Leadership from an unexpected quarter

I will start off with a controversial statement: Former MK cadre Robert McBride is now my hero! He is a source of hope in this South African hour of darkness.

Well, it is men like him in our history who have always been our source of hope, confidence and optimism, you know. We need to be reminded that it was the McBrides who brought us out of the darkness of the past. In the present violent conflagration, we need Umkhonto We Sizwe to defend and consolidate their gains. The present is going to separate the men from the boys. The ugly violence perpetrated against men, women and children from countries who provided shelter to MK guerrillas is testing the strength of our leadership.

Of course, there is reason to suspect and even believe that this ghastliness is orchestrated by a ‘Third Force.’ What we have seen over the last dozen days is too ghastly to witness with our own eyes. In the 1980s, when we marched and demonstrated and went to jail and died and went to exile, it was people like Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Robert McBride who were involved and provided inspiration. It is heartening to see that when the country calls for unwavering leadership that will go deep into the heart of darkness in our communities, it is the same figures who are unafraid to confront this spectre of evil violence.

Well, there are a number of people who are asking: where is the leadership? They refuse to acknowledge and recognise the people that the media and status has always condemned to the margins. When you look at the headlines, the TV we are, again, seeing media institutions that cannot wait to demonize the only courageous people who have stepped forward to intervene and help turn things around. In effect, McBride and Madikizela-Mandela are not projected as ‘true’ leaders because they continue to be seen as a threat to the system.

One does not need to get into the details about how the coverage of the wanton violence is orchestrated to project negative images, the stereotypical images that contribute to African people’s loss of hope and waning of self confidence. Well, I think the mass media, while reporting what is truly taking place on the ground, is missing the story of heroism and African self-determination as exemplified by McBride and Madikizela-Mandela, for instance. Instead, the portrayal of what is happening emphasises and worsens the negative.

Somebody needs to tell the editors that they need to take it easy on magnifying the negative. McBride and Madikizela-Mandela are both experienced on how the media obsesses with the aberrational, the bizarre and the sensational to boost sales and make money. I think we all know that they can never be projected as the heroes that they are at this darkest hour in Africa.

But if we are to be objective, they are the critical mass of the calibre of leadership that is needed now because they give us hope. While our bloodthirsty and hungry African have-nots are behaving and projected like predators, it is McBride and Mandela who have come to not only witness the self-inflicted suffering but to confront the evil.

I guess as someone who has followed their lives and intuitively understands what they represent, I do not despair. It is this kind of leadership that took us out of man’s worst inhumanity to man during the dark days of apartheid.

Instead, what I despair about is the apparent inability of editors, journalists, analysts and the media in general to reach into the psyche of leaders who understand the problems of the rampaging dispossessed people and know how to deal with them.

Even in this hour of crisis, you still find journalists who taunt McBride about his ‘charges’ to weaken his impact and manipulate perception towards him as a discredited and corrupt leader.
Someone needs to advise some of our journalists and their editors to go see a shrink as they fail to connect to the stories of hope and determination among the dispossessed.

What I despair about is the portrayal of a country that is gripped by insanity, fear and self-destruction when we all know that the majority of South Africans, especially in the African community, are opposed to this orgy of violence. But the stories of those who take time out, risking their lives to enter into the heart of darkness to provide hope and nourish our souls are not told.

Everything that we read and hear are stories of a bungling government and a society gone mad. It was this negative portrayal of the African experience in the 1980s that saw journalists attacked by the very people they had come to cover to make profit for their bosses.

Well, no one should be surprised that though McBride and Madikizela-Mandela make the headlines, the intention is not to make them the heroes that they are but to trash their images as people who are corrupt and discredited. It would seem that a lot of editors sit in their ivory towers and decide what stories and pictures they want even before their journalists go out there.

It is the predictable and monotonous diet of journalists who neither understand the country they cover nor care for efforts to rebuild a nation that is still reeling from a painful past of colonialism and apartheid. The brief for the journalists seems to be: “Go out there and tell and show us how monstrous and beastly these Africans are!”

Of course, no one can deny that what is happening is a hellish experience in an African paradise.
Also, ambitious journalists who want to be promoted to political editor and other senior positions need to abandon principles and do as they are told by their bosses.

But I dare anyone to convince me that the majority of people in this country support this orgy of violence, death and destruction. Of course, this is madness that they condemn in the strongest terms.

So, where are the stories and pictures of people who are out to stop what Nelson Mandela calls the “descent into divisive destruction” that must not happen again? That is probably why McBride and Mandela are not celebrated as heroes for their boldness to confront what threatens the very center of South African society.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the sensational ‘South African Story’ that is making headlines, now. But if there are far less people who support this wanton violence, where is the voice of the African majority?

If there is to be any change in how South Africa is going to be perceived by the world, we will need to transmit images and portray heroic people who have to turn this tide in a manner that gives us hope, confidence and optimism for the future.

Although McBride and Madikizela-Mandela are not and will not be acknowledged and recognised as heroes by the media, thank God and the ancestors that some of us do not rely on the media to tell us about what is going on in what Alan Paton called a “beautiful country that no man can enjoy.” We do not need a sweetheart media that glosses over the hard realities we face. But the ‘South African Story’ has two sides.

We need to see and read in the mix the stories of heroes, known and unknown, who are dealing with this ghastly challenge in a way that shows that we are not without leaders as the media wants us to believe.