Back in 1982, on a wall in the foyer of the Polana Hotel in Maputo, Mozambique, there was a huge likeness of the continent of Africa fashioned from a hammered metal alloy, but with SA and then-South West Africa omitted from the installation. The ocean washed up to the Kalahari and met the Limpopo and Kunene rivers. Lesotho was an island. More protest art than map, it underlined that SA and later Namibia were not yet part of Africa. They’d not been “liberated”, as the rest of Africa supposedly had.
Problem was, though, that while SA had not yet undergone the transition to black rule, was it still a colony in the sense that the other African neo-states had once been colonies? If not a colony, then, was SA a “colony of a special type”, as some in the SA Communist Party proposed? A colony whose settlers stayed afterwards? Could SA usefully be said to be part of Africa, except in a strict geographical sense?
In the years of SA’s transition to democracy around 1994, a cottage industry developed among those who said SA could not possibly become “like the rest of Africa”. SA had a solid legal system and the rule of law, property rights and sophisticated banking and auditing. And if all of the above failed, there was always ubuntu to save the day. Besides, we had the ANC and the constitution.
OK, so we’ve definitely got a fancy banking system, so much so that it’s near-impossible to phone a bank and speak to an actual person nowadays. That’s how hi-tech it is. And property rights and the rule of law ... well, we’ve got them too, or a form of them, for now. And the ANC, or what remains of it.
In addition to the hopeful arguments as to why we wouldn’t become another African basket case, and we had every opportunity to avoid that fate, we were told to be grateful because we were to be led by no less a figure than Nelson Mandela, and the assumption was that his example would inspire all ANC leaders to come. The looting of his funeral budget after he died in 2013 put paid to that illusion.
On its road to power the ANC took on new-fangled ideas and constituencies, retrofitting them onto the clunky yet reliable chassis of African nationalism. In its discussion document Ready to Govern, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, the ANC depicted itself as everything to everyone, an amalgam of Dr Phil, Oprah Winfrey and St Francis of Assisi, with a bit of Che Guevara and Muammar Gaddafi in the mix. Tolerant, liberal, bristling with ideas and renewal vigour, impatient to get going.
From our fancy yet useless criminal justice system to our intricate layers of elected governance (all cheques and no balances), we show the traits of a fantasy republic, a place of wealth and grinding poverty. Like the rest of the continent, we are rich in resources, but damned by avaricious and myopic leadership.
It soon became apparent though, that even while the ANC started out well, pursuing an enlightened foreign policy and calling Nigeria to account for the execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, it would soon follow the well-worn African “non-interference” template. The applause at the collapse of Zimbabwe further proved this.
In the morphing from rainbow coalition to big-man nationalist know-it-allism, typified by the elevation of Jacob Zuma in Polokwane in 2007, first to go had been the Freedom Charter and radical economic change. Next was the reconstruction and development programme, which sought to refashion the budget to the needs of a developing country. It was replaced by the growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy, which confirmed SA on its neoliberal economic path, and for a while it worked, until the credit crash of 2008 and the Zuma years ended the glory days. The events in Marikana in August 2012 further illustrated the ANC government’s resolve to keep in place the century-old cheap-labour mining model backed up by state force.
All this spurned the birth of a society of twin elites, black and white, living way beyond their means in an economy whose colonial and apartheid characteristics are largely untouched. The ANC’s leaders, while trading politically on inequality, slavishly mimicked Western lifestyles and living standards, demanding a level of splendour that gives lie to the insistence on international forums that we are a poor country.
As we move towards three decades of post-liberation rule, few doubt the ANC has indeed taken its place among the fallen liberation idols of the continent. Everywhere it has been is a shambles, and even the glacial progress in cleaning up after state capture can’t disguise a model that benefits the connected and screws the poor, the whole catastrophe kept afloat by welfare grants and the apathy of the people.
Not for us African solutions for African problems. Our imported Covid-19 lockdown, applauded by elites around the world, killed the livelihoods of millions, but saved few lives. From our fancy yet useless criminal justice system to our intricate layers of elected governance (all cheques and no balances), we show the traits of a fantasy republic, a place of wealth and grinding poverty. Like the rest of the continent, we are rich in resources, but damned by avaricious and myopic leadership.
This week we celebrated Africa Day, to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, and just in time for a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. When President Cyril Ramaphosa held a media briefing with Scholz we got a glimpse of how narrow African nationalism trumps the building of the independent Africa its leaders say they want, but won’t lift a finger to help.
Ramaphosa tried to nudge (or shame) Scholz to get the developed world to order the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine made by local pharma group Aspen in SA, which no one is buying, saying: “There are no buyers for vaccines produced in Africa.”
What he didn’t emphasise was that besides the rich West, not a single African country had ordered the vaccine either. Not even SA. How’s that for a double shot of hypocrisy? Fortified by a hubris booster to give complete immunity from reality.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.