by Mputhumi Ntabeni

G21 Africa Correspondent

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QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - With my childhood friends we've developed a ritual of meeting in our small township on Easter holidays. That is when we were urbanites living in big cities. As urbanites we developed tastes that could not be easily satisfied by our small town. This introduced the first strain in these gatherings. Sometimes the issue verged on the ridiculous, like when one of my friends became hysterical because he couldn't find a place that sold "decent calamari that didn't taste like rubber in the whole f*#k'n town."Talk about Jonnies-coming-late-to-Johannesburg (arriviste).

About a year ago we met as usual at the house we've been meeting in since our varsity years. The house belongs to some of our friends whose parents died around those years. Since then it has served more or less as our base, a jam huis in South African parlance. Things were simpler then. We were all still on the same side of genteel poverty as township life. But thanks to the former Bantustan (Transkie Homeland) our lots improved. [Don't tell I said that. It's not politically correct to say anything good ever came out of the Bantustans.].

We had bursaries (grants) for studying Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, Teaching, Architecture and so forth. Today we're mostly respectable members of our community (at least most of us); prototypes of beating the odds and the prides of our parents. 'Born at the right time,' as the saying goes, referring to our generation (between twenty and thirty five). Unfortunately with our success we lost our social conscience. We use to discuss plans of coming back and uplifting our communities. We had venerable aspirations of working in our communities and improving the lots of our brethren. The gatherings use to build these aspirations and our bonds. Now all they ever do is to reveal our camouflaged frictions, perceived jealousies, and the rest. Such that excuses for skipping gathering are increasing yearly.

To me this was an undeniable sign that we had succumbed to the utilitarian individualism of Western culture. The Lockean assumptions of property rights being antecedent to society (a completely non-African thing) have become our custom too. Phrases like: 'It's because I make more money than you'. 'I cannot change the world on my own I'm not God.' are frequently thrown against any slight attempt to reawaken our social conscience. Tiresome mono-casual arguments of materialism from the left and the right usually follow them. When they start I usually opt for long walks in our dusty streets.

The last time after my nostalgic perambulations I found myself entering a sheeben I use to know well. To my surprise I met faces I recognised and sat for a beer and a little of that false happiness alcohol exultation brings. It struck me as no surprise that most of the faces had signs of degradation: scarred, bloated and some people were missing limbs. The inevitable signs of tippling in the township. I was duly asked to produce inhambi indlani (what were you eating on the way), which translates into me buying beer since I was then a stranger in my home. At some stage it became obvious that we had run out of our school reminiscences and the only thing I was good for was buying rounds. Beyond that people felt distant to me. I too felt peripheral to their lives. This hurt but did not surprise me. It perturbed me that they felt I was no longer part of their world, my world. But try as I did my sedate face no longer belonged there. It must have been an uncomfortable reminder of their short-comings, or rather what they could have been with half the opportunities I had.

Poverty is practically hereditary where there're no opportunities. I have no illusions about the fact that most of these people were far intelligent than I had been at school. Only I had better chances because my mother, a professional nurse now working in London (England), could afford to take me further to higher education in preparation for varsity. I dreaded and looked forward to the moment of my departure. As anticipated I was asked to leave umslapi (one for the road; only we call it one for bed, which seems appropriate in a culture where people drink themselves to the floor). I parted with a fifty rand note and remained with a guilty feeling that I was not helping with their drinking problems. My former class-mate gave me a vigorous, pregnant with emotions, handshake with one hand while clasping tight to the bottle of his suicide with another. I couldn't help seeing how defeated he looked. I sighed for our childhood innocence and wondered about the gods of fate.

Meantime the party was hot at the jam huis. My friends were standing outside listening to amplified car sound systems; 'the one in the house had a Mickey mouse sound.' I stood afar and watched with a sense of strange isolation. Somehow I didn't feel part of that world either. The gathered crowd outside was fascinated by the mondaine things they were used to seeing only on TV. More poignant feelings overwhelmed me as I marvelled at the stubborn greed and the resilient patience of the poor; the capacity to be deceived by their desires. One of my friends was irritated that a little boy played too close to his car; concerned for the paint no doubt. The mother of the child quickly grabbed the stripling. Flustered and caught off guard by the sudden realisation of how defeated we too were by the noises of our luxury sedans and flickering entertaining screens I turned back. Unfortunately one of my friends I used to go out with (now married to a wonderful guy I can't find fault with no matter how hard I try) had already spotted me amongst the crowd.

"There you are. I've been looking all over for you. Living again so soon?"she asked with what seemed like a forced smile. The manner by which my emotions were heightened made me impolite.

"We're hypnotised away from our responsibilities by our comforts." I said. Words kept coming to my mind, "We've become rude, importunate, shrewd, greedy, and cunningly artful. We've become everything we despised only a short decade ago, representatives of vulgar elitism with elements of cloying consumerism."

"There's no need for your strangeness tonight,"she answered, visibly bored. "You've always been strange. It's part of your charm. But please not tonight. Can't we just all have a good time without your nonsense? Must you forever spoil everyone's fun with your rarefied futile moralising? Remember the time I found you sitting like Buddha on that floor,"she pointed at the house. "You were concentrating at something I couldn't figure out on the ground. We were still lovers then. I asked you what the matter was. You said you were 'looking at the ants, concerned at how big against them we were. And how small against the skies. I remember hating you, feeling frustrated because I couldn't understand you. I was supposed to be the love of your life, yet there I was feeling stupid and vapid.

