter of the First World: "Too much information; too little knowledge, and bugger-all wisdom." Despite his hard-wired European cultural heritage (the maxim derives from Eliot), he was an African at heart. In many ways, his cultural and visceral outlook replicated itself in me through the carrier DNA of his open-source culture. Although European, I am African. Being African, I'm happy with irony, ambiguity and paradox.
Steve Biko's above statement makes perfect sense to me.
Last Sunday evening, we dropped my youngest daughter off at the Lentegeur Adolescent Unit (LAU) in Mitchell's Plain on the Cape Flats. Fighting demons common to most teenagers, Cathryn stays at LAU during the week and comes home on weekends. An academic training facility, the LAU is the second largest adolescent psychiatric unit in South Africa. It caters for five adolescents.
And thereby hangs a tale involving a scurrilous local publication going by the name of Fair Lady [click link for article abstract], to which I have referred somewhat disparagingly in the past.We drove home towards the mountain in moderate traffic, swooshing along the national road past windswept miles of informal housing, shacks, and shanties built one on top of the other out of wood, tin, and plastic. Fire-blackened concrete barriers prevent cows, goats, horses, dogs, kids and idiots straying across the road, and mesh-covered pedestrian bridges stop rocks and other objects being lobbed at passing cars.
Because "Violet" is our daughter's friend and has, for up to six weeks, stayed with us, the article [Hormones, highs and hangovers] infers much that is way out of line. It also omits to mention all that is good, sensitive, and remarkably intelligent about our admittedly street-wise "Violet".
Shown exiting a Cape Town club, she and her boyfriend scored a couple of sandwiches and milkshakes out of their exploitation; seeminly designed purely to terrify white southern suburbs' mothers rather than get them to listen to their kids. Psychologists with whom she's had contact, other adults, family, interested school teachers, friends and, most importantly, her musician boyfriend shed no light on V's plight or the up side to this creative young girl's life.
Through its failure to accentuate—or elaborate on—the role adults play in creating such realities, the article loses the plot altogether. Possible answers to problems being experienced by kids, not written off with a 'bad prognosis' as 'V' has been, lie uncomfortably close to home, most often within the 'shocked' reader. There's very little wrong with our kids ('V' comes out of this a 'survivor'), but an examination of their criminal neglect by often clueless and usually overly wealthy parents would lead us to some hard answers worth reporting.
It's a shabby article.
It's barren, featureless dune country, separating the Table Mountain granite outcrop of the Cape Peninsula from the Malmesbury shale of the great African continent. For most Capetonians, it's home.
A youngster of about nineteen was walking towards Cape Town along the large, concrete 'blast-barrier' separating inbound and outbound traffic. He was walking unconcernedly; ambling towards the city. He was naked. In our instant of passing, he showed no distress or concern. Unpainted and wearing no loincloth, he wasn't an abakwethu, or initiate. He was merely walking to Cape Town and, although I've remembered him, I've felt little concern for him. He probably arrived, unharmed, at his destination.
The contradiction inherent in my daughter finding one of five places at a state hospital in a city of millions, where teenagers wander the streets naked or drugged or raped or beaten, does not puzzle me. What does puzzle me is our apparent need for institutions qualifying other youngsters in social work, psychology, psychiatry, etc. in a sea of deprivation, poverty, and dire need.
For some reason—probably five years' exposure to his writing, I've a feeling my Spiritual Guide and Mentor Father Christopher (FC) and RageBoy would feel quite at home in Africa. Lacking Barnes and Noble, Starbucks and cheap telecoms, I'm not so sure about Chris Locke. But, as Father Christopher's stenographer and RB's batman, Locke has little choice in the matter. It is FC who is behind most of the lucid, revelatory prose emanating from the Jesus Bunker in Boulder, so we'll stick with him.
