Amerika was one of the more evocative television events of the later 1980s. Originally broadcast over seven nights in 1987, it depicted life in the United States after a Soviet takeover. This was a jarring, dystopian alternative reality, not least because it aired at the tail end of the Reagan era – America was virile, prosperous and confident, and while its Soviet competitor remained in place, the latter’s weaknesses were glaring and ever more debilitating. Many viewers probably shivered at the thought that even in the then global order, somehow this might be plausible.
The TV series never really explained how the US was occupied, but it is suggested that even as Soviet forces were attacking the country a disconnected political class refused to acknowledge the attack. The Soviet Union, it is made clear, is in internal turmoil itself, which only adds to the Americans’ humiliation. (A subsequent novelisation had a desperate Soviet Union using electromagnetic pulses to kill the US electricity grid and communications infrastructure.) It focused rather on living in an upended world – refugees, gulags, shortages, pervasive decay and perhaps above all the choices that ordinary people make when confronted with it – and obliquely how something like that might come to pass.
This was captured in a dialogue between the pragmatist-collaborator Peter Bradford and the KGB colonel Andrei Denisov:
Bradford: If you’d landed troops on the beaches, maybe it would have been different.
Denisov: What we did not expect was that, without communications, the United States would revert to a collection of separate peoples.
Bradford: You just got the drop on us.
Denisov: I don’t believe it. It worked because you lost your country before we ever got here.
The theme of civic virtue and engagement in the life of a society comes across strongly. Series writer Donald Wrye commented that it dealt ‘with rather fundamental American principles which should be, in my view, of common agreement – the nature of the individual in a free society and the responsibility of that individual in maintaining a viable democratic society.’
This has something to say to contemporary South Africa.
The South African Council of Churches – the umbrella body representing the mainstream Protestant denominations – recently spoke out passionately about the conduct of former president Jacob Zuma. At issue was his refusal to cooperate with the Zondo Commission, whose investigations tread heavily on the conduct of his presidency.
‘Tendency to undermine the rule of law’
‘The leaders of the member churches of the South African Council of Churches are concerned that the tendency to undermine the rule of law is brewing in the very party with the constitutional responsibility to uphold and protect the law as government, the African National Congress,’ said the body’s general secretary Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana.
He went on to say: ‘Any party that is presently leading government at local or provincial or national level should not use its privilege of influence in a way that leads the country into chaos and disarray. Specifically, disagreements within the ANC must not be managed at the expense of the country and its 60 million citizens.’
President Zuma’s actions and those of his allies are, the SACC feared, destabilising the country.
It is a legitimate fear, and to hear the SACC express it – it speaks (nominally at any rate) for millions of Christians and is a prominent part of the civil society landscape – is important. To hear it speak not only about the pathologies, but to name the transgressors, deserves acknowledgement and recognition.
In a similar vein, one might also acknowledge that the country’s churches have been vocal about the corruption that has dogged so much of South Africa’s governance, and which reached a spectacular low point as resources intended for handling the Covid-19 pandemic were plundered.
Sadly, the challenges before the country are extensive and deep-rooted. In recent weeks, the Zondo Commission was told of programmes conducted by the State Security Agency to suborn judges and journalists. Large sums of money were alleged to have been made available to these ends, and to have changed hands to achieve them.
Breathtakingly, these charges were not new, but had been made in an official report in 2018. Even more breathtaking has been the apparent failure to follow this story up. Neither journalists nor the legal community have investigated it, the implications for the integrity and reputation of these institutions notwithstanding.
More than this, it compounds the abuse of South Africa’s people: the theft of public resources, the manipulation of administrative and possibly judicial processes, and the conduct of governance by backroom decree.
These are indications of advanced pathologies that afflict the country, and pose a threat to South Africa’s future as a constitutional democracy.
Inherently vulnerable
A political system such as ours is inherently vulnerable. It is meant to be responsive to public demands, but regulated and organised by constitutional principles and impartially applied law. It entrusts power conditionally to those in political or administrative offices. The failure or corruption of any part of this system can collapse the whole edifice.
This threat demands ongoing public participation and engagement, and a recognition that the system as a whole – rather than any constellation of power that it makes possible – has an inherent value that must be protected. This is the responsibility of every citizen. Indeed, a first principle of sustaining such a system is to understand just what citizenship is: not just attachment to a state, but the ability to act politically in relation to it and the society around it.
South Africa’s record in this respect has been mixed. A large, unruly civil society has at times been a great asset; but has also all too often failed.
The SACC (and much of the rest of the church world in South Africa) dropped its guard unforgivably when the transition happened. In a very revealing documentary about the body, Remember Khotso House, Rev Frank Chikane described an almost childlike faith in the ANC as a repository of steadfast moral integrity. It rather echoed what the ANC said of itself in 1999, that it was ‘the most important moral voice of the country on almost any question facing the country’. (Chikane would become a member of the ANC and then director general in the Presidency under Thabo Mbeki.)
