R.W. Johnson, National Post (Toronto), February 6, 2009
The ongoing row in the South African press over President Kgalema Motlanthe’s complicated love life has brought out into the open a subject that much of the country’s ruling black elite would rather keep hidden. Motlanthe, 59, is estranged from his wife, has a steady 45-year-old mistress and a 24-year-old, now heavily pregnant, lover. The African National Congress (ANC) spokesman, Carl Niehaus, insists that media attention is an invasion of privacy, but South African journalists have proven underwhelmed by this response.
Only a few weeks ago, Niehaus issued a statement denouncing as “lies” reports that the ANC leader (and, doubtless, South Africa’s future president), Jacob Zuma, was about to marry a fifth wife. When the reports were quickly proved true, Niehaus hurriedly insisted that Zuma’s behaviour, though “in line with African custom and tradition,” was a private matter. Still, South African journalists want to know: Who exactly is our First Lady? In particular, which of Zuma’s five wives (he is currently courting a sixth) will be the First Lady at his presidential inauguration in April?
“What you’re really looking at here is a collision of cultures which has been going on ever since the first missionaries landed at the Cape,” says sociologist Laurence Schlemmer. “To an extraordinary extent, the missionaries managed to associate the Christian ideal of monogamy with high social status and modernity.”
Indeed, Zuma is unusual in his frank acknowledgement of his own polygamy. In the eyes of many educated Africans, this is a shameful sign of his cultural backwardness—that, as former president Thabo Mbeki put it, Zuma is still a traditional Zulu peasant at heart. All educated Africans publicly deplore the ever-expanding harems maintained by the Swazi and Zulu kings. But among less-educated Africans—Zuma’s natural followers—polygamy is far more easily accepted.
Stanley Mogoba, former president of the Pan Africanist Congress, has said that “virtually none of the African National Congress leadership have normal and stable family lives. There are multiple but hidden wives and mistresses, ex-wives, unacknowledged and hidden children, every imaginable sort of arrangement. Sometimes, they seem almost to turn themselves inside out trying to be or appear what they are really not.”
Thus, officially, Nelson Mandela has been serially monogamous with three consecutive wives. But it is no secret that, at least when he was young, he was a philanderer on a large scale, and there are persistent rumours of illegitimate children. Mbeki was also known to be a ladies man on an almost industrial scale. The accusation could hardly be denied, but drawing attention to it was impermissible, especially since Mbeki was haunted by notions that the AIDS epidemic had confirmed stereotypes of lustful and sexually irresponsible African male behaviour. Similarly, neither Motlanthe nor Zuma welcomes questions about, or even attention being paid to, their marital lives.
This anomalous situation is compounded by the fact that although polygamy is legal in South Africa and homophobia common, the South African constitution is one of the world’s most progressive in its acknowledgement and championing of gay rights and gender equality. Feminists have won legal battles over inheriting property—even though in African customary law a widow and all her chattels belong to her late husband’s family—and have angrily denounced polygamy as a form of female subordination.
But even such feminist advances have their own contradictions: When Joe Modise, the notoriously corrupt former defence minister, died, his wife asserted her right to inherit his considerable wealth. The trouble was that so did his regular mistress. A battle royal ensued.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the black elite are trying to keep the subject of polygamy out of the press. It brings to light too much embarrassment and anxiety about what constitutes “respectable” behaviour.
Still, the question remains: Who is South Africa’s First Lady?
Original article
(Posted on February 6, 2009)
Comments
When will black people get their act togther. It’s sad when a large portion of a ethnic group. This behavior is the sick and shouldn’t be condone. It is sad when members of the human race choose to wrong even when hurts them and their people.
And I always love reading the term ‘serially monogamous’ in regards to blacks. An absurd oxymoron.
I see no problem with this. It is their culture; let them run it as they please. In most primate species there is wide-spread sexual permissiveness — both sexes mate with different partners. However, usually the dominant male achieves most matings. Throughout history, and even today, most human societies are polygynous (males having multiple partners). In fact, monogamy may be an aberrant behavior in humans. Monogamy does have advantages in terms of family stability and wealth creation, and in fact, Western civilization has done quite well using this system. However, that does not mean that it is the “natural” state for humans. If Africans want to practice polygamy — then let them.
I don’t care too much about polygymy; if you can support more than one wife and your resultant family - and no one is forced, then more power to you. Many of European extraction actually have Royal blood because most Kings and other nobles impregnated unknown but huge numbers of young women all over their territories. But that is why there was an important designation term - “bastard.” It was not a dirty word, just implied that the child could not claim hereditary rights. But when no legitimate offspring was present as in William the Bastard’s case, he might become a Duke and a Conqueror.
What we need is reality in our movement not adherence to “Moral” laws that really only restrain us.
As far as I know polygamy is not legal in South Africa. The black gangster government turns a blind eye to many “traditional” arrangements, but they are extra-legal and would certainly never be allowed among whites.
I must disagree with Whiteplight; adherence to moral laws that restrain us is what makes our civilization superior. Monogamy might not be a "natural" condition, but it is an institution that has served us well, and moreover is a beautiful ideal that deserves protection.
Even America’s most celebrated national hero, MLK, was a serial philander who repulsed his own friends with his adulterous and degenerate behavior.
To no avail, apparently.
If you want an advanced, prosperous, First World nation, monogamy MUST be, if not rigidly enforced, then at least held up as the common ideal that everyone should shoot for. Having leaders whose sexual behavior is no different from alleycats will only encourage the masses to behave the same way.
And when they do, you can forget about ever having that advanced, prosperous, First World nation. All you’ll EVER get under those conditions is a chaotic, poverty-stricken Third World nation.
This is true regardless of the race of that nation’s citizens — although it is obviously more of a problem with Africans than with anybody else.
I must second the opinions of Anonymous at 12:19 PM on February 7. And nothing more in fact needs to be said. Western civilization is a combination of classical rationalism and Christian idealism. This is all that we need, all that we should strive for. Any large deviation therefrom will only accelerate our demise, as is witnessed by the constant assault on our culture.
>>AnalogMan at 2:23 AM on February 7 - I must disagree with Whiteplight; adherence to moral laws that restrain us is what makes our civilization superior
In this critical period when the birth-rate among Whites is declining, we need more white babies. If polygamy can help to reverse this demographic decline, I would welcome it. Whites have proven the superiority of their civilization several times over. Now, they have to do everything in their power to secure their future.
Stone cold polygamy, with a side of denial and hypocrisy. It’s a lovely recipe I got to see up close at a recent place of employment. The only solution is to get as far away from it as you can.
Kgalema!! he got baby mommas.
I understand some men’s sexual need for variety. But what I don’t understand is just how in the world does this guy have time to run a country when most of his time has got to be spent on keeping the peace between all of these women?
MoMo
The news here is that it is not news, at least as reported in most U.S. newspapers. Any story that doesn’t bolster the religion of diversity and multi-culturalism is ignored. Who remembers the daily attacks on South Africa prior to black rule? Now that it’s obvious that black rule is a failure it just isn’t reported.
“I must disagree with Whiteplight; adherence to moral laws that restrain us is what makes our civilization superior. Monogamy might not be a “natural” condition, but it is an institution that has served us well, and moreover is a beautiful ideal that deserves protection.”
Posted by AnalogMan at 2:23 AM on February 7
It is fine for you to disagree with me, however, I would counter that restraint has only led to outbursts of indecency and hundreds of years of secret living because we deny our nature in our Christianity. We worship an apparently eunuch god. This has led to a vast sub-culture of hypocrisy from the start along with a variety of guilt complexes that have decreased mental health. Restraint is bound by laws of nature including the application of physics as a metaphor as in “an equal and opposite reaction.” The West is hardly a showcase of restraint these days and it really never has been in any way. In fact, that is one of Islam’s problem with the West - its decadance. You can’t have traveled much if you haven’t noticed how appalled most non-Westerners are with Americans and Western Europeans. They may like our money but they look down on us as inferior animals. They look down on us because of how we portray our society and how we represent it with in our television, movies and also from the news that our society produces with its latest pedophile hunt and our hypocritical commercial child imaging. It leads one to think whatever we have been practicing, it hasn’t served us well at all. All of it is the product of restraint and the guilt and frustration that leads so many to act out.
I want to point out that one may be moral according to a given societies ethics. If we measure morality at its baseline, those things that add to a society in terms of its survival and expansion are good and therefore - moral. The succession of its best to better the whole than it becomes moral for the most fit of those societies to contribute to it through its superior genetic product. It is how that is done that is the quesiton. In the West, mostly because of Christianity, violation of monogamy rule is deemed a “sin.” In Christianity “sin” may be forgiven. That created the state of culture wherein one could violate manogamy all one’s life but be forgiven (along with whatever other sins one might commit or accumulate). This condition has created a culture wherein wrongdoing may be forgiven. My opinion is that this has created for example the corruption that has brought us into so much trouble today. No one worries about consequential morals and ethics because we live in a culture that is in the final stage of the “forgiveness flaw” that has typified the West for nearly two thousand years.
If a culture has found that polygamy has strengthened it (and it always has, even in the West although covertly)it is not immoral to have more than one wife out in the open. A wealthy man is usually smarter than an impoverished one and it is well within natural law and in a culture’s interest to have the more sucessful of its members produce more offspring than the unsucessful ones. In many culures, it is actually considered selfish for a rich man to not have many wives and father many children. Lately in the West, we have gotten around this by practicing polygamy serially, but with much more social damage than the more honest practice of it.
In my first post I pointed out that Christian Kings and their society actually hardly ever practiced monogamy in actual practice. Regardless of that, we built this “superior” civilization in spite of that and many more hypocricies. In fact, in Victorian times there were well understood rules of society that were by that time codified in practice if not by law. They were part of an elaborate chivalric code where honor meant how one conducted themselves in life, not whether they denied life itself. One of them for example is the “No affair before there is an heir.” Once one or preferrably two heirs have been produced by the marriage, neither was too concerned with mistresses and romances so long as the companion rule, “Never humiliate your spouse through indescretion” was adherred to. Europe had gotten along well for hundreds of years this way despite occassional religious upheavals and the wars they produced.
As a historian by advocation, I have found many examples of the many exceptions to the idea of monogamy in the West throughout history - including at monestaries and nunneries. Monogamy was and is mostly successfully enforced in the working class - mostly because they are brought up and kept under strict religious pressure. Your postion rather indicates that you are a product of this class and its conditions.
However, the myth of societal monogamy was taught as a view that everyone was monogamous was sold but only true for that class. That is why for example, as soon as Americans had more leisure time, the problems of affairs and the subesequent rise in divorce began. The overwhelming tendancy is that once a member of society becomes successful enough, polygamy, even if it is secret - proliferates. Just look at all the Senators, Evangelists and others who just can’t control themselves once power is attained. That is probably because it is biologically natural for power to act as an aphrodesiac (actually proven).
Keeping the Working Class in thralldom may indeed have served a function in the West, but it is certainly not a new thing to have violated it and it doesn’t threaten society today. What threatens society today is that we are seeking to apply “moral” rules that have been practiced generally in the West for hundreds of years without bringing along the conditions that actually made monogamy appear successful structually. Without the rules that made monogamy tolerable, we have become a society of serial polygamists. You judge which produces more stability.
I understand some men’s sexual need for variety. But what I don’t understand is just how in the world does this guy have time to run a country when most of his time has got to be spent on keeping the peace between all of these women?
Go read this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuEc-nFULY8
To: Skip
Thank you for the site.
I well know this Reverend. I believe that he speaks what he believes to be the truth! I know that he was not overjoyed when Bill Clinton moved his group into Harlem. He and I totally agree that the black race should carry its own water. His view, of course, does not make him popular with most blacks or liberal whites. I hope he has competent bodyguards.
Apparently he is less than one hundred per cent black himself. I would love to hear him debate the Reverend Wright, also a light skinned black, over the accomplishments of his fellow blacks.
I note that our President’s popularity rating is continuing to fall. When the whites realize that the whole stimulus package’s primary function is to funnel money to blacks [to keep them from rioting], his popularity will fall at a much faster rate.
I was not happy with President Bush. I also didn’t care for Senator McCain, other than the fact I believe that he knows how to deal with individuals in the world who are obsessed with our destruction.
I don’t know who or what group is actually running the country other than I don’t believe this President would, or could, ever be capable of doing it himself!
I am going to be out of the country for a while, so when I don’t show up here, don’t worry I haven’t died.
MoMo
Posted by Whiteplight at 4:11 PM on February 9
OK here it goes…….I can’t believe your comments, I really can’t.
“The West is hardly a showcase of restraint these days and it really never has been in any way. In fact, that is one of Islam’s problem with the West - its decadance.”
YOU HAVE SOME NERVE-CALLING US, WESTERNERS, UNRESTRAINED. IF ISLAM HAS A PROBLEM WITH THE WEST, IF WE ARE UNRESTRAINED, WHY DO THEY KEEP COMING HERE????
A wealthy man is usually smarter than an impoverished one and it is well within natural law and in a culture’s interest to have the more sucessful of its members produce more offspring than the unsucessful ones.
YES, WE AGREE WITH YOU. THE PROBLEM IS THAT IMMIGRANTS COME HERE AND BREED LIKE RATS. EVEN IF WE HAVE THREE CHILDREN EACH…THEY HAVE TEN.
“Without the rules that made monogamy tolerable, we have become a society of serial polygamists. You judge which produces more stability.”
YES, I AM JUDGING. EVEN IF THE WEST ARE SERIAL POLYGAMISTS, WE ARE WAY MORE STABLE.
I can’t even go on.
Posted by Whiteplight at 4:11 PM on February 9
“The West is hardly a showcase of restraint these days and it really never has been in any way. In fact, that is one of Islam’s problem with the West - its decadance.”
The problem islam has with the West is that it is not Islamic!
