A Lame Canard

First, in tribute to our comrade Eve Hall, who passed away a few days ago, and to her living family, please click here for a link to Linda Grant’s “comment is free” blog on the Guardian web site. There you will see something special and extraordinary, generated by Eve’s memory, having to do with people’s recognition of each other. Note the long and diverse string of comments. This example is not irrelevant to the rest of today’s post, as you will see. Linda Grant’s obituary of Eve is here. I wish we had a picture of Eve, but we don’t, so let there be no picture for today. To proceed: The insights of the CU's inspiration, Paulo Freire, are not the exclusive property of Freire’s followers and admirers. In yesterday’s Sunday Independent, it is reported that Judge Dennis Davis gave an address that included the following rather Freirean paragraph: “Expression is about a conversation in which I open myself up to the reality of another person into whose world I then enter. I begin to see things from his or her perspective. We touch each others’ realities and, in the process, exit the process differently to the state in which we entered it. If we fail to converse, no constitutional community is possible.” Davis’ address - a defence of the right and duty to criticise - is a product of the contradiction that has arisen because of the attempted monopoly of democracy by our bourgeois state. The tension between the self-righteousness power that feels compelled to corner all power, and the frank gaze of its counterpart, the common crowd, becomes more and more unbearable to the powerful. It would be hard to find a better example of such a discomfort of the ruling power than the Presidential blog published on 9 November 2007. According to President Mbeki, one after another of the expressed concerns of those others, who, like him, are writing all the time, are nothing but “canards”. (“Canard” is French for a duck, but also means an intentionally harmful lie, says the Pres.) The President thinks the others are all telling “canards”, while he never tells “canards”. He is a victim and they are villains. The “canards” listed by the President are as follows: threat of dictatorship; media freedom in danger; ANC gone astray; angry masses. According to Mbeki these are Lies! All lies! With our President, do we “touch each others’ realities and, in the process, exit the process differently to the state in which we entered it?” No, we do not. We must take his word, or be ostracised. If we continue to dispute his word, we are branded as liars and canard-peddlers and cast into the sin-bin. By the way, the "Letter from the President" is a lot of work. This one is nearly 2000 words long. It must take up plenty of Presidential time. It has to be conceived of in peaceful thought, and then researched, written, edited, checked, polished and sent. It could easily take up one-fifth of the President’s working week, or more when he is troubled, like now. In the current “preslet”, Comrade Mbeki asks rhetorically, or perhaps sarcastically: “should we not, through our actions, so define the meaning of liberty, at the same time repeating words and routine formulae the global democratic community would understand, to build a society in which all are free to pursue their individual interests as individuals and partisan collectives, with no obligation to recognise and respect the common national good!” Is this riddle a contribution to the discussion on Dual Power? If only if it was! Only in dialogue can we sharpen up our common understanding of things. The Communist University, of course, needs dialogue too. Today, the CU is not going to carry any list of links at the bottom (Coming Events are here). Instead, we are going to try an experiment. This is an attempt to publish a box that will allow you, simply by typing your e-mail address and clicking “Submit”, to join YCL’s Discussion Forum (the one used by the CU). All are invited. President Mbeki is also invited. This kind of box is the easiest way to subscribe yourself (or a friend) to a Google Group. If the box does not appear, what you will get instead is a lot of code (HTML script). In that case, please accept apologies. In any case, the same box can be found at the bottom left-hand corner of the YCL web site.

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