Category: politics

A negative end?

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The plan was to end off 2009 as this blog has seen 2009: a look forward with typical realistic optimism to what 2010 has to offer for South Africa.
And then the Mail & Guardian reproduced this little gem from The Guardian in the UK.
It’s one of those opinion pieces which is written with a cheeky gleam in the author’s eye, the well-known “this should prompt a reaction” gleam. It’s not a difficult thing to do: pick an emotive subject, cherry-pick facts to suit your agenda, sprinkle with a couple of disingenuous statements and rely on the reading public not having the knowledge to question them, hit PUBLISH, sit back and watch the sparks fly. Jonathan Steele did it in this case for The Guardian and then Nic Dawes et al picked it up and used the same techniques to keep the M&G website ticking over while everyone should actually have been on the beach.
But no one falls for that sort of trap anymore, do they? So, it didn’t work, did it?
Of course it did:

…written by a Brit, I must point out. Typical whingey, onanistic bluster.

(the full irony of which is fully revealed after this comment on this post)
and:

It amazes me that the Brits have so much to say about SA.
It’s not as if we’re still a colony.

and:

A bunch of whingy Brits have a go at South Africa (see the comments).

Honestly, if you’re going to judge an entire country on the work of one journalist on a slow news day, we’re in trouble. And if you’re going to judge an entire country on the comments on a website news article, then we’re really in trouble. Especially South Africa.
No – much better to judge an entire country on their cricket team, I always say. *ahem*

Moving on to the article itself, it’s actually rather cleverly written, reminding me of that Peter Hitchens one from last March, except that it’s rather cleverly written. There’s no one fact in there that is actually incorrect, but there’s a good deal of careful omission and use of “opinion” to put a negative spin on things. And then there’s the fact that while the title “Why 2010 could be an own goal for the Rainbow Nation” hints towards something about the World Cup going awry, the article is primarily about the supposed failings of the ANC  Government over the last 15 years – and nothing to do with next year at all, save for a passing mention in the first paragraph and a vague assertion that next year will bring further scrutiny on the ruling party. Who knew?

The only moment of positivity I could find in this otherwise one-sided effort was that Jacob Zuma is “more accessible to ordinary South Africans than his aloof predecessor, Thabo Mbeki”, which is hardly much of an earth-shattering epiphany either. And then it’s tempered with a nice dig at everyone’s favourite enemy of the world… er… Nelson Mandela, “who, according to former ministers, could be brutal in cabinet, shutting speakers up by saying he had already taken his decision”.

But from then on in, it’s all doom and gloom; flirting with the full truth on occasion:

Instead of scapegoating the innocent, poor people are aiming their criticism at officials of the ruling party, the African National Congress, and demanding delivery of long-promised improvements. The bad news is that the government and the media seem unwilling to engage in serious debate, let alone action, on how to supply people with what they need.

hiding behind the author’s own prejudices opinion:

South Africa’s press and blog sites are dominated by rightwing thinking. They regularly headline claims that the government is “lurching to the left” and that the Communist party and trade union allies are getting the upper hand.

and being downright disingenuous with others:

Zuma was unlucky to come to power just after the onset of the global economic crisis. Growth in 2010 is projected to fall by 2.6% at a time when western economies are already reviving.

I don’t think that Zuma doubts that South Africa has problems. Nor do I think that he is afraid to stand up and face them or those who rightfully demand service delivery. The trouble is that for every township that riots, there are another [large number] that also face exactly the same problems. Apartheid left a huge wound on South Africa which is going to take many decades to heal. To expect everything to be sorted out already is laughable: these people are politicians – they are just human beings.
South Africa is going the right way – but too slowly. Zuma’s task is to speed up that change.
How? I don’t know. I’m a microbiologist. But I will suggest that if anyone had a magic wand, they surely would have waved it by now.

I felt sure that I was going to disagree with Steele about his view of South Africa’s prospects in 2010. But if the only conclusion he comes to is that “The spotlight on the country’s progress since apartheid will be more intense than ever”, well then maybe I agree. But I do think it will stand up to that spotlight.
It’s all very well talking of an (unreferenced) average class size of 50: 15 years ago, there weren’t even any classrooms.
It’s all very well talking of the “brutal” police service: what were they doing pre-1994?
And yes, the people are now turning to the justice system to bring change: how is that not progress?

Next year promises to be huge for this country. With the FIFA World Cup comes a massive opportunity to showcase what South Africa has to offer. I’ve said before that there will be dissent; that there will be articles (like Steele’s) which will seek to derail the occasion and pounce on every little error or problem. But we don’t have to live our lives like that.
It should be a year of progress – not by overlooking the problems, but by tackling them.
It should be a year of celebration – enjoying the successes and learning from the failures.

