In your face. Rhoda Kadalie
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In your face
Passionate conversations about people and politics
Rhoda Kadalie
Tafelberg
Rhoda Kadalie is a columnist for Business Day, Die Burger and Beeld. Trained as an anthropologist, she worked from 1976 – 1995 as an academic at the University of the Western Cape, where she founded the Gender Equity Unit. She presented papers at numerous international conferences, in countries ranging from the USA, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden to Japan, China and Brazil. In 1995 President Nelson Mandela appointed her Human Rights Commissioner. She investigated and reported on rights violations in prisons, places of safety and on farms. In 1998 she served as head of the District Land Claims Unit for the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights. Since 1999, Kadalie has been the executive director of the Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust which rewards initiatives that improve service delivery and eradicate poverty in South Africa. She has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and her alma mater, the University of the Western Cape. She is also the recipient of the Human Rights Award, Toronto, Canada and the Rapport and City Press Prestige Award for Inspirational Women. Kadalie serves on a number of boards, including those of the South African Institute of Race Relations, the Institute of Ethics in South Africa and the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University in the USA.
Acknowledgements
This book happened because many people believed in it when I was deeply sceptical: my readers across the country who kept asking me to publish my columns; members of Parliament who regularly sent comments either endorsing or cursing depending on the party to which they belonged; my parents beaming proudly whenever they saw their daughter in print but who feared for her safety; my brothers, some who were supportive, and others who felt their careers were jeopardised by association; my daughter, Julia, ever trusting of her mother’s righteous indignation when others rebuked her; her boyfriend, Joel, one of my most loyal readers long before I knew him.
Milton Shain, Millie Pimstone, Marianne Thamm, Suzanne Vos, Anne Routier, Jeff Lever, Njabulo Ndebele, Tony Leon, my colleagues, and my beloved Helen Suzman encouraged me to keep on writing when I felt uninspired, tired, and bored with ANC politics, or wanted to opt out for fear of sounding repetitive. It was often the column I was most displeased with that got the most comments. Soon these friends became a necessary sounding board, highly valued when they were least aware of it.
My greatest mentor, the late Anthony Holiday, for whom writing was the product of blood, sweat and tears, shaped my thoughts through much teasing and laughter when I was most inarticulate. He made me appreciate the value of every word, every sentence, and every paragraph. Intolerant of sloppy thinkers, he agonised for days over one sentence and I marvelled over the results captured in some of the finest columns this country has ever seen.
The person who actually got me writing was Diana Russell, who spent a sabbatical in my house in the late 1980s, writing one of her many books. Whenever I returned from a UDF or UWCO meeting outraged at the Stalinism of the left, she would say, ‘Rhoda, write it down.’ ‘But I cannot write,’ I would complain, whereupon she would urge me to write it down as I speak. Thus began my struggle with writing. She, thankfully, undid the damage all the years of apartheid education inflicted upon my porous brain. She will probably be surprised to read this, and be even more surprised that her advice has been translated into a book!
The greatest disincentive to putting this book together was to wade through the hundreds of columns I had written since 1987. It was my colleague, Candice Jansen, who took the bull by the horns and eagerly volunteered to sort them, classify them, and sort the fan from hate mail. I shall never forget how she spluttered and gasped while reading through stuff she was too young to understand when they were first published. She made me realise that, for people like her who were too young to remember the cataclysmic political events that shaped our past and future, my columns were an ongoing chronology of events about people and issues. She was so excited about this book that her enthusiasm became infectious. Walking endlessly, always smiling, from our offices to those of NB Publishers in the raging southeaster, to convey messages to the publisher, she, more than anyone, deserves my heartfelt gratitude and thanks.
One friend in particular convinced me to publish my columns – referring to them as the ‘wet-market of ideas’ – so I finally gave in and am forever grateful to him for his persistence.
Finally, I wish to commend publisher Erika Oosthuysen and her team, always respectful and responsive to my dumb questions, for putting this volume together.
Rhoda Kadalie
Foreword
RHODA KADALIE’S writing never evokes a neutral reaction. It is either liked or disliked. Between this fraught continuum, the gamut of reactions to her opinion columns over the years is reflected in some pieces in this new publication whose very title evokes Rhoda Kadalie’s expository bearing: here are the basics of truth-telling. Reading her is guaranteed never to be a dull moment.
South Africa since 1994 has never seen a dull moment. Change has driven the excitement at the heart of our public life. Policy changes in the entire range of national life were a key feature of the Mandela presidency. Implementing those policies can be said to have been the key objective of the Mbeki presidency. Indeed, change has been a consistent feature of our national life in the last fifteen years.
The lively witness of Rhoda Kadalie’s pen has been in synchrony with South Africa’s unrelenting change. How has our engagement with that change, a central feature of our dramatic history, been shaping our national character. Public figures, private or public organisations and institutions, have an enormous capacity to shape and influence public opinion and behaviour. That is why in a democracy it is mandatory that they deserve our closest scrutiny.
Rhoda Kadalie is one of South Africa’s public agents on behalf of that mandate. The import of her focus on any public figures who happen to be in her sights is about their credibility, their judgement, and the choices they make against the standards they have declared themselves to be measured against. They can either affirm or condemn themselves in their expressed thoughts and actions. Thought and action in public figures are self-defining. By the time Rhoda Kadalie writes about them, they have already assessed themselves, even though at times they may want us to believe what is contrary to the real visual or conceptual import of what they have done. This disparity is what raises Rhoda Kadalie’s ire.
The same goes for the behaviour of organisations and institutions: their credibility, judgement, and choices, and the often lack of consistency between self assessment and the actual reality of the outcome of some of their actions.
I once thought that her unrelenting forthrightness could eventually be dismissed as her ‘usual thing’. That has not happened. What rescues her writing from the predictability of sameness is precisely the varied reactions it evokes. They guarantee the freshness of impact. It is a total package of forthrightness, passion, strong belief, strong-mindedness, and unflinching witness.
And so, In Your Face – Passionate Conversations about People and Politics is guaranteed to please, annoy, embarrass, amuse, unnerve, anger, frustrate, empower, cajole, and even revolt. Profoundly, Rhoda Kadalie invites you to yourself, to your own thoughts and feelings, and their implications for your own interactions with the world around you. For this reason, she will always make you look over your shoulder. She performs a vital service to ensure a lively and self-aware democracy.
njabulo s ndebele
October 2008
Introduction
THIS BOOK of columns is a tribute to the power of last-minute writing. Inspiration seldom responds creatively to deadlines but the scramble for a column the night before deadline is saved so often by the unscrupulous politician who, in the nick of time, determines one’s script. Ranging from the inspirational to the analytical, most of my columns are sheer gut responses to a government that has failed to live up to the promises so easily made during election time. And, after fifteen years of democracy, we are once again at the crossroads,