Tainted blood, machine guns and metaphor

Earlier this afternoon, (it’s a Sunday, and I last watched a Formula 1 Grand Prix when I was nine years old and Nelson Piquet was still around), I found myself, as usual, collating material for my chapter on Jacob Zuma, Helen Zille and the Wild Whore Libido, when I happened across this quote from fellow TL blogger, the wonderfully acerbic and eminently quotable Llewellyn Kriel:

“I suppose that’s as good as can be expected from a sworn communist who doesn’t see the contradiction in asking his supporters to bring him a machine gun and asking God to bless Africa.”

For some reason, it was a comment that took me back to my comparative literature days at Wits, when I wrote essays about the role of Liberty and Reason (which, interestingly enough, were always depicted as women) in the French Revolution.

Take the famous chorus of Le Marseillaise, the French national anthem which was officially adopted in 1795:

“Rise up, brave citizens! In battle order march!
Let’s march! Let’s march! May our land with tainted blood be soaked!”

Lovely stuff.

Which makes me wonder how those little French school children feel when they sing these words. Are they meaningful? Do they have any link to real blood and real suffering, the way they did when the words were first written in Strasbourg in 1792? And if it’s acceptable for the French to sing about bloodshed at soccer matches, the opening of Parliament and solemn national occasions, then why are we so threatened when Jacob Zuma’s supporters sing about machine guns?

At what point, I wonder, do words of power and immediacy recede into metaphor? At what point, do they become myth, at least in the sense that Barthes understood it: a part of speech drained of meaning, to be replaced by bourgeois ideology. (Barthes was very much a man of his time, a period when many French intellectuals admired Mao.)

This is a question that many of us who regard ourselves as Western in orientation might do well to meditate on with more consideration. I think of how, when taking communion, I do not question the notion of transubstantiation (even if I don’t entirely understand it): eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood. On the literal level, it sounds like some ghastly cannibal ritual; on the symbolic level, it makes perfect sense and always has done to those who grew up within Catholic or Anglo-Catholic tradition.

There are many other instances where we take something for granted merely because it is within a Western frame of reference, and we happen to understand what is meant by it. One of the examples that comes to mind is the penchant by liquor retailers for “killer deals” — which, given our awful drunk-driving statistics, is a truly sickening and insensitive marketing ploy. But then of course, we don’t take it literally, do we?

So, to bring me back to the observation that prompted this post: do the supporters of Jacob Zuma — and the president himself — see any contradiction in singing Mshini Wam’ and invoking the blessings of the Almighty? We all know why many of us don’t believe Jacob Zuma when he tells us that singing Mshini Wam’ is merely the celebration of tradition rather than some kind of call to arms. Many of us believe that there is a direct correlation between the words of that song and the actions of those who hear them. And maybe we are right.

But we could at least be honest about why we hold one set of beliefs about one political (and semiotic) tradition, and an entirely different set about another.