Michel Foucault :: The Unequal Gaze

It’s the mid-70s and a French philosopher and historian by the name of Michel Foucault (15 October 1926-25 June 1984) has just hammered out a book concerning the birth of the prison system. The work tracks the evolution of the social and technological mechanisms used to entrench discipline in Western Society. His ideas serve up an effective theoretical means of understanding the dystopian world conceived by George Orwell in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Moreover, Foucault has devised a philosophical matrix through which the existence of Big Brother can be perceived in familiar contemporary contexts.

Discipline and Punish asserts that we live in a state of perpetual imprisonment, drawing connections between the mechanisms of law enforcement in modern society and the panopticon. A type of prison building dreamed up in the Eighteenth Century, the central characteristic of the panopticon was that the guards could observe prisoners while prisoners were unable to see the guards. The bottom line was that the prisoners never knew when the guards were looking. Fewer guards were needed, costing taxpayers less money. Everybody was happy.

Needless to say, Foucault would have drawn profound conclusions concerning the evolution of enforcing the speed limit on South African roads. Once upon a time, traffic cops crouched behind bushes and cables were intermittently stretched across roads in unexpected locations. When it was discovered that the income generated by speeding fines was not commensurate with the cost of conducting these stealth operations, the government turned to the panopticon method, slapping up signs like the one above.

As there were no cameras to go with the signs, people quickly realised that there weren’t any guards on duty. Big Brother was caught napping and all the mice came out to play. When the cameras arrived, the farmer’s wife raised her carving knife and speeding vehicles broke wildly to avoid persecution. However, they remembered where the cameras were located and formulated a strategy of slowing down in all the right places. In a flash, the intuition of South African drivers sped to the lofty philosophical heights of Foucault.

Kurt Vonnegut :: Honorary Citizen

A profoundly South African sign that commuters pass as they shuffle onto Metrorail trains. Kurt Vonnegut (11 November 1922-11 April 2007) would have approved. The American novelist and social commentator contemplated the mess that dangerous weapons make during his involvement in the Second World War. Held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Vonnegut took shelter in a meat factory during the infamous bombing of the German city in 1945. He emerged to find piles of rubble and death.

Vonnegut later drew on his experience in Germany to create a novel entitled Slaughterhouse-Five. An exploded narrative that skips backwards and forwards in time, the book is laced with science fiction and provides a gloomy picture of war. Published in 1969, it was embraced by readers who were puzzled and drained by America’s Vietnam blundering. Around the time it hit the shelves, polls in the United States indicated that only 33% of the nation supported pursuing a complete military victory.

Vonnegut concocted a distinctive brand of hopeful pessimism in his literary contributions to Planet Earth. His final work, an exhortation of the Bush administration entitled Man Without a Country, sees him soaring the lofty peaks of intelligent insubordination. “What can be said to our young people,” he writes, “now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?”

Zinedine Zidane :: Head of God

Only the World Cup is capable of arousing authentic global collective consciousness. It’s an event that every media-consuming entity is sucked into. Every four years, for just one month, the World Cup infiltrates the broadest possible sweep of hearts and minds on the planet. It conjures South African football experts from thin air and elicits football commentary from the least likely sources.

World Cup interactions are hinged on TV sets. From the belligerent outbursts of friends in bars with big screens to the distracted eyes of shop assistants with small ones, the World Cup assembles every variety of media congregation. When the immediacy of the events has passed, the Internet steps in to archive memorable moments.

This brings me to what must surely be the most powerful stream of images from the 2006 World Cup Final. The streamlined arc of Zidane’s cranium as it sailed through the air, his body bent behind the shiny orb as it found its mark on Materazzi’s chest. The limp body of the Italian defender dropping to the ground, the mouth that had spat an insult at the French captain twisted into a different shape.

The most extraordinary aspect of the Zidane’s rage was the manner in which he chose to vent it. Of all the appendages available to the football legend, he chose to use his head. Somehow a fist would have been a crass substitute, the very essence of football being hinged on the rule that you can’t use your hands. Moreover, Zidane’s skull mercifully targeted Materazzi’s impact-resistant ribcage. It would have been ungentlemanly to pit his bulbous rock against the Italian’s eggshell noggin.

