Hard to stay positive while being delivered to hell
FINALLY, I am back in the motherland, or is it Zumaland now?
The first news item I see is about a deal between one of the president’s sons and a European airline that wants to organise a licence to operate in South Africa.
I also arrive to news that our troops were sent to the Central African Republic to defend someone’s undisclosed interests. In the process, 13 of our men in uniform were killed.
My heart sinks, and that ’ s the reason I had done all I could to block out South African news when I was away: to avoid the depression.
No sooner have I finished reading the stories about the airlines and the Central African Republic that my eye wanders to a headline about theft at PetroSA, the giant petrochemical company that was reputed to have loaned millions of rand to the ANC through Sandi Majali, or something to that effect.
What in the world does someone do with a billion rand once they have stolen it? Is the new-found wealth not obvious to the neighbours or friends or parents? Or could it be that no one cares anymore?
Another newspaper had a front page story with a picture of the Minister of Communications Dina Pule.
It’s about how the mini- ster ’ s boyfriend allegedly hires people and dishes out contracts in the department. The allegation this time is that the boyfriend weighed in on a soccer supremo to rein in a journalist to stop writing about the minister in return for a billion-dollar deal with the ministry.
And if this privatisation of state resources was not enough , the Guptas land at Waterkloof Air Force base and are conducted by a convoy to Sun City. What exactly entitles them to access to a national key point? Nothing, nada, zero, zilch.
But they are, of course, friends of the president and his family.
A friend welcomed me back with these chilling words: “Zuma has taken us to a dark place, Xolela, a very dark place.”
Wrong, I say. We seem to be all coasting along for the joyride, except for the little children who have to walk kilometres on end and wade through rivers to study under trees.
And did it cross the minds of Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa, Baleka Mbete and the ANC top brass that their shameful display of Nelson Mandela to the cameras may well be one of the last images the world has of this towering figure?
As it turns out, these scandals coincide with celebrations of Freedom Day – as if the heavens are really mocking us. Like a dutiful citizen, I listened to the president say something about fighting corruption. I realised midway through the broadcast that my mind had blocked him out.
The SABC ferrets out some political analysts to exhort us to be positive, which is the most inane thing you can say in politics. At the church or on the football field maybe, but in political analysis we deserve more than just a sentence.
I can imagine trying to get one of my students to write an essay about what’s wrong with the country and all I get is an Orwellian oneliner: “Stay positive, Prof.”
I can also imagine a Master’s thesis on the scandals that have taken place since Zuma took office, and a PhD since the ANC took office. The arms deal would take up a few chapters, let alone the new arms deal.
I am not being facetious when I say maybe we should stop complaining about these leaders as we have been wont to over the years.
Painful as it is to admit, it may well be that this is the best the black world has to offer. Maybe we have reached the ceiling of our talents and exhausted our imaginations.
How else do you explain that we keep voting the same dudes back into office over and over again?
And spare me the argument about people voting for the ANC, not Jacob Zuma. We do so knowing who will have his hand in the till. And so, fellow analysts, stop asking me to be positive. Try the guy next door. As for me, I remain negative, ready to be delivered to hell in a hand basket by a criminalised state.