Not fearlessly prophetic words
Chikane was not alone in this. The much-beloved Archbishop Desmond Tutu declared that he would not vote because of the ructions in the ANC when Mbeki was expelled from office – a remarkable conflation of the party with the system. There was even a 2011 Kairos declaration (harking back to the 1986 statement on the crisis in South Africa) entitled A Word to the ANC in these Times. Of uncertain authorship, but endorsed by many prominent church people, it raised some trenchant concerns about the party’s conduct – not dissimilar to those the SACC raises today – but within an analysis awash with congratulations, gratitude and appreciation. These were not fearlessly prophetic words, but a supplication before the natural leader of society.
By this time, however, it should have been apparent that South Africa was facing crises precipitated by the course the ANC was taking, and from which it showed no intention to depart. Cadre deployment, for example, was a central pillar of the ANC’s approach to the state, despite being a violation of the Constitution, and acting as a prime driver of patronage and corruption. Cadre deployment is directly antithetical to good administration. Effectively, the churches abandoned much of the responsibility of citizenship.
Former Methodist Bishop Peter Storey commented:
‘During the struggle years, the churches had to work on their theology. It took us three decades to get clarity, about the relationship between God and Caesar, between Church and state. We got it right, I think. We got it right. It’s not for the Church to be in the corridors of power. It’s always for the Church to stand with the least and the lowest. It’s always for the Church to keep a prophetic distance away from political power. I can’t believe how quickly the churches forgot all that theology; we dropped our guard during the Mandela years. In these years instead of prophetic distance now we were going to be collaborating with the state in building the New South Africa. You don’t ever collaborate with the state too closely if you’re the Church, because the DNA of Caesar never changes.’
The churches were not alone. The ‘NGO sector’ often evinced similar loyalties, at least in the early years of democracy. The South African National NGO Coalition, very prominent in the 1990s, would see some of its officials drawn from the ANC, while some of its own would move in the other direction.
Reluctant to resist
When proposed legislation in the mid-1990s sought to grant the government wide-ranging powers over NGOs’ governance, it was remarkable how some prominent pro-democracy organisations, such as the erstwhile Idasa, were reluctant to resist. (Largely through the IRR’s efforts, the draft legislation was withdrawn.)
The bonds of party affection were evident even in some instances where civil society groups faced off against the state. The Treatment Action Campaign mounted a memorable challenge to government policy over the provision of HIV medications, even resorting to litigation. This was admirable, though many of its leaders gloried in their connection and loyalty to the ANC. One went as far as telling researchers that ‘while [the TAC] endorsed the role in the ARV “roll-out” of the ANC-NNP Western Cape government, this may have been impossible if the province was governed by the Democratic Alliance’. A truly remarkable and deeply disturbing admission.
Business, with a few honourable exceptions, has probably been even worse, seldom daring to offer robust criticism, but going along to get along, and all the while seeing South Africa’s prospects decline. Its position might have been articulated by another of Amerika’s characters, the maverick former presidential candidate and political prisoner Devin Milford: ‘Nobody wanted to risk anything for anybody else. Everybody was afraid they were going to lose what they had. They knew it was bad. They were just afraid it’d get worse. That’s all they lived for – for things not to get worse.’
South Africans as individuals, and in their social and political organisations, complain – rightly enough – about the dreadful trajectory of the country. Less reflection is given to how their own conduct has brought South Africa to this point.
How different might South Africa have been if, over the past decades, those interested in and committed to the country had drawn a line in the sand and resisted the corrosion of our governance and constitutional orders, and if a misplaced deference to the ruling party and what it supposedly embodied had been replaced by a robust assertion of the imperatives of citizenship?
Perhaps the lines that defined Amerika’s deeper meaning came from a confrontation between Peter Bradford and his wife over his work in the administration.
‘Damn, I’m so tired of this “I’m an American” bull! Where was all that patriotism when it counted? Where was that willingness to sacrifice? Nobody wanted to join the damn army to defend the country unless they got paid well! Nobody wanted to give any time to public service unless they could make a career out of it! And I didn’t notice a lot of us giving up our lives in the last 10 years!’
Tormented
For, in the world of Amerika, the United States has become a sad, desperate place where people shuffle on in the hopes of getting by. Resistance is rare and for the most part sporadic, and often performative, if not narcissistic. And those who inhabit this world are tormented by the memories of what they have lost, and why they lost it.
South Africa’s future is unwritten, but the failures that once might have been ascribed to paranoia and doom-mongering now loom as real possibilities. As a country, we have often failed to face the realities of the dangers confronting us. The result is the present impasse. We dare not mistake our civic duty to protect and renew our institutions any longer.
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