SA FLIRTS WITH FAILURE

ast week I had dinner at Le Lagon in Dakar, a beautiful restaurant built out onto a pier in the bay. It’s been there since 1956, an impressive longevity. This was my second visit to Dakar, the first having been about 10 years ago. Weirdly, on that visit I was also taken to Le Lagon, so clearly it’s the go-to place when you’re entertaining visitors.

This is emphasised when you arrive, as the boardwalk leading up to the restaurant entrance has long rows of brass plaques lining each side, with the names of famous visitors emblazoned on them. These range from presidents to cultural celebrities, and though I didn’t take notes, I think I noticed the names of Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (who famously stole $5bn$15bn from his people), former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and celebrity fundraiser Bono of U2. Oh, and former German chancellor Angela Merkel.

I excitedly pointed this out to the people I was with. Earlier that day, another South African had shared, with a group of people from all over the world, the uncomfortable truism that most South Africans don’t really care about the rest of Africa, and don’t bother reading news about our continent.

I know there are exceptions, but it is sadly true that, some South African companies, for example, still talk about “going into Africa”, as if they aren’t already here. And I’ll never forget this quintessential example of South African parochialism, from the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

I’ve written about this before, because it’s something that struck

Lme, at the time, as the last dying hiccups of the old colonial order. It was the opening ceremony, hosted in Africa for the first (and only) time, and as the team from Ivory Coast walked past, the South African commentator said: “And here’s the Ivory Coast, the only African team to make the tournament.”

With hindsight, this now strikes me as less of a hiccup, and more of an omen.

Walking up the boardwalk at Le Lagon, I remembered that the last time I had been here, SAA had featured on a plaque right at the entrance, and at the time I was told that the crews always ate at Le Lagon on layovers. I proudly told my companions this story, and took them to see the plaque. It wasn’t there any more.

I did eventually find it, hidden much further along the row in a dark corner. But my first thought had been: “Uh-oh. SAA is in such bad odour that they’ve removed the association.”

The last time I visited Dakar, I flew SAA a direct flight, if memory serves me. This trip, I had to travel via Europe, leaving on a Friday and only arriving early on Sunday morning. Though SAA still has a commemorative plaque at Le Lagon, it’s now part of the same distant history as the dictators it shares space with. It was a sad thought, and as I sat on my Ethiopian Airlines flight back to Joburg, I couldn’t help but lament how far we’ve fallen.

Ethiopian Airlines has been voted “best airline in Africa” for five years in a row now. SAA held that position for 14 consecutive years, up until

2017, but has now fallen below Royal Air Maroc (which I flew to Dakar, and can highly recommend) to third place.

The Skytrax World’s Top 100 Airlines in 2022 chart, Business Insider tells us, “shows SAA sliding to 79 on the list of top 100 airlines, dropping 12 places for the year. In 2019, SAA ranked 46, and in 2018, 45, maintaining its position at roughly the halfway mark for consecutive years.”

It adds: “Over the past decade of Skytrax awards, SAA’s position peaked at 21 in 2013. At the time, South Africa’s national carrier was rated better than British Airways, KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Air France. SAA’s drop to 79 on the international rankings puts it at its worst spot since Skytrax started measuring airlines two decades ago.”

But I’m not here to write about the travails of SAA, which have been covered in detail on the pages of this august publication. Rather, this is intended as a meditation on what it means to be a South African, and how our position on the continent is morphing.

One of the pleasures of returning from a foreign country is the glow of coming home to the familiar, but also the way you can see your country with fresh eyes. Some South Africans I can’t speak for all, of course tend to get too bogged down in the many, many problems of our country, and don’t notice the good bits.

I remember coming back from Bangkok a few years ago, and marvelling at how clean our city streets were. Or returning from a trip to New York, and being grateful that there weren’t heavily armed paramilitary policemen clustered on every corner in Cape Town. Neither of those examples makes sense if you examine them, I know. Only some of our big cities are clean, and we could probably use a few more police officers on duty. But if you’re looking for aspects of your country to be grateful for, you dig deep.

Every time I come back from another African country, for example, I look forward to getting back to a place where I can drink the water from the tap. It’s something urban South Africans have long taken for granted, and it makes us unusual. According to Global Citizen, one in three African citizens are affected by water scarcity, and 400-million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to basic drinking water. And Al Jazeera reports that “10 countries eight in Africa and two in Asia have less than a 20% share of the population with access to safely managed drinking water. The lowest in share percentages are Chad (5.6%), the Central African Republic (6.2%), Sierra Leone (10.6%), Rwanda (12.1%) and Ethiopia (12.6%).”

So the fact that South Africans can, mostly, just turn on a tap and water comes out is something to be grateful for, I thought, as my Ethiopian Airlines flight landed in Joburg.

As the aircraft stopped at the disembarkation gate, I turned on my phone.

The first message that arrived was from the City of Cape Town, and it read: “Residents of the Deep South advised to boil water before drinking.

“As a precautionary measure, residents in Noordhoek, Redhill, Simon’s

Town, Sun Valley, Kommetjie, Ocean View, Scarborough, Masiphumelele and Glencairn are advised to boil tap water before drinking it or using it to wash fruits and vegetables that will be consumed raw. This follows routine sampling results showing that the water quality is not compliant with national water quality standards. Investigations are under way to determine the cause and the affected pipelines are being flushed and disinfected.”

Basically, our water was contaminated with faeces. Tasty.

“The country’s sewage pollution crisis,” the Mail & Guardian tells us, “is set to continue with 40% of all wastewater already being left untreated. Of the 824 wastewater treatment works, 30% are in a critical state and 20% are in a poor state. The major sewage crisis is being experienced by the Vaal region, eThekwini municipality where rivers are polluted and beaches have had to be closed, and in the City of Cape Town where beaches were closed over the December/January holiday period because of sewage spills.”

On one level, perhaps it’s good to have my illusions shattered. I would hate to share in my fellow citizens’ myopia about other African countries, and think we’re somehow special. This isn’t all South Africans, I’m sure, and it might even be a flawed deduction based on anecdotal evidence. It is undeniable, though, that South Africa is devolving to a more continental norm, and we should be able to say that without it being hijacked by afropessimists and bitter conservatives for their own ends. Thank you, Eskom, SAA, Rand Water, Denel and all the other bespoke feeding troughs that are chipping away at our country.

A recent colloquium at the University of Pretoria asked the question: “Is South Africa a failing state?” One of the academics, Prof Sandy Africa, said: “As a political scientist, when I hear the term ‘failed state’ my mind goes back to the context in which this labelling arose, which was after the fall of communism and the imposition, really, of a single model of what the rest of the world should look like. When states appear to not be conforming to this model, there tends to be a labelling of the state as one which is starting to fail.”

I understand the reluctance to impose a universalist understanding of what constitutes a failed state. But we are becoming less and less a successful, functional state.

Arguing for hope, with particular reference to violent protests, Africa said: “Without ratcheted development and a different type of political culture taking root, we could tip into a sphere of conflict where the state will not be able to successfully intervene. We do, however, have the foresight to step away and find an alternative path so that catastrophic consequences are avoided.”

Let’s hope we do have that foresight, and the will needed to fix our problems. But in the meantime, I guess we should stock up on bleach just in case.