The annus horribilis of Africa's last and only hope

Submitted by Felix Ngasama

The year 2008 is so far proving to be South Africa’s annus horribilis since its rebirth as a new democratic state in 1994. Things haven’t been worse since 1994.

This year has brought with it the aftermath of the ruling party’s most divisive national elections where Jacob Zuma, a man acquitted of rape charges and still likely to stand trial for corruption in the third quarter of this year, trounced President Thabo Mbeki and emerged as the new leader of the ANC, thus making him the likely next president of the country.

Zuma is rumoured to be a traditional and clueless man without formal education who cannot even diarise his day or manage his basic personal finances. This is just part of the doubts and fears of most South Africans — mostly the middle class — at the prospect of Jacob Zuma becoming the president of the country. Most South Africans, although they may not admit it publicly, are waiting with bated breath in anticipation of the political buffoonery Zuma might bring with him on the presidential stage, as indicated by his poor showing in a recent BBC documentary titled No More Mandelas where he was interviewed by Fergal Keane but dismally failed to impress.

There was Zuma — the ANC president and likely to be the next president of South Africa — taking part in a television programme that was portraying his country as on a downward spiral and he unwittingly confirmed this by his own poor showing.

The incumbent but outgoing President Mbeki made it clear in his recent State of the Nation speech when he said: “I am aware of the fact that many people in our society are troubled by a deep sense of unease about where our country will be tomorrow.” Zuma has contributed to this sense of unease by cavorting before his supporters while performing karaoke with the popular but anachronistic ANC liberation song Umshini Wami.

The year 2008 has brought with it a ruling party split in the middle, albeit unofficially, thanks to its highly contested and acrimonious national leadership elections, fought between what the South African media labelled as Mbeki and Zuma camps. The two camps cynically fought for the leadership of the ANC in total disregard of the party’s interests.

Since the elections, there has been no sign of the two camps smoking a peace pipe together. Instead the new leadership is flushing out party officials holding key positions but perceived as belonging to the Mbeki camp, and replacing them with Zuma zealots.

This year has been the worst for Mbeki as South Africa’s president. He has been bruised in a lost bid to lead the ANC for another five years and reduced to a lame-duck president with no real power while his Cabinet ministers have become a bunch of limping flamingos. For the first time since 1994, some opposition parties were toying with the idea of garnering support to push for a parliamentary vote of no confidence in Mbeki and force him to step down as president.

The year has brought so much uncertainty in South Africa. People don’t know where the ANC is leading them any more, especially with rumours making newspaper headlines that the so-called Mbeki camp is hatching plans to undermine Zuma and take control of provincial leadership, having lost at national level. Newspapers have also reported violent clashes between supporters of Zuma and those of Mbeki that have allegedly claimed at least one life this year in the Eastern Cape, Mbeki’s home region.

Soon after taking power as ANC president, Zuma and his lieutenants made a beeline for an elite crime-fighting unit, the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO), popularly known as the Scorpions, to lay down plans to disband it.

The Scorpions, Mbeki’s brainchild to combat corruption and organised crime, have been highly successful and, to a certain extent, have become the pride of the nation. However, the unit touched a raw nerve within the ANC government and political alliance circles when it went beyond fear or favour to investigate and charge top and powerful ANC government and parliamentary officials for offences ranging from corruption to racketeering.

Prominent among those who have seen the wrath of the Scorpions are Zuma himself and a flamboyant dandy, former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni, who spent four months in jail for corruption and is now out on parole — but was in December elected as a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, regardless.

The hasty and controversial move to disband the Scorpions this year is seen by many as a pre-emptive and vengeful tactic by Zuma and the new ANC national executive committee — whose members include convicted criminals and others who are awaiting trial or being investigated by the Scorpions.

In a country where crime is one of the biggest and most challenging problems, the move to disband a highly successful crime-fighting unit defies all logic. Organised crime lords and other dirty rotten scoundrels will be watching the whole plan to disband the Scorpions with glee since it will significantly lower the risks involved in carrying out their shenanigans in future. For the scum of society, the year 2008 is not one of doom and gloom but rather of boom and glory, courtesy of the new ANC leadership under Zuma’s stewardship.

The Zuma spectre is just one of many ominous factors that the year has brought into a country touted as Africa’s only hope. As the year was hovering while waiting for 2007 to pack and go, it sent warning signals of power failures. Since 2008’s arrival there has been a “new dawn” in form of power cuts euphemistically described as “load-shedding” by Eskom, the country’s electricity supplier. Load-shedding has become the official term for power cuts in the country; it is now a South African household and boardroom term — a locally celebrated term that would turn any South African resident who may not know it into a laughing stock.

Such power failures would have major economic and social implications in any country, and it goes without saying that the power cuts in South Africa have negatively affected every economic and social activity here. For the first time South Africa stopped being a leading gold producer in the world, having being elbowed from the gold-production throne by China as power cuts took their toll and interrupted mining activities.