In his post on net² (submitted by Locke), FC states: "I hope my title slug above [Biko Lives] is warranted and that the code is getting down to the people who need it most and know best what to do with it." He's a bugger, eh? He always knows which buttons to push and he always sets me to thinking (which explains his exalted status from Beijing to Brazil). And, usually, much like the man, the answers to his unstated questions comprise many, often paradoxical, but always interesting and thought-provoking parts. For the first part, I've never known FC to be a minor-league slugger. His evocation of Peter Gabriel's most beautiful song and, especially, the lyrics "Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja, | The man is dead | The man is dead" give the lie to any notion of throwaway lines.
Quoting Enoch Sontonga's Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, adopted by the ANC in 1925 to close its meetings and as our national anthem in 1994, the hymn's exhortation to the Spirit ensures Biko's survival—despite the imperialism of two centuries being neatly but unobtrusively ensconced in its words. Gabriel too, incorporates ambiguity. "Come Spirit. Take the man, for he is dead?" Possibly, but I think not. "Come Spirit. This guy's had it. It's your turn now," is more like it.
In short, and more often in frustration and anger than resignation and submission, Biko lives.
However, and this is where FC is always at his most probing, whether Biko's legacy computes to a compatibility with or need for open source or proprietary software leads to some interesting questions. And to address them, we need to view Africa from afar. We've been blessed with many great leaders, before and since Steve Biko's time. In an excellent overview of the 20th Century, Gamal Nkrumah summarizes Africa's struggle to find itself. His prognosis, based on Mandela being the only great African leader to ring in the 21st Century, is undeservedly bleak and can be ignored.
However, forecasting a forbidding future, he begs a response. Riding out the storms of neoliberal economic policies foisted on newly independent countries by new and insidious imperial tools such as the IMF, World Bank, G8 and World Economic Forum necessitates a low profile. Thabo Mbeki, for his leadership of South Africa and the direction he gives other African countries, is hugely undervalued. If we need to amend the constitution to give the man and his team a third term, why not?
See the South African president's must-read blog entry on Hamas's election victory.There's good reason for my buddy Thomas P.M. Barnett painting South Africa into the functioning Core of the Pentagon's New Map while relegating the rest of the continent to the dysfunctional Gap. Harnessing a superficial, paper-thin, broadcast media-friendly ideation of South Africa superimposed on harsh, unforgiving and incomprehensible realities, the new imperialists see the country as a springboard to Africa's untapped wealth.
Well, as they say, fuck 'em. We're busy. Mbeki and the ANC, sharing the sentiment, are playing it down the middle and balance external, predominantly economic threats against internal needs with finesse and élan.
Barnett and his neocon crazies will not have their way with us. To mangle Biko's statement: our mind is the most powerful weapon you have in your hands. Don't mess with it.
Besides Biko stands the ghost of Chris Hani, a man for these times. Centuries of interaction with our Arabic cousins have taught us the lessons of time and its tides. Despite the lingering legacies of negritude and xenophobia (racism is a nuisance we can deal with), this appreciation of the long term has led to a form of innate, continental 'consensus socialism'. It has and continues to serve us well. Not for nothing can we absolve ourselves of crimes committed over the past two hundred years against the environment and the future.
An aside on racism. Local government elections are under way. The Democratic Alliance (the residue of formerly white parties and their collaborators) has strung the streets of Cape Town and its suburbs and townships with election posters shouting "End ANC Racism" and "Take Back Your City". Hah! Were the ANC to do the same, I've no doubt as to how DA supporters would respond.
Hani was particularly well suited to reading and responding to Western attempts to subvert and subdue African liberation movements for short-term economic gain. Why does his spirit and that of Biko live on? Because both men were expressions of the people they represented. Just as the elegant, eloquent calls for calm issued by Tokyo Sexwale (deployed with Cyril Ramaphosa to the private sector) in the wake of Hani's assassination reflected the disciplined demeanour of a bereaved country, so Africa's myriad outstanding leaders mirror their people.
Africa is a chameleon. We'll be whatever you wish us to be but, despite poverty, violence, AIDS, exploitation, unbelievable income disparities and the empty dreams of our present captains of commerce, we'll remain true to ourselves.
