We need to stop looking behind us and fix the road ahead

SOUTH Africa’s two major political parties this week gave notice that their members in Gauteng will be all over voters like a rash in preparation for next year’s elections. Gauteng citizens are delighted, I’m sure.

Helen Zille and her gang will do their utmost to prove that their ranks are swollen with struggle bunnies who opposed apartheid.

The ANC says it will be setting up an election “war room” from where it will control up to 3 000 battle-hardened activists who will convince voters that it’s in their best interest to keep the same clowns in government.

Expect to feel nauseated, more than you already are. I realise our history is inescapable in South Africa, but dwelling on it doesn’t take us forward. I’m glad that Zille exposed the brutality of apartheid and the fact that Steve Biko was murdered in detention. I wonder how that enhances her party’s ability to govern though.

I’m not excited about images of Helen Suzman and Madiba, which is what the DA is punting.

Romanticising your past doesn’t help change my life for the better now. Looking in the rear-view mirror doesn’t help.

Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, who I previously admired, became the latest government leader this week to blame apartheid for the country’s ills. According to The Times, Motsoaledi said apartheid influenced men to be violent towards women.

We could justifiably blame all of South Africa’s social ills on apartheid. It was a vile and pernicious system of legislated evil, but harping on about it won’t change the fact that it happened.

I don’t think the Germans and the Japanese built the economies they have today by obsessing about the past.

Motsoaledi, according to The Times, spoke about the effects the migrant labour system had on men. It kept them away from their families and meant children grew up without their fathers. Aids orphans, he added, had no role models and got involved in alcohol and crime.

Motsoaledi is absolutely right. Modern-day South Africa is

greg.arde@inl.co.za replete with examples of how apartheid ruined generations of families, but he dropped in my estimation by saying what he did because it came so soon after the undeclared spat between President Jacob Zuma and Planning Minister Trevor Manuel over blaming apartheid.

It sounded like Motsoaledi was trying to score brownie points with the boss. He said that only born-frees could stop violence against women because they did not inherit the sins of apartheid. Young men, he added, would be taught at school about alcohol and its relationship to violence.

Why absolve the current generation of responsibility for their actions? Here’s an idea, Aaron: why not deploy the 3 000 election volunteers to preach virtuous living to the current crop of adults who are misbehaving, rather than getting them to wax lyrical about ANC heroics?

Unveiling the ANC’s campaign in Gauteng, the party’s provincial secretary, David Makhura, said the ANC would “experiment with new forms of campaigning that will generate excitement”.

Wow, I’d prefer it if the ruling party used the same energy and enthusiasm to deal with the many miscreants within its ranks.

Last week the Mail & Guardian reported that an ANCcommissioned survey had revealed that there was a growing distance between the party and its supporters. The survey apparently cited political infighting, corruption among senior party leaders, poor service delivery and unemployment as issues causing ANC members to desert party ranks.

If I were an ANC member now, I’d be rankled by the shenanigans in government. Blatant buggerups happen with frightening monotony. And it’s not to say people aren’t forewarned either.

Take one issue that came up this week in KZN, thanks to the snooping of colleagues at The Mercury. It emerged that the former head of Bonitas, who resigned under a cloud of financial mismanagement, is now a board member of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.

Bafana Nkosi, the former principal executive officer of the Bonitas medical aid scheme, resigned in January 2010, just five days after the Council of Medical Schemes lodged papers in the Johannesburg High Court alleging that he was “grossly negligent” in managing a property deal for Bonitas and several million rand of medical scheme funds had been wasted under his watch.

According to The Mercury report, Nkosi is now a Joburg property and investment manager and will be travelling to Pietermaritzburg, courtesy of the taxpayer, for Ezemvelo meetings.

Meshack Radebe, the MEC for agriculture and environmental affairs, who appoints board members to Ezemvelo, brought Nkosi on board because of his “extensive knowledge of the business sector”. The mind boggles.