08 June 1998, 994 words
Last week, I realized that I will never be a great woman. This is not a thought that would occur to many men, but I am a professional thinker. It is my job to sit down and think thoughts that most people would not think of.
In this particular thought, though, I must admit that I was aided considerably by Pearl Eintou Springer and the Emancipation Support Committee. I had always known, in a vague sort of way, that I would never be a great woman and, whenever I dropped my trousers, I became sure of it. A penis is a great obstacle to being a great woman (although in my case, it's just a medium-sized obstacle.) Mind you, though, I do value my penis greatly. I have heard it said that the brain is the true sex organ but, while I can agree with this to a point, my own view is that the brain is to the penis as theory is to practice - and I am no mere theorist.
But it is not my genitals which is the only barrier to my being a great woman. I am also unwilling to kill children and, according to Eintou Springer, this is an insurmountable barrier to female greatness.
This is the only logical conclusion I can come to after reading an article defending Winnie Madikizela Mandela, in which Springer writes: "As mother, as woman from whose womb would come the enslaved, [the African woman] would prefer to kill her children rather than let him betray the revolution." Winnie Mandela, of course, is alleged to have been involved in the murder of a 14-year-old boy named Stompei who refused to join her "Football Club" of personal bodyguards and hooligans.
Despite being a professional thinker and a heterosexual male, I have yet to find any principle which can justify killing children. But, of course, I am not a mother like Eintou Springer. Mahatma Gandhi, alleged by many people to be truly great, once said that there were causes he was willing to die for, but there was absolutely no cause he would kill for. But Gandhi is not as great as Winnie, because though both were involved in revolutionary struggle, Winnie now lives in a luxurious mansion in South Africa, whereas when Gandhi was killed all he owned was his glasses, a walking-stick, slippers and a spinning wheel.
In that same article, Springer managed to accomplish something which you might ordinarily think impossible: mention herself and Wendy Fitzwilliam in the same sentence. "In my country, faces black like mine's, like Winnie's, like Wendy Fitzwilliam's, rarely appear in any advertisements," she writes. (This, by the way, is described as an aspect of "a new and deadly weapon of war", presumably because of the scores of fatalities among dark-skinned women in Trinidad and Tobago from not being featured in advertisements.)
Strangely, the ESC has not condemned the similar "persecution" of former South African President P.W. Botha. Botha is on trial for shunning the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Last week, he was accused of knowing far more than he admits about the State-sanctioned killing of anti-apartheid activists. But, as any white supremacist would know, this is undoubtedly a conspiracy hatched up by the TRC and, inasmuch as Botha has denied all involvement in State killings and refused to apologize for apartheid, the accusations are also no doubt a campaign of disinformation.
Why is the ESC not speaking out now? What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. As regards involvement in murder, the evidence against Botha is just as strong - or just as weak, depending on your ideological bias - for Botha as for Winnie. The same principle applies in both cases.
The ESC, however, is not about principle. After all, Nelson Mandela has proven himself to be a man of true greatness simply because of his personal integrity and unshakable commitment to peace in his country. Along with Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev, I consider Mandela to be one of the three greatest statesmen of this century. So, when a man like that rejects his ex-wife politically and personally, I feel I have to pay attention to his attitude, even if the facts may be unclear. The ESC women, however, while not so bold to condemn Mandela outright, have been implying that he has distanced himself from Winnie only because she horned him while he was in prison for 27 years. Presumably, the fact that he believes his ex-wife to be an advocate of political violence, and even a murderer of young boys, is entirely irrelevant.
There is probably some deep psychological connection between ethnocentrism and a predilection for violence. I myself think it's a simple combination of insecurity, stupidity and moral laziness. After all, no matter what group they belong to, these people all spout exactly the same crap, just using different labels. Kumar Mahabir tries to encourage violence against Black people; Burton Sankeralli thinks violence is a necessary tool to bring about social change; Kamal Persad and Rajnie Ramlakhan thoroughly approve of India exploding nuclear weapons; Selwyn Cudjoe describes ethnic relations in Trinidad as a battle for "survival of the fittest"; and CAFRA has issued an official welcome to Winnie Mandela because, as a woman, her violent past is OK.
Wendy Fitzwilliam has undoubtedly aroused the ire of all these incompetent human beings, since she bluntly declared at her first press conference here that the terms Indo-Trinidadian and Afro-Trinidadian are "insignificant and mean nothing." She even declared, unforgivably, that she had experienced absolutely no discrimination in the international competition. (This is unforgivable because bigots never want to admit that those who look for bigotry will surely find it.)
"Some who come from my womb will be traitors and must be treated as such," declares Eintou Springer, who hopefully will never get close enough to Wendy to demonstrate the strength of her convictions.
Copyright ©1998, Kevin Baldeosingh