How about Gorbachev Boulevard in honour of his role in changing SA?
International news outlets are full of obituaries hailing the profound changes Mikhail Gorbachev brought to the Soviet Union and his crucial role in ending the Cold War.
Yet in SA there is very little focus on the profound influence his leadership had on this country.
Acknowledging the effect of the life and times of Gorbachev has the potential to transform political discourse in SA. It is barely acknowledged that the political changes here in the early 1990s were much more a function of the end of the Cold War than we tend to appreciate.
When Gorbachev took over as leader in 1985 the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe had become economically unsustainable and he had to make a stark choice: clamp down in ever more harsh ways on political dissent and hold on to power as long as possible, or open up the system to deep reform. His response was the latter and crystallised in the ideas of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).
He opened up dialogue and initiated economic reform. In his words, perestroika was “development of democracy, socialist self-government, encouragement of initiative and creative endeavour, improved order and discipline, more glasnost, criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of our society. It is utmost respect for the individual and consideration for personal dignity.”
In a world where capitalism is understood to be the big winner at the end of the Cold War, we would have done better over the past 40 years had we heeded the words and followed those values of the erstwhile enemy of the West.
The reforms in the Soviet Union took a level of courage that is hard to fathom for us who have only a faint memory of the Cold War.
Of course, it did not work out for the Soviet Union in the way Gorbachev anticipated. But, as we can see in SA in the early 1990s , it changed polarising global politics almost overnight and opened up possibilities for political transformation in many parts of the world.
One of the enduring myths of democratic SA is that the country was liberated almost single-handedly by the ANC, a narrative that suits the ruling party and its claim to power.
The end of the Cold War marked the end of the West’s support for the apartheid state as it no longer feared that SA, with all its resources, would fall under Soviet influence. As the Berlin Wall crumbled, apartheid’s days were numbered.
The end of the Soviet empire also marked the end of an indispensable pillar of support for the ANC. Its role as a resistance movement had become unsustainable in a fundamental way, not least financially.
SA required solid leadership from both the then ruling minority and the suppressed majority to seize the historic opportunity. But this opportunity would not have arisen without the monumental changes Gorbachev’s leadership set in motion.
Studying Gorbachev would give us a deep understanding of the defining influence of the international context on South African politics then and now. It would not only give us a healthy dose of humility, but also the responsiveness required to seize the opportunities that lie before us. Otherwise we remain lost in the hubris of thinking we can be successful as a nation without taking cognisance of the international context we operate in, even when we make seemingly autonomous local decisions.
SA owes Gorbachev a debt of gratitude that is barely acknowledged, even though it was his leadership that so fundamentally shaped the opportunity seized by the opposing sides during the darkest days of apartheid. Maybe among the many Nelson Mandela avenues, streets and bridges we should name the occasional Mikhail Gorbachev Boulevard. This would not only be the honest thing to do, but would open up our minds and our political thinking in a way that would bode well for our future.
In SA, there is very little focus on the profound influence Gorbachev’s leadership had on this country