Ante-Diluvians All

Blast From the Past

John Minto is a serial, professional protester.  We have often wondered whether there is any consistent ideology at work when John shows up to protest his current cause d'jour.  He has had no real job, no career, nor profession.  He would probably describe himself as a "voluntary worker", since he apparently has lived off the tax payer's dime for much of his life--either directly or indirectly. 

But when the causes you espouse are BIG and really, really important all that counts for nothing.  The cause justifies the narcissistic indolence.  But we would be amiss to think that Minto has no ideology at all.  Some would mistakenly think him to be a committed anti-racist, having been at the forefront of protests against apartheid.  In other words, they see Minto as a human rights ideologue, committed to fundamental human civil rights, regardless of ethnicity or colour.  Maybe.  But Minto has not been well known for positive affirmation. 

One would have thought that, after protesting and campaigning against apartheid in South Africa, there would have been a note of triumphalistic celebration in his later career.  Not so.  It appears that he was deeply disappointed in Mandela and the subsequent course of non-racist South Africa.


In 2008, a local blogger, Poneke had this to say:

John Minto was one of the heroes of my formative years. 
At the time, I thought Minto was driven by the same kind of repugnance of the racist apartheid system that motivated the opposition of many other New Zealanders. Apartheid was a stain on humanity.
In 1995, Mandela visited New Zealand for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting being held in Auckland. He was mobbed in the streets everywhere he went. He was a hero of almost everyone of my generation and of almost everyone who had marched against the Springboks 14 years before. The one anti-tour protester to whom he was not a hero was a profound surprise. I went to a meeting Mandela attended at the St Matthews in the City church in Auckland. To my astonishment, and dismay, John Minto, who was there, hectored the great man for not kicking private enterprise and transnational companies out of South Africa after apartheid ended. A bewildered Mandela asked Minto how he expected people to find work if their employers were banished. It was at that moment I realised Minto was not driven by opposition to racism but by opposition to the entire capitalist system. [Cited in Kiwiblog]

Opposition to the entire capitalist system.  Now there is an umbrella big enough to find sufficient causes every day to give a serial, professional protester a life-time of "work".  There is nothing in New Zealand that Minto, given his blotting-paper ideology, could not turn into reason and cause for protest.  In his own mind, Minto probably sees himself as the one of the last true believers, willing to castigate even the great in a public forum.  But in reality because he protests everything, he stands for nothing. 

A more bright-line contrast with Nelson Mandela could hardly be found.  Over time Mandela's commitment to communist ideology waned.  His commitment to human liberty remained, or grew.  Therefore, he could stand not just against, but for something.  He could put his shoulder to the wheel and work to create and sustain liberty for all.  Necessarily that involves trade-offs, compromises, reality checks, and a degree of pragmatic adjustment (like learning to co-operate with globalised trans-national companies) for the sake of the poor and unemployed. 

If ever one needed to illustrate an argument for term limits for welfare, Minto provides the perfect exemplar.  We suspect, though not certain, that Minto has never had an employer, never had a boss, never had to work for wages or salary outside of emoluments and grants and monetary libations from the public or union teats.  He has never had to deal with customers, let alone their complaints; or quality control; or meet customer expectations; or achieve service standards; or out perform competitors, whilst cheerfully co-labouring with colleagues to the greater good of the enterprise. 

Minto has been a leech with a megaphone.  He is not alone.  There is a coterie of fellow-travellers.  Sue Bradford and Hone Harawira spring to mind.  Ante-diluvians, all.