The politics of imagination

The depressing state of international and domestic affairs has seen a rise in optimistic thinking, specifically exploring alternative economic paradigms, modes for environmentally sustainable and eco-aware living and more holistic models for civic engagement and citizen participation. However, despite this renewed enthusiasm to revisit social and economic orthodoxy, very little has been championed with regards to recasting our understanding of and engagement with the political processes, and specifically, political leadership.

Against the backdrop of a diagnosis charging that, among other sectors, political leadership “lacks clarity of purpose and is increasingly self-interested, unethical and unaccountable”¹ revisiting our assumptions and approaches to politics is imperative in order to move beyond “business as usual”.

As the old cliché goes: desperate times call for desperate measures, and I don’t think it is wholly objectionable to consider, nay, advocate, the “politics of imagination”. While not necessarily referring to, the arguably more entertaining, power struggles in Hogwarts, defections and counter-defections in Middle Earth or corruption in Discworld, the notion of imaginative politics builds on a foundation laid down by the hugely successful salesperson of imagination, JK Rowling².

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. (Emphasis added)

The politics of imagination is the politics of transformation, it is the politics of empowerment, and most importantly, it is the politics of empathy. This is the kind of politics that is fundamentally rooted in those individuals, those communities, that politicians and administrators serve, and in the South African context, the politics of Ubuntu, Botho and Batho Pele. More importantly, due to our capacity to “learn and understand without having experience” this is a politics that remains aware of and responsive to the needs, the realities and the sufferings of the people, through an active pursuit of thinking ourselves into other people’s places.

It is clear then that this is not the kind of politics that acquires luxury cars during a recession, with features and interiors that the average South African cannot even dream of. It is also not the politics of corruption, of self-interest, unethical conduct or a lack-lustre response to providing communities with the basic amenities. The politics of imagination unconditionally rejects such politics of indifference.

What’s more, this constructive politics of imagination rejects the politics of fear and its attempts to “manipulate or control” through twisting the needs and realities of communities, seeking instead to “understand or sympathise” and accordingly empower and enable.

This is not just an indictment against unimaginative political leaders, this is a wake-up call to both those who represent us and more importantly, to those of us they represent. It is a clarion call to a society not unfamiliar with the potential of imagination and the role it played in the struggle for liberation. Fifteen years into democracy we are seeing the impact of those choosing “not to exercise their imaginations at all” remaining “comfortably within the bounds of their own experience” and not ever troubling to imagine “how it would feel to have been born other than they are”. We have a nation gripped by xenophobia, continued white denialism (of privilege and culpability), a nation refusing to “hear screams or to peer inside cages”, living in gated communities or heavily protected official state and parliamentary residences, we, South Africa, have closed our minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch us personally; we have refused to know.

Rowling rightly argues that “choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia” with its own terrors; “the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters” and are more afraid. Herein eMzansi, lies the root of the collective culpability not only for a tainted and deplorable past, but for present that is rife with refusal to know, refusal to engage and a refusal to contribute and help.

Through our collective refusal to empathise we are equally and collectively guilty for enabling real monsters, exactly because “without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy. How long are we going to be held hostage by our own fear, our own lack of imagination, our own refusal to know? How much longer are you going to rest, South African, while your country and fellow South Africans, fellow Africans and fellow humans, burn around you?

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better”, to achieve better, and to do more. Imagine.

¹ The Dinokeng Scenarios Report
² The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination