TUESDAY EDITORIAL
Things fall apart – between a Buffalo and a hard place
Let’s start this week’s editorial by putting the obvious in plain language: our country is fast falling apart and there’s nothing any current politician is going to do to stop it.
It’s coming to pass
My countries coming apart
The whole thing’s becoming
Such a bumbling farce
Was that a pivotal historical moment
We just went stumbling past?
Kae Tempest
It seems pointless to provide yet another inventory of the collapse, when it’s in front of our noses. What is important is to join the dots and see each new crisis as a manifestation of a deepening breakdown of the rule of law and constitutional governance, rather than as one more isolated and unfortunate tragedy.
On certain key indicators, South Africa is fast sliding towards failed state status, defined in Wikipedia as:
“a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. A state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly.”
Weekend reports of the so-called construction mafia (this investigation by the Global Initiative Against Organised Transnational Crime) may well explain why an expert police forensic investigator concluded that the fire at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was set on purpose, as we reported this month.
The Jagersfontein dam wall burst was just another disaster waiting to happen. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)
This week, Brigadier Brenda Muridili, SAPS spokesperson in Gauteng, provided us with this lacklustre statement: “Following the province’s receipt of the forensic report, the initial enquiry which was registered after the incident has been changed to a case of arson. Investigations are still under way and no one has been arrested yet.”
This lack of will to investigate prima facie evidence of grand arson can be explained by the fact that a significant part of the SAPS now pursues the profit it can make through shake-down criminality and extortion rather than catching criminals.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “The end of compassion and the price of indignity”
The Jagersfontein dam wall burst in the Free State was just another disaster waiting to happen. Like the Enyobeni Tavern. The poor are becoming cannon fodder for state incompetence and contempt.
What’s next?
A government with no intelligence
Criminality or collapse is hiding in plain sight, but one striking thing about all of these reports is the lack of police or government intelligence to prevent it, or administrative concern once it’s happened. Politicians only rush to the frontline of disasters if they can make political capital out of it.
As veteran activist Kumi Naidoo says, ‘it’s no longer time for activism as usual’. (Photo: Ian Forsyth / Getty Images)
Key ministers seem to have given up hard work in favour of populist grandstanding and intraparty plotting.
At this point, repeatedly appealing to a compromised President and his mostly incompetent Cabinet to do something won’t work. As we get closer and closer to the ANC’s December congress it’s clear we are between a Buffalo and a RET place.
As a result, South Africa feels like it’s heading towards a cliff without a driver.
We can’t let that happen. We have too much potential to allow our country to be crashed. The question is: where are those people and powers that can pull us back from this situation?
Where are the church leaders?
Where are the trade union leaders?
Where are the academic and thought leaders?
Where are our artists, poets, dancers, writers?
Where are the business leaders?
Where are our young people and women’s leaders?
At this point, repeatedly appealing to a compromised President and his mostly incompetent Cabinet to do something won’t work. (Photo: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Jaco Marais)
One major problem is that civil society is spending so much time firefighting that it is unable to sustain a focus on the bigger picture. Organisations and coalitions come together for conferences, make grand declarations, and then dissipate.
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Many organisations are so focused on their sectoral interests that they can’t see the national interest.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Snatching away Mandela’s gift of health and the return of medical apartheid”
More elite conferences on State Capture, while worthy, won’t change the balance of power.
Ordinary people in South Africa need to see a force for good, that is independent, has integrity and can act decisively within the rule of law.
Ordinary people need to see that good people can stop squabbling over the points they disagree on and unite and act on what they do agree on.
There is a national interest.
Ordinary people need to see the Constitution not just as a stick to fight political battles (however necessary), but as being made to work for their rights to food, jobs, dignity and well-being.
