Because I give a damn

Ever feel that our world is flipping out of control with a head-spinning competition of needier than needy causes?

We don’t know where to start with our caring (and tax-deductible spending)…attempting to prioritise needs is oh-so-Sophie’s Choice. At times, I feel torn between malarial outbreaks, the AIDS epidemic, a bacterial killer I just learnt about this week called MRSA, Oprah’s new pet project Invisible Children, and of course, general poverty and starvation.

But as my mother always said, good housekeeping starts at home. And South Africa’s grocery list is just as long. 

Living abroad, I have so often been met with wrinkled noses when I start to unravel the story of my land. To Americans, Asians and Europeans, it is just too far away to care too much about. South Africa is insignificant.

But it shouldn’t be. Here’s why you need to care.

You see, the power behind the mother continent of Africa, rests in the hands of our little country at its tip.  As the only African member of the G20, South Africa hobnobs with the richest and most powerful countries in the world. Our post-apartheid constitution is among the most progressive worldwide, and we’re the largest energy supplier and biggest consumer on the continent. We are the breadbasket of Africa.

And here’s why I am worried…

Since the ANC first came to power in 1994 an estimated 1,000,000 whites have left the country, taking their skills with them in an exercise referred to as “brain drain”. Estimated because burning bridges and all that prevents them from filling out that redundant emigration form at Oliver Tambo Airport when they leave. This departure of the previously advantaged is not altogether uncelebrated, as SA’s aggressive affirmative action policies have all but bought the “pale males” in SA a one-way plane ticket to London. The number of departures of these educated, somewhat wealthy few is significant, considering it is estimated only 4.5m whites remain. This equates into 9% of the population. Who have the skills, training and education to do all that needs to be done.

Crime has certainly played an equal part in emigration, although the real stats of violence are unknown, owing to the muzzle on the media. Most everyone agrees, despite actual, reliable numbers, South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates. According to a survey for the period between 1998 and 2000 compiled by the UN, South Africa was ranked second for murder and first for assault and rape per capita. In the world.

 But whites are not alone in their pessimism. “We are in a bad place at the moment in this country,” liberation struggle warrior and hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu has lamented. The rose-tinted ideals of Nelson Mandela’s “rainbow nation” were overdue in their transition to a harsher reality. The table has turned for even Mr Mandela, the international hero, is being scolded for going along with corruption and making poor use of his immense authority, as he watches of the mistakes of his party. In my point of view, however, pointing out all the wrongs of Nelson Mandela, doesn’t make our new leader right.

Yes, new leadership is what keeps me up nights most of all these days. Let me explain. Unlike the rest of the world, South Africans vote in their general elections for a party, not a person. And that party has a conference where its leaders vote for the president. So in essence, democracy is dead.  The party can at any time ask the president to step down and will replace him, without so much as a backward glance at the will of the population. This happened last year in the country. And when Zuma won 60% of the vote at the ANC summit at Polokwane, he also scooped up the top 5 positions within the party for his candidates. The ANC is his. And so is the country.

According to Dr Zweli Mkhize, the KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of the African National Congress, “South Africa was eternally blessed to have a leader like our beloved Madiba. We must also face up to the reality that there will only be one Madiba. Therefore, our leaders will increasingly become more and more ordinary.”

After last month’s general election, Jacob Zuma will take over leadership of South Africa, and that presidential inauguration day will be a dark and gloomy one for all South Africans.  And not just because it is the birth of winter in the Southern Hemisphere either. You see, Zuma is a real character. He flaunts his polygamy as he moves onto his 4th or 6th wife (no one really knows), who is 30 years his senior. He dances well. He is a people-person. And that is why the masses want him. But here’s a bulleted-list of why any thinking person who cares not about his rhythm would agree that this new president is a really bad idea for the future of SA:

