Perspective can help national mood swings

REGULAR followers of the news in SA tend to exhibit symptoms akin to bipolar disorder, jerking back and forth between mania and depression. While the exact cause of bipolar disorder is not yet known, we can identify the reason for our national mood swings: the damage done to the country by a politically exhausted struggle leadership, and a sense of despair that this state of affairs could be permanent.

This desperation was captured in an editorial on the textbooks scandal carried last week in this newspaper. “The only people who could do more than the rest of us will be the delegates at the ANC’s leadership contest in Mangaung in December,” it said.

“They will be asked directly whether they want Verwoerd to continue running the country or to relieve President Jacob Zuma of the burdens of high office. The choice, to us, is easy. It is not difficult to deliver a schoolbook to a child who wants one. Mr Zuma’s lame excuses are, sadly as we say, merely typical of an administration that has … lost its way.” Indeed. The legacies of Bantu education and apartheid bureaucracy, both of which will be with us for longer than we can comfortably admit, have combined to take incompetence in this administration to the stratosphere, undermining some good work in the process. It’s enough to make Hendrik Verwoerd proud of the success of his reactionary social engineering project.

Yet some in the African National Congress (ANC) don’t think so. Perhaps thinking about their job security, they want Zuma to stay on, remaining the face of the party’s campaign for the 2014 elections and president for another five years. The mind boggles.

So the ruling party is living through a period of internal warfare. But the rest of the country cannot be caught up in these spasms, seized by a mood swing each time the ANC confirms it is a party in decline. We can take comfort in the fact that SA’s democratic foundation remains firm, despite serious attempts to undermine the constitutional foundation in the recent past. The record from the courts suggests that constitutional jurisprudence remains intact despite the “second transition” wishes of Deputy Correctional Services Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi. SA’s fourth estate remains free and occasionally gutsy, even if it frequently shoots itself in the foot with shoddy reporting. More importantly, South Africans have internalised their sense of freedom, a state of consciousness that can be defeated only through a successful counter-revolution.

We are clearly not facing such a reversal. Instead, we are confronted with a leadership vacuum and shocking levels of state incompetence. Granted, if this situation is prolonged, in combination with high levels of poverty and inequality, the deterioration will be far more severe and volatile. But most of the world is dealing with similar issues, which helps to keep things in perspective.

In recent travels through the US, I was struck by the similarities in national discourse. The US has been a democracy for 236 years, yet is still grappling with issues such as judicial restraint, same-sex marriage, race-based inequality, corruption, political party funding, union-bashing, immigration and the poor quality of political leadership.

The crisis that began in 2008 has brought the “republic of economic superiority” low. Some Republicans wonder aloud if President Barack Obama is even an American, even as he sends killer drones off on international assassination missions “in defence of America”.

And consider the political impasse in Egypt, where a democratic breakthrough is struggling to maintain a foothold despite much sacrifice in the streets of Cairo. Civil war grips Syria. Europe is in the midst of a deep economic crisis and is seeing the rise of fascist parties.

So, in the global scheme of things, it is hard to understand how “Julius Malema lashes Zuma” makes front-page news, let alone how it gets the national blood pressure up.

SA cannot afford to be consumed by the ANC’s internal strife. We must use our most important weapon — our voice — to demand clean and competent government, and develop the kind of leadership that advances our national aspirations.