Indeed, love for country and one’s ‘nation’ has probably drawn more people to die in war and conflict. When the loyalty of patriotism meets ideas of nationalism – where blind faith meets the senses of identity, belonging and exclusivity – the consequences can be disastrous. Patriotism’s association with blind loyalty is trumped only by its almost umbilical link to militarism and war. The poet Horace pronounced this link as, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; it is ‘sweet and meet’, noble and proper to die for one’s country.

I may not want to die for South Africa, but on several occasions over the past couple of months, I was asked to provide an overview or a perspective on the country, and on the National Development Plan 2030, and did so with unflinching commitment. Of course, as irascible as I can be at times, there were occasions when I waded into the muck of South African politics with benign delight. On several occasions, however, I found myself defending the people of the country. Accepting that there are very many things going wrong in the country, I have had to dig deep into diplomatic skills – which I didn’t think I had – and relied on rather slick lexical legerdemain.

On a few occasions, I presented the NDP the way I did over three or four years in places across South Africa, explained the implementation, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms that are in place. I also batted away questions about the government with benign delight, managing to turn the debate away from the ruling party. The most difficult questions I have faced over the past two months have been about corruption, the public service, energy supply, labour, crime and infrastructure, all of which seem, sometimes, like insurmountable obstacles…

Nonetheless, my generally positive view of the country has less to do with patriotism, I think, than with the belief that everyone in the country has a basic obligation to support the idea and policies to create a better society. This is especially true, it seems to me, when you’re abroad.

Anyway, I spent most of the past 20 years abroad, and usually avoid all contact with South Africans, most of whom left the country, and have nothing positive to say about the place. There are newsletters and websites dedicated to highlight everything that has gone wrong with the country and/or that praise the old order – especially the old South African Defence Force. It makes you wonder why people remain so patriotic to the old South Africa, and long for an order that no longer exist, when the new order, with all its flaws – and there are very many – is where we all live. Surely it’s best to improve our conditions, the conditions of our daily lives, than remain nostalgic about a glorious past that may never have existed.

Alas, if we ignore the government and the ruling party, South Africa is, actually, a fantastic place. It is the people of South Africa, all of us, who may well be doing more for the country than the government, at the moment. For instance, it may be facile, but drive along the M1 North between Johannesburg and Pretoria and you pass by majestic cranes working on construction sites on the West Bank of the highway. On the East Bank, there is a rather incongruous, but no less dramatic and architecturally marvellous mosque. I have never been to the mosque, but I am told that it is, indeed, quite marvellous. Back on the West Bank, the cupolas of the St Sergius Russian Orthodox Church glisten in the distance. Mosques and Churches are centres where communities meet. The Waterfall development on the West Bank seems to be mushrooming, and, I think, is driven by the private sector.

Back south on the M1, while the state has allowed much of the city of Johannesburg to deteriorate over the past two decades, citizens are re-capturing the downtown area, and redeveloping spaces. From Maboneng in the East, to Newtown in the West, people are driving regeneration. It’s not all successful, but people are showing initiative. There may, of course, be state money involved in some instances, but it is civil society that is driving the regeneration of the inner city. Where people tend to avoid going into downtown Johannesburg at night, runners and cyclists have recaptured the space in all their luminous glory. Not everyone would agree, but the runners are making a bold statement; the city, like the country, belongs to everyone who lives in it. There should be no places that are out of bounds. Braamfontein, Maboneng and Newtown have become veritable manifestations of what is possible when the people (not the government) take on the tasks of improving our living conditions.

Compare all of this – and there is so much more – to the areas where the government operates. Public hospitals are in various states of collapse; schools are failing their pupils; the police services are no longer worthy of our trust – we fear the police, and would rather not turn to them in times of need; the postal service is not what it is supposed to be; the public utilities, all in the hands of the government, are crippled; the national airline (surprisingly) barely keeps planes in the air; much of the defence force is just useless; the county’s borders leak like a sieve; Parliament has come to resemble an ossuary where the last bones of our constitutional democracy rattle, giggle and prattle, mockingly and jeeringly, seemingly in the last throes of death.

The people of South Africa have never been more alive, though. When xenophobic violence reared its monstrous head in the country last autumn, the response from the people was massive displays of solidarity. For its part, the state turned on the victims with armed force.

None of what I have written, here, should be construed as an ideological anti-state argument. Unless you have been living in stateless wonder for the past 500 years, we can agree that the state has always played an important role in society. What has happened in South Africa, however, is that the people seem to have abandoned the government and the state. Generally governments come and go, while the state usually remains in place. In South Africa, however, the two have blended into one. In the meantime, people are getting on with building lives and families, and protecting themselves from the failures of the state. Parenthetically, I will, at a later stage, write about the parallel systems we are creating in South Africa, to protect ourselves from a failing state.

Having said all this, it is difficult not to reach the conclusion that if it were not for the fact that the state handed out salaries to public servants, cash to the poor through social grants, access to tenders and other opportunities to cronies and allies, the ruling party may become increasingly isolated.

The ruling party, or any political party, for that matter, is not what drives me, when I have been asked to give talks on South Africa over the past several weeks. In fact, it is in a spirit of defiance, and towards self-reliance that I have promoted the people and the country, and not because I am patriotic.

I may have written this somewhere, but when I returned to South Africa four years ago, many people abroad asked why I was going back, ‘when things are so fucked up’ in the country. When I joined the secretariat of the National Planning Commission in the Presidency four years ago, people asked ‘why are you going there; it’s so fucked up?’ My answer was assured: it would be ‘fucked up’, if we left the poor of South Africa to remain ‘fucked up’, and to be governed by the ‘fucked up’. In other words, we cannot leave the country to the ruling party alone. South Africa belongs to everyone who lives in it. There’s nothing patriotic about that. DM