• More than ever, there is talk these days amongst his henchmen of “reracialising” the country that once bonded over a rugby jersey back in 1995
• SA is saturated with Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment policy, designed to broaden the ownership and management of the South African economy. Black employment equity policy outcomes are clear – they have merely enriched the elite politicians and sent the skilled overseas. Mr Zuma is a proponent.
• Mr Zuma has been an active member of the Communist Party and served on the Politburo as recently as 1990.
• This leads me to my next red flag. Corruption is obviously not new to African politics, but our struggle heroes seem stained by many a controversy. Joe Modise, Mandela’s choice of minister of defense, described as a big-time gangster, is being investigated post-mortem by German, British, and South African prosecutors for conflicts of interest in awarding lucrative arms deals. This has become an increasingly complex and far-reaching web benefiting leaders such as Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and other prominent ANC leaders. This is just one of many scandals come to light in the past decade. Today, it is difficult to find any SA minister apart from Trevor Manuel who has not presided over a steep fall in standards. Unfortunately, many have come to see the ANC as nothing more than a nest of racists, thieves and hypocrites, who have done almost no good at all since they won power in 1994.
• So now we face a future under a President Zuma and an all-powerful, perhaps even vengeful, ANC.
• Yes, Mr Zuma is angry. He’s angry with the Constitutional Court who have several times voted against him. He now says he would like to review the status of the Constitutional Court “because I don’t think we should have people who are almost like God in a democracy.” He also blames the press, which he loathes. He threatens to weed out the “lazy, corrupt and incompetent” i.e. those he does not like from government.  
• Zuma’s gangster friends aren’t limited to the late Mr Modise. Julius Malema, leader of the ANC’s Youth League decalred just last year the powerful Youth League was “prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma” if his prosecution went ahead.
• For many, it is Mr Zuma’s eight-year tussle with the courts that turns their stomachs the most.  First, there was that pesky rape case. It wasn’t so much that he was accused of rape but that in his statement his views on prevention of the risk of AIDS came down to a taking a shower after this unprotected unconsented sex. Moving on, corruption is his favourite vice, evidenced by his long legal battle over allegations of racketeering and corruption. His financial advisor, Schabir Shaik was convicted of corruption and fraud, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 2005. The judge on the case said that the payments totalling more that R4m ($596,000) between 1995 and 2005 from his friend in exchange for using his influence to help secure government contracts for Mr Shaik’s companies “can only have generated a sense of obligation in the recipient”. President Thabo Mbeki promptly sacked Zuma as deputy president, (leading to his own demise). Last month, Zuma announced that if elected he would consider granting a pardon to his friend and advisor Shaik. Three days later Mr Shaik, suffering from hypertension and depression, was released from jail on “medical parole”, normally reserved for the dying. He has served only two years and four months of his 15-year sentence.
• It is the speed and outcome of the way the case that had gripped the nation and dominated world headlines was snuffed out that shocked South Africans most. On 6 April 2009, the National Prosecuting Authority decided to drop the charges citing political interference. All charges of corruption, racketeering, tax-evasion, money-laundering and fraud against the president were withdrawn. The actual merits of the case were not in question, they admitted. Nor was the prosecution in any way flawed. The issue was the timing of the announcement of the charges were deemed to be an attempt to thwart Mr Zuma’s political ambitions. This made it “neither possible nor desirable” to continue with the prosecution.
• And so the corruption continues. A poll taken in February/March of this year, shortly before the charges were dropped, showed that 50% of all ANC members believed him to be innocent. Yet nearly 75% continued to support him “wholeheartedly” and unconditionally.
• With South Africa sinking into its first recession after 16 years of expansion, the last thing we need is a leader with a personal agenda and a hard heart. Footage of Mr Zuma belting out his “Umshini Wami” (“Bring me my machine gun”) theme song are not the sort to encourage international investors.

I can’t help but wonder why I still care so much about a country that welcomes my dollars on a holiday, but continues to discourage my vote.  Not that it would count.

For more on the current situation in South Africa and its political future, take a look at Peter Hitchens’ excellent article most recently published in the UK’s Daily Mail.