Part One
Looking at the plethora of challenges that our South Africa faces, one could place them (loosely and unscientifically) into the following trio of categories:
Global challenges
How does South Africa deal with a changing world, in particular the spectre of the US, which looms, like its president, long and large over the world? These are not normal times. It’s tricky to use the word “extraordinary”, because much of what comes out of the White House these days is truly extraordinary in terms of the undoing of its own democracy and the post-WW2 order, its defiance of norms and basic civility alongside the peddling of lies.
US President Donald Trump’s transactional and corrupt approach to global trade has turned the world upside down, leaving even powerful nations scrambling. A country like ours stands little chance of standing up to the form of bullying Trump dishes out in this new order of “might is right”. South Africa, at a political crossroads, lacks the nimbleness (both politically and policy-wise) to meet the moment, even as we hold the G20 presidency.
The talk of middle powers creating a new and powerful bloc against Trumpian madness is not without merit, but South Africa will then need to be serious about dealing with its own challenges. We may speak the language of modern governance on issues like climate change, for instance, but the ANC is a relic that has spawned a corrupt, incapable state that cannot lead and act to bring about much-needed social change. President Cyril Ramaphosa himself seems to have lost the energy to govern.
Forming part of a powerful middle powers bloc will mean bringing an element of seriousness and discernment to the government about who represents us all as South Africans, within the Cabinet and outside of it (including ambassadors). In addition, the Presidency is an intellectual empty shell, which is increasingly problematic for navigating this new and complex world.
Systemic inequality
Even if we had a government free of corruption, adhering to constitutional values, it would take more than 30 years to wipe out the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
Intergenerational wealth and privilege remain the preserve of a minority of the population, which benefited from apartheid and continues to benefit from post-apartheid South Africa. We seldom say this out loud, and when black people do raise intergenerational disadvantage, they are often told to “move on” or they are blamed for the ANC’s failures. Would that it were that simple.
In the current maelstrom of ANC corruption, it is easy to forget the magnanimity of the black majority at the moment of freedom. We are often careless in our dealings with each other, blinkered to the past, without ways of seeing the patterns of injustice so deeply ingrained in our society. (To say this excuses none of the ANC’s venality and betrayal of the liberation promise, more of which, later.)
Self-inflicted wounds
This brings us to the third and possibly most disheartening of our challenges: the self-inflicted wound. In South Africa, there are many. The Zondo Commission into State Capture gave us a thorough rendering of how Zuma and his ANC acolytes stripped the state of resources. This continues apace even as Ramaphosa says otherwise. His Cabinet is littered with those fingered for corruption, yet the President comfortably avoids any means of holding them to account.
Our law enforcement agencies are in dangerous disarray. That the ANC has become a vehicle for tenderpreneurs is well-documented. At the heart of it is a society unmoored from any form of accountability, with the corrupt among them moving around shamelessly. The impunity seeps into virtually every area of South African life, most tragically, perhaps, in education, where the majority of Grade 4 and 6 children cannot read for meaning. The most serious self-inflicted wound of all. Again, at its heart is a lack of accountability.
The following story is perhaps illustrative: it’s a wintry morning as four of us set out to Rawsonville, set in a farming area in the Western Cape, to deliver a Mandela Day shoe donation. The town, in that most beautiful of South African settings, is surrounded by mountains which seem to rise straight from riverbeds and reach all the way to the sky.
It’s a majestic and achingly beautiful land. Sullied, of course, by tragic under-development and unemployment and the ubiquitous Chinese and Somali-owned shops selling everything from cellphone chargers to groceries. There is little except farming here, and with the Trump tariffs, it’s easy to foresee little towns like this becoming decimated.
The local school is next to shackland, also sadly familiar even 31 years after the end of apartheid. But all of this aside, it was the school itself that was sadly illustrative of the self-inflicted wound. The poverty of the place is obvious, but upon setting foot inside the school, one sensed another kind of poverty — that of imagination and commitment.
It was clear that there was no accountability within. In the middle of the day, children ran amok in the presence of mostly inert teachers, comfortable in the midst of chaos. Some children were washing the school-feeding dishes, unsupervised. The janitor and cleaning lady sat in the reception area, scrolling through their cellphones. Orange peels greeted us on the staircases inside, despite rubbish bins dotted around. No amount of money will change this fundamental failure of accountability from those entrusted with care here.
How did we get to such an abysmal state? What are we modelling for the next generation? Rights and obligations, a future bigger than this little town, or are we content with consigning poor children to a future free of dreams?
