Looking at us through other eyes. Misty ones

ISPENT some time in the Western Cape over the past week and was amazed by something I had never noticed before. It is how many Chinese tourists there are in South Africa — or at least in the Cape.

The Cape is pretty and it’s much cleaner than, say, Johannesburg. The Chinese are fastidious about cleanliness and I have heard people whose job it is to attract investment to Gauteng say their Chinese guests all complain about Johannesburg’s litter. And then they leave.

But the numbers I saw in Franschhoek and then in Hermanus and then at Cape Town International Airport were truly remarkable. Long may it continue.

I wondered what it must be like to come from China. The tourists I saw were all snazzily dressed, but gathered mostly in groups. What I most wanted to know was, did they know that, at the moment, they were standing in an authentic free country? They don’t live in one. Would they perhaps like to shout something out loud? “Down with the president!” (ours or theirs) or something?

Our freedom here in South Africa is almost total. Sure, there’s lots wrong with the country and some of its political and business leaders leave a lot to be desired. And, obviously, in a badly run country like this, you don’t want to be poor, or sick, or uneducated. But we are not uniquely badly run, not by a long shot.

So consider your life as a South African and be pretty damned thankful for it. Here, when a neglectful, uncaring government department kills 94 mentally ill patients by farming them out into the care of incompetents, there will be consequences. There is outrage. But not in every society.

Here you can be the president but you’re not all-powerful. The law applies to you too. You slip past fraud charges because you’re a smart tactician but the law will catch up with you one day and you know it. Not in every society.

I often get asked what it was like being a newspaper editor for 17 years under ANC rule. It must have been hell, the pressure and all? Actually, no. Not once was I ever called or threatened by a South African politician. The only person who threatened to fire me, or get me fired, was a white guy who sat on the board of Times Media 20 years ago and who I think is now dead.

Sipho Pityana is actively trying to goad civil society into upending Jacob Zuma as president, to “save South Africa” from him. Not a hand has touched him.

University students have behaved appallingly towards their institutions these past few years and, well, they can. They’re upset, about fees, about colonialism and whatever. They have a right to protest and it is a precious thing. Not only for them but for the rest of us too.

It is trite, I know, to wax lyrical about these things when there is so much misery around us. But I also think our freedom to do what we like and to say what we think is healthy and that it genuinely matters.

Only genuinely free people build societies where ideas flourish, where thought and philosophies can be challenged, where history matters.

In China, the state is rewriting the six-year occupation by the Japanese to make it eight years. That is so boring. Imagine having to live in a state where you are told what to think or, worse, where your “facts” are always the state’s.

In Argentina, former president Cristina Kirchner made it a punishable offence to report the real rate of inflation. How insane is that? No wonder Buenos Aries has the highest number of psychotherapists per head of population in the world. In China official statistics are often also falsely optimistic. It must make people cynical.

The fact is that we are a glorious, loud, argumentative, combative and open democracy — and it is telling that for all the criticism showered upon Zuma he has never really tried to damage the core of what we are.

We’re a conservative, law-abiding society almost across all of our divides. We pay our taxes and we love a rogue. But we are not cynical people.

Zuma has tried to game the system to his advantage, but ultimately he won’t succeed and he won’t be the last to try.

In a way I envy the Chinese tourists I saw. They may not appreciate it, but while they’re with us they’re in a special place.

The fact is, we are a glorious, loud, combative and open democracy