An expert police forensic investigator has concluded that the fire at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was set on purpose. (Photo: Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Morapedi Mashashe)
As veteran activist Kumi Naidoo says, “it’s no longer time for activism as usual”. Or as English poet Kae Tempest puts it in People’s Faces, the poem with which this editorial started:
“There are no new beginnings
Until everybody sees that the old ways need to end”
But it’s hard to accept that we’re all one and the same flesh
Given the rampant divisions between oppressor and oppressed
But we are though
More empathy
Less greed
More respect
All I’ve got to say has already been said
I mean, you heard it from yourself
When you were lying in your bed and couldn’t sleep
Thinking couldn’t we be doing this
Differently?
So, will someone step up to the plate before it’s too late? DM/MC
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Mark, the Defend Our Democracy movement is on the case The DM should start giving more airtime to what it is doing, and planning to do. And less airtime to the failing ANC and losers like Malema
I fully second this and look forward to that coverage.
What Defend our democracy movement? Never hear of it. Please enlighten us DM.
You ask … “We can’t let that happen. We have too much potential to allow our country to be crashed. The question is: where are those people and powers that can pull us back from this situation?”
The answer is in a single word – DEMOCRACY.
In your “where are” question above you list some groups of people. WHY do YOU LEAVE OUT the democratic opposition in South Africa? Gutless! The Democratic Alliance has the best record of delivery in SA. It is non-racial, the ONLY party to have that in its manifesto and in practice. Compare the WC to any other province, Cape Town to any other city!
Or are you, Mark Heywood, gutless?
Mark, the SINGLE reason behind the myriad of failures is glaringly obvious. Would you appoint any of our cabinet ministers to the board of a new company you were setting up? Are they the best leaders we have? Listed companies are required to comply with the King IV code of corporate governance. At its core are competence, ethics and accountability. By simply applying the King IV principles to the National Assembly (and other levels of government) we would immediately remove incompetent, unethical people who make daily decisions many of which have terrible consequences on the lives of ordinary South Africans. Section 47 of the Constitution should be amended to ensure that South Africans are led by competent, honest people, who are accountable for their actions. Years of poor education has produced an electorate lacking the critical skills to evaluate party policies, or political leaders. By raising the qualifying criteria for entry into public office, we would protect the people and the country. Dealing with the list of specific failures is merely treating the symptoms of a serious illness, whilst ignoring the cause; the patient will die.
2024 is coming. Hopefully, well before then, Action SA and the saner parts of our political system get their houses in order and vote the ANC out. We are not a failed state. We are the failure of 1.2m ANC party members to put forward honest representatives. Coalitions are going to be tough but is a million miles better than this system where a tiny number of people determine through cadre deployment who mismanages what ministry, province, metro, council, SOE, agency, etc. for heaven’s sake : Mkhize and NDZ are viable candidates 🙁
Our salvation is for the ANC government to fall. That requires a tidal shift of the rural vote. (By-election results do not give hope.) Who is willing and able to go out there and influence people in the right direction?
Please start posting regular articles of people stepping up. And then post them more than once and follow up.
We all know Gift of the Givers and Imtiaz Sooliman. However they cannot be the only portion of group that is materially changing things for the good.
Where is the article on the municipality that has fired workers for incompetence and graft. Where do we hear about the business that is helping to secure livelihoods in the face of strike action. The business that was started against all odds. What about the sustainable actions like boreholes. Not purely handouts and charities.
We all need examples to follow and heroes to admire.
Why do I only read this in Food for Mzansi
South Africa has been brought to this point by the criminal negligence, breathtaking incompetence and fundamental dishonesty of the ANC. Clearly, it has to go.
And go it will. The writing is on the wall. If there are ANY are good, capable and honest people in the party, which is looking increasingly unlikely, those people need to stand up right now and loudly renounce their membership of the party. It is time for you to pick a side. Do this now and you can still salvage some respect. Later, when the country is howling for revenge, will be too late.
In life, it is essential that progress is made in firm foundations.
In South Africa, since the ANC gained power, the effort has been split; to undermine the existing foundation while starting a new structure of massively different design. Not even the foundations are the same!
Are we surprised that the new structure is now collapsing?
Sage words indeed.