A Journey, Part 2. Indoctrination and Freedom
February 12, 2012
Leaving Eger, we pushed east toward Debrecen and the Romanian border, crossing into Romania on 6 February and spending our first night in Cluj. From there, we took the road through Sighişoara (once home to Vlad Dracul – Dracula’s father), and Brașov (the coldest I’ve ever been), to Bucharest. The Romanian countryside is absolutely spectacular, with vast plains and rolling hills covered in snow. The roads, though, were potholed almost beyond repair and much of the visible infrastructure was completely dilapidated.
We didn’t linger on this part of our journey through Romania and Bulgaria and it took us only a few days to reach Nessebar on the snow-free Black Sea coast. From our limited interaction with people in on route, we were struck by the difference in attitude between people here and those in the Western countries we’d travelled through before. The concept of customer service, for instance, was almost absent – not as a result of bad attitude, but rather because one got the impression that the people had probably never seen themselves as customers, or permitted themselves what we would consider normal customer expectations.
Seven years on from the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and Bulgaria’s transition to democracy in 1990, I got the impression of countries trying to come to terms with freedom and people coming to terms with their need to accept, adopt, and adapt to new roles, expectations, and attitudes. Although the change in doctrines in South Africa was very different to that in these countries, it was easy and natural for me to identify with what we experienced in Eastern Europe.
The doctrines of the societies in which we live define our norms and have an enormous impact on our thoughts and behaviour. Growing up in apartheid era South Africa, I’d had first hand experience of the shape shifting effects that a major change in doctrine brings about, as people like Mandela and Hani that we’d been indoctrinated to believe were terrorists, turned out to be moral heroes and champions of freedom. This has always served as an ominous reminder to me of the extent to which the prevailing doctrines can shape and constrain our thoughts, and of the need to look beyond the political and other agendas of the day and seek out one’s own truth.
It seems it’s harder to see the effects of a doctrine when you’re on the inside, and much easier to find fault with the doctrines of others. This is even more so when the press is muzzled or acts merely an agent of the politicians, as was largely the case in countries of the former communist bloc and in apartheid era South Africa. In this respect, it’s our individual freedoms in general and freedom of speech in particular form the bedrock of free society, and the current trend to curtail freedom both in South Africa and in other so called liberal democracies is deeply perplexing.
Here in South Africa, the strength of the ANC allowed it to muscle the Secrecy Bill through the National Assembly in November last year. This bill makes it a crime to possess or disclose classified state information, punishable by imprisonment for up to 25 years. Whether or not the disclosure is in the public interest is irrelevant. Hot on its heels, the proposed Spy Bill will bring about the formation of a powerful State Security Agency with powers, among other things, to tap the communications of ordinary citizens without a warrant. In the United States barely a month ago, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. This permits the Pentagon to kidnap and indefinitely detain and interrogate both foreigners and American citizens, without recourse to the law, right to a trial, or legal representation. Hardly a murmur was raised as the American Bill of Rights of 1789 was effectively repealed. Recently, my sister reminded me of a fitting and haunting quote by Benjamin Franklin.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
We’ve seen these types of laws before. They are reminiscent of those promulgated here, in South Africa, by the Nationalist government with it’s apartheid agenda, and by other counties before, on their descent into totalitarianism. What is the agenda now and what is the truth that needs to be suppressed? A tragic and common theme among virtually all of today’s liberal democracies, is that no matter which way the people vote, they get more of the same. Are we seeing the demise of democracy in the interests of the corporate-military-industrial agenda?
I remember vividly being at university in 1984 as the year came and went, without fanfare of course. When forecasting the future, we often tend to think that changes will happen more rapidly than they do in reality. Now more than ever, I feel the real danger of an Orwellian outcome.