We need to take the long view when choosing our way forward
Our public discourse could do with a greater measure of restraint
● Driving along the N2, past Cape Town International Airport and through the winelands, one is struck by many things. In every possible way it challenges our ways of seeing in this complex country.
The ramshackle houses that hug the highway are apartheid’s legacy and post-apartheid’s shame. One can be pretty sure that the residents of these informal structures, with limited access to clean and safe sanitation, have given up trying to find the politicians responsible. Perhaps they have been involved in the protests that are now part of daily life, but really they are simply trying to eke out a living in desperate winter conditions.
One is also struck by the number of adult men wandering along the highway with nothing to do. They are generally young and searching for work. Statistics tell us that a job is unlikely to be found.
Still further along the N2, away from the harsh reality that is Cape Town’s informal settlements, one is inevitably confronted with the breathtaking beauty of the rural landscape. Yet, along with the snow and lashing rains, so desperately needed in the Cape, come thousands of people in informal settlements who have lost their homes and have nowhere to go.
The farmlands with their methodically planted vineyards tell their own story. For the land stands as a powerful symbol of past dispossession and a present struggling to come to terms with precisely how to deal with what President Cyril Ramaphosa calls the “original sin”.
And so, in every way, the beauty of this country compels us to think differently about how we live in South Africa and the solutions we fashion. More importantly, it requires some degree of reflection and thoughtfulness given how intractable our challenges are.
When Ramaphosa took office he promised a “New Dawn”. Of course, even he knew that this was going to be an uphill battle. Ramaphosa inherited a veritable hot mess from Jacob Zuma.
No matter how many times Ramaphosa summoned our better angels and encouraged us to say “Thuma mina!”, we all knew it would be a tough ask to rebuild our economy and a social compact that is fraying at the seams.
After 100 days of the Ramaphosa presidency, the media and others were starting to feel the urgency to somehow measure it.
Expecting too much to be solved in 100 days was naive, but it made a good headline. It also speaks to the public discourse and the immediacy of reaction required.
This is by no means unique to South Africa. Any scan of Twitter and other social media from around the world is proof of this. News has barely broken and swift reaction is required as a matter of course.
In South Africa, a cursory scan of Twitter shows how divided we all are — “we” the Twitterati — and how that discourse very quickly becomes toxic.
Much of the immaturity of the Ashwin Willemse debate was found in the tweets and random attacks on people who happened to disagree with the view that Willemse, because he is black — and because black people experience subliminal racism in the workplace — must have been right when he walked off the SuperSport set seven weeks ago.
This kind of “engagement” leaves no space for complexity and grappling with solutions.
The debate itself is a zero-sum game that becomes almost as meaningless as the “100 days” analysis of the Ramaphosa presidency. It provides no space for thoughtfulness beyond the urgency of now and the need to respond in real time.
Our public discourse — and indeed discourse around the world — could do with that rare commodity, restraint.
As we try to grapple with race, land and our triple challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty, how to change the public spaces and the nature of life along our highways and byways, we need to also restrain ourselves from the immediacy of the quick fix, it seems.
The reality is that 100 days were never going to be enough to fix what Zuma broke. Easy slogans about decolonisation, white monopoly capital, taking back the land and white tears were only going to lead to the cul-de-sac of thought we have seen thus far.
We must hold Ramaphosa to account, yet there is a rather more urgent need to take a long view on our economic recovery as well as on the rebuilding of this democracy.
It may not be popular and it may not satisfy the slogan-filled politics of populism that, say, Julius Malema espouses, but it is necessary if we are to truly build an inclusive democracy and economy.
As Donald Trump’s presidency is showing us, democracy is only ever as strong as the people who populate democratic institutions and the ability of those individuals who lead them to adhere to constitutional norms and values.
During Barack Obama’s first campaign for the US presidency he was faced with media and political opponents deriding him for attending the same church as the Rev Jeremiah Wright, who had, over time, made several rather charged comments on race. Obama decided to deal with the elephant in the room, head-on. It was race. At a speech in Philadelphia in March 2008, Obama delivered his seminal and beautifully constructed from-the-heart speech on race in America. It may well have changed the trajectory of his candidacy.
Somehow one cannot help but think that this is precisely what Ramaphosa needs to do: make a “line in the sand” speech on where we are and where we are headed.
It would perhaps frame his presidency in a way that is clearer to those who clamoured for more progress after 100 days.
It would also provide some insight into where he believes the country is headed, beyond even the 2019 elections.
February is a governance specialist. Her book Turning and Turning: Exploring the complexities of South Africa’s democracy will be released next month. A version of this piece first appeared in the Daily Maverick