Culture of corruption is depriving our children of their future
The brazen looting of Covid-19 funds by undeserving, politically connected people has been one of the more depressing moments in this time of SA’s battle with the coronavirus.
I have constantly asked myself how we, as Africans, who proclaim ubuntu and inhlonipho (respect), have become so deeply crippled in our ethics.
Here we are in the middle of a pandemic, burying our loved ones, but this has not stopped the “politics of eating”.
It would be pointless to flag only politicians for this, because opportunistic looting seems to have become a common culture gripping our societies.
Our universities are riddled with corruption. Our churches are no longer able to provide moral leadership in communities. Stokvels are stealing from their own members.
While some white-owned companies might be benefiting from all this looting, I am asking the question of us black people, the formerly oppressed.
We are the ones who have a legacy to build from scratch for our children and we know the pains associated with deprivation.
We are the ones who have more than 300 years of liberation struggle invested in making this new SA. And yet we seem eager to dismantle it one tender at a time.
This pattern shows us that SA is not unique. It will follow the same path of collapse by corruption that we have seen in many post-independence African states.
Most of these states have never recovered from the looting of state coffers following their liberation.
It is said that under Mobutu Sese Seko, the late dictator of then Zaire, everything collapsed because corruption was so endemic that every government official — from lowest to highest — used to just sell off whatever state infrastructure they were presiding over without any consequences whatsoever.
The trouble is that as South Africans we have been living in times of relative sufficiency where the general economy is concerned, even though there is huge inequality of distribution within the system.
We take for granted that we can pay social grants, yet daily we see municipalities collapsing due to being overburdened by patronage.
One day the grants system will collapse too. Izokwenzeka, nyani (this will come to pass). Now the question I ask myself is — when and how did black adults lose their common sense and ethics?
We were once a people whose grandmothers would save every cent diligently so that, one day, they could reach into their mattress and retrieve a handkerchief with money that could be given to a family child who needed to go to school.
We know that the late antiapartheid and Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Bantu Biko was sent to school with money collected by his community.
This culture of collective conscience is gone. It has been replaced by ubukrwada (crudeness) and nokungakhathali (“I don’t care” attitude).
It is shocking to hear black professionals in public institutions brazenly saying: “Ndizokwenza imali apha, ndifuna imali qha” (I’m at work solely to make money).
Kwenzekentoni na Mz’ontsundu? (Why have we changed this much?)
I am not so naive as to believe that government can be totally clean or that all unofficial transactions must be seen as inherently corrupt.
I do remember legends about how Nelson Mandela as president of the country would have to send people in the dead of night to get suitcases of cash from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fund the ANC.
Maybe the stories are not true. But one can see how Mandela would have had to walk a fine line, and talk to his inner self, to keep himself straight on a thorny road of ethics as he attempted to keep his liberation movement going.
He had no fear of taking tough decisions within the ANC when he had to do so for the sake of the integrity of the movement.
The wisest leadership is prepared to navigate the thorny areas of ethics, to be bruised and still come out whole.
What we need as black people is to ask why it is so easy to destroy our ethics.
After all, you may eat now but there will be no country left for your children.
What we need as black people is to ask why it is so easy to destroy our ethics