When former president Jacob Zuma referred to his detractors and “enemies” as “clever blacks”, it was not intended as a compliment.
To be a "clever black” was to be an individual whom Msholozi believed challenged the rules as he made them up, those people who applied their minds to our Ex No 1’s fantasy world with its benefactors and extractors, the borer beetles that ate the State.
Zuma’s world-view, we all know now, does not include the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa in any shape or form, even from its conception in the Freedom Charter.
We live in it now, dear compatriots, or at least we are digging our way out of it – “it” being the debris of the Zuma-led ANC-accelerated wrecking ball. But we led ourselves to the brink of the abyss through our own actions, our own stupidity.
After the event, said Homer, even the fool is wise (although we might take issue with that one).
Jacob Zuma himself is not stupid. Far from it. He is a keen, wily and ruthless strategic thinker, with no righteous moorings, willing to step on whoever and whatever stands in the way, including, and especially, the law.
We are where we are because we believed in Jacob Zuma and his “Zunami”.
We love-bombed him (well, not the DA, obviously, but certainly Julius “Flipper” Malema, and the Guptas) in those heady days leading up to his rise to lead not only the once-glorious movement, but the country itself.
The big fish, democratic South Africa, was hooked. We fell for the fake bait.
The Theory of Stupidity
Human beings have, for centuries, relied on stupidity for our very survival. So much so that, in 1980, Dutchman Matthijs van Boxsel began what he termed his project of “delirious proportions”, the compilation of the satirical Encyclopaedia of Stupidity (Reaktion Books).
Writes Van Boxsel: “Stupidity is unwitting self-destruction, the ability to act against one’s best interests, with death the extreme result.”
Stupidity, he says, is not the converse of intelligence; it is the converse of a lack of stupidity, while intelligence is the converse of a lack of intelligence.
“Particularly fatal is the combination of stupidity and intelligence,” Van Boxsel observes.
So, if the opposite of clever is stupid, what are we dealing with, really?
Ignorance has nothing to do with stupidity. If ignorant of a fact or a tradition, a person might be open to being enlightened. Should they choose to remain unenlightened, well, that’s just plain dumb.
Ignorance and lack of knowledge can be rectified; stupidity cannot.
If a person insists the world is flat when all evidence points to the fact that it is a sphere, then that person is stupid. Avoid eye contact, walk away.
Years ago, working for a hugely popular family magazine, I was sent to interview a man who was at that point in 1992 described in the headline as “the unluckiest man in South Africa”.
Rereading the endless series of mishaps that befell Boetie (sort of his real name) begged deeper reflection.
Why did all this shit keep happening to just one human?
Like the Zuma family, bad luck following them all the way: poisonings, suicide, a political witch-hunt, spies, agents, traitors, scorpions in the rafters.
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A country of serial victims
Boetie lived in one of those white working-class council houses and at 32 had almost drowned on a fishing trip, had escaped unscathed from the wreck of a car and had been electrocuted when he touched a live wire.
Boetie was also in the process of building the “biggest Porta Pool” in the area when the dream literally came crumbling down.
“Suddenly, the whole side collapsed. There was more water on the outside than the inside. I don’t know if there was something wrong with the pipes. Then the brick paving collapsed. Then the front of the house started cracking and then everything collapsed,” he recounted.
The run of “bad luck” for Boetie began on a fishing trip off St Helena Bay. On board were Boetie, his younger brother, his half-sister and a friend. The snoek were running and the boat was packed to the gunwales.
Give us a sign
“The sea got really rough. We noticed lots of other boats heading back to the quay [red flag, red flag]. Next thing we knew, we were being hit by 5-metre waves.
“One of the engines got knocked off and everyone started shouting out instructions [no skipper, it seems]. I didn’t know what to do. My brother told me to grab the life jacket [ahem, not wearing it, clearly], someone else shouted I should turn the wheel [WTF? Where is the skipper? Ahoy]. It was chaos.”
But, as luck would have it, Boetie and his brother managed to save four snoek after a costly rescue operation at sea.
Their boat, with gaping holes, was towed back to Cape Town, where Boetie parked it next to a nearby afdak when … “it suddenly caught fire”.
“The flames just shot up and burnt a bit of the roof. The whole place could have burnt down.”
Of the finger of fate that had been prodding him, Boetie had this to say: “I don’t know what I have done to deserve this. I don’t have any enemies and I always help people.”
If ever there was an example of a stupid person, it would be Boetie. Sorry, not sorry. It is supposed to be rude to label someone stupid but, sometimes, it is worth it.
One has to admire Boetie’s self-confidence in construction and engineering and plumbing, as well as deep-sea boat skippering, to say nothing of rewiring your house and leaving live bits peeking out.
He was so hoping to construct a swivel bar that would swing out of the house and hover over the pool, and that is what brought down the edifice.
Big dreams with no owner’s manual.
If you need to know more about the life and times of Boetie, then we push on.
His video machine was stolen (hi-tech back then), equipment worth thousands of rands was pilfered from his workshop while he was attending a funeral, his gun was stolen and then his new television set (a replacement for the previous one, which shattered when his foot caught on the cable) wouldn’t work when he plugged it in.
And load shedding was unheard of back then, people.
Boxsel writes that “stupidity is unfathomable” and “can only be defined negatively, in contrast with another quality or as a deficit".
“There is a danger that we create stupidity by defining it, while stupidity lies in the difference.
“Stupidity is always somewhere else. Once defined and named, it loses its baffling quality. Stupidity recognised is an additional bit of wisdom.” DM168
Marianne Thamm is assistant editor at Daily Maverick.
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.
