Summon courage for 2018
SO, IT is the countdown to the end of the old and the beginning of the new and the hope it heralds… There is no doubt that 2017 was a roller-coaster globally and here at home. From a media perspective, there was also a challenge to differentiate between fake and authentic news.
The arrival of Trump presaged an increasingly polarised world in terms of race, class and geography (your location on the planet matters!).
Trump withdrew from the Paris climate change agreement and promoted an “extreme anti-environmental agenda”.
Tragically for the planet, Trump’s intention was “to roll back environmental and climate regulations (with drastic budget cuts) to the agencies that protect public health and public land…
“Basically, unwinding and shredding the safety net we have been building up for 40 years.” All in the name of making America great again.
Scientists warned that: “If future adaptation mimics past adaptation, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes with roughly 23% by 2100 and widening global income inequality relative to scenarios without climate change.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have a strong influence in the US, and there are investigations about the Kremlin’s influence in the last presidential election.
Some are hopeful about possible impeachment.
Putin exerts a similar influence over President Jacob Zuma. The South African link is the secret nuclear deal with Putin that Zuma has tried to unsuccessfully bamboozle us with and bulldoze through via institutional structures.
Globally, a number of prominent women began to talk publicly about sexual harassment and abuse, starting in Hollywood (silence is golden in Bollywood).
Time magazine honoured these courageous women by choosing #MeToo “Silence Breakers” as person of the year.
The magazine’s editor-inchief, Edward Felsenthal, said that Time respected the mettle of the hundreds of women across the world (and some men), who “unleashed one of the highest velocity shifts in our culture since the 1960s”, to challenge the power and influence of men who believed they were invincible.
This led to the fall of Harvey Weinstein, who was accused of molesting at least 80 women.
Empowered by the #MeToo movement, former ANC MP and singer Jennifer Ferguson accused SAFA head Danny Jordaan of raping her 24 years ago in a hotel in Port Elizabeth.
For two weeks there was a deafening silence from Jordaan.
Then his lawyers released the following statement: “Dr Jordaan’s perceived silence in the face of such serious allegations is because of his empathy with the victims of genderbased violence.”
Perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis in 2017 was the persecution and displacement of 655 000 Rohingya Muslim people from Rakhine State in Myanmar, who had to flee across the border into the Cox Bazaar district in Bangladesh. Such rapid dislocation the world has not witnessed since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
A child eyewitness reported as follows: “I saw a soldier pour gasoline over a heavily pregnant woman. Then he set her on fire. Another soldier ripped a baby from his mother’s arms and threw him into the fire. …he was not even one-year old. I will never forget their screams…”
The response of the international community left much to be desired.
Closer to home, the Life Esidimeni tragedy (143 psychiatric patients died) exposed the incompetence and maladministration by cold, callous senior officials as articulated by advocate Adila Hassim: “The sorry tale of extreme neglect, insufficient or rotten food, exposure to the cold, lack of medication, overcrowding, abuse, death, late notifications of death, picking through bodies stacked upon each other in mortuaries… It is best told by the families themselves.”
What was the motivation that drove this course of action? The burden of answering this lies with the government.
There is more compelling evidence that South Africa is facing a literacy crisis.
An international study showed that 78% of our pupils are illiterate. According to a study conducted by the University of Pretoria‚ eight out of 10 Grade 4 pupils “still cannot read at an appropriate level”, compared to 13% in Chile, for example. So don’t be shocked when the matric results are released – you have been warned.
The unthinkable occurred when Robert Mugabe was forced to resign in a bloodless coup after 37 years in power.
In many ways, his extended reign was aided and abetted by the ANC government. More than half of his rule was characterised by a ruthless dictatorship – characterised by looting and pillaging – while the majority of Zimbabweans were reduced to penury, all in the name of radical economic transformation, which some political groups want to introduce in South Africa.
After Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report, the affairs of the Guptas and their insidious, intricate network of patronage and connections at all levels of government, came under intense scrutiny.
Thanks to the tenacity of courageous investigative journalism #GuptaLeaks emerged where thousands of e-mails publicly revealed compelling evidence of a captured state.
However, NPA head Shaun Abrahams is yet to prosecute auditing firm KPMG that has been implicated; Bell Pottinger… the British PR company is heading for bankruptcy; and MultiChoice must explain the millions paid to ANN7 to influence the government’s communication policy.
This was followed by Jacques Pauw’s explosive revelations in his book, The President’s Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and out of Prison, of which Jeanette Buijs succinctly argued “… will forever be the articulation of what happens when power lands in the hands of people who are unmoored from reality and any sense of what is ethical or moral”.
The lacklustre reign of the man at the centre of the controversies – Zuma – was aptly summarised by Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo: “The president had no justifiable basis to simply ignore the impact of this corruption on the South African public. His conduct also falls far short of the expectation of him as head of state…”
The good news is that the new ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa is reading Pauw’s book, and he has publicly stated: “I’ve learnt you must never muzzle the media. The media in terms of our constitution should be free and fair.” Ramaphosa’s first public responsibility would be to change the combination of the locks in the Treasury.
Sipho Pityana, the convener of the Save South Africa campaign, summarised the challenges facing Ramaphosa and SA in 2018: “We now need to work together – civil society, political parties, government, faith-based organisations and business – to truly Save SA.
“That means rolling back the contamination of our society by the architects of state capture, and putting in place mechanisms that will get our beautiful country back on the right track, and make us proud of our national flag.”