untwisted/issue#1/Whose country is it anyway? Nov 5th, 2008 by Jason Ross

My son is 19 months old and learns a new word almost every other day. I am sure that if I leave the radio on for long enough, his next word is going to be “Obama”. American politics?

What is it with our obsession with

I fully acknowledge that changes in the US

leadership have global consequences, but do we give our own politics due diligence?

Is there not a general apathy, ignorance or

despondence with South African Politics? For a country that has gone through unprecedented political change, why is our own struggle for credible leadership not nearly as exciting to us? While stuck up on the hill in the Natal Midlands at boarding school during the 90’s, there was little opportunity to watch TV. Usually we could squeeze in about twenty minutes just before dinner. So we got to watch five-critical-minutes-short of a full show of Friends.

J A S O N R O S S | Psychologist BA (RAU) | Hons, Psychology (RAU) | MA, Counselling Psychology (UP) | Pr # 0211907

The

outdated TV in our common room was a momentary escape from the relative tedium of daily life at school. But television was not so much a window into the world beyond the boarding school gates; it was more of a window into American Culture. This was hardly noticeable from within the confines of the white-supremacy of a private boarding school, hidden in the misty heights of Botha’s Hill.

The few black

students spoke ‘accent-free’ English and so there was little else to our daily lives to distinguish us from an Americanised culture. By the time I was free from these confines, Mandela had also found freedom. My own freedom was limited to a more physical freedom as it took me many more years to truly break from the confines of a sheltered white-south-african-americanised youth. You will be forgiven for assuming that this is the sound of guilt on my parents’ generation’s behalf talking, but, it is a distinctly different voice from that. This is the voice of a professional South African who struggles to find a comprehensive story for what it means to be born and have lived in South Africa. Perhaps such a story is an inevitably disjointed one in a country of such diversity. I am sure that the United States have their own rich diversity, but with only two political parties to represent the peoples’ views; that manage to insult each other in the same vernacular – the story for what it means to be born and live in America is surely made allot simpler. You either hated Bush or you loved him.

J A S O N R O S S | Psychologist BA (RAU) | Hons, Psychology (RAU) | MA, Counselling Psychology (UP) | Pr # 0211907

Why does politics have anything to do with what it means to be South African?

Ask

that

question

the

thousands of South Africans living in Australia whose children will grow up to be Australian.

It is, surely, their political

convictions (or lack thereof) that have led them abroad.

There are many intelligent

Americans living in New York whom, despite enduring 9/11 firsthand, vehemently oppose Bush’s bullish response to this event. Their belief that Bush’s obsession with national security has endangered their lives even further does not cause them to flee. Like Eve Ensler’s latest publication, Insecure at Last, they dig their heels into the soil they grew up on and announce their discontent with political conviction. I

have

come

to realise

that,

psychologist, I need to acknowledge certain things, like: I can’t stay ignorant to South African Politics; the media tends to bring me even farther from a sound political education; and that to properly assist my

J A S O N R O S S | Psychologist BA (RAU) | Hons, Psychology (RAU) | MA, Counselling Psychology (UP) | Pr # 0211907

clients, I cannot exclude private political assumptions from our conversations. The traumatic experiences of a client affected by crime are inherently influenced by the story that they have for the politics of our country. The perceived lack of response to crime from leadership leaves them with the deflated feeling of abandonment. The media then makes this worse by thriving on the details of horror stories related to crime. In the end, we are not only traumatised by the actual acts of crime but by the distressing sense that even worse things are bound to happen to you and that no one is going to do anything about it. So where does this newfound curiosity in South African politics leave me? A bit displaced. I don’t know what to politically root myself in. I confess that I did not vote in the last elections and ‘displacement’ is my excuse. I cannot claim to belong to the “struggle”. My youth was not dominated by a struggle for freedom from apartheid, nor did I have to struggle with fears of the “swart gevaar”, like my parents might have. When it came to the last elections, my choice seemed to be - vote for a party whose ideologies seem most ‘just’ but least likely to be effectively implemented (such as the ANC) or give into some ‘white obligation’ to vote for a party whom I don’t really support but who needs my vote for the sake of egalitarianism (like the DA). Neither seemed appealing enough to me! Ultimately, my point is that there is no party that speaks in a way that reflects my own relationship with this country. In fact, they speak a

J A S O N R O S S | Psychologist BA (RAU) | Hons, Psychology (RAU) | MA, Counselling Psychology (UP) | Pr # 0211907

language that I do not understand, at all. I am not talking about the 11 unique languages that our country is home to, nor do I mean to undermine the “struggle” in any way. But, the language of “resistance” and “struggle” is no longer very relevant to young South Africans. Although I think I intellectually understand what it means to be a comrade, I do not feel that I am one. In fact, it is unlikely that any South African of my age, regardless of race, feels the camaraderie of the “struggle”. Furthermore, I believe that at this point in our countries history “the struggle” has distracted us from what is politically significant to our people in their everyday lives. I have no problem with changing the name of a street in order to rewrite South African history. But, I want to be able to walk down that street safely - regardless of its name! I want the leadership of my country to be interested in the dreams that I have for my son as a child of this nation. When my son’s vocabulary is rich enough to discuss politics, will there be someone interested in listening to what he has to say? If not, he is likely to inherit the same feeling that I have now – one of being invisible to his own nation!

J A S O N R O S S | Psychologist BA (RAU) | Hons, Psychology (RAU) | MA, Counselling Psychology (UP) | Pr # 0211907