Charles at 60

Over here in the UK this week, we’ve been celebrating that our oldest junior executive is getting his free bus pass. Yes, this week, Prince Charles, the beloved eldest son of our monarch, Queen Elizabeth II has reached the age of sixty, hale and hearty. First of all, Prince Charles has to be congratulated, for being, like me, a Scorpio, one of the nobler signs of the zodiac system. (So, I’m told at any rate.) Nevertheless, there has been a great brouhaha over the fact that the prince, when he ascends the throne:

A. Wants to redefine his role as defender of the faith to become, defender of
faith

B. Wants to continue with his current ability to express opinions and champion particular causes such as the campaign for organic food and in support of tackling climate change.

All worthy causes, everyone agrees, yet perhaps not edifying for the role of king in the world’s oldest constitutional monarchy. This quandary got me thinking. Perhaps it’s time for us to revisit the idea of monarchy and consider what use it can have in a modern twenty-first century democracy. In the days when monarchy served as a preserve against chaos, warriors and peasants gave up their rights to bear arms and be the defenders of their own livelihoods by holing up in villages and fortresses protected by the strongest warrior their societies could produce; by and large, the means by which this was established was brute force and often, by the very democratic notion that the warrior with the strongest arm would become king. Isn’t it time we reverted to this time-worn principle?

Instead of considering whether to abolish the monarchy perhaps we should consider making the position of monarch an elected office, to which those able, noble and willing put themselves forward as the embodiment of the nation. The monarchy is a well established institution in British society, respected and a buttress against the ravages of change and turmoil in our increasingly diverse and multicultural world; making this office which has all the conferred grandeur of age an elected office would obviate all the debate about monarchy vs. Republic, old vs. New, and tradition versus modernity. We could still have a royal family but it would be one constituted of an ordinary family elevated by the people to the role of Heads of State. In a period when we are already re-considering the role of such age old institutions as the House of Lords, it would be fitting to revisit the role of monarchy with the view to preserving what is best – the role of the royal family as the embodiment of brutishness and the first ambassador for our country – in a time when the world expects us to become more of what we are – an old nation, respectful of its traditions but ready to renew itself and innovate. What could be more innovative than a monarchy determined not by heredity but by the will of the people?

Age of the movie

If Europe conquered the world by the bible and the maxim gun; it was cinema and coca cola which won it for America; beaming images of it’s dream into billions of homes and hearts across the world was the soft edge of America’s might, and why the world is so familiar with it’s values, it’s people, it’s cities and it’s fears. People arriving in its cities, New York especially, are struck with the eerie feeling of visiting a place familiar, and wrapped up in the very fabric of their own dreams. There was a time when the means by which we escaped the world was a book; increasingly we understand the world through the visual image. Citizens of European empires pinned for the metropole that they knew of only through books and letters, and generations of settlers understood themselves as civilized only by their feelings of belonging to a greater, whiter whole that was the west from books – now that age is past and we live in an age of pictures; the iconic image of towers crumbling like Babel; the green haze of an ancient city under bombardment or a fading president memorialised in a biopic. In the 21st century cinema is king – in fact, its ascendancy began in the twentieth; for an Africa emerging from centuries of negative stereotyping, it promises the possibility of erasing all the constructed myths around our identity and replacing them with new ones. A banishing of the clichéd images of tarzan, safaris and famine for something new, thriving, aching cities; epic and dazzling history and tender, careworn people, falling in love, falling in grace, gaining in riches. At some point in my studies, reading African Literature a feeling impressed itself on me, that somehow the world of books, which had become so important to me and my understanding of myself had been superseded by a more powerful force. Cinema it seemed to me would be crucial in shaping the way the world perceived a culture, and in the way a culture perceived itself that anyone with the ambition of shaping ideas and the world would have to engage with it. I still love books, and still believe in the power of a book to change, and yes, sometimes save a life, but in making sense of the world, film I believe will become increasingly powerful as a medium. It’s because of this that I am excited about the London African Film Festival, organised this year by the Royal Africa Society, showing films in cinemas all across London. Everyone in the game of revamping Africa’s PR must begin to see culture in general, and film especially as just as powerful as the maxim gun in changing the way we are perceived. There is still a place for books in all this, for the writer’s mind has always been the well from which all stories are drawn. As for the power of the cinema, the London African Film Festival is a welcome start.

