If they don't care, who does?

When chilled-out chats around the fire reveal black and white ethical issues as opportunist grey for some

During a weekend in Mpumalanga, having planned to think about nothing but the scenery, I began a novel in which famous Swedish fictional detective, Kurt Wallander, stresses about the ethical lapses of his society in producing two very young female killers. That evening, talking about everything under the moon including skewed ethics with my son's friends, one conversation on the mountainside stopped me in my tracks.
A 26-year-old South African from a privileged background, the boyfriend of someone in the invited group, was describing his recent migration north to join the diamond rush in Marange, Zimbabwe, when I asked how he felt about the human rights controversies surrounding the sale of those much-discussed minerals.
His response was shocking. One person's morality was another's opportunity, he retorted. Robert Mugabe was an okay guy seeing it was easier to exploit Zimbabwe's resources than those in over-regulated South Africa, he continued, insisting he was entitled to get rich regardless of ethical considerations provided he stayed out of prison.
Well, Wallander and I fretted over such narrow self-interest for the rest of the weekend. What makes a young person so cynical? Why do some and not others have the moral resources which make it natural to summon self-restraint in caring for others? Over the years, I've seen the rest of the group exercising their moral identity positively in response to different behaviors: cruelty arouses their revulsion, a mean swindler evokes contempt, generosity and courage inspire admiration. But this diamond dude seemed amoral.
Most of us have an idea of the kind of person we want to be, which limits what we are prepared to do to others. I am not the type who gives bribes, people confide in me, I would never park in a disabled-only bay, I am someone who can't tell lies. Added to respect for dignity and sympathy for the miseries of others, these responses are so widely distributed as to thrive even without external controls like formalized religion giving people an idealised picture of the world from which to derive their values.
Some of us - including members of our political elite in an era when looting of the public purse is commonplace - have much darker things to understand about ourselves, though few will individually admit to their own degenerating ethics as readily as the young diamond dealer. There was much thoughtful talk during the farm getaway about the valid three-week-old public sector strike, which, however, gave rise to some horribly antisocial acts and showed what unscrupulous strikers were prepared to inflict on others in pursuit of their own ends.
Stampeding an operating theatre during surgery, assaulting nurses and intimidating schoolchildren are, let's face it, symptoms of barbaric selfishness. Trade unions would have us believe such cruel incidents were few and far between, but numerous first-hand reports tell a different story.
Of course, we must remember that our apartheid past lives on as resentment – and entitlement. There is, as the philosopher Jonathan Glover observed, "…terrible significance in what some people expect others to forget". Although the plight of the poorest in South Africa has been eased through social grants – thanks to the ANC - the income gap remains shamefully wide. Promises of a better life for all have indeed been broken in recent years but, however embittered, we need to continue to see what is humanly important.
What sort of picture of conventional morality are we constructing for children when so many teachers were willing to ditch their charges just as the students braced up to exams that will determine their future opportunities? Making the country ungovernable was once rational self-interest, but what has the uncompromisingly aggressive strike taught today's youngsters about cultivating some of their instinctive characteristics and curbing others?
(This is, admittedly, an old-fogeyish, middle-class commentary on industrial action widening the moral gap in an unequal country where morality itself needs to be humanized and become rooted in human needs and human values – a good start being fair wages.)
Whatever the inequalities of South African life, the best way for parents to promote the interests of their offspring is to encourage the development of moral feelings which will motivate obedience to society's ethical rules. Where parents are living precariously themselves, it is teachers who are entrusted universally with training children in proper social behavior. But in South Africa, as every education specialist will tell you, our schools are failing largely as a result of teacher absenteeism and a culture of adult indifference in the classroom.
There are some wonderful state schools, but many of the striking teachers have not earned their pay increases. The unfortunate message kids from collapsed families get when their own teachers don't even want to help them pass crucial exams is quite clear: who in the world cares? It is a tragic betrayal that could haunt South Africa for generations, the disintegrating public education system being our gravest post-apartheid defeat by far.
Mercifully, as those of us around the Mpumalanga braai who weren't dreaming of diamonds discussed, the trend in rural areas is for parents to abandon hopeless state education in favour of the low-fee private schools that are springing up around the country. Researcher Ann Bernstein's excellent study, Hidden Assets (www.cde.org.za), shows that cash-strapped parents are investing in their childrens' futures because they get better results and because private schools are more accountable to them than the state system.
In addition to providing good, old-fashioned competition in schooling, one way South Africans can begin to make things better for the disadvantaged is by developing a moral imagination so as to become more aware of the realities confronting the poor.
For example, while moving mountains for your own child's educational benefit, consider what it's like for most of our citizens to attend crumbling institutions in which teachers are either perpetually absent or perhaps painting their toenails while students throw paper darts, listen to pop music, learn virtually nothing – and grow up as ruthlessly selfish as the hardened young diamond dealer.