In Game of Thrones, Petyr Baelish thought he had found a “simple truth” that prominent families often forget, which he shared with Cersei Lannister, the daughter of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families, headed by Lord Tywin Lannister. Asked what that “truth” is, Baelish says smugly: “Knowledge is power.”
Cersei looks him dead in the eye before ordering four armed guards to “seize him”. They’re then ordered to “cut his throat” and, as the blade is put to his neck, with his eyes wide open, she yells out, “stop”. She throws her hands in the air, laughing mirthlessly: “Wait, I’ve changed my mind — let him go.”
She orders them to “step back three paces, turn around, close your eyes”. As the guards comply, Baelish is shaking in disbelief. Cersei steps towards him, sporting a triumphant smirk, and declares: “Power is power”. It doesn’t need to disguise itself as knowledge or anything else.
Baelish, also known as Littlefinger, learnt the hard way that knowledge may bring you closer to power, but power is still power itself. Cersei may not care how she is perceived. She may not make much of the fact that she’s born of privilege. What she knows is that she has the power to get things done — even if it is to demonstrate to Littlefinger that she could have him killed in seconds.
The point is that many people have titles and authority. They’re imbued with opportunities to move the needle. They could get society, or even the government, to do things that would catapult their names into the dizzying heights of history. Yet they’re immobilised by perceptions and something as simple as doubt.
Poet Bertolt Brecht reminds us: “The thoughtless who never doubt, meet the thoughtful who never act. They doubt, not in order to come to a decision but to avoid a decision.”
Ebrahim Rasool, by many counts a nice human being, has been shown the door in Washington for saying something close to the fact that Donald Trump is running a white supremacist cabal. It may not have been the most diplomatic thing for our top diplomat in Trump’s territory to say, and the response was swift and decisive. We may disagree and call them “the thoughtless who never doubt”, but they know when to use power against modern–day Littlefingers — do they not?
In our country, we have Littlefingers who go around spreading false information about expropriation they claim is without compensation, even when the law uses the phrase “just and equitable” compensation. We have Littlefingers trying to derail the national budget by moving goalposts, creating impressions the centre is not holding. We also have Littlefingers internally making us doubt whether the drafters of the constitution were correct to include the country’s obligation to right the wrongs of the past, a past of apartheid declared criminal by no less an authority than the UN. Elsewhere, Rasool is told to leave within a week.
Being resolute is ensuring that those taking potshots against his administration are in no doubt about where he stands
If we want to apologise to America for trying to correct the injustices of our past, will President Cyril Ramaphosa at least be decisive about it and put it behind us? We will disagree with him. Some will call him names. Whatever.
But if Ramaphosa and the rest of us are indeed not going to be bullied, as he once said, can we also be resolute about it? Resolute is not reckless. Being resolute is ensuring that those taking potshots against his administration are in no doubt about where he stands.
Sending Rasool to Washington, to get this out of the way, was a bad call for reasons other than those put forward by the Americans. If you put aside the nonsense about diplomatic niceties, America is deeply scarred by the September 11 terror attack and continues to view Muslims and anyone with Asian looks with deep suspicion.
Mahmood Mamdani, a great scholar, wrote a book called Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, explaining how the post-September 11 period changed how Americans view Muslims. In a Joe Biden-led America, Rasool would be tolerated, but not quite accepted. In a Trump-led America, Rasool stood no chance. The key words used against him are “we have nothing to discuss with him”. He was othered. He, feeling ignored and impotent as an ambassador of a country under siege from Washington, fell for the trap and failed to read the room.
In an ideal world, we could send whoever we want anywhere. That we can doesn’t mean it should be done. Not strategic. To revert to my main point: Americans are resolute, even when they’re wrong. Is that too much to ask?
Forget the Americans and their inflated sense of self. Our president must communicate to us about what the next steps are on a range of issues he's doing the egg-dance on. Just clarity of thought and action. The point is not dictatorship. Just clarity of thought and action.
He should resist being “the thoughtful” who “doubt to avoid a decision”. There’s nothing worse than going through pain in slow motion, stewing in the heat, immobilised by indecisiveness.
Even if we want to support Ramaphosa, to show how “patriotic” we truly are, we can’t do it when we are confused about what’s next. We don’t suffer the illusion our president must always be right. He hasn’t always been right anyway.
The question is whether our president has power or merely the title to his position. This is not a call for nihilism; it’s a yearning for decisiveness on a range of issues. The “simple truth”, to use Littlefinger’s parlance, is that to be as knowledgeable as we are about our state of being is not power — power is what we do about it. Action. Please show us that the power we gave you is, in the face of so much disrespect, power. Still.
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