The Ranter's Guide To South Africa: A Handbook For Hotheads, Windbags And Demagogues.

By Bryan Rostron

Ever wondered what waffle like 'accountability', 'site of contestation' or 'The National Democratic Revolution' really means? Here, in an irreverent nutshell, is your answer. The Ranter's Guide to South Africa pinpoints and defines some of the most overused and abused words, acronyms, piffle and jargon that noisily bamboozle our daily life. It is a satirical dictionary for our times, encompassing politics, business, culture, sport, history and that relentless, buzzing swarm of clichés that assault us every day. At last, comic relief is at hand in this indispensible A-Z digest with its short and sharp definitions that will puncture the bombast, bias and rampant populism circulating on all sides. Keep this subversive manual close by, it could save your sanity ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Release date: Oct 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781868424740

Bryan Rostron

Bryan Rostron, born in Johannesburg, has lived and worked as a journalist in Italy, New York, London and South Africa. He has written for 'The New York Times', the London 'Sunday Times', 'The Guardian', 'The Spectator' and the 'New Statesman', as well as writing columns for the British political weekly 'Tribune' and the satirical magazine 'Private Eye'. For ten years he worked with the great campaigning journalist Paul Foot on his investigative column in the 'Daily Mirror'. Since returning to South Africa, Rostron has written for many South African newspapers. He is the author of five previous books, including the novels 'My Shadow' and 'Black Petals'. He lives in Cape Town.

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Introduction

Swarms of clichés assault us from all sides. Defend the revolution! Brand South Africa! These two slogans, not exactly compatible, are urged straight-faced every day. The fact that exhortations to revolution and branding can appear to coexist peacefully, as if they could possibly share any kind of symbiotic relationship, tells us that not only has a great deal of our language been tortured out of any sense, but that there are also plenty of people who listen to this hocus-pocus as if it means something.

So here, dear reader, is a short dictionary that defines some of our most overused and abused words. It encompasses, from A to Z, politics, business, culture, sport and history. The two great trailblazers in this field are Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, which was not published in his lifetime, and that contrary classic, The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (1911). The Ranter’s Guide to South Africa aims to deflate some of our current claptrap with brief, possibly somewhat tetchy explanations. Consider it as a sort of cautionary dictionary for demagogues. As appropriate to a South African work, this will be an equal-opportunity abuser.

Ranting final.tif

We are surrounded by ranters. They are shrill, self-righteous and impervious to argument. Ranters attempt to make their point by sheer volume rather than by logic or reason. The danger is that they habitually overwhelm quieter, more reflective voices. They are the kind of people who thunder that they will ‘kill for …’, then later claim that this was merely a metaphor. Words, for these rabble-rousers, do not necessarily have real meaning; words are used as blunt instruments to bludgeon the rest of us into submission. That’s why they use worn-out slogans, racial insults and high-pitched invective.

The ranter, as a rule, is intimately related to the demagogue. But while the ranter may just be yelling to let off steam, a demagogue aims to win your heart, mind and soul by whatever means necessary.

Demagoguery is the art of divorcing words from thought to whip up frenzy or fear. It comes in many shapes, colours and political guises, but usually as a spittle-flecked rant. This reflects, perhaps, a pervasive, unresolved anger in South Africa. Daily, in conversation, newspaper letters pages or on radio chat shows, one hears indignant, unsubstantiated accusations. No evidence or argument. It’s enough for the bigot to assert.

The Longman Dictionary defines ‘demagogue’ as: (1) ‘a leader of the common people in ancient times; (2) a leader who makes use of popular and false claims and promises in order to gain power.’ The gap between these two meanings continues to grow, especially in this opinionated age of cyber-blather.

Ours is swiftly becoming the time of the ranter. The fracture between word and deed, promise and delivery, inflates exponentially. The resulting vacuum soon fills with fetid hot air, particularly from politicians and well-known personalities, mostly self-important, including media pundits and sportsmen.

