I have followed the trial of former police chief Selebi about as far as is tolerable, and could not distinguish the good guys from the bad ones even if they put them into black hats and white hats for TV purposes. There is simply a pervasive projection of unsavoury characters doing deals and arguing about them, and it doesn’t look likely at the moment that anybody is going to jail in a hurry.

But then they seldom do, as corruption and extravagance by the new hierarchy surpasses even the lifestyle of their predecessors. The struggle (against Mbeki) has been won, instant gratification is the aim and bling’s the thing.

The ANC, says party spokesman Julius Malema, can take a youth off the street , put him in good shoes and teach him how to enjoy red wine. Does he not sometimes wonder whether that is perhaps settling for too little in life?

How about a dream not yet dreamed by anybody else, that could benefit his people, and perhaps put another South African up there in the international pantheon of achievers? Like freedom fighter Nelson Mandela or heart transplant pioneer Dr Christiaan Barnard, or Dr Phillip Tobias, co-finder of Homo Habilis and world authority on human origins?
Just think:

Mythology tells of human beings who tried to fly, constructing wings of feathers stuck together. But it was not until 1903 that American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, “engineers and tinkerers” built and flew an airplane and changed history. No unions, no red tape, just a magnificent obsession successfully executed by trial and error and financial and physical risk, now taken for granted by people who queue every day all over the world to fly from one place to another.

Less than 60 years later, in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space and orbited the earth, returning safely. I watched it on television, astounded. Before the decade was out, the U.S.’s Apollo 11 mission commanded by Neil Armstrong put man on the moon. A clumsy and tentative step in slow motion, but as colleague “Buzz” Aldrin commented at the time, “a giant step forward for mankind”. Earlier this very month, it was established that there was water on Mars, making it habitable and opening another window of possibility.

Cartography has been part of human history and endeavour for thousands of years, the earliest being of the night skies, not the earth. The Age of Exploration, from the 15th –
17th Centuries, saw European seafarers explore the unknown and map the world, in spite of long absences from home, before the mast; grinding hardship, frightening risk and sometimes death; sometimes the warning of unchartered limits: “here be dragons”.

Portugal and Spain were prominent, establishing links with Africa, Asia and the Americas. They were followed by France, England and the Netherlands, in the search for silver, gold and spices. Australia was discovered in 1606 and New Zealand in 1642.

These explorations, yielding a new world view and knowledge of other civilizations, were facilitated by an understanding of longitude and latitude, and by the compass, first made by the ancient Chinese. They also gave the world gunpowder, paper and printing, though the first moveable-type mechanical printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, in 1439.

It is said the invention that sparked road transport evolution was the bicycle. Developments designed to produce the first self-propelled, wheeled road vehicle that could carry passengers took place world–wide and over some years. The vehicle produced by French engineer Nicolas Cugnot in 1796 is considered to be the “first” as we know it. What followed are now in the fleets of our VIPs and, as they have asked, how could they be expected to do their jobs without such tools?

The story of man’s ingenuity has no end. I write this on a computer and if I want to know I can look it up on “google” and see that in 1884 an English mathematician Charles Babbage built a complicated machine called “the analytical engine”. Today’s computer encompasses many of the principles of its design. As recently as 40 years ago, as I can remember, it could have filled whole rooms and required specially trained staff to operate it.

All of the achievements listed, Malema might suggest, were motivated by the wish for money or power or glory and the personal luxuries they bring. The Age of Exploration in fact has also been referred to as The Age of Colonization and Commercialisation, but I would like to think it is not as simple as that.

The unnecessary suffering endured, the incredible resilience and bravery exhibited, in for instance the icy wastes of the Antarctic and the Mount Everest expeditions, demand a less cynical answer. Perhaps British mountaineer George Mallory’s, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: “Because it is there”.

I would like to get that black Amerian TV advertising actor (Louis Gosset Jr.) to say the final line for me, with that little cock of the head that silences any argument: “We don’t do bling here, Julius”.



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