Msholozi's 'moral code' - Thought Leader

Zuma said today that some people say

” ‘Zuma is causing a problem for himself’. I don’t think they understand me,” he said.

It’s true Zuma. Some of us don’t. Then again, the life of a president must put some really intense pressures on a man. You can’t seem to say anything right, in fact, sometimes you don’t say anything new at all but simply circumlocute the essential point that things are essentially as good/bad as they were last year with Thabs in power. You have to worry about being flipped at a stop street and that your nation doesn’t understand you. Shame.

These statements haven’t come from nowhere, our prez is not just feeling bad for himself. In fact Zuma is pushing for a debate on a national moral code. The founding pillar for this push is the belief that

“Using one’s own culture to judge others is unconstitutional.”

It’s very confusing. I mean, the Constitution is difficult and tricky. It’s a mish-mash of Western constitutionalism (written down in various forms) and African traditional law (which is not written down) aiming to create a balance between respecting culture and preventing culture from harming others. It’s tough to understand, tougher to make fit comfortably and even tougher to apply in a court of law.

But, what does he mean “judge”? How is to judge different from critique and debate? Like he says,

“We cannot be expected, all the time, to be respectful to others when others are not respectful to us and others.”

Is respect something that can just be given willy-nilly, or like in cowboy films and family stories is it something that is earned? Is it something that you can grant to others when they have made no effort to grant you the same respect? These may seem like airy-fairy, philosophy-school style discussions, but if we’re going to have a new national code, I’d like to know who’s making it and what the rules are.

Is it like the Da Vinci code, or will it be more like Morse code. Will it be based on pagan, Muslim, Christian, atheist, patriarchal or feminist mores? Will it be moulded and shaped by Xhosa/Zulu/Sepedi/English/Afrikaans/French/Tswana or some other form of heritage? Will it be accepting of homosexuality, transgender people and transsexuals? Where will you pick and choose from? And more importantly, when these moral codes begin to clash, which one will trump?

The scariest part about his statement for me, was what the president wanted from the code. For Zuma the goal of the debate around this new universal morality which will be enforced post discussion like the lovely green Outsurance blanket, or the rainbow nation, is …

“to define an African in this country and a South African” .

But Mr Zuma, that’s exactly what the problem is. As soon as you set up a universal a-historical idea of “African” you block it off from progress and critique. You block off diversity, change and development from within and from outside. To define it as though it had always been that way is to deny the very acts of decision-making and discussion that you wish to engage in. So you are really making it very much more difficult for future changes and evolutions to occur.

It cannot be defined. An African is not simply a picture on a postcard. It is a dynamic identity that you feel in your heart and defend in your actions. It should be open to challenge, feedback and constructive criticism. It should be inclusive, not exclusive.

My fear is that when you create a moral code, you suddenly cast some people as immoral. And when you tell someone that they are suddenly no longer an African, you return to the same type of problematic pencil testing and irrational demarcations that South Africa tried to get away from in 1994.