Of Malapropisms and Political Agendas

by Vuyani Ngalwana

Of Malapropisms and Political Agendas

            It was with an anxious measure of foreboding (from Liberals) that I read in last week’s edition of the City Press newspaper Mr Ramaphosa’s gentlemanly reprimand of the media in the wake of public criticism of the mooted “review” of the Constitution by the ruling party. I take a different, though not opposite, view of the matter.

Liberals (in the classic sense in which the Black Consciousness Movement used the term in the 1970s) and their sympathisers are foaming at the mouth with affected rage. Why?

Well, black people in power started talking about “reviewing” the Constitutional Court. Horror of horrors! But what does that mean exactly?

The trouble is that while we, black people, have largely gone out of our way to learn the English language, its idiom and its phonetic frailties, white people have largely ignored our efforts and instead make merry over our pathetic attempts to sound like them (and look like them, too – what with the now fashionable scented trails of “human hair” and skin-lightening creams by which the Krok brothers have become relatively well-off. But that is a topic for another winter).

In that process, malapropisms and rampant mispronunciation have become entrenched in black English speech. Meanings are lost in the mirth, and the Mandela-esque Tower of Babel has sprung up only to collapse in a heap of engineered misunderstanding.

The root of this is that the only means we (black people) have had to convey our ability, intelligence and competence over the years has been a rich English diction coupled with an indispensable twangy or nasal accent. Anything but native speech patterns would do. Akere we had no opportunities in our chosen professions (such as they were) to demonstrate our abilities?

So, it became a survival motif to sound intelligent, clever and competent. Then we learnt that white people (who controlled who gets employed or recognised as being competent) started believing that if it sounds clever, then it must be clever (eerily like the storied Farmer Brown chicken ad of many years ago: "they taste so good, because they eat so good"). Inevitably then, “high” English was born (even if a word did not quite fit the context, like the chicken ad metaphor I've just forced into this piece) and the twang and nasal pronunciation resonated with those of us looking for a ticket out of the township.

We started saying “comity” to mean “committee”; “corporation” meaning “co-operation”; “beggar” to mean “burger”; “anonymous” to mean “unanimous”; “cock” to mean “cork”; "devil op mint" to mean "development" (our own President, no less); "few ndamental" when we mean "fundamental". We started using words like “clever” when we mean “intelligent”; phrases like “in the final analysis” when we mean “in the result”; “as a consequence” when we mean “as a result”; "in terms of" when mean anything but; and, yes, “review” when we mean “assess”. Therein lies the rub.

“Review” has a jurisprudential ring to it (see, I told you we like “high” English!); “assess” does not. Given our history of cultivating an appearance of intelligence and competence by words and accents, no black President or cabinet minister worth his or her seat in Parliament will be caught dead using a simple word like “assess” when he can say “review” and thereby happily attract the demurring attention of liberals on the eve of an elective conference.

So, I say all those liberals and their sympathisers who baulk at the mooted “review” of the Constitutional Court have been comprehensively suckered by the black ruling elite. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, I know. Blacks aren’t supposed to outwit liberals. But there you are. Accept it and move on to the next challenge.

I promise you there will be no “review” of the Constitutional Court or the Constitution. There should be, but that will not happen. Despite its ostensible bravado (typified not so long ago by its Secretary-General's remarkable retort that mineral resources don't take flight, they remain in the ground and it's people who take flight) the ruling party is sensitive to Trevor Manuel's "amorphous markets".
What you will see is a self-assessment by government (not of the Constitutional Court or the Constitution) about whether the socio-economic rights conferred by chapter 2 of the Constitution have been realised under its watch hitherto. The results will be released closer to the Mangaung elective conference and they will confirm that government has indeed delivered a better life for all South Africans but that (one can’t be too smug about these things) more work needs to be done.

Whether or not that is factually correct is not the point. The point is that is the result, and the liberals, having been wrong-footed, will not have seen it coming and so will not have had the presence of mind to perform their own parallel “assessment” and inevitably come to a different result (as they tend to do with cabinet ministers’ score-cards).

Following such an uncontested result, the ruling party’s constituency (largely black) will once again rally behind the party, having forgotten about all the shortcomings of the past 3 years or so.

The “review” debate is a red herring and liberals have all been suckered! Blacks are not as naïve and bereft of all cunning ways as liberals have come instinctively to accept.

For my part, I have reason to be proud as a black man in South Africa today because, for once, the cunning ways of the ruling black elite have been employed at the expense of the unwitting liberal. May this continue for many years to come.