Professor Lesiba Teffo of the Centre for African Renaissance at the University of South Africa did not mince his words when commenting on the ANC’s victory in the May 8 South African election: despite an outcry from some voters, “the ANC’s arrogance in power and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fear of a coup had to do with their insistence on keeping objectionable party members on parliamentary lists”, he declared. The list of public representatives for parliament and provincial legislatures was published in the Government Gazette, and those with tainted images and nefarious backgrounds featured prominently.

This is but one of the anomalies of South Africa’s strange “democracy” – the ruling party’s “going through the motions” of Western-style procedures, with electoral commissions, voter registrations, public campaigning and then the sweeping to power with a large majority: this effort certainly impressed the world.  But there is a dark side to all of this - fissures and contradictions and bizarre behaviour patterns and mindsets reveal the prevailing democratic South African narrative to be quite different to the Western ideal. Characteristics endemic to Africa are becoming very conspicuous, yet are tolerated with an amazing passivity both inside and outside South Africa. These idiosyncratic traits would never pass muster in any of the world’s representative governments, but the ANC’s shaky standards have become South Africa’s standards, and that party has been given a free pass which virtually no other world government has been given.

Nowhere in any truly democratic country would a party be voted into power after twenty five years of serious failure.  One mentally challenged SA university professor lauded the president for “at least apologising” for the party’s past mistakes. Mistakes? Is the wanton destruction of a country a mistake? Another columnist urged South Africa to give the ANC “another chance”. After four destructive terms of office, followed by umpteen motions of no confidence in ANC ex-president Jacob  Zuma,  we must give his and president Ramaphosa’s party  “another chance”?

MINDSET

These bizarre electoral phenomena represent a mindset inimical to Western thought processes. Professor Teffo articulated this in his comment about the “objectionable party members” who are going to take their places in the SA parliament and in the cabinet without any shame or cognizance of accountability. A further phenomenon of singular importance in assessing the ANC’s “sweeping” election results is the eighteen million mostly black South Africans who depend almost wholly on government welfare payments every month. Most care only about that:  sewage in the streets, erratic electricity supplies, lack of proper education and wholesale plundering of the country’s finances by the party they continually vote for doesn’t register with them as an incongruity. As long as they get their money every month, nothing else seems to matter and they will continue to vote for the ANC ad infinitum. These voters are “in the bag”, so to speak, for the ANC, which party has told voters for years now that voting for anyone else will see this stipend disappear.

Then there’s the African “big man” syndrome - the cult of personality. President Ramaphosa is seen by many as the country’s saviour, as if he alone can change the ANC’s destructive DNA. Issues which worry voters in the rest of the world are airily dismissed by SA’s ruling party, and failures are called “challenges” whose solutions are just around the corner. Scapegoats are regularly brought out of the hat: apartheid, colonialism, white monopoly capital, Western aid stinginess and climate change, to name a few. Drought is a good old standby.  (The fact that it occurs in dozens of other countries which plan forward for the occurrence is not mentioned.)  Professor Teffo says that “in the African context, the electorate tended not to deal with issues but with emotions, driven by the politics of the stomach.”

The race card is relentlessly proffered. Many ANC officials and hangers on who have illegally enriched themselves, play this card masterfully and cunningly to deflect attention from their crimes.  Race as an issue is very effective in exacerbating the deepest and most visceral antagonisms within South African society.

EUPHORIA

During the post-election euphoria, the president talked of an “inclusive” South Africa, and that he was president for all South Africans. At the same time, ANC secretary -general Ace Magashule declared vehemently that “we (black people) are slaves in our own nation while those who hold our wealth through historic theft still enjoy it. Control of the resources of SA is still primarily in the hands of white people who are the descendants of colonists who stole our wealth and land in the first place”.

He went on to claim that “our mandate is to expropriate land without compensation”, this after president Ramaphosa told a select white pre-election audience in Pretoria that this expropriation would mainly consist of state-owned land and land that was not being used.”  So who speaks with forked tongue?

The sheer stupidity of Magashule’s words beggar belief. Firstly there was no indigenous civilization in South Africa when whites arrived in 1652. Early South African history was written in the main by European visitors and British government agents, naturalists, doctors, anthropologists and journalists who saw nothing more than a primitive nomadic way of life, of black people moving their cattle from place to place to escape the regular wars and genocide practised by other numerically superior tribes. Mr. Magashule’s antecedents had never developed a written language so European historical records are in fact the only history of record. Land ownership in the Western sense was unheard of in pre-1652 South Africa.  The Western property title deed system was and is the only real proof of historical ownership. And wealth? Who created the wealth of South Africa? According to a recent commission of enquiry evidence, Mr. Magashule has not been backward in coming forward to help himself to the wealth created by others. He is indeed a very well-off slave!

TLU SA offered a reward of R100 000 to anyone who could prove that land was stolen from blacks by whites. So far there have been no takers. Magashule and his party have little else to contribute to South Africa except vitriol, corruption and destruction. Racial resentment is their narrative. They have built nothing but they have stolen and plundered. Yet his words resonate with many.

CHANGE

We will see if president Ramaphosa can turn the country around. South Africa can tell him what to do but whether he takes any advice is a moot point. He needs to hold on to power, and the chasms within his party are large and deep. Will the president change the country’s municipal discriminatory employment policies against whites? As of now, advertisements for these jobs still display Employment Equity conditions giving preference to blacks. Scores of local authorities are on their knees and under administration. Opening up government job opportunities to all, so that merit is the criteria, would be a good start for the president to turn South Africa around. How quickly he will fix the roads, clean up the raw sewage in the streets, un-pollute the country’s water supply and repair our crumbling infrastructure will be measured in days and weeks, not months and years.

It is not a cliché for nothing – “words are cheap”-  and stentorian political speeches are two a penny. Insurance group PPS’s recent survey of professionals’ views of SA’s future revealed that 84% of attorneys are worried about how the government’s actions in the next twelve months will influence their profession; 72% of doctors believe the government’s national health insurance plan will not improve health in South Africa; 78% of engineers say there are decreasing project opportunities; 55% of dentists say there is a serious shortage of skills in the profession;  62% of chemists say there is a shortage of pharmacists,  while 86% say the proposed national health insurance program will not give enough attention to pharmacy.  Fifty nine percent of accountants say that current graduates are not well trained enough, while 35% say that recent scandals have affected the reputation of their industry. These are the cream of the crop. If they are further dissatisfied, they will leave South Africa.

The elephant in the room for president Ramaphosa is his obfuscation about land expropriation without compensation (EWC). He told a New York audience in December last year that EWC was on the cards, and that there were no farm murders in South Africa! Yet he recently informed foreign investors at a Goldman Sachs conference that all assets would be safe in South Africa, despite his commitment to EWC. With the secretary general of his party shouting from the rooftops that EWC is a sure thing, believing Mr. Ramaphosa’s dulcet tones is a real stretch.

TLU SA, like many others, is prepared to give the president elbow room to get things right. But there is a time limit, and South Africa waits!