We must all make our voices heard in the outcry against corruption

Mondli Makhanya: South Africa has this amazing ability to excite, depress, shock and fascinate you all at the same time.

Such was this week: civil society mobilisation against corruption and anti-democratic behaviour, massacres, new growth paths and the petulant arrogance of the nouveau riche.

This was an exciting week in South Africa because civil society got together on Gauteng's East Rand and decided to send a strong message to the corrupt elements in our society. In Cape Town, civil society groups working under the aegis of the Right2Know coalition marched in protest against the anti-freedom-of- expression measures making their way through our political system.

Spearheaded by Cosatu, the anti-corruption coalition showed that this republic was not willing to raise its hands in surrender and declare that this is the way things and are and this is the way they are going to be.

The coalition has drawn about 70 organisations from across the interests spectrum. What brought them together, said Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, is a recognition that corruption "is a matter of life and death for our democracy".

"Young people in their 20s and 30s have become overnight multimillionaires ... We are rewarding laziness, greed and corruption and discouraging hard work, honesty and integrity."

On any other day one could have dismissed the event as just another gathering of hotheads, driven by opportunism and bitterness. But the weight of those gathered there and the fact that many of them represent a constituency that is close to the ruling party proved that the outcry against corruption is not the preserve of those the ANC likes to label as enemies of national democratic revolution.

Corruption is, as Vavi said, a matter of life and death. It is this important because it destroys the economy, corrodes values and accelerates our descent into a callous society.

If we embrace as normal the scourge of corruption - as many in the upper echelons of society seem to have done - then we will be accepting as normal the behaviour of the thugs who massacred at least 10 people in two separate incidents in KwaZulu-Natal this week.

It may seem like quite a leap to link corruption to cold-blooded murder. But the reality is that the two massacres are testament to the corrosion of values in our country.

It is when you allow the normalisation of wrong that you begin to create an anything-goes society.

The men who launched the attacks this week felt nothing for the fact that it was human beings they were killing. Whether the motive was robbery, revenge or something else, in their minds they were just out to kill objects.

It is the same mentality that governs the behaviour of corrupt politicians and the businessmen they collaborate with. To them it does not matter that the public purse they jointly pilfer is the property of the people and should, in most cases, be used for the upliftment of those on the margins of society.

As far as the "hyenas" are concerned, it is just fair game for plunder.

As these developments were taking place I was somewhere in the Western Cape, deliberating with fellow South Africans (and some neighbours) on where we are at as a country.

The occasion was the Goedgedacht Forum, which is held several times a year to ponder the state of the nation on the modest community upliftment trust farm below the Ceres. The purpose of the dialogues, which are almost as old as our democracy, is to "promote reconciliation and to help develop a humane, peaceful and democratic society in South Africa".

It was a rich discussion that dealt with the state of our politics, the health of our media and judiciary, the pace of delivery and the direction of our economic policy.

As with most such engagements at this time in our history, it was not necessarily the most uplifting of conversations. There are massive challenges facing our country and very little in the way of a vision and creativity to tackle them.

There was an attempt at the vision thing in the new growth path deliberated by the cabinet on Monday and announced by economic development minister Ebrahim Patel on Tuesday and elaborated on by Pravin Gordhan, his counterpart in finance, on Wednesday.

While nice sounding and ambitious in tone, many elements sound eerily like the songs that were rehearsed in the Thabo Mbeki era, but which never quite hit the recording studio - never mind the record store.

Some of the grandiose targets had the feel of a manifesto pamphlet than a realistic plan to lift the nation out of its morass. Nonetheless, it is better to have some targets than none. So rather than adopt a cynical pose, society should find ways of both assisting in working towards those targets and also holding the politicians to account for the promises made. We are, after all, all in this together.

Throwing our hands in the air in despair will serve only to empower the thugs, the corrupt and the bling crowd who now define our being.

But for that happen, the government must lead with the vision thing.