South African optimism explained
May 20th, 2009I just finished reading Letter from Africa: America’s cousin on the continent, an article where David Smith (a UK journalist for The Guardian) lays out his views on all the similarities between South Africa and the US. As a South African currently living in the US, this immediately grabbed my attention. And the piece starts off pleasant enough — Mr. Smith argues that Los Angeles is like Johannesburg, Miami is like Durban, Washington DC is like Pretoria, and San Francisco is like Cape Town. I found myself agreeing with everything — I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I have to give him that — if you were somehow able to plunk down another Table Mountain where the Golden Gate bridge currently is, you’d pretty much have Cape Town!
He then gets a little more serious. He starts talking about racial tension and the political similarities between the 2 countries — still making a whole lot of sense along the way. And then, completely out of the blue, Mr. Smith ends the article with this:
Yet there is one thing that South Africans have not mastered, and that is the relentless optimism of Americans about their country. Whether they would be well advised to do so is a question that will take time to resolve.
At first I thought I’d just let it go. Move on, it was a pleasant read, just post it on Facebook and be done with it. But now it’s festering, and 2 hours later I still can’t get over it, so I have to respond…
I think the mistake Mr. Smith makes is in equating criticism with pessimism. This is similar to the mistake I believe some Republicans make in the US when they accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic. Time Magazine recently did an excellent piece on patriotism which I highly recommend (The War Over Patriotism). It lays out in detail the differences between patriotism as “a tribute to the past” vs. patriotism as “a key to the future.” It’s a long argument that I won’t go into here, but I wanted to point to some key pieces in that article that talk about the role of criticism in patriotism (and I cut and paste shamelessly from different sections to make my point):
For liberals, America is less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law. American history is a chronicle of the distance between those ideals and reality. And American patriotism is the struggle to narrow the gap. Thus, patriotism isn’t about honoring and replicating the past; it’s about surpassing it.
Love of country requires both affirmation and criticism. It’s a good thing that Americans fly the flag on July 4. In a country as diverse as ours, patriotic symbols are a powerful balm. And if people stopped flying the flag every time the government did something they didn’t like, it would become an emblem not of national unity but of political division. On the other hand, waving a flag, like holding a Bible, is supposed to be a spur to action. When it becomes an end in itself, America needs people willing to follow in the footsteps of the prophets and remind us that complacent ritual can be the enemy of true devotion.
Patriotism should be proud but not blind, critical yet loving. And liberals and conservatives should agree that if patriotism entails no sacrifice, if it is all faith and no works, then something has gone wrong. The American who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience.
I know Mr. Smith wasn’t referring to patriotism in his article, but my point is this — don’t think that because there is so much negativity and criticism in South Africa at the moment, it means that we haven’t “mastered relentless optimism” about our country. We criticize because we believe we can do better, we criticize because we know there is currently a huge distance between our ideals and reality, and we want to narrow that gap. We aren’t pessimistic, we are getting involved in our future.
I just want to be clear, I completely agree that America is a country with that relentless optimism deeply ingrained. But Mr. Smith, I’m going to respectfully disagree with you if you believe that we South Africans haven’t mastered that art. Remember that every country was designed to make its citizens feel comfortable, not its visitors. So it may look like just a whole lot of pessimism to you, but we’re actually just talking about how to make things better because we are so relentlessly optimistic about what our country can be.
Pieter May 20th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Great article and response.
Unfortunately I see the criticism from white south africans typically involve an “us vs them” mentality, non-commital passivity thrown together with predictions of a future zimbabwe. A kind of pessimism that tends to end up in emigration, and it is becoming very fashionable.
Annie May 22nd, 2009 at 11:52 am
I’d like to throw my “two cents” in here, being an American who currently lives in South Africa.
1. One thing that bothers me is the group of emigrating South Africans who complain about how awful things are here in South Africa. I don’t have a problem with immigration – I myself immigrated. And South Africa has it’s challenges, as does every nation. But one would hope the criticism – whether deserved or not – would lead to action. I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said, “He has the right to criticise, who has the heart to help.”
2. From my perspective, South African are more optimistic than Americans. Definitely more resilient, and more joyful (I realise this is just my opinion, and I am making sweeping generalisations). And forgive me for saying this – I mean no disrespect – but most Americans (in recent generations) have had it too easy and therefore find it all to easy to complain over small issues.
Perhaps the bottom line is that we could learn from each other. Every country is great at something.