An ambitious, unscrupulous ANC politician provocatively sings ‘Shoot the Boer’; then an opportunistic Afrikaans organisation shows its paranoia by forcing a courtroom showdown. Bizarrely, they are mirror images. Both appear to be grandstanding. Our most volatile demagogue, Julius Malema, seeks to promote his lucrative public notoriety by plundering a liberation history that he had no part in, while the myopic Afrikaner interest group, AfriForum, seems to have forgotten that it wasn’t so long ago that leaders like PW Botha were lucky not to face Nuremberg-style trials for crimes against humanity.

At the same time government ministers and police chiefs urge policemen to ‘shoot the bastards’, then weep crocodile tears when their words are taken literally and police kill innocent people. Protesting students trash their own campuses; township dwellers, infuriated by deepening poverty, unemployment and the slow pace of change, go on the rampage, yet mostly only destroy their own neighbourhoods.

During the popular revolutions which swept through Europe during 1848, the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin suggested that a shrewder tactic would be for the insurgents to put art treasures on the barricades. While the bourgeoisie would not hesitate to send in troops against people, he reasoned, they would flinch from harming a single painting. Instead, increasingly, when there is a violent protest in a neglected township, some self-appointed leader will revive the old anti-apartheid chant, ‘We’ll make the country ungovernable!’ Pure demagoguery. All that happens is they make their shack settlement unmanageable for a few days, burning tyres and throwing stones at police; then the township sinks back into desolate obscurity … till the next flare-up of despair.

In the bad old days, National Party politicians harangued the public and wagged their fingers at us wrathfully. The voice of reason was effectively silenced by bluster, threats and fear-mongering. Now, as it discovers how difficult it can be to govern an unruly, free people, our new democratically elected government seems to be following suit. The demagogues, at least for the moment, are drowning out the democrats. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ruling party’s strident campaign against the media. Once upon a time – and a very bad time it was, too – I used to ring the chief censor of the apartheid regime, a sanctimonious dolt called Jannie Kruger, to press him about the latest bizarre reason for banning a book. ‘Listen, we have highly qualified professors on our board,’ Kruger finally shouted one day. ‘And believe you me, they know what is right and what is wrong.’ That, precisely, is the problem: people who think only they know what is right and wrong – and believe they have the right to dictate to the rest of us.

Nevertheless, today South Africa is also, triumphantly, a democracy of demagogues. They are everywhere. You will find them loitering on street corners in ragged townships as well as moaning about the state of the nation at suburban dinner parties. That’s the marvel of our rainbow republic. Everyone can be a demagogue. Prejudice is routinely disguised as common sense or wrapped in euphemism. The acerbic American journalist HL Mencken defined a demagogue as: ‘He who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.’ This neatly identifies some of our most fashionable religious gurus, too. Of course, the best demagogues are habitually politicians. Mark Twain, always a reliable guide, said, ‘Whisky is carried into committee rooms in demi-johns and carried out in demagogues.’ This is as true of a rowdy Saturday night shebeen in Khayelitsha as it is for a sedate Sunday braai by the pool in Bryanston.

Yup, you know that demagogue. You read their words in the newspaper. You see ’em on TV and hear ’em on the radio. He or she is perhaps that colleague sitting right next to you, or quite probably the friend at your braai. That culprit, dear reader, may also be you. Or, quite possibly, me.

A

Accountability: indispensable. A revolutionary requirement. Just not quite yet, comrade.

Acronyms: a South African psychosis. Mix random letters of alphabet (AZAPO, ACDP, SANCO, PIFCO). Effect: to make organisation sound important. Check any reference book; will have glossary with several pages of acronym elucidations. Much loved by the apartheid state, a vice shared with the old Soviet Union. Tradition carried on with gusto in the new S’eth Efrica. Symptom of a country with severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Affirmative: mocking white euphemism for black person. Implies an individual not qualified for a job (affirmative