Over the Limit

I this week again realized how different Germany and South Africa can be when dealing with potential scandals. Here is a cultural case study in how one deals with prominent figures when over the limit.

Early on Thursday morning, during rush hour traffic the ANC’s chief spin doctor Jackson Mthembu was caught for drunken driving at 7 a.m. being three times over the legal drink-drive limit. (Just imagine what his level was at 3 a.m.). He was arrested after driving or rather swaying along in the bus lane on a motorway in Cape Town.

According to several reports in South African newspapers he was then taken to the Mowbray police station. That did not put him off doing his job. At about nine he was conducting a 21 minute interview with the news agency SAPA. He was defending the controversial ANC Youth Leader Julius Malema. Malema is facing criminal charges for reportedly singing at the University of Johannesburg, "Dubula amabhunu baya raypha" (Zulu for, 'Shoot the boers, they are rapists) with a group of students.

On Friday the ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe announced that Mthembu will not be suspended, but the party was taking the matter seriously because of the "carnage" on South Africa's roads. Mantashe said the party would wait for the law to take its course. (However long that will take)

Two weeks ago the first woman elected to lead Germany's 24 million Protestants through the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Bishop Margot Kässman, resigned only days after she was apprehended for a drink-driving offense.

Once the scandal broke, she swiftly gave up her posts as a bishop and as head of the EKD, but said she will continue as a pastor. The EKD elected Kässmann, the bishop of Hanover, to be its new leader on 28 October 2009. It was the first time for a woman to become the highest representative of German Protestants.

Kässmann, a Lutheran and the chairperson of the EKD, the umbrella organisation of Germany's Protestants, was caught drink driving late on the evening of Saturday 20 February in Hanover. She allegedly jumped a red traffic light and was found three times over the legal limit. She immediately had her driving license revoked for a year and a traffic offense case was opened.

Once the story broke in Bild, the biggest German tabloid on the Tuesday, events moved quickly and barely 24 hours later on the Wednesday she called a press conference to announce her resignation from all her leadership posts. She has since then been praised by media analysist s as an example how to swiftly deal with a scandal.

“Last Saturday evening I committed a terrible mistake that I deeply regret; but however much I regret it and accept the-in this situation-entirely justified reproaches that are being levelled against me, not least by myself, I cannot and will not dismiss the fact that my office and my authority as presiding bishop and chairperson of the Council have been damaged. I would no longer have the freedom to identify and measure ethical challenges in the future as I had in the past. The harsh criticism to a sermon such as "Nothing is good in Afghanistan" can only be faced when one's personal power of persuasion is unquestionably acknowledged.”

Germany lost an unique critical and ethical voice; a star who could have moved the Church into the 21st Century. South Africa is left with pantomime - a new act every new day.

The Mandela Release That Never Was

This week it is 20 years since Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. In my unpublished new book “Traitor’s Daughter” I reminisce about those mad times when I worked as a BBC Producer in Johannesburg.

“The new decade had arrived with a big bang or so we all thought. As New Year’s Day 1990 drew to a close, the foreign press community in Johannesburg simultaneously received a message on our pagers to say that Nelson Mandela had been released that afternoon. That message jolted us all into action. Ten weeks before they had released Mandela’s fellow prisoners like that. In the early hours of the morning of 15 October 1989, prison vehicles dropped off Walter Sisulu and all his possessions at his Orlando West home. On that occasion I was also paged to rush over there.

Now on New Year’s day the BBC team rushed to the office in Richmond, near Auckland Park. Although we had never ever had a practice drill, any army general could have been proud of our BBC efforts on that day. As I parked my car with the necessary screeching of tyres, the first to arrive, I was followed within seconds by cameraman Richard Atkinson, video editors and BBC correspondent Colin Blane. We were pulling in one after another, pulling handbrakes, jumping out and running into the offices, switching on machines as we went. No one had summoned anyone. Colin, had in fact just left my house after an afternoon running through the various release options while enjoying a bottle (or two) of fine South African wine.

I started pulling wire copy to see what SAPA was bringing on it and hitting the phones. This was pre-internet and pre-mobile phones. It was the end of the New Year’s Day and most South Africans were recovering from a mega-hangover, even Government types. We were trying to reach Winnie Mandela, elusive at the best of times, and at that stage living at about three addresses. The BBC London Desk immediately panicked and wanted to pull the BBC’s southern Africa Correspondent James Robbins from his holiday in the Eastern Transvaal. Colin Blane, the BBC’s East Africa correspondent, down from Nairobi to cover for James, and I, felt we had to verify the story first. After about 90 minutes of various phone calls we realised it was a hoax. By that time we were all stone cold sober.

It may have been a hoax, but from then on, we maintained that frenetic pace. For the next two months it seemed as if we were working day and night.”

© Anli Serfontein, Traitor’s Daughter - 2010. Unpublished manuscript. All rights reserved by the author.

Melting in the Rain

Christmas Market in Trier

South Africans even after years abroad, melt in rain. Well, unless they are from Cape Town.

We met up at the Christmas Market in Trier last night with with some ex-Zimbabwean, South African friends living here. We hardly had our mugs of warm glühwein in our hands or the skies opened.

While my German husband was still standing sipping, we began to move. "Where can we eat, where can we go indoors?" The Germans stood thick on the market: not moving, sipping and talking or calmly taking out umbrellas.

We thought nothing of it to march into a café with our untouched mugs of glühwein in our hands. We unceremoniously plonked them on the table and then peeled off our dripping wet coats. We told the waitress we intended eating there too. No-one said anything about us drinking glühwein not coming from their café.

We had a pleasant evening watching the rain through the large windows; first sipping our glühwein before moving onto drinking wine and beer and eating a lovely meal. And we laughed and talked of Africa!