Well, most of us. Denied a socialist regime and a severe but necessary redistribution of wealth, the predominantly white private sector was the big winner in 1994 and continues to impose its will on and flaunt its lifestyle at the majority. But, while we pander to its whims, its power is waning. With China offering far better deals on oil, only a small percentage of white businesses, subject to their market forces, will last. And it's here, where we make our choices, that we can discern the future of computing in Africa.
And it's here too, that we should not forget the runners-up in the '94 elections, the NGOs. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) exist to serve ordinary South Africans where the state is unable to. Many do a remarkable and, all too often, unsung job. On the downside, many exist to give employment—frequently allocating the top slots to whites—to those who would otherwise be unemployable. State policy is, supposedly, given effect by these institutions. However, with the advent of democracy, everybody suddenly became a consultant and most consultants, charging exorbitant fees, came from the NGO sector.
These people hindered, rather than helped, solve identified problems; for example, illiteracy. The problem's hardly been dented, let alone addressed. Large commercial publishing houses, out of touch with social realities, employed literacy consultants to produce elaborate literacy packs designed solely for their shareholders' benefit. The packs might as well have been PCs. These days, there are far fewer such people about. Sadly though, we're now saddled with convention organizers and call centres.
While you (reading this) and I use a computer to communicate, most people need something faster, cheaper, better. (Hmm... we need Jeneane Sessum.) Denied fat, sedentary lifestyles and consumption-friendly disposable mentalities, 82 million Africans use a cell phone. Eh? Yeah. Kofi Annan hasn't a clue. The other half of the world just made a phone call. Most TV viewers cackled at the cell phone advertisement showing the ubiquitous beggar at the intersection losing his handout because he chose to answer his cell phone. I didn't. Vodacom and MTN deal in reality and big bucks. And the reality is that very few Africans own computers and even fewer are linked to the Internet or Web. If a couple of million put the Web to effective use, it's a lot. Generally, we don't need computers, software, WiFi, etc. Whatever for? Large, expensive and clumsy, networks demand space, time, security, electricity and telephone lines. On a continent where society doesn't place too high a priority on such things, they're simply impractical. When school kids have few teachers, fewer books, no doors, windows, toilets, power points, phones and roofs in their educational institutions, what price computers? When rape, drunkenness, violence, prostitution, gangsterism and drugs are risk-free schoolyard activities, what chance their survival? Nada, zippo, zilch.
When hardware doesn't stand a chance, neither open source nor proprietary software enter the equation.
We've never really had a national education system. Too much division. Too much history. Another Western song to make it big in South Africa was Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. "We don't need no education | We don't need no thought control." It became the anthem of school kids countrywide during the '84 riots. The state's response? Shoot the kids and ban the song. Together with Jesus Christ Superstar, the Beatles, Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson and, believe it or not, Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Yeah, the story of the horse.
Many will disagree with me when I say there's little room in Africa for computing as we know it. To them, I say "Go read the Starfish Story." I share its sentiment. Do what you can. Think global, act local, etc. Your efforts are not in vain. Hell, as one who likes to write, cogitate and communicate, I don't understand our inability to link the continent to the Net. But at what price do we save the few and leave the rest behind?
Let's face it. The schools into which computer classrooms have been introduced; where open source or proprietary software are used, are the bright, shining exceptions that light our deluded fantasies of First World emulation. Like the psychiatric facility existing for the staff rather than the patients, these experiments in proliferating computers baffle me. It just ain't on. Like the formal-sector businesses that exist to entrench the wealth of our padrone class at the cost of the many, proprietary and open source code are more trouble than they're worth.
Computers and the code are "...getting down to [...] people who [...] know best what to do with it." But it's not getting to the people. And whether they need it most (or at all) is moot. Either way, most are denied it or don't want it. They have better things to do. Like survive.
Given that the spirit of Biko lives, let me put it this way. An oral tradition ensures Africans are natural communicators. If the Web were people, it would be us. Every type of network is evident in every city, village, and settlement. As social beings, we're suckers for tools facilitating communication. But, given our environment and living standard, pay-as-you-go cell phones make far more sense and are way more functional than PCs.
