TayoBlog

You cannot walk past the most prestigious hotel in Stone Stone, Zanzibar,  and miss an oil-painted portrait of Barak Obama. I resisted the touristy thing to take a photograph for a long time, but succumbed on my last day in July.
The portrait expressed the savvy promotional talent of  Massoud, a 25-year-old Zanzibari who claims to have enlisted 200 individuals in an organization supporting the American democratic hopeful. He even told me that he was planning a special meeting in the 16th–century Old Fort to coincide with the official democratic nomination in Denver!
Beyond the clever advertisement trick, the portrait reveals as much about Obama as the beautiful island of Zanzibar. Massoud is a tour operator who has decided to connect his own life and that of the islands of Zanzibar with the election of the most powerful man on earth.
His grandfather hails from Oman, and settled in Pemba. This is the sister island of Unjuga that together form the largest island of an autonomous archipelago of  Zanzibar within the United Republic of Tanzania. Pemba is known as the green peninsula, well known for its plants packed with indigenous remedies. His grandmother came from this island.
Massoud’s father combined this indigenous knowledge with modern medicine, acquired from the Chinese who supported Tanzania’s post-independent efforts to establish a modern, socialist state. He ventured deeper into the interior of the country, peddling medicines from the “east and west”. No prizes for guessing whom met in the African interior: Massoud’s Congolese mother.
Massoud sees himself as the confluence of many cultures, just like Obama. And this is an aspect of the Zanzibar that one cannot miss. The people of the island are over 90% Muslim, but they are consist of African, Asian and Arab communities. Not surprisingly, the Asian are the most exclusive but are themselves divided into Ithna Ashari, Ismaili, Bohra, and Sunni. To add to the mix, there are also Hindu and Christian group among the South Asians.
A Sunni Oriental mosque, with a classic Indian dome, is tucked away into one of the many alleys of Stone Town. It is administered by seven groups of Kutchee Muslims, each group equally represented on the mosque board. The Arabs are more integrated with the indigenous peoples, but even more elitist than the Asians.
The vast majority of Zanzibaris regard themselves as African, but Shirazi. They  regard themselves descendents of the first settlers from Persia. Their Shafi communities and culture have developed over a thousand years. The earliest known mosque, going back to the  11th century AD, is located on the southern part of Unjuga island, about 40 km from Stone Town.
The Zanzibaris are proud of their distinctive culture, and see themselves quite different from other Tanzanians (including its minority Muslim inhabitants). In reality, they are what Massoud  says to tourists and passersby: A meeting of cultures and peoples across the Indian Ocean into the distant past. The ethnicities are clearly there, but they share a cultural fabric that is not difficult to miss.
But Massoud did not stop at the Obama’s multiculturalism that matched that of the Zanzibaris. He was also familiar with the general message of hope that Obama projected, and which many Americans seem to recognize.
Massoud had read the first book of Obama and was busy reading his second when I met him. Upon a little deeper probing, he told me that he also admired the courage of Obama to bring about change. Most Zanzibaris, he told me, had despaired of seeing any economic and political change for the better. They had resigned themselves to their fate, often turning to religion to accept their condition.
I certainly heard this sentiment across the island. Teachers and government officials lived on $100 per month, and ordinary workers on less than that. As we know too well, globalization ensured that most food and essentials had to be paid for in global prices. Apart from some reliance on subsistence farming and international proceeds from  Zanzibaris working in Dubai and Western cities, it was difficult to understand how people made ends meet.
The political situation is none the better. As in many African countries, state planning and intervention had given way to free-market forces in the last 15 to 20 years. The same Revolutionary Party (Chama cha Mapinduzi) that brought independence, was overseeing the wholesale sale of state assets, and withdrawal from social services. In Zanzibar, the CCM prided itself in bringing about a revolution against Arab hegemony, and still rested on those laurels.
Against these realities, Massoud was determined to turn the tide against despair and hopelessness. He was not the only one who expressed these sentiments to me. But the threats and realities of global economic exploitation were quite palpable.
Obama was a symbol of that hope for about 200 Zanzibaris. This is the not the reaction he has got from Muslims elsewhere. Before I left for Zanzibar, I took a fellow researcher from Kenya to a Friday sermon at the Awwal (first) Mosque in Cape Town. I was astounded to hear a direct attack on Obama from a very respectable and leading member of the Muslim Judicial Council.
The preacher did not elaborate on the reason for his attack, and I could not understand the vehemence of this sermon. I later found out that the sermon may have been a response to Obamah’s almost total capitulation at a 4th June pro-Israeli lobby meeting, promising American support for the whole of Jerusalem as the eternal capital  of the Jewish state, and also his support to take a hard line against Iran.
Was Massoud’s support for Obama misplaced? Or was it more important to recognize the intermeshing of our cultural streams, and the need to have the confidence of making a difference? The choice of the Americans, we know too well, has far-reaching impact on the globe. I picked up a strong desire in Massoud to steer the symbol of Obama towards the values and needs of Zanzibar that I did not see in the Friday sermon in Cape  Town.

