How do we know if we’re making progress as a nation and all that jazz?
Positive developments in a country do not always translate to happiness
Democracy is so noisy that citizens could easily get submerged in their daily disagreements that they lose sight of the fact that their society must move in a particular direction.
It is not difficult to tell if a car is moving or not. It is much more complicated to detect a moving society.
People can spend their entire lives thinking that their society is getting somewhere, when actually they are trapped in static and directionless drudgery.
A person who visited the province of Gauteng in 1990 and never came back may still think that there is open land between the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg.
Twenty years ago, the place called Midrand was an open expanse of farm land. Today, it is populated with gated residential estates, office parks and factories. Pretoria and Johannesburg have practically become one massive city.
There are many parts of South Africa where whole new infrastructure developments have taken place, thus redefining the appearance of those places.
Many rural villages have been transformed into modern settlements by the sheer provision of water and electricity.
We say societies are making progress when there are new buildings, new roads, new water and electricity connections that redefine both life and physical appearance.
The development of infrastructure tells us that people no longer share water with animals from a dirty river nearby.
The mushrooming of townhouses and mansions in places like Midrand in Johannesburg, Tender Park in Polokwane, or Zimbali in Durban, tells us the middle class is growing.
More than half of the cars that clog traffic in our cities were not there in 1994. The town planners of the past never imagined a new class of black car buyers. We were condemned to taxis.
In the midst of the cacophonous noise that has accompanied the evolution of our democracy, new RDP houses, townhouses, and other structures cropped up to confirm ours as a moving society.
It is true that the pace of progress has not been the same everywhere. But no one can claim that since 1994 South Africa has not been changing. The greatest challenge for individual citizens is how to plot their own progress in a larger and complex society like ours.
It is possible for new buildings to keep on popping up, only to find that you are stuck where you were 10 years back. In other words, you are not moving.
Being stuck is not a mere question of not finding employment, or getting promoted to a new position.
There are people in highpaying jobs who feel a sense of being stuck. Unbelievable as it may sound, there are rich people who don’t know what to do with their boring lives.
This is where progress transcends material wealth. New cars and beautiful homes may suggest that we are a prosperous society, only to find that we are a society of depressed drug addicts, sex perverts or women abusers.
In his book The Meaning of Life, Scottish social theorist Terry Eagleton entertains the possibility of organising human society according to jazz.
Eagleton observes correctly that jazz is a complex harmony wherein “as each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights”.
Jazz displays the ethereal beauty of individual fulfilment in a bigger, harmonious flow of music that affords each artist ample space for the kind of selfexpression that reinforces the unity of the whole band.
An ear that is endowed with refined auditory gifts can discern harmony and progress in jazz, while the unrefined battle to follow the leitmotif and structure of the music.
Such is SA’s political challenge – how to set the parameters of our national discourse in a jazzy fashion that facilitates the individual expression of all citizens in a complex harmony of a rhythmically organised engagement that is forward looking.
Put differently, the question is: Are we able as a society to rise above our daily differences to check if our combined works and noises constitute national progress? Can we tell if we are moving or not?