The ANC and Ideology – III

Although somewhat overshadowed by recent global economic events, the ANC saga continues apace.

Having staged a palace coup and removed the sitting President of South Africa without much apparent recourse to normal, accepted democratic norms and values, the ANC is now acting all upset and indignant at some of the criticism coming its way.

The vehement attacks by the ANC against those former ministers, Provincial Premier(s) and other previously fair-weather ANC fellow-travellers only serve to underscore the paucity of ANC thought and democratic fair-mindedness whilst, concurrently, further highlighting the unmitigated arrogance of the new order within the organisation.

The faceless and shadowy NEC of the ANC, together with its lapdogs in the form of COSATU and the ANCYL, is following its old Soviet-style totalitarian inheritance by trying to strong-arm and bully into submission those who would dare to challenge its self-appointed right to govern by decree. On the premise that those who are not for or with the ANC are, de rigueur, enemies of the ANC, the NEC seeks to discredit and disarm its critics – particularly those within the ANC – through the most sustained of attacks and vilifications.

What the ANC fails to grasp, of course, is that the dissatisfaction of a number of ANC members and the possible ‘divorce’ of some of those members from the party is due solely to the ANC itself and the behaviour of its leadership in recent months.

Had Jacob Zuma and his lackeys been less overt and more sophisticated in seeking to gain personal power on the back of the ANC, fewer people would have been offended, repelled and scared of these individuals and their naked lust for power and preferment.

Had the ANC and the NEC been more transparent in their handling of Thabo Mbeki more people would have felt confident that the ANC was, in fact, being true to its claim of being a democratic organisation. Even though Mbeki himself failed to put country before party by not forcing the ANC, Zuma, et al, to deal with the challenge to his position and authority in Parliament, the ANC then monumentally failed the country by itself not voluntarily placing the entire issue before the Assembly. The ANC shot itself in the foot; nothing would have been lost had there been a debate and subsequent vote in Parliament (which is but an ANC rubber-stamp) and the ANC would have gained some credibility for its claims to be democratic. But, as with all other totalitarian regimes in history, the ANC is extremely fearful of the general populace getting to know about the real nature and character of itself as an organisation and of its leaders. They fear people realising just how venal and incompetent they are, fabricating a web of deceit and illusion about their motives and abilities which is, at best, tissue thin.

Had the ANC been less secretive and clandestine there never would have been the opportunity for the ANC dissenters to criticise it and its methods. After all, had not those dissidents themselves been willing passengers upon the gravy train of ANC government for many years? Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the criticisms of the dissenters, the ANC has ceded the moral high ground to them and looks increasingly insecure with its objections to open public debate on a matter of national concern (viz: the leadership and governance of the entire country).

This is but another example of ideology blindly triumphing over rational thought, common sense and duty and service to the needs of the whole country and all of its people.

Even worse is the application of the ideology of never admitting error and never apologising in case it were to reveal weakness – such are the politics of fear and such are the politics of South Africa.

Spearpoint.

13^th October 2008

Would the last democrat leaving South Africa please turn out the lights…

 

 

So here we have it, at last. It has been a while coming, but come it has.

 

Not that it has been unexpected. It was bound to happen eventually, in one way or another.

 

Many very astute and able writers have been trying – for some considerable time – to show how South Africa has been slowly descending into the abyss. More recently Spearpoint has (with far less ability and effectiveness) added his own voice to the warnings that have been increasingly thronging the various media available to us in this country.

 

I fear that it will all be to no avail.

 

The pessimism, even despair, which has silently pervaded South African society over the last decade or so, is now gaining increasing momentum even amongst those who celebrated the most after the release of Nelson Mandela.

 

Now we begin to see the true colours of our Rainbow Nation; colours that were once purposefully and skillfully hidden behind shimmering nebulae of rhetoric and political razzle-dazzle are now being glimpsed more often as the perceived need for global political respectability is, more and more, discarded as the ANC and its puppet masters gain in confidence and arrogance.

 

Today, the legislation to disband the elite crime-fighting unit known as the Scorpions has been tabled in Parliament.

 

Modeled broadly on the FBI, the Scorpions have proven to be a formidable and largely untouchable crime-fighting force that has shown little or no favour and has appeared to be indefatigable in the pursuit of those who would place themselves above the law. They have been a very necessary foil to the poorly performing South African Police Service.

