What is 'we'? On government, Zuma and our fears

“Surely you should want Kentucky Fried Chicken to give you more than five RMB an hour as waiters?” I asked (The rand is currently less than the RMB). I was facilitating a discussion group of bright Chinese seventeen-year-olds to improve their English. “No, we are students. Five RMB is all that we must be given.”

“So you are happy with KFC only giving you five RMB an hour?” I asked, my jaw dropping.

They hung their heads, would not look at one another. “We are just students, we cannot be given much money.”

Fly’s voice was quiet as he spoke this, his face barely visible. Fly was the boy’s English name, a tall, bony lad and very bright. His face had a way of curling into a benign smirk as he tackled English questions and various topics with relish. I usually had to slow him down to give the other students a chance to get a word in edgeways during our discussion of topics.

But now, in a talk of gross abuse of employees (not only students earn 5 RMB, full-time employees do, much older than them) even he was subdued, a head-hanger, a face-hider, reverting to the opinion and safety of the “we”. Exploitation is a good thing, this community says.

Or that’s how I saw it, what I was shown. I hoped that at least in his private thought life Fly thought otherwise, hated KFC and other businesses’ exploitation of Chinese people. I don’t know.

At the beginning of my unpublished memoir, Cracking China, I have an extremely apt epigraph: “Little Sun, you’re a Chinese. We don’t think of you as a foreigner, so we can tell you what we really think.” (A Chinese monk speaking to the BBC film producer and writer, Sun Shuyun.)

What is the nature of the “we”, this vague community of people who blithely refers to themselves as “we”, who ostensibly brings a nation, its new government, into being?

The we is like the mob, caught up by the craftily imposed impression that Brutus is not an honourable man; the we never examines its complexities, the possible delusion that there is no real “we” in the sense of enjoining sentience and wisdom.

We, in our wisdom, voted in the ANC. We believe in equality. But there is none. We wanted apartheid to end. Another “we” wanted it to continue, waved the old flag at rugby games. We fear a Zuma in power in a few months’ time. Another “we” cannot wait for that advent.

Here in China another “we”, the only community in China, believes in allowing the government, for which they cannot vote, to take care of things. The ruling Communist Party votes among its own elite as to how things will be done. They examine the will of the people, which surely wants to create policies for the common good, and implement their rulings. Here you are, this is your will; we have decided it for you.

On one level the previous sentence could be read with the typical sarcastic irony I love. It could also be read and quoted with relief: “this is your will…”: so I need not decide my destiny; you, my monarch, my benign dictator, bear that responsibility. Each day I need just wield the spade, shuffle through my paperwork, read the newspapers where you tell me all I need to know. You, dear leader, will ensure my well-being, tell me that I am well, explain to me that I am actually very happy, so fortunate.

To turn to an entirely different nation, America and its splendid array of choices and rights. In America (especially America I think), are people really given a democratic choice? That there is not even the faintest hint of monarchy, an invisible dictatorship? I think of all the micro-decisions that go into making a decision, into creating my voted decision for me, or better, for the “we”. The candidate is taught the power-smile, the power-wave (of the hand), the powerful finger-pointing at crowds as promises are doled out like helpings at an eat-all-you-want buffet. The leader-to-be is well-versed in body language to present himself as powerful and wise, but also as a down to earth fella. He uses the right jokes in the right states.

A lot of money is spent in getting the we to believe they are making an independent, wise choice. Do they make wise, well-informed, detached decisions about their leadership? George Bush?

Was there really no choice other than Obama? I will answer the last question before I get rightly accused of asking too many bloody questions instead of attempting to answer them. There was no choice; it could only be Obama. McCain was too old. He looked like he may suffer from a heat attack half-way through his presidency, throwing all his strategies into disarray. To repeat the current truism, Bush’s Republican Party was so despised that the opposition inevitably was favoured.

Are two parties really a choice for the people? They created this choiceless choice, didn’t they? Is it not a virtual monarchy in the guise of democracy? These are questions that of late I have been asking and invite debate on them. Little of the above is perhaps new to you, the reader, but in the two historical events that rapidly approach us, the coming into power of Obama, now upon us, and Zuma very soon, the questions and their various answers are timeous. They require thorough scrutiny, especially this baffling, potent bit of opium, the “we” who creates, supposedly, governments and decides leaders.

We (oh, this sneaky word, we) should know that the decision as to who comes to power does not lie with us. But we deny it, do nothing about it. Because at a subconscious level we have decided we cannot.

I really have a lot more time for that other sneaky word, the “I”.

I have always been an outsider, a black sheep of the family, damn difficult to employ, a bit of an eccentric and an individual without really trying to be one. It is just how I am, as surely as I have blue eyes. Most of my life, due to my unconventionality, my tendency to rebel against authority, my unusual set of skills (who the hell in the corporate world needs someone who loves poetry and won’t stick to the SOP, the standard operating procedure), I have mostly been successfully self-employed or a freelancer.

I, per se, “I”, am not particularly fearful of a Zuma leadership of SA. I think the he will actually do a very good job of running this country. He will avoid criminal charges, unlike others, we (yes, we) who must go to court if we are suspected of committing fraud or other crimes. How can it be otherwise, say I?

Because Zuma is the will of the people, as I said in a previous blog, and so have other commentators who are far more knowledgeable than me. He is the expected choice of that world monarchy, the US, judging by his recent invitation to the White House. And because God help us if Zuma does not win. There will be civil unrest if the will of the people is not granted, and only the magnitude of that unrest is debatable.

With Zuma in power, the football World Cup 2010 will go ahead with only a few hiccups, says this “I”. South Africa will not plunge into a Zimbabwean darkness, I say.

Thus, ironically enough, the “we” is our saviour, does not consign us to hell.

What do I think of Obama in power? I don’t celebrate with the world. He has a huge burden to carry, the country’s massive alleged legacy of crimes against humanity, the crushing fiscal woes. He is too young. Too much was laid by the celebrating “we” on the deep, psychological need to have a coloured (or black, as you will) man in power, too much was laid on the “we’s” need to display a magnanimous sense of equality to itself. The “we” dearly needed a new kind of hero, a new kind of saviour, not the usual tall white man.

What bosh, thinks this I. I think, after a few months, perhaps a year, the collective, worldwide communities of “we” will be shocked, will scorn Obama, mourn their decision, but never interrogate the “we” that made Obama.

And if I am wrong? I will swap selves, celebrate my/our rightness as Obama goes from success to ringing success while we cheer him on.

And if we are wrong about Obama? I will say I told you so in a future blog. This is how we are.

With regard to Zuma: What if I step back into my other self, the vague we? Then… we fear Zuma’s ascendancy. We fear for the country’s future. This is because we have absorbed the collective fears of the we, and its realisation, since the coming into power of the ANC, of the “we’s” deceitful nature. “We” pretends to be a community, but its nature is disempowering, impotent.

It is incapable of breaking through illusion, seeing the 5 RMB an hour to serve chicken hamburgers as good enough, well enough.