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11/9: A moment that froze us in time

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Judith February is executive officer: Freedom Under Law.

Where were you when…? When Mandela was released? When South Africans voted for the first time in 1994? When 9/11 happened? When Barack Obama became the first black President of the United States?

Now we can add, where were you when billionaire Donald Trump went from rank outsider to President-elect of the United States? It was a night a like no other and quite early on one had a sense that it was not going to go well for Hillary Clinton.

She has now been dubbed the Jeb Bush of the Democratic Party. Despite the star power that saw Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi join her on the campaign trail, Clinton has again hit that ‘highest and hardest glass ceiling’.  For the Obamas Clinton’s loss must be particularly stinging. After all, the animus started with Trump questioning Obama’s citizenship. Obama left it all on the floor at the final Clinton rally in Philadelphia as he sought to pass the baton to Hillary and protect his own legacy. Clinton’s concession speech was raw with emotion, something which one rarely sees in this woman who is at once the most famous woman in US politics but paradoxically an enigma to many. Obama’s post election remarks were nothing less than one would have expected from a seasoned campaigner but also a President who understands the arc of history and whose sheer decency is evident no matter the circumstances. Something the world will surely miss.

On Wednesday morning the world awoke to the harsh reality that Americans had voted for someone whose trademark has been race baiting, bigotry, narcissism and who has by and large run a fact-free campaign. When CNN commentator Van Jones said ‘this is painful’, he was speaking not only on behalf of many African Americans but also millions of people around the world who watched as the American electoral map turned into red like a bloodbath. It seemed a victory for fear and a death-knell to the progressive values Obama had tried so hard to cement during his 8 years in the White House.

There is no doubting that his election cycle has been a decisively anti-establishment one, turning the global geo-political order on its head. The Obamas, the trail of celebrities the Clintons hauled out, the commentators and the media are all part of what Trump has crafted as a global elite stacked against the working class American. Some are calling it a ‘white lash’, but of course one cannot ignore class in the analysis of who turned out to vote and why.

As with Brexit, the polls got it completely wrong and the world now faces an uncertain future. Can America lead on climate change, human rights, diversity and all the other crucial global issues that require resolve and principle? It is hard to see Trump as a unifier or a bridge-builder either in America or around the world. He is simply too vacuous for such work. To extend the point, think: Newt Gingrich as secretary of state and the raving Rudy Giuliani as attorney general for those are the names now being bandied about. The US election result may well be a pre-cursor to similar results in the German and French elections in 2017. At this stage strongman Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.

And yet, as Obama reminded us, the people have spoken in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power is at the very heart of any functional democracy. The sun came up but it seemed not like a new dawn, rather a nightmare for many who had hoped the first Black President would pass the baton to the first woman President in the US. There will be much dissection in the weeks and months ahead and lessons will be drawn. Primarily however it is that rights are won through struggle and maintaining progressive values takes persistent hard work. Rights can quite easily be rolled back as we in South Africa know only too well. It seems inconceivable that Trump will achieve much of what he has set out to do without creating further polarization. Doubling the growth rate for instance, building a wall or deporting hundreds of thousands of people work better as slogans on the campaign trail- until real politik sets in. Already yesterday as Trump met Obama he appeared somewhat more subdued and shell-shocked than his usual brash self. The White House he will soon understand is not Trump Tower. Americans will also soon find that their ‘change candidate’ is in the thrall of vested interests too, some more dangerous than others. Unfortunately the world will have to suffer the consequences of Trump’s folly alongside the American electorate.

If the world is abandoning progressive values, South Africa seems to be following suit. Listening to deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa defend our withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday was equally surreal. The ICC is far from perfect yet what does Rampahosa suggest rises in its place to deal with genocide and war crimes? It is hard to fathom South Africa’s position yet perhaps it is not surprising given President Zuma’s consistent praise of Robert Mugabe and his cosying up to leaders like Sudanese President, Mohammed Al-Bashir. We should also not be surprised for this is what the ANC has become. It starts with Zuma undermining the Constitution and our democratic institutions and ends with a large part of the ANC being captured by vested interests. It is thus predictable that the ANC would have acted the way it did when the ‘state capture’ report was released. Storming the ramparts to defend Zuma were those who themselves appear deeply compromised, ANC deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, the ANCYL and others. The unraveling of Zuma has started but it will take a while yet and those hastening the obituaries last week spoke too soon.

Yesterday, a motion of no confidence was brought against the President in Parliament. The opposition Democratic Alliance has brought this motion in terms of s102 of the Constitution. It needed a vote ‘supported by the majority’ of MPs. 

Despite the hype and despite what seemed like a tinge of nervousness ahead of the vote, the ANC will simply did what it usually does and closed ranks around Zuma. He will eventually go but not through a Parliamentary vote of no confidence brought by the opposition. One instinctively knows that palace revolution is not on the cards right now.

So, given the political milieu, we may well feel as if we are in a very particular time of global and South African despair, yet now is a time for the very opposite of despair, for greater mobilisation and the true awakening of citizen activism for progressive values and corruption-free societies.

Toni Morrison is instructive:

This is precisely the time when artists go to work.
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity,
No need for silence, no room for fear
We speak, we write, we do language.
That is how civilisations heal.’

No more than ever is the time to speak, write and do language in the most constructive ways possible. DM

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