 

Why the ANC has bothered to involve Parliament escapes me. South Africa is a dictatorship of the elected majority party (the ANC), with absolutely no prospect of any realistic challenge to the current status quo being mounted through the ballot box anytime in the next couple of generations.

 

The ANC might as well come clean and rule by decree. It would save them and the rest of the world time, effort and embarrassment over the increasingly amateurish attempts to legitimise their fumbling realisations of their ambitions.

 

The signs have around for a long time.

 

• The selection of a party leader – soon to be the country’s President – who is awaiting trial on corruption and related charges investigated and brought by the Scorpions.
• The blatant and public protection by the current President of the country – with the tacit approval of the ANC – of the national Police Commissioner who faces serious charges investigated and brought by the Scorpions.
• The blatant and unashamed protection of numerous public officials and office holders who have either admitted or have been convicted of innumerable offences ranging from drunk driving through fraud, embezzlement and worse.
• The blasé and indifferent approach to, and acceptance of, crime levels unparalleled outside of war zones such as Iraq. (An example – it is generally accepted that a rape occurs in South Africa every 23 seconds. Do the math – 1.4 million rapes per annum in a population estimated at around 45-50 million people).
• The awesome drift from reality embodied in the continuing and, until very recently, unquestioning support of rogue and repressive states such as Zimbabwe and Burma – behaviour which has led to the ridicule and scorn of the rest of the world, to say nothing of the loss of life and liberty of those poor unfortunates living in those countries.

 

And these are but a very few of the straws that have been blowing in the wind in recent years.

 

The Scorpions are but a single example of the lengths to which the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (all members of the tri-partite alliance which rules South Africa but of which only the ANC presents itself for election before the people of the country) are prepared to go in order to exclude themselves from scrutiny by both the courts and the electorate.

 

When will the people of South Africa – as well as the rest of the world – awaken to the fact of the immense confidence trick being played upon them at their expense?

 

Do we have to wait for the raids on the newspapers and televisions stations to become more frequent? (It has already happened). Will we only realise our plight when the Internet and blogs are monitored, controlled and restricted? Will we have to wait for the situation in Zimbabwe to become a reality for South Africa (and so memorably and eloquently expressed by the unknown Zimbabwean who voiced it by saying “We have freedom of expression; we just don’t have freedom after expression”)? Will we wait until the cadres of the ANC and SACP are joined on their nightly dissent-suppression street patrols by armed MK war veterans? Will we wait for the type of bloodbath that surely lurks, Kenya-like, in Zimbabwe’s near future?

 

The writing is on the wall. We ignore it at our peril. We run the risk of a bovine-like acceptance of the denial and corruption of the hopes and aspirations of an entire country already brutalised in the not-too-distant past. Or, simultaneously, we run the risk of opening the door to hotheads and armed reactionaries eager to turn back the clock.

 

And as much as Spearpoint harbours hopes for this country and its people, it is very much my profound fear that already it is too late and that the time is nigh for the call to go out, “Would the last democrat leaving South Africa please turn out the lights”.

 

 

Spearpoint

13^th May 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dictatorship in South Africa

If there was one thing that was a sure-fire bet back in April 1994 it was that the ANC would win the first “universal suffrage” elections in the history of South Africa.

A copper-bottomed certainty – based purely upon the demographic make-up of the country. The identification of the bulk of the populace was squarely against the perceived – and, no doubt, very real – privileges of the primarily Afrikaaner whites at the time. Black people saw the opportunity to redress the balance and the most prominent group seen as best able to deliver on that opportunity was the ANC.

And because the ANC was always first and foremost – although not exclusively – a movement of the majority Khosa people the resultant government was, principally, a Khosa government.

 Well and good. A democratic election produced a government based upon the wishes of the majority of the population of the country.

It must be said that, in the years since 1994, the ANC government has, in general, done many, many good things for South Africa, its economy and its people.

