Our generation of South Africans stands on the shoulders of giants. This is a splendid blessing. It is a haunting memory capable of becoming a curse. We take tremendous inspiration from the ideals and character of those who came before us.
But we also have the power either to fail to live up to, or simply to betray, the very ideals and achievements of the giants on whose shoulders we stand teetering today. For me, these realities of blessing and curse, usually relegated to the innermost corridors of consciousness, surged to the surface, again and again during the past week. In this regard, several "events" tortured my mind.
On August 10 begun the fifth anniversary of South Africa’s week of shame, when the gruesome events that culminated in the Marikana massacre of August 16, 2012 began to unfold.
Last week, the nation watched the eighth failed attempt by Parliament to execute a vote of no-confidence against President Jacob Zuma.
In the same week, a country which, according to AfricaCheck, recorded 42 596 reported rapes (excluding the many not reported) in the 2015/16 reporting period, celebrated Women’s Day with the usual pomp and some stunning intra-party electioneering in Galeshewe, Kimberly.
In the same week, a cabinet minister confirmed that he had smacked a woman for something she had said. Later, a mobile phone video showing a young school boy, in uniform, seemingly on school premises, beating up fellow pupil, a young girl, also in uniform, started circulating on social media.
The above episodes stirred and simmered in my guts, all week, making me realise how precariously we stand on the shoulders of the stalwarts who have gone before us.
Last week, South Africa said goodbye to one of the finest legal minds this country has produced, Judge George Sammy Shane Maluleke - known fondly as GSS among his colleagues, friends and family.
Former Deputy Judge President Dikgang Moseneke tells the story of how in 1978, three young black lawyers - George Maluleke, Willie Seriti and Dikgang Moseneke - formed the first black partnership legal practice in Pretoria. In open transgression of the Group Areas Act, they installed their practice smack in the middle of koPitoli - on the corner of Strubens and Prinsloo.
Soaked in the Black Consciousness ideology of Steve Biko and the Pan African ideals of Robert Sobukwe, the three set high standards and lofty values for their new firm. These included, black excellence, a conducive office environment and the restoration of dignity to their black patrons.
Born on December 14, 1940 in the far-flung semi-rural village of Wallmansthal outside Pretoria, Maluleke was the most experienced of the three at that time. He started practicing as an attorney in 1973 and only stopped in 2003 when he was elevated to the judiciary of democratic South Africa. Maluleke gave 42 years of impeccable service to the legal fraternity. He was one of the approximately 30 black lawyers who in 1977 moved to found the Black Lawyers Association (BLA). Maluleke chaired the Legal Education Trust of the BLA from 1985 to 2001.
Maluleke leaves a stellar legacy to legal education and training. Among others, he served as a member of the Standing Committee on Legal Education of the Law Society of SA for several years. He played a key role in the founding of the National School for Legal Practice, which has trained thousands of law graduates.
An experience Maluleke had as a teenager caused him to gravitate towards studying for a law degree. This was when his father, a small businessman in Wallmanthal, was involved in a freak car accident which resulted in a permanent leg injury. Young George experienced first-hand how near-impossible it was for black people to access the Road Accident Fund.
As result, during his years as an attorney, he specialised, among others, in personal injury litigation.
The other incident which affirmed his decision to study law came in the mid-70s, when the apartheid government expropriated the land of his birthplace, Wallmansthal, forcibly removing the community to the then newly established Soshanguve township. His father, insisted on taking his business rights from Wallmansthal to Soshanguve with him, failing which he would stay put. At that point, George came face to face with the ruthlessness of apartheid laws as instruments of dispossession and impoverishment of black people.
But take a look at the South African bench today and consider how much it owes to the BLA and the dogged resilience of the black legal practitioner. The BLA has become the unsung backbone of the current South African judiciary. How then, can contemporary jurists, ensure that they stand firmly on the shoulders of our gallant predecessors and do so without wobbling and without dropping the ball?
On July 2, 1963, Moseneke, 15, appeared in Pretoria Old Synagogue court to receive his guilty verdict - of sabotage. Suddenly, from the back of the court a voice was heard shouting, ‘My Lord, I want to testify in mitigation’. It was an impromptu cry form the heart, a plea for mercy, from old man Moseneke, Dikgang’s father, to the embarrassment of his son, who thought his father was showing unhelpful signs of weakness!
This week, as the we underwent the formal and informal rituals of bidding farewell to Maluleke, these and many more images and narratives filled my mind.
Can our generation ever be able to emulate the likes of Maluleke, Seriti and Moseneke?
And what about the fifth Marikana anniversary?
Though it may yet be too early to fully understand the meaning of Marikana, all the chroniclers of the Marikana massacre - Greg Marinovich, Felix Dlangamandla et al, Gis Nicolaides, Rehad Desai, Raphael d’Abdon and others - are agreed about it being a crucial turning point and red alert. It may be democratic South Africa’s most despicable attempt to belittle the sacrifices made by striking workers in Durban 1973 which, according to Noor Nieftagodien, led to ‘a resurgence in black trade unions’, in tandem with growing anger in the townships.
The Lommin strike of 2012 invokes images of the historic and heroic resistance of mine workers - some of the struggle ancestors upon whose shoulders we stand. But the premeditated blood-letting that followed, the lacklustre interventions proposed by the Farlam commission as well as the muted outrage of political and social formations, may reveal how the state and the mining industry, came together efficiently, to spit in the faces of those whom Lucas Ledwaba and Sadiki describe as "broke and broken". Marikana feels like a sadistic rehearsal and mimicry of Sharpeville 1960.
Fast forward 57 years later to August 8, 2017 and consider the eighth vote of no-confidence against president Zuma - an increasingly unpopular incumbent.
Depending on how the ANC interprets its narrow victory and depending on the course of action it takes going forward, the ANC could further hurt itself. A purging of those suspected of having voted in favour of the motion is one clearly unhelpful way of proceeding. It would certainly not be the best way of standing on the shoulders of giants as Ngoyi, Maxeke, Tambo, Mandela and Hani.
* Maluleke is a professor at the University of Pretoria and an extraordinary professor at the University of South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity. Twitter handle - @ProfTinyiko.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.