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Mistaking the country to the north for a mirror
Jonny Steinberg
May 08, 2011

http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/article1055655.ece/Mistaking-the-country-to-the-north-for-a-mirror

I recently read a clutch of South African newspapers - the Argus, Die Beeld, Die Burger, Rand Daily Mail - published in August 1966. Rhodesia hit the front pages twice that month.

The first time, the country's Anglican bishop warned that Rhodesia technically had no legal government, since Prime Minister Ian Smith was rewriting the constitution at will. The second story was occasioned by the head of Rhodesia's air force, who warned the country's hostile neighbours that "we are ready for anything".

What did white South African readers make of the news from the north? In 1966, white South Africans had never had it so good. The economy was growing at 5% a year, soaking up the last residues of white poverty. People whose parents had lived in pokey houses were buying suburban homes with swimming pools. Black opposition had been forced into exile. Life was comfortable and the state was secure.

I suspect that, for whites, the news from Rhodesia of threatened invasions, fighter jets and illegal governments seemed like a clock ticking faintly in the depths of one's being.

Deep down, whites knew that Rhodesia's present was their future, that one day minority rule would be challenged here too. But everything around them felt so secure. Could their comfortable world really come under threat? Most of the time, they convinced themselves that the ticking was just background noise, something of no consequence. But, every now and again - like in the middle of the night, when the mind wanders too freely - the ticking grew unbearably loud. Rhodesia was the future whites could not afford to think about.

For all that has changed in the past 45 years, the country north of the Limpopo still agitates South Africa in much the same way. But now it is not just white people who wake in the night having heard the ticking clock. The fears Zimbabwe triggers are more democratically spread.

A former liberation movement grows stolid and corrupt. Trade unions break away and form a political party. It begins to sweep the urban vote. The ruling party is in trouble. What does it do?

This is not just Zimbabwe's present. It is also a version of South Africa's future. It cannot be otherwise. Time does not stand still. Morgan Tsvangirai is the ticking clock. That is why Thabo Mbeki found himself paralysed over Zimbabwe. To preside over Zanu-PF's defeat would have been like pushing pins into a voodoo doll of one's own likeness.

But Zimbabwe infiltrates South African fears in more subtle and secretive ways. Several years ago, I commuted every month to a small village on the outskirts of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape. Once, I arrived to discover the entire village talking of a shortage of long-life milk.

The village had no electricity, so nobody could keep fresh milk, and the shortage was causing much hardship. Among the explanations doing the rounds, one stuck. Blacks had taken over South Africa's dairy farms, it was said, and they did not know how to run them. And so now there was no more milk.

That people settled on this explanation tells a complicated tale. Above all, it is an expression of self-doubt. Our country is liberated, the tellers of the story are saying, but do our leaders have what it takes? Having waited for generations to be free, could it be that we will mess things up?

The story speaks, too, of deeper and more difficult fears. The men of Lusikisiki were once farmers, but white minority rule took that away. Then they were mine workers, but the gold industry's decline took that away too.

Embedded in the story of the milk is a raw and painful worry. We are free now, but are we still useful?

Why did these fears harness the image of black people ruining dairy farms? I am fairly certain that the story made its way to Lusikisiki only because of the land invasions that began in Zimbabwe several years earlier. But the people in Lusikisiki who told the story did not realise that.

To explain the milk shortage, they dipped into a fund of stories in which things South African and Zimbabwean had become mixed up. In the midst of a crisis over milk, the two countries became confused with one another.

From Transkei villagers to presidents, we are incapable of imagining our future without thinking of Zimbabwe. For the last half-century, our sense of who we are has been prisoner to the country to the north.

* Steinberg is with Huma at the University of Cape Town

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