It has been about twenty-four hours after the address and I have still not digested the nuance of both the speech and its praises and critiques. The full address has been printed online. In rereading it after hearing its performance yesterday - I recognize that, while I may never be qualified to assess the accuracy or fairness of its accounts of past and contemporary events, issues, and organizations - the emphasis on memory and its connection to hope remains striking to me. After recognizing and commemorating his mother, whom he constructs to represent "the rural masses of the Transkei," and several key anti-Apartheid activists and events in the past, Mbeki insists these guests "represen[t] both memory and hope" and "remin[d] us by their presence that ours is a task in a relay race of continuous rebirth so that the dream of a better life becomes a reality for all South Africans."
We see this connection between the past in the form of memory - particularly memories of the physical sacrifice of bodies through death, internment, and segregation - and its connection to a hope and obligation (Mbeki uses the word "expectation") for the future appear in many places. In an essay from The Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche explores the collective feeling of debt held by a group or culture towards past generations (particularly in terms of past physical sacrifices) and suggests that as time elapses, the perceived magnitude of this debt mushrooms to a proportion that no subsequent generation can ever resolve or "pay off." For Nietzsche, the result of this is a sense of guilt that is endless. If I'm remembering the tenor of his essay correctly - the production of this guilt sickens Nietzsche when he suggests this is how we might understand celebrations of the passion of Christ.
In the case of South Africa and in this address, the question becomes how can any movement forward (that will likely always be riddled with problems, complications, nuances, critiques) ever be perceived to fully honor or "pay off" the number of lives lost to torture and the number of years activists spent repressed, banished, or imprisoned? Of course the direction Mbeki has led the country toward and the direction that many people believe Jacob Zuma will lead the country in a year's time are likely to be radically different interpretations of how these memories of sacrifice should be fulfilled.
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There is much coverage of the address on the web, including the following from Roy Hartley, editor of The Times, who provides a humorous and irreverent summary of the address on his blog:
Mbeki State of the Nation in four sentences:
"I’ve got Jacob Zuma and my mother watching, so have a little appreciation for the political minefield I’m about to walk through, okay?
We’re sorry we stuffed up the electricity thing but we are really, really, really trying to fix it by whatever means possible.
Things look pretty weird with the Police Commissioner on trial and the Scorpions boss suspended, but we are a resilient people that have been through a lot of weirdness before.
All the other promises to fix things and speed up the government made in previous speeches still stand, only this time, I’m going to kick ass because I only have a year or so before Jacob takes over … and you know what’s going to happen then."
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