From baasskap to bra-skap: As bad for the black man as ever

PERVERSIONS OF CAPITALIST SOCIETY

From baasskap to bra-skap: As bad for the black man as ever

Our society is riddled with examples of large- and small-scale extortion and a specific kind of bra-skap that erodes the law and prevents progress in creating order, ISMAIL LAGARDIEN writes.

ANGELA TUCK
ANGELA TUCK

I HAVE been racking my brain for several years over our disregard for “the law” or for “laws” and for the most basic of ideas of what constitutes a good society, and the perversions of the liberal-republican democracy in which we live. This has nothing to do with the legal structures or the practices and practitioners of the law. It is, also, quite the opposite of the “law and order” position so beloved by our more conservative or right-wing friends. I mean, a pedestrian crossing is, legally, the designated place for people to cross a road with some guarantee of safety. You will have recourse to the law.

We may, if only for convenience, for now ignore the relationship between the state (and its laws) and civil society. By which I mean you and me, lay people, as opposed to the government or political parties, which we seem to engage only during elections, after which they seem to do as they please.

It is, of course, dangerous – if not completely wrong – to generalise from personal experience. But … there was no recourse to law after food poisoning from a chesanyama vendor on Mooki Street before a Chiefs-Pirates match, a long time ago. I too once got food poisoning during a Phunya Sele Sele match in Bloemfontein. Everybody had a good laugh. Nobody moped, and no formal complaint was filed with the health authorities. I am not a fan of fast food companies, and these days rarely can afford to eat in restaurants, but they, at least, may take responsibility for poor sanitary conditions in their kitchens.

There is, however, a mass of “isolated incidents" of lawlessness, all the way down (up and sideways) that has apparently run away with our institutions; those practices, norms, customs, habits and ways of social conduct, not the physical institutions with bums on seats. Everyone knows it.

One is always tempted to complain about “isolated incidents", but because we have normalised incidents of lawlessness, we sigh and carry on with our day. Biasa, lah (it’s normal and there’s nothing we can do). We encounter, every day, the abundance of reality that surrounds us, and we move on. How many “isolated incidents" make something a crisis? In an earlier incarnation I learned that when one bank failed there was something wrong with that bank, but when several banks failed at the same time there was something wrong with the system ...

Not just capitalism is to blame

The outstanding example of lawlessness that almost everyone automatically points to is that of the minibus taxi industry; the way drivers have become a law unto themselves, and the way they often completely ignore the rules of the road. We might as well refer to the “laws" of the road. Sure, the statement can be made that instead of having an emergency lane, demarcated by a yellow line, we simply add another line. But we have, almost all of us, seen how taxis drive on pavements, or on the wrong side of the road – against oncoming traffic. The latest assertions from those quarters, terrifyingly, are that nobody should give free rides to pedestrians or hitch-hikers, because it infringes on the (free market) rights of taxi operators.

This is probably the purest of unbridled capitalism, and everyone is too afraid to directly challenge this “logic" of ultimate free market operations because taxi owners and operators are heavily armed, and run security services which have given themselves the right to “fine" transgressors.

Hell, in the USA – the country that is always the reference point for all things good and great among South African intellectuals – you can’t even be a hairdresser without some form or certification and registration. (For the record, I have a single “contact" among the many governments of all America’s enemies. And, for what it’s worth, my actual phone number shows up as “private", and/or “unavailable", plus I don’t take calls from people I don’t know.)

Back to the hairdresser example, all you need in South Africa is some kind of seating, a pair of scissors or clippers, a supplicatory or self-pitying look (we do typically take great pleasure from despair) and an attitude that says: “Why are you preventing me from making money?”

Everywhere else there are veritable practices of extortion. Let’s set aside, for now, the extortion associated with large firms and small businesses; although a word on this will follow. In the one place where I have studied widespread cultures of extortion, (southern Italy, and the island of Sicily), the practice is often a kind of post-hoc habit of approaching people, telling them you have been providing protection, and they need to pay you. A long footnote is required, here. In Sicily extortion rackets have become so pervasive, so normal, that they have come in conflict with, and undermine the law. Resistance to these rackets have been taken up by ordinary people, grassroots activists, vendors and shopkeepers, through a process of Addiopizzo, to combat extortion. In South Africa we have “bra-skap" – more on that below.

In South Africa the streets and parking lots of shopping centres or government offices are populated by extortionists of another kind; car guards, who “protect” your car without your permission. Loitering with intent outside shopping centres, they offer to carry your bags to your car, and expect to get paid. Sure, this is a direct consequence of unemployment. Car guards, forgetting that most often they are quite ineffective when it comes to car theft, are themselves roped into networks of exploitation. At three malls, two in Cape Town and one in Somerset West, car guards “work" for someone who collects “taxes" from them at the end of every day. After enquiring, one French-speaking car guard refused to explain why he photographed my car and registration number ...

Bra-skap is a cause of our downfall

To be clear, there is a lot of complicity between organised criminal networks, public servants, politicians and private enterprises. We know it, accept it, or state this a priori. (As mentioned, my earliest inquiry into this is detailed here. It’s a basic introduction.) This column is about us, ordinary people, civil society who are so imbricated in the perversity of bra-skap. Let me build some kind of argument about the dangers in this regard.

We have, in South Africa, a dreadful habit, one which I have known since childhood; of bra-skap. It simply means that we, black people, in general, should always look out for one another; not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s us against “the man”; it has historically been the white man. We should never sell one another out, and we should always cut down the tall poppy – however innocent, decent, well-intended, diligent and successful she may be.

How often have we heard (black) political leaders insult black people who speak with “Model C" accents. It may have been Floyd Shivambu who once said, on a radio station, that someone could not possibly be a “true African” because they did not speak like “a true African”. The former international relations and co-operation minister Naledi Pandor was insulted in parliament for her accent. You cannot stand out. We have to continue to suffer together.

This bra-skap also circumvents the law. Take the example of a friend whose front wall was destroyed when a minibus taxi sped through an intersection, and to avoid colliding with another car, crashed into said wall. The damage was severe, and some of the windows of my friend’s house were broken. A “deal" was struck between the taxi driver (thoroughly inebriated) and my dear friend whereby he, my friend, would not call the police, or any authorities, and the owner of the taxi, who was not the actual driver, would pay for the repairs to my friend’s property.

Customary solidarity

Several laws were broken, here, all because we (black people) had to retain solidarity, and never be impimpi. In the end all’s well that ended well. But did it really end well? This bra-skap, fear of being an impimpi and customary solidarity erode whatever laws there may be to keep us safe and healthy, and which may lead us to a society that is more prosperous, stable, cohesive and with high levels of trust among citizens.

I share the view that humans are inherently malevolent. (I have read too much Dostoyevsky, I suppose). I find the perversion of society especially disturbing; that capitalism’s unifying logic (we do, after all, live in a capitalist society) and its totalising imperatives seem to have been replaced by a bricolage of multiple, and quite fissiparous realities, each driven, separately, by avoiding the law, protecting our own at all cost, afraid to stand tall – and making money.

Clever people and distinguished Marxist professors may try to convince us that we live in a world marked by post-Fordist fragmentation. A simple explanation of Fordism is the mass assembly-line manufacturing of things. That’s all fine. What I am suggesting is much more indistinct, uglier, and, I would venture to speculate, it is here to stay – and it could get worse.

♦ VWB ♦


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