http://www.africaatthepictures.co.uk/

Why South Africa’s latest party is to be welcomed

It’s the latest drama in the history of the rainbow nation, but the arrival of the as yet unnamed and breakaway party out of the ashes of Thabo Mbeki’s ousting from power has prompted murmurs of unease within South Africa and elsewhere. The ANC, always an uneasy alliance of communists, trade union activists and anti-apartheid fighters has worked hard to maintain its internal unity and indeed dominance in Africa’s strongest democracy, yet the cracks have always been evident. The tensions between the forces of the left such as COSATU, Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, and the market oriented wings of the ANC, embodied by former president Thabo Mbeki, have coalesced around the neo-liberal route to development and economic prosperity the country has followed since its ‘independence’ in 1994. It is anger over the fact, that despite ten years or more of ANC government, unemployment amongst black South Africans remains at 40% while corporations and a few individuals have grown rich that powered the vote against Mbeki’s chairmanship of the ANC and secured the role for the controversial populist politician, Jacob Zuma. The high profile battle inside and outside of the courts to convict Zuma on charges of corruption is what finally brought down Mbeki and triggered the political split now consuming the ANC. Mosiuoa Lekota, a former defence minister officially broke with the ANC and called a convention of like-minded south Africans. The split, according to the BBC is primarily over three things, ideological differences over economic policies, with the breakaway faction leaning to the right and in support of Thabo Mbeki’s policies, a clash of personalities, and more darkly, tribal divisions. The last reason is perhaps the one to be feared the most, that South Africa’s politics will increasingly become like that of the rich tapestry of basket cases to its north, spelling an end to the ‘miracle’ that has bedazzled the world for ten years.

There are some reasons why this is unlikely to happen, not least the existence of a civil society that is more vibrant than most, and the existence of the Inkatha Zulu party which is unlikely to welcome any encroachment of its political terrain. Yet there is enough popular anger in South Africa as we saw in the recent xenophobic riots to force South Africans to seek an alternative to the neo-liberal model that has dominated the country’s politics over the past ten years. Though the new party is yet to formulate any policies and is unlikely to stray too far away from Thabo Mbeki’s neo-liberal ones, its existence should be welcomed. Not least because its success would represent a mature turn for South Africa’s democracy; currently the ANC carries 70% of the national vote. It’s likely that this is less to do with South Africans great love for the ANC, though no doubt this does play a part, but more to do with the lack of viable alternatives. A new party, led primarily by leaders with an anti-apartheid and ANC pedigree would do much to enrich debate in South Africa; it would also guard against the apathy and corruption that seem to have become a sub-culture with the ANC.

The current electoral system in the country would also come under increasing pressure for reform, if a mass movement of black South Africans could be gathered behind the new party, to make it more representative. Currently, MPs are picked by party lists rather than directly elected by their constituents – a system stacked in favour of the ruling party and more relevant to a revolutionary outfit than a modern democratic nation. Lastly, as black South Africans in particular become differentiated by income, the existence of a party of the neo-liberal right might be good for the ANC, allowing it to focus and position itself as what it was always aimed to be, a party of the people.

We have overcome....

Ambition is always grasped with the hazy reach of desire. The desire to transform, influence, create usually begins unclearly; just a beating in the breast, an anxiousness to do something, be somebody. It is either nurtured or crushed by the measure of its owner’s force, by their confidence, or the mirror the world holds up to them. For a long time, in the United States of America, and by consequence or in similarity, the rest of the world - the ambitions of black peoples have been constrained by the ever present concern that they won’t let it happen. It is for this fact that in 1972, when Shirley Chisholm declared audaciously her candidacy for the United States presidency, her campaign was humoured, to put it politely, and laughed at, to be blunt. Yet, the audacious hope that led her, and Jesse Jackson and countless other leaders, thinkers and martyrs to push their weight and mind against the weight of entrenched prejudice and centuries of oppression has borne fruit.

On November 5th 2008 we lived to see a black president-elect of the United States of America, the same country that legislated less than three hundred years ago that black men and women were three-fourths of a human being. For this moment alone, it is good to live in these times. Yet in many ways, it illustrates the world as it is. The world has not suddenly changed the odds it puts on the lives of black men and women, and the intractable problems of Africa and Africans have not been resolved because a ‘son of the soil’ is on his way to the white house. It has however woken up to the fact that we can alter history. The structures of power that would have made it impossible for Barack Obama to be president forty years ago can be and have been challenged. Now, it’s time for that slow revolution called ‘African Progress’ to begin.