South Africa isn’t perfect. Nowhere is perfect.
But in 2010, SA is going to shine.

Happy New Year.

The curious case of the ex-South Africans

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Here’s an interesting article from Ilham Rawoot in this week’s Mail and Guardian (one of very few that actually made it in – the Christmas issue was rather thin).

Martine Schaffer, managing director of Homecoming Revolution, a non-profit organisation that encourages and aids the return of skilled expatriates estimates that two million South Africans live abroad – mostly in Australia, Canada and the United States. Each month, she says, about 200 of them contact her organisation for advice on how to come home. Emigration is not a uniquely South African phenomenon, she says, but nowhere else is the act of leaving so steeped in guilt.

Schaffer described to the Mail & Guardian the emigration trends that she has seen over the past decade. Although more black people are heading off these days, most emigrants are white, she says. She attributes earlier waves of emigration to hysteria, generated by the political situation: “The people who left in 2000 didn’t want this country to succeed. When the lights went out [in the Eskom crisis] they were celebrating.”

Schaffer says 2008 was the year of “our biggest outflow”. The people who left at that point felt they had “stuck it out and had given the country a chance. Then Polokwane happened, Zuma came into power, there was the Eskom crisis and they felt their fears became rational.”

The article doesn’t make clear whether figures are available for 2009 yet. Probably not, as there may be a huge pre-New Year exodus or something, but I’m interested to see them. Because it seems to me that the “rational” fears of those 2008 emigrants haven’t actually followed through.
While Eskom and Zuma are still a little shaiky (geddit?) around the edges, crime rates have fallen, the country has ridden out the global credit crunch and the weather is superb. There hasn’t been the widespread load-shedding of early 2008, Zuma hasn’t killed all the whities and we have the World Cup coming next year. It’s all good.

For me, the exceptionalism comes not with the guilt of those leaving, but rather with the bad-mouthing of SA once they’ve gone. Now, I know that not all SA ex-pats do this: I can name a couple from the blogroll who definitely don’t. But there’s a huge proportion that do. I’ve not really seen this in ex-pats from anywhere else. Perhaps the odd toot about how Gordon Brown has dragged the UK into Kak Creek without a paddle, but that’s really about it. Nothing so serious, so vehement and so continuous as the stuff you get here. There really is no need to feel guilty for leaving – it’s all about perception and if you really see no future here, then go – but then move on, be positive, celebrate your new home, rather than vilifying your previous one.

Last word to Hilary Alexander, who went to London from 10 years, but is now back home in Cape Town:

Being away from home was like walking for a long time with a stone in your shoe and you can’t shift it. Now it’s as if someone has taken the stone out of my shoe.

And it’s sunny.

Mourning Manto

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Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang passed away yesterday. While foreign readers might not know who she is (or was), she will be well known to anyone with a connection to South Africa. They will know her as the AIDS-denialist Health Minister who associated with quacks and never lived up to her promise upon taking office that she would roll out ARV treatment to those in need in SA.
Perhaps better still, they will know her for her (in)famous comments that HIV and AIDS should be treated with a diet of garlic, lemons, beetroot and African potato.
Oh, and then there was the legendary interview with John “not always right, but never going to admit it” Robbie on Talk 702 where they spent most of the time discussing how she should be addressed: “I’m not Manto to you!”. 
And how could we forget the liver transplant saga? Did she need it because she was an alcoholic? Did she jump the queue? How did the Sunday Times gain access to her medical records? And should they have published them?

But those who choose to celebrate her death are missing some important points. Perhaps most importantly of all, the fact that she is no longer Health Minister and hasn’t been for well over a year now. So her death doesn’t make any difference to the state of the Health system or the supply of ARV drugs in the country. She had no control over that yesterday, nor does she have any today. Their delight won’t bring those who have died of AIDS on her watch, back.
And indeed, I am still left wondering how much of the rhetoric and denialism came from her, and how much came from Thabo Mbeki. Not that that excuses her complicity, but I believe that during her tenure in the Department of Health, she acted as a shield for what were, at that point, ANC and Government policies.

And there was more to Tshabalala-Msimang than just her last few infamous years. She made sacrifices – and as so many South Africans did – went into exile during Apartheid. She had been a member of the ANC for nearly 50 years and, prior to 1994, worked hard in the struggle, using her medical skills to support Umkhonto weSizwe.

“Comrade Manto dedicated her life to the struggle for justice and democracy in South Africa and she left the country to fight outside the borders of our country for the liberation of her people,” said ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu.
“She has given many young ANC cadres guidance over the years and her death has robbed the ANC of a truly committed cadre and stalwart to the transformation agenda of the ANC.”

