WHAT LIES BENEATH

Unrest, violence and service delivery problems merely the tip of the iceberg

THE PAST five weeks may well be remembered as a period in our history when the lights went out. South Africa, whether we like to admit it or not, is stumbling in the dark, and it is going to take enlightened leadership to put the lights back on.

The mining unrest that has gripped the country for more than a month is a clear indication that we are a nation with a myriad questions with few or no answers.

Our plight is a result of cumulative bad choices, missed opportunities and halftruths by those entrusted with the responsibility of making tough decisions and leading from the front.

Is it surprising that after more than a century of mining, mines in South Africa are once again a hotbed of discontent?

A month after the Marikana killings, many continue to ask how the police can have been so callous as to open fire on striking miners and leave 34 of them dead in cold blood.

Many continue to ask how President Jacob Zuma, and by extension his government, can be so out of touch with reality.

Many are asking how the mine bosses can be so oblivious to the plight of their workers and pretend that all will be well.

Some are also asking why expelled ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has found a receptive audience among the aggrieved miners.

And perhaps not to be outdone, others have posed this key question: what have the unions been doing all along if poverty wages remain the order of the day at the mines and nearby communities remain impoverished?

These are tough but pertinent questions to which South Africa must urgently find answers, or else the dream of a free and prosperous South Africa that 1994 gave us may well have been a nightmare just waiting to blow up in our faces.

The scale of denial that has permeated the discourse around the mining industry turmoil will probably lead many to feel despondent about what the immediate future holds.

Granted, politicking will be the order of the day as political careerists in our government seek to carry favour with whatever faction they think might win the day in Mangaung.

There will also be plenty of scapegoating. Yet, what is clear is that answers to our vexing questions have to come fast because it is not only mining that is in turmoil. Our education is also in turmoil just like health care, service delivery, job creation and public governance.

A couple of weeks ago in this column, I reflected on the perils of relying too much on the past to predict future outcomes without taking into consideration that more often than not, life has its own crude way of throwing what we least expect at us.

What matters is how we respond to what has come our way. So far, though, South Africa continues to dangerously muddle along, hoping for the best from what increasingly looks like a quagmire.

The government’s response to the mining crisis has been incoherent, which suggests to any observer – here and abroad – that there is very little comprehension of the underlying problems that bedevil the country.

Malema, contrary to popular thinking, is hardly the cause of any of the underlying problems that now manifest themselves through violent protest in many corners of our country. If anything, he is the embodiment of all that is so fundamentally flawed about our society.

Perhaps we ought to ask ourself if our government understands the 80/20 rule. If it did, it would realise that the status quo – rampant corruption, widening poverty and unbridled avarice – is untenable.

We might just as well be on a Titanic headed for an iceberg. Experienced mariners know that 20 percent of the iceberg is often the part that one can see on the surface, but 80 percent of it will be below the surface. So it is with the ongoing mining industry upheaval.

What the government is seeing and responding to is just surface mass, the real trouble lies beneath, the growing discontent that must be addressed sooner rather than later.

There is a glaring need for leaders that are present, the kind that is responsive and ready to roll up their sleeves and say to South Africans: “Let’s forget ourselves, narrow interests, and cheap politicking – and get down to work.”

Our problems are no mystery. No commission of inquiry or hiding behind academic arguments will solve them, instead we must find the resolve to build an inclusive society that provides economic opportunity to all, regardless of race, class, party or union affiliation.

The clock is ticking.