South Africans and the fine art of bitching

It’s the simple things in life that give us the most pleasure. The most meaning. And what can be more meaningful than sinking your teeth into the denials and accusations of Winnie M&M and the latest shenanigans of leaders like Zuma and Malema?

Look at the sheer delight on Zapiro’s face as he shows off his “baby shower” T-shirt with the cartoon of all the cute baby versions of shower-spout Zuma and its comment on our leader’s sexual exploits. It’s a meaningful moment for Zapiro.

Or we get hackneyed articles on South Africa maybe going the Zimbabwe route as if that were a thundering new revelation. Articles like that get high ratings because people just love a good gripe, gloom-and-doom session.

People don’t have time and money for everything. They spend both on what is important to them. It is bleakly hilarious to just glance from Kiwi-land and previously from China (just glance, that’s all) and see the amount of media “bitch & hak” sessions given to leaders in South Africa — those mentioned above — who have proven over and over in their track record that they should not be leaders. It must be mentally exhausting, all that grumbling. I’ll explore that later.

But can’t readers and writers think of something else to write and read about?

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Yesterday I was sitting in Glenfield Mall in Auckland here in New Zealand, savouring a large latte (couldn’t get them this good in China) and a nice chunky newspaper. English papers in Shanghai are the thickness of a mousepad, mentally unchallenging and full of propaganda. I stared in amazement as I watched a senior lady calmly dodder over, riffle through the various sections of the New Zealand Herald (my New Zealand Herald, I’ll have you know), select what she wanted, and went back to join her table of other senior ladies. They then turned to the movie section and clucked over what movie they were going to see. All silver-haired, they looked exceptionally healthy from lives spent in about the most pure air on earth in one of the cleanest seaside cities in the world. The serene removal of my property, my property! from my table was done in such an innocent way that I sat there open-mouthed, amused, half-way through cracking a word puzzle, and simply watched them and sipped my latte. I eyed my daylight robber’s sun-wrinkled, liver-spotted hand point out various movie options. These ladies did not know what it was like to be intimidated by violence. They could come and go as they pleased on the streets by day or night. Eventually I summoned up some courage. That had something to do with respect for them, which I’ll come to later.

“Ahem, excuse me ma’am, I don’t mind if you look at that section of my newspaper … so long as I get it back.” For some reason the trembling Oliver Twist line echoed through me, “Please sir, may I have some more?”

“Is it yours?” she enquired, perhaps showing a slight blush and tightening of discomfort on her face which I believe I projected onto her. “The shop usually provides papers for customers,” she said in a calm, friendly voice.

“Oh no actually it’s mine, ha ha,” I said, my mind silently hissing, mine mine! “But no problem at all, not at all. Take your time, just pass it back when you’re finished, ha ha.” I was comfortable with feeling that I meant that.

She laughed in a friendly way and a friend of hers piped up to make conversation with me. “I kept an eye on your rucksack when you disappeared just now. Thought you may have gone to the loo or something.” “Oh no,” I replied, with my standard laugh, the light ha ha used in coffee shops or airport lounges. “I went to the shop next door to buy a copy of the paper.” I had scurried off, leaving my rucksack almost in eye view while I bought a copy of the Herald.

A little later they all stood up, wished me well, passed back that section of the paper and were on their way to watch a movie.

An everyday incident. But after five years of China it was like standing under a refreshing waterfall, never mind a shower at home. I rarely got a chance in China to do this kind of simple, Western exchange in what I call “quick-speak”, normal, rapidly spoken English with all the right cultural references and etiquette. It’s the simplest things in life that give us the most pleasure. The most meaning. Innocuous events where we can learn the most about ourselves, capture the best in ourselves. Of course, I just loved these “senior citizens’ ” openness, their lack of fear of being violated, comfortable that their rights were protected in a lovely city, Auckland.

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What are we learning when we are making a fine art of bitching? You tell me your answer. My answer is: nothing. Less than nothing. It’s ultimately counter-productive, de-energising. If you are a blogger or someone else out there who proclaimed he was voting for the ANC, well, stop whining in blog after blog about your choice. The South African poet and professor of German, Peter Horn, made a comment recently on Facebook that took me back to thinking about the heart of relationships and respect for others.

Peter Horn wrote: “Respect for others depends on a paradoxical non-identification”. This sentence sums up the heart of much psychoanalytical discourse, among other discourses.

Let’s look at this. People project onto others what they cannot confront in themselves. Thus they bitch and moan about others’ shortcomings, never tending to their own, or even developing any awareness that their flaws are there. They do not identify in themselves others’ shortcomings, be it Winnie M&M accusing Madiba (we have all accused), or Julius accusing Afrikaners or saying that Zuma’s victim had “a nice time”. And then everyone else bitches about what these promising leaders say, do and deny. So the chances for all for personal growth and to make meaningful contributions to sorting out the mess are choked off.

The other extreme is gross over-identification. It is blasé, but I will say it again. So many are deeply, excessively identified with their mythic community, for example, the ANC. This group’s followers literally cannot see their collective identity or its expression in individual leaders of being capable of wrong. Thus we have statements like, “the ANC will be here until the second coming of Jesus Christ” and Malema will never have to step down unless something drastic changes.

Of course Peter Horn’s statement talks about non-identification. That is the next level of maturing, moving past identification and refusing to identify or denial. Non-identification suggests enormous maturity in relating to others, not bitching. In other words, I still respect you even though you don’t have my beliefs and customs. A better way of putting the above sentence might be, “I respect you because you don’t have my beliefs and customs. That’s exciting! In fact, let me learn more about your beliefs, where you are coming from. Let me cease from trying to only identify with what I think is correct”.

It follows we can have, going back to my little anecdote in the middle of this blog, either one of these.

1) How dare you take my newspaper without asking? To hell with you!

2) Good grief, this is weird. Let me take a minute to pause, laugh it off and find out why she took ~~my my!~~ the newspaper.

That kind of thinking, if we all opt for number two, and take it to heart, could work wonders. Of course I am the first to admit it is bloody difficult because of all our selfish conditioning and love for bitching. And don’t get me wrong, I often find myself doing number one.

It’s so simple that it is just too simple, isn’t it?