Micro-accountability within this school and within the education system needs to be scrutinised and tightened. It is easy to blame the government and poverty, but what is preventing the creation of a learning environment? There are, after all, multiple examples of schools in disadvantaged areas that model pride and a culture of learning and where teachers are committed despite the obstacles.
None of this failure is thus inevitable.
The self-inflicted wound is also about our own failures to hold institutions to account and demand something better for future generations.
Might it be a question of how we think about citizenship, and does it highlight our post-1994 failure to understand what it means to have rights and responsibilities?
Do we embrace a vision of a better, more equal and just society, or an individualistic one, each to their own and believe that building is someone else’s responsibility — government’s — not a teacher’s, a principal’s or a parent’s, for instance? It is this that we need to deal with and talk about.
This brings us to the National Convention towards a National Dialogue (let’s think, “talks about talks” circa 1990), an event, one may say, almost doomed from the start, the moment an Eminent Persons Group was announced.
Part Two
The President opened the National Convention with a laborious speech, which started as follows (one has to ask who writes these dull screeds for Ramaphosa): “We are embarking on a process that will launch a million conversations. Across the length and breadth of South Africa, people will and must meet to talk of what worries them, what gives them hope and how they think their lives and our country can be better.”
South Africans actually talk a lot, but perhaps the President is too busy listening to the acolytes within the ANC to listen and hear what people are saying in the media, on the radio, through protests and various other means. They also spoke during last year’s national election. They said loudly that they rejected the ANC as a majority party. The President surely understands this? It might be the reason he mostly avoids the press and has been loath to sit down for one-on-one interviews. Ramaphosa seems keen to busy himself with the illusion that a National Dialogue represents some form of action.
“Why do South African women have to live in fear of men? Why, after decades of democracy, are the prospects for a white child so much better than those of a black child? Why do clinics run out of medicine? Why do taps run dry?” he asked plaintively.
Ramaphosa surely knows the answer to these questions. The National Planning Commission has an entire site dedicated to these and other questions.
Aside from the National Planning Commissioners thinking about policy responses to various vexed issues, there is also the Human Sciences Research Council, largely state-funded, doing seminal research on the state of our society, including much data to be mined in successive South African Social Attitudes Surveys. Have the President or any of his staff read any of the plethora of research papers from think tanks and universities across our country?
Rambling incoherently
The “Why do taps run dry?” question had unfortunate timing, because at around the same time, the minister of water and sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, was trending on social media in all her sartorial inelegance. The clip shows her addressing the AU-AIP Water Investment Summit, rambling incoherently and ending her embarrassing speech with the following gem, “We are in control of serious things like water, rivers, dams…”
On the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, many had not had water for 41 days, and cities and towns are falling apart.
Taps run dry, Mr President, when someone so clownishly out of her depth is assigned a crucial portfolio. Equally so, when those in provinces and municipalities rig tenders and live without fear of consequences.
In much of what was recycled rhetoric, one line in Ramaphosa’s speech stood out. It was revealing in its emptiness. He asked, “Why do so many people live in abject poverty and so few live lives of opulence?”
Ramaphosa might be surprised to learn that successive Afrobarometers have found that South Africans want jobs, decent healthcare, proper education for their children, and to be safe from crime.
The use of the word “opulence” is what Americans would call “a tell”. The ANC is awash with corrupt gains that buy opulence — Louis Vuitton handbags, Deputy PresidentPaul Mashatile’s R28-million Constantia house — peak opulence, some might say, German cars worth millions as money is pilfered from the poor.
The opulence is mostly gained through no honest work, simply creaming the top off government tenders in most cases. Opulence has become the way in which this society has defined success: not through knowledge but rather conspicuous consumption. The greed is choking us all. The failure to build a knowledge-based society is producing a lost generation of young people who see in those in power only the pursuit of opulence. Can we blame them if they strive for the same by whatever means necessary?
Our country cries out for ethical leaders who put people first. The National Dialogue will collapse under the weight of eminent persons, goodie bags, provincial dialogues and a costly secretariat.
We have not taken care. The Ramaphosa presidency (and successive ANC governments) have fallen far short of taking the action needed to fix our infrastructure and the economy, even though many aspects of Operation Vulindlela should be lauded. But Ramaphosa has largely been unwilling or unable to use his power to act decisively to arrest corruption and maladministration, even at moments when he had the greatest support outside of the narrow confines of the ANC.
The answers to the President’s questions are in the public domain. Our challenges will require tough decisions and a commitment to the things that matter. But if we begin from the premise of seeking opulence, we will not find the answers we are looking for.
Words matter. They carry weight and they shape societies. DM