The arrogance and disdain of our leaders are our greatest challenge
With the ‘new dawn’ having so far proved to be a mirage, we need to hold this government as accountable as the regime of Jacob Zuma
● SA is teetering dangerously on the brink of a precipice — and our leadership is either somnambulant or deeply in slumberland.
At face value, that may seem a harsh thing to say or admit to, especially for a patriotic South African. And yet, we need to have the courage to stare the truth in the face and to diagnose our collective ailment correctly if we are to stand a realistic chance of ever arresting the decline, let alone reversing it.
In 25 short years we have become a lawless and nearly anarchic society in which the law-abiding lose out and retreat to a corner, while the daring, the vainglorious and those with a criminal bent not only thrive but also disdainfully despise those among us who still revere and obey the country’s laws. When not on the take, our law-enforcement agencies and other related state organs charged with the allimportant responsibility of ensuring order are too impuissant and are repeatedly exposed as woefully ill-prepared for the enormous task at hand.
As a result, we have become the rape and misogyny capital of the world, where just having been born female is enough to mark one out for all kinds of abuse. Our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters live in palpable fear of being molested and murdered with absolute impunity, while our leadership limply throws its hands in the air, mouths yet more empty condemnations and makes more unconvincing promises and undertakings.
Our streets have been taken over by angry and vile men who rape, murder and pillage with gay abandon, comfortable in the knowledge that they will get away with it. With unspeakable savagery, they lay into men and women whose only sin is that they are from another African country; torch trucks on the country’s roads for no reason other than that those who drive them are employed and are unknown to them; and target construction sites in our industrial areas to demand — by brute force — a stake in other people’s businesses, to which they will add not an iota of value.
Our borders exist in name only, with anybody who so desires free to walk in and out of the country at any time, in the process worsening our unemployment crisis and seriously inflaming passions among the indigent, who do not know where their next meal will come from. Our police are inefficient and ineffective and our department of home affairs and the military are anything but what they should be.
All this goes on while our political mandarins are either conspicuous through their silence or make the same mealy-mouthed excuses for their failure to do the jobs for which they were elected, or threaten — yet again — fire and brimstone, fully knowing that their words are not worthy of the pieces of paper or notepads from which they read them. It would seem our beautiful country is on autopilot. Its leaders have either gone to ground or are too preoccupied with their internecine conflicts and sundry machinations. It is as if we are left to our own devices.
Instead of a ruthless enforcement of the law and throwing the book at those who commit crime and perpetrate mayhem, our leaders can be heard from time to time making excuses for them — and even calling for clemency on their behalf. We are told, for instance, that the thugs who unleashed unspeakable violence at various universities across the country and burnt valuable infrastructure during the protests for fee-free education should now be considered for blanket amnesty or a presidential pardon so that their criminal records would be wiped clean.
Perhaps the most painful thing to have observed over the past year is that President Cyril Ramaphosa, the man on whom we had pinned so much hope to rescue SA from the depths to which it had been sunk by his predecessor, is either reluctant to lead or simply unequal to the task before him. Instead of boldly providing leadership, he seems too preoccupied with welding together the disparate factions in his organisation and placating people who, apart from a common commitment to intoxicating power, have little in common either ideologically or morally.
Although there is now better policy coherence, our bloated cabinet appears to be out of touch with reality. It can hardly run the current public service efficiently, yet has grand ambitions of introducing complex innovations like National Health Insurance.
Some ministers, who have the habit of inviting business at the eleventh hour to events in order to give the appearance of having consulted with that community on important matters, simply do not bother to respond to invitations to interact with those who create wealth and pay taxes in this country, the business community, let alone honour those invitations. In the past week, Ramaphosa and six of his ministers failed to attend the annual Southern African Metals and Engineering Indaba in Sandton, a conference which represents a vital sector of the economy, and could not even be bothered to delegate their various deputies or directors-general to stand in for them.
Their message was unmistakable: the economy may be stuttering, but we cannot be bothered to interact with you, even though you employ, as a sector, more than 400,000 people, are a crucial foreign exchange earner and contribute just under 4% to the GDP.
For as long as the chauffeur-driven, blue-light brigaded members of this government show such nauseating arrogance towards business and society, that long will our challenges remain.
That imposes a huge obligation on all South Africans of goodwill, but especially those with any influence in whatever space they find themselves, to make their voices volubly heard. Now that we know the promised “new dawn” has so far proved to be a mirage, civil society and organised business in particular have an inordinate duty to hold this government as accountable between elections as they did the Jacob Zuma administration, and to remind our political mandarins that they are no more than mere servants of our people, who are the real bosses in elections.
Nyatsumba is CEO of the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa and chair of the manufacturing working group of the Southern African chapter of the Brics Business Council