Caring rulers lead by example
More marches are inevitable unless the government gets serious about sharing the country’s spoils with the people
SOUTHAfricans are feeling despondent right now. The euphoria of post-1994 is rapidly dissipating. Diehard ANC cadres are disillusioned at how the mighty ANC is crumbling through infighting and wavering loyalties to personalities rather than to the party, sadly in Mandela’s lifetime. Marikana is hurting our conscience because we are sensitive, as a people, to oppression.
However we may want to rationalise it from a party point of view, Marikana will be an unerasable blot in our history. We cannot believe what we see. Black on black violence is not an easy pill to digest especially since we believed that race was the main and only reason for oppression. It was easy to manage then. It was easy to mobilise the international conscience because racism against black people was abhorrent. Now class is emerging as a divisive force that is separating workers from their masters.
How can leaders in the Struggle for freedom turn against workers, the very lifeblood of their movement. Yet analysts will tell us and social science theorists can document the inevitability of this behaviour. When circumstances change they produce a change in the behaviour of people. But when rulers oppress their own kind it is akin to domestic violence.
In newly emergent post-revolutionary nation states, the rulers have two sets of standards; one for themselves and one for the masses. They build barriers through cars, clothing, homes, lifestyle, travel, functions, food and other material markers of privilege. Julius Malema is reputed for ordering the best foreign label champagne and whisky fit for royalty and the megarich while the masses that he is supposedly representing can’t afford their daily bread, which incidentally is unsubsidised and too expensive for the street urchins.
NGOs, like the Gift of the Givers which is feeding the Marikana workers, quietly go about their work adding a Band-Aid to the haemorrhage of national neglect.
It is these pockets of excellence that we have to develop if we want to save our country from a national crisis. Civil society, through a system of volunteerism, is our last hope of redeeming ourselves.
Hangover
There is a saying, “the greater the party, the greater the hangover”. This seems to be the mood of many observers of current day SA. Nineteen years after democracy the party is still going on within the ANC.
When Lindiwe Sisulu says that she cannot be expected to use dilapidated offices downtown and risk the safety of her staff, she makes a very telling comment of “us and them”.
Why should downtown be cordoned off for the safety of the ruling class yet it is of little concern when it is unsafe for the people? Why should we be spending so much on bodyguards for leaders while the rest of us are suffering under crime?
If our rulers really cared they would be setting an example that tells us that they understand our predicament and that they are willing to do something constructive about the crime situation.
Instead, they are using taxpayers’ money to protect themselves to do a pretty bad job at protecting us.
Logic defies our ruling class’s mentality. Cronyism is rife when inefficient ministers are appointed by the government to mess up education, health and policing. What is the point of getting our gender quotas right when we are appointing inefficient people to fill certain positions? We need to measure the outcome of our policies and balance them against good judgement.
When we cannot deliver textbooks or we cannot launder hospitals sheets and cannot keep a laundry going how do we expect to lead a nation? Unless the government is serious about sharing its spoils, South Africans will continually march to make their voices heard.
So, simply put, what is the problem? The working classes are feeling degraded and undervalued. They are not getting a living wage. Basic commodities like milk and bread are too expensive. Their freedom is meaningless. The nation’s wealth, like heavy frosting on a chocolate cake, has not seeped into the crevices of its other layers. It is rich and creamy at the top and dry and crumbly at the bottom. What one should do with a cake like this is to halve the icing and tuck the excesses into the belly of the cake, making it moist all around. But in real life this is not happening fast enough.
The excesses of the government are yet another example of why people at the bottom feel so hard pressed to retaliate.
The fees paid to consultants, auditors and lawyers for litigation battles is shocking to the average civil servants who battle to eke out a living on their monthly salaries.
Nurses, social workers, teachers, the backbone of our society, are grossly devalued financially, and to add fire to dry wood, they are expected to make a sacrifice by taking an oath to remain loyal to their professions and their wards.
Why should there be a positive correlation between lowly paid jobs and loyalty? Why can’t we have the reverse where we expect the more highly paid individuals in society to show more commitment and make greater sacrifices towards nationbuilding than they currently do?
Greed, poverty and the devaluing of honest labour are factors that are currently splitting the country apart. Unless the government is serious about equitably sharing its spoils among its people South Africans will be continually marching under the banners of unions to make their voices heard. Marikana, it seems, is just the beginning of an Arab spring that President Jacob Zuma has assured us will never happen, well at least till Jesus returns.
Rajab is a psychologist.