REGRESSING FROM ‘BORN TO RUN’ TO ‘LET MY PEOPLE GO!’

BY 1994, South Africans had suffered enough – you’d have thought. Enough already.

The past was past. It was time: South Africa was born to run.

When Bruce Springsteen began writing that album, that’s all he had – a name: Born to Run.

“I had these enormous ambitions for it,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “I wanted to make the greatest rock record that I’d ever heard. I wanted it to sound enormous… insist that you pay attention – not just to the music, but to life, to being alive!

“It was a record of enormous longing, and those emotions and desires never leave you. You’re dead when that leaves you. The song transcends your age and continues to speak to that part of you that is both exhilarated and frightened about what tomorrow brings,” he explained.

South Africa’s universal destiny was precisely that, in ’94. The future remained scary. But the suffering was over. The nation was unanimous: it was time to flourish. To put our shoulders to the wheel – to sweat it out “in the streets of a runaway South African dream” – to paraphrase The Boss.

“Baby we were born to run!” But just when we were home free… in the shadows, the predators lurked.

Andrew Feinstein, the arms deal whistle-blower, called his book

Shadow World – for good reason. For the whole globe’s shadowy forces of evil and greed – from the UK to Europe and the super-powers to the east – all drooled to conspire with the local scavengers.

To start circling the young democracy, still shaky on its feet. To draw first blood – and not stop feasting until the carcass was bare.

Springsteen’s “longing” is the story of the US working class – their hardship, resilience, urge to break free.

But The Boss’s ballads, for all their empathy, cannot resonate wholly with South Africans. Because our tale is far worse.

Our working class’s struggles are only half our story. Such has been the gluttonous sabotage of our economy, half our army comprises battalions of jobless.

Millions without even the dignity of consistent working-class realities, about which to sing.

After 25 years of “freedom”, a more honest depiction of RSA life is of a country still enslaved. By unemployment, poverty and despair.

So a far more apt anthem, this voting day, is the ancient Biblical chorus – the plea for emancipation from slavery: Let My People Go!

From violent national suffocation, by a captured hyena state.

But, with a jolt, here’s the killer point: only South Africans can set themselves free.

“In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve.” – Joseph de Maistre.

Such has been the gluttonous sabotage of our economy, half our army comprises battalions of jobless