Voters in 2024 will be caught between a rock and a hard place
“Choose between chaos and the opposite of chaos”, was the message sent to voters by prime minister Jan Smuts before the 1924 general elections in SA. The National Party of Barry Hertzog had signed an election pact with the Labour Party of Colonel Creswell to win majority support. The gnawing problem for Smuts was the Marxist-orientation of the Labourites.
In 2024 a similar choice faces democratic SA’S voters. A mere 30 years into democracy and almost everything has collapsed. Our failures have begged the unfortunate question as to whether whites shouldn’t be given the chance to fix the problems SA faces. This narrow view equates whiteisim with good governance and good service-delivery. As yet there are no serious political opponents to challenge the ANC for the position of the country’s ruling party.
This year’s ANC January 8 statement delivered in Mangaung last month should not be just a talk-shop but must result in practical actions. SA’S majority must choose between forlorn hope they have sadly become accustomed to, or do the unthinkable but possible, vote for a coalition government in 2024.
Anthropologists bequeathed scholarship with an examination of cannibalism as a metaphor. According to Harri Englund there is a close connection between “eating, being eaten and being human”. There is an interesting correlation between the cannibalism of apartheid, SA under the Nats and the cannibalism of democratic SA under the ANC. The metaphor of cannibalism resonates well with the very poor whose existence is in all respects that of utter hopelessness.
Currently a new black middle class originating post-1994 is the epitome of corruption, dysfunctional and collapsing state. This class has some members who left prison or exile with their luggage in fruit cardboxes or plastic bags. Within five years they had become the new devourers of the country’s wealth.
This is the class the Lonmin miners were protesting against at Marikana in 2012 and dozens of them paid with their lives. Cosatu, an ally of the ruling ANC, has always warned against such tendencies. Will the SACP, another ally of the ANC, as the vanguard of workers and downtrodden masses in both rural and urban areas unleash new forms of fighting back these tendencies? The choice is for the citizens to be hoodwinked instead of taking advantage of their numbers like they did in the 1980s against PW Botha’s cosmetic reforms. Then ANC president Oliver Reginald Tambo had declared SA had to be rendered ungovernable.
In 2024, the choice will be between the continued existence of social grants versus real work opportunities and not relief jobs lasting less than 60 months. Grants are a waste as the state is not investing in its populace. Why not change the rules? For example give a grant to any school-going child with conditions that they will forfeit it forever if convicted of a crime of any sort.
The Covid-19 emergency period has displayed that South Africans can comply with sound rules. Grants are a smokescreen for getting votes and to cannibalise the very poor in SA.
The choice in 2024 is for pensioners to wait for belated payments of their accruals and to suffer endlessly. Former Umkhonto we Sizwe and Apla military veterans have been ditched by their erstwhile comrades who no longer care about their days in the trenches.
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm the ruling pigs elevate their lifestyle and tyrannical rule by emulating their former human oppressors. The ruling pigs wear suits and the oppressed are fed empty promises and reminded that oppression will come back if they do not respect the rulers. This was all contrary to the manifestos preached before and during the rebellion against humans. Umkhonto we Sizwe has become a tool of pre-1994 militancy transformed into a toothless grinding machine.
Poor education and questionable outputs lead to millions of young men and women oscillating between points of poverty and those of a better life. In any settlements within a few metres radius alcohol consumption, smoking of dagga, all forms of gender-based violence and killings are commonplace.
How did the apartheid regime control the menacing alcohol breweries and other beer importing entities? The choice is before any reasoning person to ask whose agenda is being followed.
As a nation we have unashamedly ridiculed the Almighty God, the creator. SA is a laughing stock among other nations in the continent and the world. This is an African state some of whose citizens hate being called blacks or to look like one.
Calvinists of the Afrikaner race used the Bible by wrongly interpreting the book of Revelations. The beast was said to be black leaders on Robben Island. As recently as 2019 evangelist Angus Buchan said the Afrikaners or Boers are the only chosen people of God, save the Israelites. Of cause he apologised to the nation for that statement but the damage had been done.
The choice in 2024 is for all people to return the country to God and do righteousness and justice. Otherwise they shall get nought for their comfort, to paraphrase anti-apartheid activist Father Trevor Huddleston.