‘Indlulamithi’ scenarios: Know where you’re headed?

“DO you know where you are going?” This was the question my three sons continuously asked me in 1989.

I was reminded of the question when Abba Omar, the director of strategy at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, giving his closing remarks on Indlulamithi Day, commented that on the long trips between Johannesburg and Cape Town his children often asked: “When are we arriving home?”

This common question is relevant as any South African from the top to the bottom always asks: “When are we going to arrive?”

Obviously, this is on the heroic assumption that we know where we are going. A more realistic question is: Does the country know where it is going?

Border posts are a good example of problems encountered in planning, despite knowing the direction in which we are headed.

In December 1989, I was travelling to Cape Town from Mahikeng. On my way, there I branched off to Lesotho to visit my parents and, the next day, headed to Van Rooyen’s Gate to proceed to Cape Town.

As fate would have it, I picked a squabble with the police officer at the passport control desk. I objected to not being served while others pushed in front of me.

In the queue behind me was a woman who used to be our Sunday school teacher. I had greeted her after many years of not seeing her.

When the trouble started, I picked up from her body language that trouble was imminent. It was clear that I ran the risk of my passport being destroyed before my eyes. To avoid this, I got back into my car, made a U-turn and headed back to Lesotho.

That reminded me of yet another run-in with the border control police in 1976. At the time, I had gone to fetch a cow from my elder brother’s holding pan which my elder brother and I had bought the previous day at an auction in Wepener, in the Free State.

During the course of the afternoon, we had to get permits in Mafeteng, Lesotho, and off I went to Olivier’s farm, which is a stone’s throw from the gate, to collect the cow the next day. But, at the border, the policeman asked me where I was going. I said I was going to Olivier’s farm.

Seated behind the desk, he saw the top half of my attire but did not see the gumboots I had put on for purposes of walking 20km with the cow to my village. He concluded that I was not fit for going to a farm and rejected my request.

A squabble resulted in a white officer being summoned to intervene, who then called me a k ***** . After a few heated words that led me to declare things about his ancestry, I also walked away.

Back to my 1989 trip to Cape Town that resulted in yet another squabble and retreat…

What triggered the unpleasantness was not my manner of dress, but the car I was driving. The black policeman, who was almost my age, just out of the blue felt infuriated by the frills of material life and blocked my journey.

So, I turned tail back to Lesotho and headed to Sterkspruit and crossed at the Telle Bridge, a border post between South Africa and Lesotho.

It was gravel all the way. Cattle, goats and sheep decorated the road. Herd boys lined the road, riding on donkeys going to mill corn.

My three boys had lost confidence that this could represent a road to Cape Town. They asked me repeatedly whether I knew where I was going.

Certainly, many South Africans wonder whether the government we elected to lead knows where it is leading us. The question is not one of when we are going to arrive at our destination, but whether the destination is known.

Perhaps, as a nation, we might not know that our leaders picked a minor squabble with a policeman at the policy design gate and, out of frustration, might have and have taken a short left to get to their destination.

According to the Indlulamithi South Africa Scenarios 2030, the Gwara Gwara scenario is where social inequality is at its highest. It embodies a demoralised land of disorder and decay, mostly characterised by a steep decline in trust and belief among fellow South Africans, the state and social institutions.

But Indlulamithi South Africa Scenarios 2030 says we have arrived not only in Gwara Gwara, but we have gone into Gwara Gwara plus that is perhaps where our policy short left us.