I am not defending Tshabalala-Msimang’s stance on HIV and AIDS. She could have, should have done more. Someone with her knowledge should have recognised the stupidity of Mbeki’s policies and had the integrity to challenge them or to step down. That there were many complex personal and political reasons why she didn’t is no excuse.
What I am saying is that there was more to this woman than will be remembered:

Tshabalala-Msimang’s contribution to our democracy is huge. We should remember her for that. We should remember that she gave up almost her entire life, put herself in danger, and left her family for the cold Russian winter, in the hopes of making things better for her people. She achieved that, and lived to see a better life for all. For that, we should be grateful. But her legacy is also the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Aids sufferers who could have been saved had her beliefs been different.

I wonder how many people know ALL the facts before they begin their celebrations at her passing.

There’s talk of emigration in the air

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Remember when we used to hear that at all the dinner parties, the braais, on the television and in the papers?
The ZumaRumas™. The dangers of another ANC government. Chasing the whites out of the country. Murdered in our beds. How South Africa was going to become “another Zimbabwe”.
I never did get a firm date for any of those unfounded scare-mongering stories.
When I asked, I usually just got a hard stare over my wors and some mumbled excuse about needing another Castle Lite.

Sure, South Africa does have its problems. Many of them, in fact. Which is surely all the more reason for not adding more silly ones that you made up on the way to the party.
But why the exceptionalism? Because nowhere is perfect and everywhere you go, you’re going to face challenges. The grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence. And if it is, it’s probably because of all the s**t that’s around over there.

So – back to the talk of emigration in the air:

There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket.

That’s Jeremy Clarkson in this week’s Sunday Times. He’s fed up with the UK – particularly the way it’s being run – and he wants out:

It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else.

The rest of the piece is a wonderful rant about the amount of control and red tape that is exerted over those in the developed world. And a highly amusing list of the problems with each individual country that he considers emigrating to. And – while it is, of course, written with tongue firmly in cheek – at least Clarkson acknowledges that it doesn’t matter where you go, things won’t ever be perfect. Because that’s really not how life works.

I often think that immigrants to a country are better at seeing the good in it. I certainly think that I have a much more positive opinion of South Africa than many of those who have lived here all their lives. And that goes for a lot of the other ex-pats I’ve met here, too.
I’ve done my best to educate myself on the substance behind the stories, taking opinion from all sides – like The Political Analyst and The Guru amongst others – and I’m finding it easier and easier to recognise nonsense emails and stories earlier and earlier, because – like all lies – they really don’t stand up to any degree of scrutiny. I now regularly have friends emailing me with stories of crime and politics and the ANC, with online petitions and the like, asking me if they are true.
And they never are.

And while I’m happy to set records straight, I find it sad that people still willingly believe all that they read in their inboxes and in the newspapers. And sadder still that there are individuals who will prey on this gullibility to push their agenda across. Thabo Mbeki did some things right and he did some things wrong (and this really isn’t a post about that), but he hit the nail on the head with this line:

It seems to me that the unacceptable practice of propagation of deliberate falsehoods to attain various objectives is becoming entrenched in our country.

Ironically, it now seems that he was behind some of the propagation of those deliberate falsehoods, no matter how unacceptable he found the practice. But it’s still a great quote.

What I’m saying here is that you can’t allow yourself to be dragged down by only seeing the negative side of things and you have to make the best of what you’ve got.
Because you’re never going to have it all.
A lot of people in South Africa fall into that negativity trap and their lives, their outlook and the mood of whole country in general are detrimentally affected because of it.
Positivity costs nothing and it makes you feel a whole lot better.

As for Clarkson – his column has now been removed from the Sunday Times website – probably something to do with his plan to strap Peter Mandelson “to the front of a van and drive round the country until he isn’t alive any more”.
Fortunately, I got there first and have a nice small (35kb) PDF of it for you to read. Enjoy!

Cape to be stripped of power?

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Seriaas?

Seriaas.

Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka has warned the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial government that they will be stripped of their powers if they fail to deliver basic services to poor residents soon.

Of course, the Western Cape is the only Province not to be under ANC control. And the City of Cape Town is the only major municipality not to be under ANC control. But surely these aren’t the only areas which are suffering with a lack of service delivery?
Take the recent protests in Standerton, Balfour (and here), Thokoza and Diepsloot, none of which are in the Western Cape and therefore all of which find themselves under ANC control.

When questioned about this apparent dichotomy in approach to what are basically the same problems and issues, Minister Shiceka was annoyed at the suggestion of any hypocrisy:

Let there be no doubt, if any ANC municipalities are shown to be failing, then they will be taken to task by the ANC. If there is no improvement, we will transfer their powers to the ANC.
And then, if necessary, to the ANC.

So that all sounds fair enough.
Although I think that Helen Zille, Supreme Emperor of the Western Cape, may beg to differ.