Wanted: A government that is not embarrassed by its people

It is nice to have a President who cares what the world thinks. It would be far nicer to have one who cares what the people of South Africa think.

Thabo Mbeki’s desire to change the nickname of some national sports teams may seem like a frivolous diversion from our national challenges. In reality, it shows up a key problem in the way we have been governed over the past few years.

To capture the full flavour of what Mbeki wanted to say, you need to have listened to his original Metro FM interview. Because only then would you have heard the distaste in his voice when he pronounced the names “Bafana Bafana”, “Banyana Banyana”, “AmaGlug-Glug” and “Amakrokokroko”.

“What sort of names are these?” he asked, much like a diner who had discovered a creepy crawly in the salad. They needed, he insisted, to be replaced with something more “meaningful”.

It is not hard to see why a president concerned with his country’s image might fret that our two national footballs teams are nicknamed “the boys” (literally, “the boys, the boys”) and “the girls” respectively. Or why he might prefer an Under-23 team not named after the sounds that its sponsor’s oil products make as they travel through the pipes — or a disabled team whose name seems to make fun of its players. So why have a problem with his complaint?

Because the nicknames at which the president so audibly turned up his nose have caught the imagination of grassroots South Africans — the people in the taxis and trains, in the taverns and spaza shops, and in the stands when our teams play.

When he voiced his distaste, then, Mbeki seemed to be making a clear statement — that he found the popular imagination distasteful, despite the fact that it is likely that most of the people whose imagination embarrasses him vote for the ANC and are therefore responsible for placing him in office. And that part of his distaste was a fear that people elsewhere in the world, if they knew what these names meant, would think less of us because we use them.

It is this bias against what grassroots South Africans say and do when it conflicts with (government perceptions of) what “sophisticated” people around the world believe they ought to say and do that has shaped government attitudes since we became a democracy — more particularly since Mbeki became president.

It stems from a reality that most of us sense but few of us are willing to discuss. First, most white people, around the world as well as here, believe black people are not up to running countries with modern economies. Second, people in government know this and want to prove them wrong.

This, of course, is why our elite is so obsessed with being “world class” in everything from constitution-making to commerce, from sport to city planning: if a country is “world class”, bigots cannot say that those who govern it are not up to the job.

At first glance, there is nothing wrong with any of this: the claim that black people cannot govern is a prejudice that ought to be proved wrong. The problem lies in the way Mbeki and those around him have gone about trying to prove the prejudice wrong.

Instead of trying to show that a democratic South Africa can chart its own path, based on its own values, and succeed at that, the government has been determined to show that the bigots are wrong by accepting their values (or at least its interpretation of their values). So much of the effort has been devoted to showing that South Africa can make it as an idealised version of Western Europe and North America rather than as a successful African country, and to showing that we can develop exactly the same attitudes and behaviours as the people who live in those places.

So, instead of trying to build livable, people friendly cities, we try to build “world class” urban areas that are not nearly as liveable. Instead of a style of government devoted to hearing people and working with them, we have one that stresses smart people using “state of the art” techniques to do things for people — so upsetting many citizens. Instead of policies that try to build on the energies and talents of grassroots people, we adopt an economic growth model that wants to turn everyone into a person in a business suit, operating in an air-conditioned office, so stunting development. And, instead of fighting HIV/Aids, the government spends years denying it because it does not want to give in to the prejudices of bigots who claim black people get Aids because of their sexual behaviour.

One obvious result of this attitude is that, when local people come up with funny names for local sports teams, Mbeki and those around him don’t get the joke. Instead, the reaction is shame — that grassroots folks are making us look “uncivilised” in the eyes of the world.

And, while the cost might be low if all it means is changing the nicknames of some sports teams, this would be just another of the ways in which the government chooses paths that belittle the tastes, values and behaviours of grassroots South Africans — which have the perverse effect of making people feel they are not good enough.

It is this approach that is being challenged within the ANC. An obvious consequence of this attitude is that people in the ANC who don’t fit the leadership’s model of “sophistication”, and who might therefore fail to convince Western people that we can be just like them, will not be taken seriously. They will not win high office if the leadership can help it and will not be taken seriously when decisions are made. And it is those people who have not been taken seriously for these reasons who are now trying to change the leadership of the ANC.

We have no idea what will come of this. It might change nothing. Or it might elect new leaders who will show the same distaste for grassroots South Africans. Or it might so want to change things that it throws the baby out with the bath water, insisting that it need not worry about effectiveness and efficiency because they are Western impositions.

But there is at least a chance that we may soon experience a new attitude to governing, one that respects the vast majority of South Africans and tries to build a successful society on what we are rather than what others would like us to be. If we do, it can’t come soon enough.