Gorbachev leaves a shady legacy

As we received the news of the passing of the last Soviet Union figurehead, Mikhail Gorbachev, the originator of my favourite concepts like glasnost and perestroika, I am reminded of what Hillary Clinton said: “A politician thinks about the next elections, whilst a statesman thinks about the next generation”.

Gorbachev, in my humble opinion, entered the pantheon of statesmen, albeit his cover-up of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion of 1986 in the current Ukraine, is most probably the greatest blight in his leadership of the Soviet Union, and his legacy.

The fall of the Soviet Union, dubiously credited to Gorbachev, is akin to the fall of the apartheid regime and its ripple effects, hence today’s Russian politics tend to be easy to grasp as they are comparable to those of South Africa after a long period of apartheid iron-fisted rule.

As much as Gorbachev was instrumental in bringing down the “Iron Curtain”, he also haplessly opened the doors for an immoral, greedy, unpatriotic and oppressive clique of oligarchs.

The same situation holds true in South Africa, particularly since the advent of the black economic empowerment blueprint that is clearly fashioned from the Afrikaner Broederbond of yesteryear.

The motto seems to be: “We take care of our own,” meaning that South Africa is also being ruled by oligarchs, who are spearheading a governing cartel hell-bent on self-service instead of growing the economy to benefit its citizenry.

Luyanda Marlon Kama Kwa-dwesi, PE