AN AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

The lack of imagination in SA’S leadership is even more disturbing than its ignorance. The country has become a one-dimensional universe held together by little more than the anxiety it generates

Agreat many contemporary problems would seem to have placed SA into a kind of stasis. The biggest of them all, the ANC’S national conference in December, is perhaps defining on this front. It looms large and its consequences are probably profound, but we do not know how and why it is all going to play out. And so we wait.

That kind of uncertainty is replicated elsewhere. President Jacob Zuma has been the subject of a great unknown since 2009: the charges against him were initially dropped, but their reinstatement has been doggedly pursued by the DA ever since. The judicial wheels turn slowly.

There are huge, ever-developing narratives unfolding: “state capture” and the role of the Guptas, for example. For three years, we have read snippets from this story on an almost daily basis, each one contributing to a bigger picture. But we don’t yet know the full horror, only that it is bad, and that there is more to come.

Grand policy proposals, like the National Development Plan, seem to be in limbo, embraced in word but not in deed. Simultaneously, they must compete with contradiction, with ideas such as radical economic transformation.

This age of uncertainty is playing havoc with our sense of security and purpose.

Elections are by their nature the source of clarity. But even this, for the first time since 1994, seems ambiguous. Widespread discontent with the ANC means the suggestion of it possibly losing national power in 2019 is stronger than ever.

The ANC’S influence on post-apartheid SA has been so hegemonic that the idea of its authority being fractured in real terms is something many struggle to imagine, let alone believe. All of this is fuelled by indecision. And that, in turn, is the product of poor leadership.

Elsewhere, the now-giant bureaucratic machine that is the national public administration, ever growing and expanding, seems incapable of decisiveness. Big projects are routinely delayed, important legislation sits unsigned on the president’s desk for months and accountability mechanisms, such as they are, are as interminable as they are indecisive.

Process has long since trumped outcomes as the focus of our concern. It is one of the hallmarks of a mediocracy. It seems SA is one never-ending investigation, the result of which we are constantly working towards but never seem to reach.

All of this has produced interesting byproducts. Speculation and conspiracy, for example, are now rife. Such conjecture is driven in large part by the politics of personality, as opposed to data or evidence. Thus, there is an obsession with those unseen forces believed to be manipulating our condition. And when your sole point of reference is people, not policy, intrigue and subterfuge are unavoidable.

Likewise, we have become relatively ahistoric. We live in the moment and, because the moment is eternal, we believe it to be uninformed and unchanging.

It is an attitude engendered in part by the ANC’S electoral dominance. We have not experienced, in any meaningful way, five different administrations, but one. We have no point of comparison outside the fundamental evil that existed pre-1994. So there is only the here and now, a bubble in which we seem perpetually trapped.

Nelson Mandela is often cited as an example of the kind of leadership we lack today — bold, brave and decisive. Without commenting on his convictions, it is fair to say his reputation benefited greatly from the fact that he led while on a cusp. He walked the line between good and evil and was thus able to define the past from the future so much more easily.

The age of uncertainty is not a coincidence. It is, however, paralysing.

In one sense, it is born of ignorance. That is perhaps understandable because our democracy is relatively newly born.

But the lack of imagination is disturbing. We seem incapable of conceiving any fundamental alternative, to the extent that political opposition has abandoned the pursuit of any clear distinction between its programme and that of the ANC. It offers, if anything, a better, cleaner and more efficient version of the ruling party.

Civil society too, seems trapped in the ANC’S paradigm, as does the media. They all yearn for Mandela and the ANC of old.

It makes you wonder, if anyone did come along with some fundamental alternative, what would we make of it? Would we even recognise it for what it is?

One of the prices you pay for indecision and uncertainty, indulged for too long, is a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. You sacrifice not only your ability to imagine but even develop a fear of any such attempt. Better the uncertainty you know than the uncertainty you don’t. It is a dreary existence.

But that is SA today, a one-dimensional universe held together by little more than the anxiety it generates.

“Should I stay or should I go?” The Clash asked. “This indecision’s buggin’ me”.

It sure is. But then, we love it too. It is who we are. The land of a thousand mirrors, each turned inward and to which we address ourselves.

It seems SA is one never-ending investigation, the result of which we are constantly working towards but never seem to reach