"I remember thinking, why should it be my fault that he is strange? We're too young for the shit he's talking about. I knew then I had lost you. All your talk about weeping stars served nothing but to accentuate that pending loss. I had no ability to become a part of your world. I don't think you cared much for mine, which was okay because I had no formulated views of my own then. You don't know what that did to my heart. It tore it apart."She paused for a while, as if catching her breath. "I don't feel that pain with my husband. He has no demands that are beyond me. As a result I'm comfortable with him. I can lose my guard around him without appearing ignorant or stupid. With you it would have been another story. You'd have sapped all my energy and still demanded more. I do not think it's your fault. The gulf between us is too wide. It would take more than a lifetime to bridge it. No natural love could manage it. You understand don't you?"She was almost begging me to understand.

I did not know what to say ( I write better than I speak, and like St Jerome my thorn in the flesh is a sharp tongue I must forever guard against). The pain of that dawning reality hurt more because I remembered our youthful exhilaration so vividly. I intensely understood what she was saying but suffered from an inability to express the fullness of my feelings. All I could say was, "Of course I understand,"and left her standing there without waiting for reply. I thought I saw an expression of permanent disappointment in me on her face. I didn't have the heart to linger on and burden them with my subtantalizing melancholy. Her love was an offering of truth. I feel I abused her kindness all those years. Perhaps I saw her for less than she was, and she saw me for more than I intended.

I walked aimlessly down the street laughing a sad ironical soft laugh to myself. It felt as if I was walking on knives. Momentarily I found myself kneeling on the pew trying to besought the lost grace. (Even sinners, to the great scandal of the pharisaic, do sometimes pray.) My mind was occupied in trying to figure out my real problem. I lost my timidity with God and poured my pain in the vein of Jeremiah. Then I had them read from the book of Exodus 10:8-9: Then Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharoah. "Go, worship the Lord your God,"he said. "But just who will go?"Moses answered, "We will go with our young and old, with our sons and daughters, and with our flocks and herds, because we're to celebrate a festival to the LORD." With that I understood and lost my vaporising loneliness. The Eastern tide has a tendency of taming my Sartrean nausea (the existential agony). It makes me wonder sometimes where I'd be without my religion to lean on. The long arm of coincidences in my life has fortified my belief in God, for as they say, coincidences happen because God chooses to be anonymous.

It's no longer enough for me to be out of Egypt while my brethren become fodder for the mills of perpetual economic Elysian Fields. The values of market liberalism with their money-grabbing vulgarities are a collective sin of our age that prevents common interests from becoming encompassing. I can no longer believe in things like the Washington Consensus with its promotion of legalised piracy for the winners if no better economic distribution order is found. I see capitalism's many benefits but the pari-mutuel rules weighed them by the costs of seclusion to the majority feel. This promotes barbarism from both ends, the poor and the rich. It is has been said time and time again that it is offensive to subordinate human beings to economies yet this is worsening by the day. As that fascinating cynic and tortured idealist, Alexei Tolstoy saw it:

If the arrangements of society is bad (as ours is) and a small number of people have power over the majority and oppress it, every victory over nature will inevitably serve only to increase that power and that oppression. This is actually what is happening.

In my country most people are starting to believe that the ANC (African National Congress) government has abjured from its bias towards the poor and is pandering towards the indirect violence of global markets. I don't feel that's necessarily the case. To me the present battle in our country, which has put trade unions at variance to the government, is about the extent of social democracy. The ANC seem to have chosen the pragmatic path (bliss by delusion) of Tony Blair. The poor under the banner of trade unions and the Communist party prefer commanding economics in a free market system. The poor have feelings and numbers on their side but lack a convincing theory that'll give the promptings of their heart an intellectual cutting edge.

It is clear to all that the excellent production system of capitalism is indispensable. The ANC government's failure is largely a loss of nerve. They rely too much on promises of capitalism's vicious trade system (that sub-product of culture and vested interests whose imperialistic manifestations are Transnational's global interest's) at the expense of our human development. In return they get sponsorships for pop stars and all that superficial gratification of international recognition that profits the poor majority nothing. The ANC government lives for expediency and not for right, and conflate the right thing to do with non beneficial utility. This affords it no power to grind any grist. They rely on mitigation rather than remedies and innovation towards a development peculiar to our own history. Hence the mischief of apartheid's legacy that's still salient in our societies.

Their politics of left and economics of right have put things on a false basis by making the majority serve a lie that cheats them. Very little is happening on the basis of human development. Hunger and distress are still ripe as the majority are excluded by lack of skill or capital from meaningful opportunities. The government calls progress the promotion of an elite black middle class with vaunting, selfish, ambitions. Progress for whomätowards what? the venerable Rabindranath Tagore would ask.

It's becoming clearer everyday that as correct as fiscal discipline for a country's economy maybe it solves very little for the poor. The violent shock (due to loss of jobs) of opening our markets has not liquidated the scourge of poverty on our streets; instead it's molesting the hopes of the poor. The government's duty is to create practical justifications that satisfy its constituencies' sense of fairness not to assuage the fears of investors who post their profits outside the country and do not give back much in return.

I went back to our party with a light heart, realising, because of Easter, that all things are a raw material for the redemptive energy of Christ. I still don't share some of my friend's blind optimism in the 'invisible hand of the market' (Adam Smith). Only I believe in the all-encompassing victory of the incarnated redemptive energy of Christ. That's why I'm calm.