The Politics Of Post-Colonial Trinkets And Quackery

There is a 'huge' debate over ministerial vehicles in South Africa. Well the debate is not really a debate but folks have been pointing fingers at top politicians who are spending enormous amounts of public money on flashy cars.

The finger pointing is especially fierce given that we are in a recession and you would think that high profile public servants would not spend millions of rands on luxury automobiles.

Not so and South Africa is hardly unique.

I remember being in Belize in 2002 and coming across a notice for an urgent town-hall meeting to discuss the purchase of expensive vehicles by elected officials.

The notice claimed that local politicians were spending tax money on 4x4s instead of building houses. The notice went further to say that one 4x4 was the equivalent of three houses for low income families.

That argument can be cut and pasted into the context here in South Africa.

Blade Nzimande, the minister in charge of higher education, just bought a 1.2 million rand BMW seven series.

The car comes straight off the showroom floor and seems more fitting for a capitalist tycoon bent on making millions and spending millions.

But Nzimande is the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party (SACP), should he not know better?

Or, is this the 'new' materialism that expects followers to understand that a SACP leader behind the wheel of a million rand car does not represent an interruption of the dialectic toward revolutionary communism?

I like Zapiros' take on the issue:
Marx warned us of false consciousness though probably not in these mundane circumstances and context.

I think that Frantz Fanon may have sounded a more germane critique when he spoke of trinkets and deluded post-colonial leaders who front revolutionary stances and politics.

Robert Sobukwe was even closer to the South African context when he questioned the existence of an authentic communist leadership or politics in South Africa. Three or more decades ago he said that all that was left was quackery.

He seems to be right, still.

Of course Nzimande is not alone among those in power who have a penchant for trinkets. In fact, almost the entire presidential cabinet, communist or not, is so deluded.

I guess we should not make too much about the car preferences of these bloated post-apartheid leaders. Well no more than to look closer at their priorities.

I just can't resist one more Zapiro cartoon pointed at Nzimande:Onward!

Nzimande Picture Credit