True love or embarrassing puppy love?

BEHIND all its bluster and bravado, the ANC is emotionally deeply insecure. This lack of confidence, coupled paradoxically with feelings of entitlement, often leads to irrational and obnoxious behaviour.

The psychology is that of the immature teen. When it comes to the international arena, this translates into South Africa – like a tempestuous adolescent ruled by raging hormones rather than sound sense – alternating between defiant posturing and the cringingly obsequious.

Even while begging the Western democracies for life-saving injections of investment and loans, the ANC is unwilling (or unable) to conceal its loathing of its capitalist benefactors.

On the other hand, the infatuation of President Cyril Ramaphosa and his senior sidekicks with the Cubans, the Venezuelans and their revolutionary ilk, is that of the classic schoolyard crush.

For historical reasons, it is with the Cubans, in particular, that the ties are strongest and most emotional.

Rather than acting on practical considerations, it’s all about a fairytale romance, with the ANC unswervingly starry-eyed – despite the financial cost of its dalliance.

Last year, when Covid-19 struck, the government did a deal with Cuba for the deployment of 187 medical personnel at a cost of R239m in salaries and another R187m in subsistence benefits. This week, the government announced that it was doing the same thing, albeit at a smaller scale, and importing 24 Cuban water engineers at a cost of R64.6m.

These latest Cubans, we’re assured, have all kinds of skills that South Africa’s experts – once considered among the best in the world, before the ANC drummed out those lacking the correct racial and political credentials – do not.

Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu expressed “optimism and confidence” at the arrival of the “highly qualified” Cubans who, she said, possess “vast skills”.

But the benefit of the Cuban engineers is not astonishing technical prowess, but the political benefits they provide. The ANC hopes to solve the collapse of the country’s water infrastructure, without having the embarrassment of bringing back those experts it got rid of.

Similarly, when it comes to medicine, rather than building local capacity through building more medical schools and encouraging the immigration of professional expertise, since the mid-1990s South Africa has been sending around 800 youngsters each year to train in Cuban medical schools, at more than double the cost of training locally.

Cuban medical assistance, worldwide, is both about building diplomatic leverage and keeping financially afloat.

Take last year’s pandemic assistance to South Africa. The salaries earned by the Cubans are almost double those earned by our doctors.

The ANC’s fawning engagement with these Cubans is at the level of a gaggle of simpering schoolgirls towards the hunky school rugby captain. President Cyril Ramaphosa, with eyelashes aflutter, said their arrival was “a great demonstration of solidarity and humanity”, lauding their “selflessness and unwavering support” of the government.

Lovesick as it is, the ANC is quick to lavish largesse on its adored. Aside from the more than R400m that we know was paid to the Cuban pandemic strike squad, the SANDF spent an unauthorised R260m on the unauthorised acquisition of a Cuban “miracle cure” for Covid-19.

And at the same time that South Africa was borrowing $4.3bn in Covid-19 emergency funding from the IMF, as well as raking in another few billion rands in donations from wealthy South Africans, the ANC was providing medical and food supplies to its squeeze.

While our health workers had to do without personal protection equipment, two massive consignments of bed covers, blankets, injection packs, infrared thermometers and protective clothing, particularly surgical gloves and masks, were airlifted to Cuba.

As long as it was legally done, there is of course nothing wrong with the ANC government splurging all this money it doesn’t have on its hot Cuban date. After all, theirs may yet prove to be a marriage made in heaven.

But for all the reasons outlined above, Ramaphosa’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize of the Cuban medical mercenaries is a different matter. It’s the epitome of how puppy love is indifferent to reality and it’s damn embarrassing to the adults in the room.