Drifting down as time goes by
In post-colonial history, 20 years of rule by a once-heroic liberation movement engenders apprehension
The 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa will be a depressing occasion compared to recent celebrations of Nelson Mandela's release from prison two decades ago. Although it was with a mixture of disappointment and resignation that many of us contrasted our current all-too-human president with the iconic one who made us so proud of ourselves in 1994, the upcoming twenty-year mark in our political evolution may bring downright disillusionment in 2014.
Of course, to be disillusioned is to be finally free of illusions – not a bad thing in itself. Among the unrealistic expectations we had of Madiba was that he would absolve us from the sins of a terrible past, including the daunting social ills that will remain to challenge this society for years to come. Equally, some of the promises made by the ANC were bound to be broken for the simple reason that they were impossible to fulfil.
But it is in post-colonial African history that twenty years of rule by a once-heroic liberation movement engenders deeper apprehension. We aren't there yet – just four years to go – though clear signs already echo grim experiences elsewhere on the continent – notably Zimbabwe – of dangerous dissent in the ruling party as well as growing disaffection in the populus.
People ask all the time if South Africa is heading the way of Zimbabwe. The two countries are completely different and it used to seem a silly, indeed paranoid, question that was usually posed by the former oppressor. Lately, though, a sense of South Africa's downward drift has become so widespread that at least one aspect of the answer springs readily to mind.
It is the matter of responsibility, which Winston Churchill famously identified as the price of greatness. When Madiba came out of prison, he accepted responsibility for South Africa's reconciliation, without which we could not have gone forward together in the first place. Being far more mature than the people he led, just as our hallowed Constitution is way ahead of our collective ethics, Madiba envisioned South Africans taking responsibility for both the past and their uncertain future.
How wrong he was. Who but Mandela (plus some incredibly brave Aids orphans in child-headed households countrywide) has ever shouldered any real responsibility in South Africa?
There may be little point in dwelling again on a government that ducks and dives by definition, politicians who blame the media for every shady revelation, dodgy police commissioners, teachers who can't teach, cops who can't cop, a grossly greedy, power-crazed youth leader, a bogus jailhouse release deal for the president's pal, not to mention patronized judges who will eventually defy the law. We already know officialdom is so far down the rocky road to ruin that, instead of being the beacon on a chaotic continent as we hoped back in 1994, South Africa may resemble broken-down Nigeria or bump-along-the-bottom Kenya by 2014.
Politicians aside, let's rather examine ourselves and the fact that we live in a psychopathic society where hardly anybody takes responsibility for anything. Look at middle South Africa – at those of us who have kept our nice houses and cushy lifestyles after "the revolution" but who complain constantly about potholes, power outages, crime and the crooked cops we bribe ourselves. Let's face it, today's incompetence in public life is largely our own fault, given four decades of support for apartheid policies designed to keep the majority under-educated and under-skilled. Did we think the ANC would come to office and patiently play catch-up while its cadres acquired the qualifications and experience they lacked, never having been in employment? Why didn't we realize that a triumphant liberation movement would lavish jobs on loyal supporters regardless of competence?
Meanwhile, whites vote en masse for the Democratic Alliance, as they're perfectly entitled to do democratically, despite it sending the majority a racist signal that is not going to be in the minority's interests long-term. But do they reconsider for the sake of enlightened self-interest? Hell, no.
Self-reflection? What's that?
Everybody realises you can't escape the responsibility of tomorrow by avoiding it today yet we go on blaming "them" – never ourselves. It's always somebody else's fault, never our own. Indeed, South Africa is becoming exactly what our bigoted forebears warned us it would be: a country destroyed by black rule - QED.
The formerly oppressed are equally deft at deflecting responsibility. Zuma blames journalists for the outcry over his sexual indiscretion; Malema blames Mbeki for revelations about his extravagant lifestyle. Mea culpa is not in any of the country's eleven official languages, alas.
South Africa's virtually unacknowledged crime crisis represents indulgence of behavior that ought not to be tolerated on the grounds of a violent past, former suffering, poverty, fatherlessness or anything else that perpetuates it.
Long after the past's oppressive laws have been dismantled, internalised apartheid breeds a culture of entitlement and victimhood that renders the air in South Africa thicker with grievance than greenhouse gases. Yet the downtrodden voted en masse less than a year ago for a government they rightly protest against today – and many will doubtless endorse the ANC again.
By 2014, though, history suggests that the ANC will have begun to shed popularity to a viable alternative – at long last. Remember that it was growing unemployment, declining social services and blatant corruption that gave rise to Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change at a time when Mugabe/Zanu-PF's stakes were plummeting – but then the wheels fell off completely.
Democracy? What's that when African power is up for grabs?
Assuming history repeats itself, the ANC will simply haul out apartheid's repressive machinery, smash the media and terrorize the judiciary – as Mugabe did. Haven't we already seen an innocently gesticulating man being bundled into a police vehicle with a bag over his head, and policemen dispersing protesters with rubber bullets? Is our Constitution really cast in concrete? Aren't there some dubious media laws in the offing as we speak?
What, we ask ourselves, will 20 years of democracy add up to by 2014?