The South African Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, announced the introduction of a school pledge to be memorized and recited by all school learners at the beginning of every school day. The pledge read as follows:

We the youth of South Africa
Recognising the injustices of our past,
Honour those who suffered and sacrificed for justice and freedom.
We will respect and protect the dignity of each person,
And stand up for justice
We sincerely declare that we shall uphold the rights and values of our Constitution
And promise to act in accordance with the duties and responsibilities
that flow from these rights.
! KE E: / XARRA // KE
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika

It is difficult to imagine how a school pledge recited every morning can accomplish much. However, the proposed plan might just be the opportunity to deeply examine the fundamental values of South Africa, the role of religion and education in our schools.

Minister Pandor’s proposal has received mixed reaction. Some have rejected it outright while others would rather have a modified text, particularly with regard to the second line that refers to “the injustices of the past.”

The Democratic Alliance has been quick to present an alternate pledge where reference of injustices has been replaced by a commitment to “heal the divisions of the past.” There remains a deep and visceral refusal among the previously advantaged to speak clearly and unequivocally about apartheid and its injustices. A debate on the pledge must not ignore this thing about “injustices” that cannot be named, and cannot be thought.

The pledge has clearly religious undertones and implications as well. Some religious groups have recognized the uncanny relationship between a pledge and prayer. For them, the pledge forces a believer to make a choice between a prayer and a pledge. Put in this way, there seems only one choice for a devout believer.

The equation between a pledge and a prayer is worth another look. Since 1994, religious groups without exception have benefited tremendously from the freedom that the Constitution guarantees. The number of people turning to religion has increased exponentially, building Churches, temples, mosques and other social fields. Moreover, many pray, marry, eat, and drink according to their religious values, and demand to do so on constitutional grounds if any of these are slightly threatened. And so it should be.

At the same time, these very believers cry foul when they are asked to commit to the Constitution. The fundamental conflict between the pledge and devotion to God is simply misguided. They are two different kinds of pledges that call for different responses. Equating them ignores the basis that the Constitution creates and provides for the exercise of religion. Without the Constitution, the free and equal exercise of religion cannot take place. At the very least, a pledge should be a commitment to uphold that freedom for oneself and for all.

The pledge is perhaps a sign of desperation on the part of the Cabinet in general, and the Minister of Education in particular. The evident success of the religious sector in South Africa tempts government to adopt its method. If assembled prayer was so successful, the reasoning seems to be, then the state could do worse than follow a tried and tested model. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In fact, school assembly prayers are a feature of South African schools that have not fundamentally changed since the days of apartheid. Perhaps this is the reason why school bodies would not mind refining the language in the proposed pledge, in the direction of the DA’s suggestions, and adopt it. Reciting the pledge would not be a way of addressing the values of the Constitution, the demands it makes and the possibilities it provides.

Reciting the pledge would mean business as usual. Some schools will adopt the pledge; others will happily continue to pledge and pray. The sad thing is that many would not know the difference, and be none the wiser. Such a policy would be disastrous for both religion and the pledge; confusing their clearly different purposes and objectives. The values of the Constitution would be recited, but hardly debated. Worse still, the meaning of religion would be mistaken for a bold clash with the state.

Reciting a pledge like a prayer is even more problematic from the perspective of educational practice. Since 1994, the Ministry of Education has promoted educational methods that focus on interaction, creative application and continuous learning. Despite its evident failures, OBE and Curriculum 2005 promoted an interactive process of learning.

The proposed pledge spells none of this. Its daily and public performance competes against established educational policies. It reinforces a model of rote learning, memorization and authoritarianism, all the hallmarks of education and religion in South Africa. It wants South African youth to make a commitment to the most important values of being citizens using a model that fundamentally contradicts them.

Of course, perhaps the cabinet and the Minister are not unaware of this connection. Using religion to create a model for the nation has been used by other modern countries. With disastrous consequences, the nation state has demanded the commitment, the blind following and the devotion that it has seen in religion. The model of religion has been all too tempting, and the pledge might be one step in this direction.

The South African constitution is hardly conducive to this development. And the diversity of South African citizens would make such a project totally unfeasible. In order to avoid this consequence, public debate must be stepped up: for the Constitution, for its values and also for religion.