We called him Maspala because he worked for the municipality.
Every morning in 1993, he’d arrive in a battered bakkie, its exhaust coughing as loudly as he did. Dressed in grey overalls, cigarette dangling from cracked lips, he ferried us schoolboys along a bone-rattling dirt road.
Smoke coiled around his head as he muttered: “This democracy thing is nonsense.”
To Maspala, every ill — a broken spade, a late delivery, even a child’s tantrum — was democracy’s fault.
The irony was cruel. His very name meant “municipality” — a living emblem of the state meant to fix leaks, lay roads and serve the people.
Yet the man in municipal overalls had no faith in the order he represented and no will to repair what was broken. His hands carried more ash than tools.
Years later, it wasn’t democracy that killed him. It was the smoke. Throat cancer silenced his muttering — but in truth, his slow death had been written puff by puff.
Smoking on democracy’s bakkie
I fear South Africa is riding on the same rattling bakkie, filling its lungs with the same smoke.
Cynicism is our national cigarette. We light it daily — on talk shows, in barbershops and on timelines. We inhale it until our lungs ache, mistaking the burn for wisdom.
And like Maspala, we’ve turned democracy into an ashtray.
Load shedding? Democracy’s fault.
Corruption? Democracy’s fault.
A broken toilet, a collapsed bridge, a failing school? All dumped at democracy’s door.
But here’s the truth: Maspala’s bakkie rattled, yes — but it carried us forward. The problem was never the vehicle. It was the smoke. In the same way, democracy is not the cancer. It is our refusal to care for it that is killing us.
Fresh air we refuse to breathe
Maspala had a choice each morning: breathe the crisp village air, or drag on another cigarette. He chose to smoke.
South Africa has fresh air, too — progress we stubbornly refuse to breathe.
I grew up in a village with no electricity, no running water, no tar roads. We studied by candlelight, hauled water in buckets and walked barefoot on gravel roads to school.
Today, the same village has power lines, taps and tarred streets. Yes, outages come, pipes burst, potholes reappear — but the difference between no road and a bad road, between no water and some water, is the difference between paralysis and possibility.
And the story is national:
- In 1994, only 53,6% of households had electricity. Today, 94% are connected.
- In 1994, about 60% had piped water. Today, around 90%
- Life expectancy rose from 54 years in the early 1990s to 65 by 2023 — even after the devastation of HIV/Aids.
- Infant mortality has halved. Literacy has climbed. Millions more children fill classrooms.
- The black middle class has expanded tenfold.
We puff on despair and forget this: we’re not only doing better than in our past — we’re doing better than many others right now:
- South Africa’s literacy rate (87%) is higher than India’s (74%) and close to Brazil’s (93%).
- Our life expectancy (65) already outpaces Nigeria (53) and is closing in on Russia (72).
- Almost 90% of South Africans have access to clean water — more than many African peers, and better than some American towns in which people are still drinking from poisoned
- Our banking sector is ranked among the most sophisticated in the world by the World Economic Forum.
- Here’s one of the least told stories: South African chartered accountants are regarded as the gold standard globally. In London, Dubai, Sydney and Toronto, firms prize their rigour and integrity.
That too is South Africa. Not just Maspala’s smoke — but the grit that produces world-class professionals, born in villages where the lights once flickered out.
The predictability of negativity
Maspala was not unique. Negativity has always been our reflex.
Even Nelson Mandela — the man who walked out of prison with forgiveness in his heart — was dismissed by some as too soft, too compromising.
In 1994, Mandela’s ANC won 62.6% of the vote. A landslide, yes, but one in three South Africans still voted against him at democracy’s dawn. Cynicism was woven into the rainbow before the paint was dry.
White communities muttered that he was too radical, too close to communists. Black communities grumbled that he was selling out, giving away too much in the negotiations. By 1999, as Mandela stepped down, the ANC’s support had climbed — but so had the chorus of complaint.
Cynicism is not new. What’s new is how loud it has become — trending on timelines, monetised by clicks, dressed up as sophistication. Just as cigarettes once promised glamour, despair now pretends to be wisdom.
Tools, not cigarettes
Here was Maspala’s tragedy: his overalls promised work, but his cigarette kept his hands busy with smoking.
That is our tragedy, too. It is easier to puff on despair than to pick up tools. Easier to rant than repair. Easier to scroll than to serve.
But real citizenship looks different. It means fixing a school instead of just filming its collapse. It means mentoring a boy instead of mocking his jeans. It means building, not just bemoaning.
And we have examples.
In Khayelitsha, a reading club that started in a shack has helped hundreds of children fall in love with books. In Limpopo, a group of women farmers formed a cooperative that now supplies supermarkets. In Braamfontein, young coders are building apps that serve communities their parents never dreamed of.
These are not hypotheticals. They are the fresh air already blowing — if we care to breathe it.
The Maspala choice
Maspala died as he lived: blaming democracy, choking on smoke. His name meant municipality, yet he embodied decay.
That is the parable of our nation. We can keep puffing on despair, or we can step outside, fill our lungs with fresh air, and pick up the tools lying idle at our feet.
The road is rough. The bakkie rattles. But it is still moving forward.
Our children deserve more than inherited cynicism. They deserve the oxygen of hope, not the second-hand smoke of despair.
South Africa is not finished. She is bruised, complicated, difficult — and still becoming.
But only if we resist the Maspala Syndrome. Only if we put down the cigarette of cynicism — and pick up the tools of construction.
So here is the choice before us: South Africa doesn’t need another puff of smoke; it needs the fresh breath of builders. DM