What if?

What if there had never been apartheid and colonialism in South Africa? Who and what would we have blamed for many of our problems today?

What if Nelson Mandela had not spent 27 years in prison? Would he still have been as revered by the international community? Would he still have become our president?

What if the Nats were not so stubborn and agreed to rights for blacks instead of banning the ANC and other liberation movements in the early 1960s? Would we all have lived happily ever after or would we have ended up fighting the way we do today?

What if the internal political leadership decided not to step aside for the returning exiles?

And what if the ANC had not decided to disband the United Democratic Front? Would our country have been different today? Would we have had a more functioning democracy than we have at the moment?

What if our leaders had embraced, at an early stage of our new democracy, the fact that all of us are South Africans first and foremost? Not white South Africans, not black South Africans and definitely not coloured South Africans, Xhosa South Africans or Zulu South Africans.

What if Nelson Mandela did not go out of his way to make people feel welcome in South Africa as Afrikaners and coloureds and not as South Africans? Would Afrikaners and coloureds have embraced our democracy?

What if our government decided to embrace excellence at the expense of the transformation of our society? Is there a possibility that transformation might have come faster because black people would have put up their hands to become excellent and white people would not have been able to ignore the appeals of black people who want to become excellent? Or would white people have tried to have a monopoly on excellence?

What if the government had decided not to implement black economic empowerment and affirmative action? Would our society still have transformed after the collapse of apartheid, because of the dictates of market forces? Or would there have been white people who would foolishly hold onto all the economic power without being able to see the potential economic power of black people?

And would white people really have been able to keep black people out of key jobs if there had been no affirmative action?

What if Thabo Mbeki had not decided to fire Jacob Zuma?

Would he still have been in office? And would he have denied Zuma the ability to muster so many forces against him?

What if Zuma had been charged and convicted along with Schabir Shaikh? Who would then have been the person who would be preparing to take over from Thabo Mbeki next year?

What if the ANC decided to leave Thabo Mbeki in office until the end of his term? Would they have been able to use this as an election tool: that they were effectively in opposition to the existing government even though the government represented the same party?

Opposition parties can make promises, even empty ones. Ruling parties have to deliver.

What if all Mbeki’s Cabinet Ministers decided to resign in support of him? What would have been the ANC’s response? And would they have been able to pretend that their moves are all for the sake of unity?

What if Mbeki’s supporters decide to start a new political party? Will it really have an impact on the South African landscape?

What if Judge Nicholson did not make the comments about Mbeki’s purported political interference in the Zuma case? Would Thabo Mbeki still have been our president or would the ANC have found another excuse to get rid of him?

What if Kgalema Motlanthe turns out to be a superb president?

Would Zuma still be able to replace him next year? Would we allow him to?

Just a few random thoughts ….