Gridlocked traffic due to out-of-order — load-shedded — traffic lights has become part of a contingency plan when driving in South Africa’s cities. One of the country’s major daily newspapers has revealed in its editorial that since the beginning of the year, more than 100 restaurants have lost business and closed in South Africa due to load-shedding. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of overall economic and social repercussions. The director general of the National Treasury was recently quoted by a major Sunday newspaper as saying that South Africa will no longer be able to reach its economic growth target of 4,5% until the year 2009, and 6% from 2010 to 2014, attributing this to global economic turmoil coupled with the country’s power woes.

As if the “dawn” of power failures was not enough to worry South Africans, the petrol price is another worrisome factor. Economists predict an already high petrol price to increase even more in the first quarter and probably again in the second or third quarter of this year. A chance conversation between South Africans nowadays is mostly about the gloomy state of affairs due to load-shedding, the increase in the petrol price and, generally, an uncertain political and economic future.

Interest rates, which are already high for South African consumers, may rise even higher this year. Considering that South Africans — especially the middle class — survive on credit, high interest rates will only tighten the financial noose and make it difficult for them to maintain their relatively good but credit-dependent living standards. There have been reports of an increase in bank repossession of mortgaged homes, hire-purchased cars and household goods in 2008. Although some people think that interest rates can only drop now after rising so high, respected authorities on economic matters are predicting that another interest-rate hike is not far off.

Then there is the issue of South Africa’s chief of police, Jackie Selebi, who is facing charges of corruption and racketeering. On his list of close friends was a shady underworld mogul who had been previously convicted of crime and surely listed as such in the police files. This is yet another sad and lousy episode in South Africa’s state of affairs in 2008. It is reprehensible to see a police chief who is supposed to be the country’s custodian of law enforcement dragged into court to face criminal charges of receiving bribes from a Mafioso friend of his in exchange for classified police information to put him a step ahead of law enforcement.

Hey, wait a minute … that is not all. Civil engineering and transport experts have just issued a warning that municipal and provincial roads are also in a crisis that could escalate to the same scale as the current electricity turmoil. Road networks in the country are teetering on the brink of collapse due to poor maintenance, bad planning and a brain drain of professional engineers. It is estimated that a maintenance programme to restore the roads to their former glory could cost up to R200-billion.

Racism has also refused to be left behind. It has reared its ugly head in a most hardcore fashion at one of the country’s universities as a video showing elderly black university workers being humiliated and forced to eat meat soup laced with urine by white students — just weeks after another white youth descended upon a sleepy black informal settlement, opened fire and shot dead four black people and wounded six.

What a hopeless future of racial reconciliation we face, considering that both these gross acts of racism were perpetrated by young whites who were barely five years old in 1994 when South Africa was reborn as a new democratic and non-racial country. How have they become so racist when they were growing up in a supposedly non-racial new South Africa? Institutionalised racism might have been abolished, but its root, which anchored it during the apartheid era, is still very much alive and kicking. That root is the heart and soul of the perpetrators, and this year has shown that racism is still radiating from the old to the new generation of South Africa.

Mbeki seems to have taken the harbinger of doom and gloom that is the year 2008 very seriously. He frankly issued a warning in the form of advice in his State of the Nation speech, saying: “Our nation should unite as never before and strain every sinew of its collective body to address our common challenges and keep alive the dream that has sustained us all.”

While Mbeki’s call for a united and organised effort to turn around the ominous state of affairs is noble, it is equally ineffective coming from a president sitting in a limbo and bereft of any real clout in his twilight days as leader. He has had no real influence since being ousted as the ruling party’s leader in December.

In all likelihood, the dream that has sustained all South Africans as indicated by Mbeki may just be a pipe dream if the signals of the year 2008 are anything to go by. The same old and well-known infectious causes that have brought suffering and total collapse to almost all African countries are now zeroing in on Africa’s last and only hope with a typical modus operandi of primarily targeting the leadership.

A careful look at the current South African situation will show that the usual suspects that have pillaged, plundered and destroyed other African countries are currently devouring South Africa, and may also cause its eventual collapse if not checked.

Take a deep breath in South Africa in 2008 and you are likely to smell the demons of disunity; corruption; choosing leaders based on ethnicity, culture, creed or ideology instead of integrity or ability; obsessive pursuit of power at all costs; putting one’s interests above the nation’s interests; and abuse of power and self-aggrandisement. Typical!

Felix Ngasama lives in Johannesburg. He is both employed and self-employed, having just started a quality-assurance consultancy in the tourism industry. He am a keen follower of current affairs both locally and internationally, and a contributing author to Africa Global Village, which has rated him as its top author so far this year. Some of his articles have been linked to Global Voices, a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, and to Technorati. Writing comes naturally to him and he has a passion for political commentary.