Though many might tell you otherwise, I'll go so far as to stating that this will be the case in any country or on any continent where the Golby Acid Test Ratio (I studied economics last night) is greater than .75. Okay, I'll explain. In any country where the unemployment rate comes close to matching or exceeds its citizens' life expectancy, I reckon any type of hard or software doesn't stand a chance of gaining wide acceptance or adoption.
The Golby Acid Test Ratio for South Africa, using the broad definition of unemployment, is .96. According to the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, unemployment rose to 41 percent between 1995 and 2003. Life expectancy stands at 43. So the cell phone companies look set to continue reducing computing's significance to insignificance and irrelevance for some time to come. Or until we put open source onto affordable cell phones, at least.
I first heard Peter Gabriel's song, banned in South Africa, long after it was written; in about 1983. It was the right time for me to hear it, five years after Biko's brutal murder. It put into context the rage we, as white kids living in a legally segregated society, carried to our often ignorant but always passionate protests of a system denying our common humanity. During the white elections two months after Biko's death, Minister of Police, Jimmy "It leaves me cold" Kruger came down to Cape Town's working-class Maitland constituency to back a fresh-faced National Party candidate, Kent Durr. Hundreds of predominantly English-speaking youngsters, mostly students up at UCT, out-manoeuvred the party faithful to pack the hall. We gave Kruger hell. Following the beat of a guy banging his motorcycle helmet against the wall, we did the usual, singing ridiculous songs, i.e. 'We Shall Overcome' (what freedom songs could we have known?) and chanting "You killed Biko." Drowned by the uproar, Kruger could not speak, called us "...a bunch of hairybacks pumped up by [our] lecturers and sent to disrupt this meeting", and the few security leatherfaces accompanying him could not handle the mob. They dragged out a kid who tore up his conscription card, but released him almost immediately.
Kent Durr won his seat by a landslide. Today, the U.S. beats a similar path towards Tehran.
All South Africans had been made intensely aware of the circumstances attending Biko's death by the media's publication of transcripts of the official commission of inquiry set up to whitewash his demise. Appearing for the Biko family, Sir Sydney Kentridge QC flayed the state witnesses, fully exposing the unthinking, mindless brutality of his interrogators and murderers, and the state for which they worked. Kentridge, as deserving of praise as Advocate George Bizos, is too seldom mentioned in Biko's biographies, attention being given instead to the medical profession's exculpation of those supposedly attending him.
In many ways, Kentridge was the Spirit invoked by Gabriel, for he gave Biko's work and philosophy a far wider audience than it would have otherwise enjoyed.
"It was the most extraordinary feat of advocacy I have ever seen," said Marcel Berlins, who covered the case for the Times. Sir Sydney managed to cross-examine the witnesses in Afrikaans while, almost simultaneously, summarising their evidence in English for the benefit of the world's press who were in attendance. His skill played a major part in exposing the horrific way in which Biko had been treated by the authorities, both police and medical, although the initial verdict returned was one of accidental death. more....This is a long, circuitous rumination on Chris Locke's short post, but it highlights for me, and perhaps for you, how the legacy of Biko illustrates an inversion of my father's old maxim. Because we do not have the wherewithal to equip ourselves with the code needed to fully exploit the digital age, we face a paradox.
In Africa, we have bugger-all information and too little knowledge. But this seeming poverty is more than offset by millions of cell phones and an abundance of wisdom. In a sense, Steve Biko's greatest legacy is that most of us now live Biko lives.
Do you remember when we were in Africa?
The Doors | Wild Child
Note: This reflection on Chris's entry for net² has been a while in the writing. I've sinusitis, a headache, aches and pains; perhaps symptomatic of something far uglier than its constituent parts, I shall defer to the knowledge of doctors trained in Western medicine, the use of needles and the analysis of blood. Perhaps it's airconditioning, perhaps cancer. Perhaps I'm getting old. Dare I wear my trousers rolled? Does it matter?
