The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Mabhena
Left alone without art as its discipline and beautification, politics as competition for power and resources in public affairs degenerates into primitive war itself. Seasoned with art and disciplined with ethics of politeness, fairness and justice politics becomes a modern art of sharing power and managing resources.
One may observe here that the entire academic and professional discipline of Politics and Administration was originated for purposes of civilising and ethicising politics to rescue it from the primitive instincts and passions of politicians as potential gladiators and power mongers.
It was in description of politics that has art when Chairman Mao Zedong made the durable observation that “politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” Without the touch of art politics becomes a scramble for power and resources that is a “war for all against all,” is bloody, ugly and dirty, even evil.
Students of politics as the science and art of leadership and management enjoy the illustration that was offered by Carl Schmitt that every ballot cast in an election effectively replaces a bullet that otherwise was going to be fired at a political opponent and enemy in war. Schmitt’s illustration artistically suggests that every ballot that we count in modern elections was otherwise supposed to be a dead body in primitive politics.
The artistic transition from bullets to ballots is a civilisation, modernisation and beautification of politics from war to peace, and from primitive competition to civilised contestation. That is why the arch-philosopher of the “ the political” Chantal Mouffe believes that in the political proper, that is politics with ethics and beauty, political opponents are not enemies but are adversaries that have to be contested and engaged with and not eliminated. To transform politics that is otherwise the proverbial dirty game to a peaceful and beautiful game is to decolonise and liberate politics by freeing it from barbarism and primitivism.
The art of rhetoric
Historians and other enthusiasts of the African past know it that one of the most important figures in KwaBulawayo, the Royal House of Tshaka Zulu, was the Imbongi, praise poet. The Imbongi was one of the few figures that through poetry and the tool of satire could tell the King some brutal truths and criticisms and get away with it. Praise itself was only a small part of the Imbongi’s work, satire, some advice and stern warnings were the greater part of his vocation.
That Tshaka, for instance was “Isalakutshelwa, isala kunyenyezelwa, esithe ngokuzw’ indaba sagijimela ehawini” was sober advice that the King had to learn to listen and stop finding the smallest excuse to go to war. The Imbongi was otherwise matter of factly telling Tshaka that it was more important to be a communicator, to listen and to speak, than to be a warrior and a conqueror. It was more important to rule by consent than by conquest.
Even those political philosophers that have openly celebrated the combination of fraud and force in politics have noted the importance of political communication and dialogue ahead of war. In the book: The Art of War, Niccolo Machiavelli notes that “ trying to do by arms what could be settled by words at the end of it all may only lead to the peril of the commanders.”
The very technician of war and power privileged dialogue ahead of war that even if it is successful one day it will end with the defeat of the conqueror himself. It is important to note that in a book that was supposed to provide the “art of war” and science of battle, Machiavelli chose to introduce his rendition with the importance of communication over war. African historians and anthropologists may confirm the fact that in the courts of African kings were not only praise poets and warriors but also orators, wisemen and some kinds of messengers and diplomats.
The importance of political communication and negotiations was not underestimated but valorised. The modern discipline and profession of diplomacy itself is a testimony that political communication and representation are the oxygen of history and the midwife of progress.
Of the many ideas that Aristotle became famous for his authority as a ground breaking thinker was established in his classic treatise, The Art of Rhetoric. From the 4th Century up to this day students of politics and communication use Aristotle as a foundation to their understanding of the centrality of communication in politics and in law. Aristotle mocked the temptation of human beings to defend themselves using limbs and weapons instead of words.
His argument was that “it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason.” He found it funny at best and insane at most that a man will be ashamed of the failure to defend himself with blows but still live with the misery of failing to acquit himself in clear thought and convincing speech.
Politics needs Art
In literature schools and schools of different kinds of arts we are taught that one of the most important truths about art is that it is an imitation of life. We are informed that art uses sounds, shapes, images and symbols to fictively comment on what happens in the facts of life. A good cartoonist can use drawing and words to satirise an important politician and deliver some critique and political advice.
Politicians read books, newspapers and listen to voices on the ground and then plot and plan their actions. Words, symbols and other signs are important to politicians. Public opinion is central to the life of politicians as practioners of the modern art of rule by consent as opposed to rule by coercion.
The words that they hear and those that they give out in speech and in text are the lifeline of politicians. The politicians are otherwise actors and performers on the political stage and their performance is watched and evaluated for affirmation or negation.
The modern political life itself, in that way, is a life of art and performance. Art might really be the imitation of life in literature studies and the arts, in politics life is the imitation of art. Art in terms of rhetoric as persuasion and seeking conviction and consent through presentation, performance and argumentation is the soul of modern and ethical politics. Okot P’Bitek was correct that in the final say, the artist is the ruler and the ruler might need to be an artist or degenerate to a brute.
Art in its various shed makes the proverbial dirty game a truly beautiful game. Politics needs art because art liberates politics from barbarism, rescues it from primitivism.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, in Pretoria, South Africa. Contacts: [email protected]
