Trying to boost national morale through SA’s indigenous plants
FINANCE Minister Enoch Godongwana is unobtrusive and boring, the quintessential grey man of politics.
That’s not a criticism. Finance ministers the world over too often strive to be sparklingly witty, engagingly flamboyant. Such behaviour might be a deep-seated response to their colleagues generally hating them, much in the way that feckless adolescents hate their parents for not readily doling out large dollops of cash on demand.
A BusinessLIVE editorial on Godongwana’s Wednesday Budget statement expressed relief that there were “good and sober technocrats” like him in the Treasury. Despite the “walls closing in on four sides” he somehow managed to find some wriggle room and “to stretch a metaphor, pulled a rabbit out of a hat that ought never to have been in our wardrobe”.
The DA nit-picked that there was “nothing bold” in his speech and damned the “irresponsible” bailouts for state-owned entities. But economics professor Raymond Parsons, of the North-West University Business School, said the Budget was “surprise-free, pragmatic, and credible”.
As is true of virtually every person in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet, Godongwana is not untainted by corruption allegations. But nothing has stuck, and any faint whiff of impropriety was not enough to deter Ramaphosa from appointing him as Tito Mboweni’s successor in August 2021.
Let’s be realistic: what options does the president have, given the sluggish motility of what talent remains in the ANC gene puddle? At least, on the evidence of his MSc from the University of London and his ability to remain ahead of the National Prosecuting Authority, he is no fool.
Certainly, in Ramaphosa’s lurid circus line-up of clowns, cowboys, and bearded ladies, Godongwana is an anomaly. The grey man does his job with steady perseverance, without drama and affectation.
And maybe best of all, there has been no lecturing. This is a nation sick to the back teeth of being told by parasitic politicians – cocooned in free, uninterrupted power supplies and protected by blue-light brigades – that our thundering cascade of disasters is a blessing in disguise. A heaven-sent opportunity to buff up our national character, to prove our mettle.
“Resilient” and its variations have become popular words in the ANC lexicon. As the country sinks deeper and deeper into the dwang, such rallying cries – Churchillian in intent but, unfortunately, not in effect – have become more frequent and more lyrical.
At this year’s State of the Nation Address (Sona), Ramaphosa said despite us being in an “existential” economic and social crisis, all would be okay because we’re a nation “defined by hope and resilience” and our “spirit of determination”. We merely need, as a nation, “to stay the course”.
At last year’s Sona, he told us that although “engaged in a battle for the soul of this country”, all would be okay because – as that statedesignated sage president Thabo Mbeki put it – “trying times need courage and resilience”.
“Our strength as a people,” Ramaphosa ended with a flourish, “is not tested during the best of times.” In other words, embrace the pain, suckers.
In 2020 and 2021, Ramaphosa and his then-finance minister Tito Mboweni both dug deep in four successive speeches to be inspirational.
It became the political equivalent of duelling banjos – in this case duelling botanicals – as each tried to outdo the other in boosting the morale of South Africans with homilies involving indigenous plants.
There was Ramaphosa, wielding our national flower, “the hardy protea”, both at a Sona and an international investors conference.
The protea, he told his listeners, not only survives the fiercest blaze, but literally depends on it to release its seed and germinate. This was how South Africa would “phoenix-like” resurrect itself and rise from the ashes of its troubles.
Then came Mboweni, who opted for “the hardy aloe ferox”, which could survive even while “the tempest is raging”. As would South Africans.
In another Budget speech, he simpered ingratiatingly that although the “storm is not over” the country would overcome because “Mr President, you are the wise farmer, caring for this aloe ferox”.
While all this flummery is enough to make a hyena puke, there’s a kernel of truth here.
Ask any South African to define the undefinable – the defining characteristics of an unusually diverse conglomeration of peoples – and I’d wager they’re likely to come up with phrases that indicate traits like mental toughness, a can-do approach and, yes, resilience.
Our national motto is not ! ke e: /xarra //ke, Khoisan for “diverse people unite”, as it appears on the coat-of-arms. In our hearts, it has for centuries by necessity been, ’n boer maak ’n plan. Loosely, that’s Afrikaans for “whatever the problem, a farmer will rig a patch”.
Probably not many would mention the protea or the aloe ferox specifically. Except possibly for the latter plant – large, spiky, and bitter, but detoxifying – as being an appropriate suppository for pretentious ANC politicians. That would cheer all us up no end.