Some may say that Zidane’s final act as an international footballer besmirched his otherwise glorious career. I beg to differ. Zidane’s headbutt was a contained physical response to Materazzi’s hostile invective. It could have been an ugly act if Zidane had sought to elicit pain, but this wasn’t the case. Zidane’s was simply a demonstrative gesture that turned out to be a swan song that defied the expected Hollywood ending.

In three years’ time, the nexus of World Cup media will shift to South Africa. Despite soapbox mutterings about 2010, Sepp Blatter recently assured us that “the only thing that will stop us from holding the World Cup in South Africa would be a natural disaster.” In four years’ times, a scattering of video clips and a handful of World Cup stadiums will be all that remains. No doubt our World Cup’s Internet footprint will include profoundly South African signs of divine intervention.

Miriam Makeba :: Speaking in Tongues

It’s September in the year 1979. Five months have past since the Last King of Scotland fled Kampala and Emperor Bokassa has just been extracted from the Central African Republic. The President of Equatorial Guinea is being tried for genocide and Nigeria is weeks away from its Second Republic. South Africa is currently suspected of conducting a nuclear test with Israel in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. In seven month’s time, Zimbabwe will be born.

It’s September in the year 1979. Three years have past since hundreds of Sowetan kids were killed by South African police during protests against legislation that enforced the use of English and Afrikaans as languages of instruction in “black schools.” Right now, a profoundly South African woman is introducing a song to a Dutch audience at Varra TV Studios. “It’s a Xhosa wedding song,” she explains, taking her time.

“Everywhere we go, people often ask me, ‘How do you make that noise?’ It used to offend me because it isn’t a noise, it’s my language. But I came to understand that they didn’t understand that Xhosa is my language and that it’s a written language. We use the same Roman alphabet in writing it. The only difference is that we pronounce certain letters differently.”

47-year-old Miriam Makeba is still on top of her game. She discharges a volley of crackling Xhosa vocabulary to the delight of the crowd. She finds humour in the sombre subject of South Africa and its languages: “Now, I’m sure everyone here knows that we in South Africa are still colonised. The colonisers of my country call this song ‘The Click Song,’ simply because they find it rather difficult saying ‘Qongqothwane.’”

► Miriam Makeba at Varra TV Studios (September 1979)

Koos Kombuis :: Sweet Fanny Adams

Profoundly South African singer-songwriter Koos Kombuis stirred up a storm in 2006 with a whimsical tune entitled “Fokkol.” The free download sapped the width of thousands of broadbands from Worcester to Wollongong. The song paints a bleak picture of South Africa. A tour guide’s monologue from the year 2010, the lyrics lament the plight of a fallen country and fanatically expose its ruins. Smug ex-pats were thrilled. Homecoming revolutionaries were indignant.

The song also appeared on a YouTube offering entitled “The New South Africa.” It was given English subtitles and accompanied by a montage of dystopian imagery showcasing the hack Movie Maker skills of a certain “sweetlove3ten.” While the song is described as “hilarious,” it should have been given the tag satire rather than parody. Nevertheless, most of the 314 comments generated by the video’s 58,860 views (circa the date of this post) push the idea of humour aside and vent an even direr glimpse of the state of the nation.

“Fokkol” has been embraced with enthusiasm by those seeking to confirm their pessimism about South Africa. Those in denial want to pillory Koos Kombuis for being unpatriotic. Few seem to realise that they are responding to a work of science fiction. The monologue, after all, performs an imaginative time warp that gives the song its satirical edge. The lyrics simply suggest that tour guides in 2010 will have lots to talk about what little the country has to offer.

Nevertheless, satire is also directed at the tour guide’s bleak and critical eye. Will South Africa’s poor self-esteem go so far as to infect those whose task it is to take visitors to our places of national pride? Has seeking signs of failure become a South African fetish? Mind you, the guide in question speaks in Afrikaans, which suggests that he must be addressing a group of South African ex-pats. Perhaps they’ve returned from exile to indulge in what they expect to be a World Cup disaster. Perhaps their tour guide is telling them exactly what they want to hear.