Words and action

Everyone knows the saying about “sticks and stones” but I’m beginning to become disillusioned with the ending. South Africa is a place where freedom of speech is highly valued among all people and the right to tell your story is something empowering and powerful. But how do we then stop people when they’ve said too much? And are we listening to the right people?

If you’ve read the judgment from Julius Malema’s case with Sonke Gender Justice you’ll see that it starts with a quote from Samuel Butler:

Words are the clothes that thoughts wear, only the clothes.

My understanding of this statement is that we can dress or represent our thoughts in a number of different ways by speaking gently into one ear and loudly into another. We can twist them and remould them, making them seem more or less acceptable depending on the context, but fundamentally, we are using a particular thought to shape those words. Until that thought, or thinking pattern, changes the words that fly from our mouths are unlikely to change, despite being said in a different way.

Julius Malema was accused and found guilty of hate speech following his comments about Zuma’s rape trial. He plans to appeal. His latest sing-along sessions have sparked more concerns and a barrage of accusations of further hate speech, racism and harassment.

South Africans are big talkers. We say a lot of stuff, and very rarely act on it. Politicians are the most visible and easily criticised of the lot because of the amount of talking that they do during election time. Next we probably have the media, talking about the things other people have said and giving their own 2c about it. Then there are bloggers, writers, and academics who use the words of others to shape their own, hoping that theirs will sound convincing and useful. Then, there’s the rest. The unheard — those who don’t speak clearly enough for selectively closed ears to listen to them.

The PAC youth league has threatened to kill Julius Malema if he doesn’t say the right thing. They’re upset about his comments that the PAC hijacked the 1960 Sharpeville march. They suggest that if he doesn’t change his sentiment, and perhaps rephrase, that they will “injure him to death”. Scary words. But if we’re to take Malema’s advice, threatening to kill someone, especially a boer, is not always to be taken literally. Perhaps they just want to start a new song, or perhaps they consider Malema as a boer.

So if we’re not dressing our words in the right way, how do we have to make them look before people will listen? If the stories in the news, or Julius Malema is anything to go by, we have to make them sound like a threat. But threats beget threats it seems and you never really know when a poorly dressed word will result in a dangerous retaliatory action.

It all makes me think of another useful saying about speaking, this time from Abraham Lincoln: