SYNOPSIS
In South Africa, nicknames are bestowed on many of our national
sports teams in an attempt to galvanize public support behind
their efforts in the international sporting arena. Initially,
televised events unearth these names on banners peppered
around stadiums, following which, some are picked up by
the media, and used in the conscious effort currently being
made to create the semblance of a “rainbow”
nation; a gathering in solidarity behind the national interest.
Names like the ama-boka-boka (the Springbok rugby team),
and the ama-croca-croca (the Springbok paraplegic team),
are particularized as “totalizing” agents in
the task of building a non-racial, multicultural, deconstructed,
post-Apartheid South Africa. In reality, this glossy perception
is merely a veneer concealing the deep divisions still perennial
to a South Africa not yet recovered from the hangover that
followed the miraculous democratic Elections of 1994. The
subsequent euphoria has done little to erode the reality
that, while political democracy has been won by the majority
voice in this country, economic democracy is non-existent
in the retention of the country’s wealth by the minority.
Cut to a speech that President Mandela gave at the 1998
NAM Conference in Durban. Calling for the cancellation of
all debt owed by developing countries to the World Bank,
Mandela stressed the absurdity and unacceptability in the
continued creation of excessive wealth in certain parts
of the globe, while starvation plagues the majority of Humankind.
Although his comments specifically addressed the reality
of Africa and the other Non-Aligned countries present, they
echo a global crisis.
To return to the first issue of how names are used to “totalize”,
I have coined the name AMAKOOL (the cool) to signify the
way we can go about life unconcerned with the guy in the
gutter. We can sit eating supper and watch seemingly unaffected
as CNN or the BBC delivers graphic images of Rwandan “stick
people” or the like into our de-sensitized lives.
Our collective apathy is the product of what I call AMAKOOLOGIK
(the cool logic). My naïve hope is that millions will
hear that word and ask themselves one central question:
“Aren’t
you amazed that its so alive and still going on?”
SYD KITCHEN
© 1999
Back To Top