But as time has passed it has also created a number of quite unnecessary problems which, in recent years, have become increasingly obvious and dangerous. Two examples:

1. In keeping with the promise to give land for housing to black people previously living in squatter camps (many of which, incidentally, still exist some 14 years later), the government allocated only tiny handkerchief-sized plots barely large enough to accommodate a one- or two-roomed house per family. As a short-term solution and realisation of promises made to the electorate there was benefit to be had by the recipients – of course, since the very same electorate had been led to believe that all of the country’s problems could and would be fixed in the very near future if the ANC were to be given power. (Politicians are alike all over the world). However, the government actually solved very little. The townships created were crowded and neighbours lived cheek-by-jowl. The small plots did not allow for expansion or extension of the houses and living space, particularly as families grew with time and urbanisational immigration to the towns and cities with little, if any, opportunity for the residents to move away to other, larger, houses as their needs and aspirations grew; the increased wealth and earning capacities of these poor black communities did not match the rising costs of land and houses away from the townships. Result: the government sowed the seeds of ghettos for their own staunchest supporters, the harvest of which is just now beginning to manifest itself and will grow further as time passes.
2. The implementation of affirmative action, whilst, no doubt, generating some benefits for some sectors of the black population in the short-term, has tended to alienate many of the whites who, until 1994 and shortly thereafter, had been the prime movers in the formal economy of the country. Many whites were actively displaced from their ordinary jobs with a resultant loss of skills to industry and government. Many white technicians and managers threatened by their perceptions of crime and economic revenge being exacted by the ANC politicians and hangers-on took the opportunity to take their skills and expertise away from South Africa to places elsewhere in the world where merit and willingness to work were valued more highly than one’s racial or cultural grouping and where crime levels did not threaten one’s achievements. Result: a country losing the battle to supply its own doctors, technicians, managers, actuaries and so on when, with a little more patience and less political haste a comfortable transition and re-balancing could have been organised so that the previous privileges of the white community could have been grown to encompass more and more of the previously disadvantage black community in a way that would have been economically sustainable and perceived to have been fair and just by all segments of society.

Other examples could be cited.

These and other problems have come about because, I suspect, the ANC, having acquired power by massive demographic default, began to believe that its policies were the only policies that would work and, through a combination of over-confidence, jubilation at its success and outright arrogance, failed to adapt and evolve its ideological articles of faith to engage with the real world.

The ANC was in an unnecessary hurry to impose its worldview on its newly conquered territory and, as so often in Africa, steamrollered its particular version of Utopia into existence. Then again, probably understandable, given the euphoria of victory and the prospect of being able to begin righting the wrongs of the past.

The ANC believed it was right. In its ideological heart it knew it was right. And it kept getting re-elected back into power with huge majorities so the electorate obviously agreed.

Yes, but those majorities were supplied by people who, largely as a result of various inequalities and injustices of the past, were not educated enough to sufficiently understand the ramifications and consequences of the wholesale social engineering that the ANC was undertaking. Even the ANC intelligentsia had no complete understanding of what they were embarking upon since the South African situation was unique in the world. And there was (and still is) no-one to temper their actions; there was no pressure to fully consider their intentions because there was no danger (nor is there likely to be in the foreseeable future) of serious electoral challenge – parliament would always have an ANC majority by virtue of the sheer numbers of the Khosa over other tribal and racial groups in the population.

The ANC is, therefore, a dictatorship. A dictatorship that has been elected, for sure. But there are no realistic or viable checks and balances upon the ruling party. There is no significant opposition in South Africa and the ANC can, at will, ignore any views contrary to its own simply by applying the Whip to any parliamentary vote it chooses.

The ANC has been in power long enough to know that it commands widespread popular support and that it has made a number of unnecessary errors during its governance. It also claims to be governing the country to the benefit of all South Africans.

That being the case, why, then, does the ANC not voluntarily give up a proportion of its parliamentary seats to the various opposition parties in order to create a parliamentary environment which will improve the quality and depth of debate?

Let the ANC keep a working majority. But let it be not be so large that, on contentious issues, the government would not risk losing a vote if sufficient of its own MP’s were to cross the floor on a particular issue. Allow the public to see parliament engage in debates with real value rather than those we have today where they are always seemingly tinged with the despair of knowing that the ANC is merely going through the politically correct motions and will do whatever it wants regardless of the merits of other people’s ideas and aspirations.

Such a move would require considerable political courage but neither the ANC nor the country as a whole would stand to lose anything.

Spearpoint.