Winds of change for the ANC

The winds of change have finally started blowing for the ANC government, just as they started blowing for the National Party government in 1960.

In 1960, this event was formally announced by former British prime minister Harold Macmillan in his famous address in Cape Town on February 3 that year.

In this Year of our Lord 2011, a similar announcement was made by Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

The situation in which our governing party finds itself in this time is eerily similar to the situation the Nationalists found themselves in 1960.

Like the National Party, the ANC is underestimating the seriousness of the threat against them. They are not truly aware of the breadth and the depth and the scope of the dissatisfaction of the people on ground level. They have treated the question of the Dalai Lama’s visa application as a trifle, something unimportant, a little administrative matter, an irritation that would go away if they ignored it for long enough.

They have underestimated the symbolic importance of this event. They have misread the signs. They still do not realise that they may already have passed the tipping point. They are unable to realise that, by refusing to grant a visa to a Nobel Prize winner to visit a fellow Nobel prize winner, they have sent out the wrong signals to everyone. It is perhaps one of their most serious public-relations errors ever.

I disagree with Bishop Tutu on some minor points, as I have disagreed with him when he proposed, among other things, the welfare tax for rich whites a few weeks ago. Unlike him, I do not believe that the ANC is “worse than the apartheid government”. And though I will certainly pray against the ANC, I realise that I cannot expect all fellow South Africans to do the same. After all, some, if not most, of my best friends are atheists.

Though we should applaud those ANC ministers and officials who are honestly doing their best to govern this country fairly and honestly — I know that, in spite of the blanket criticism of the biased local media there are many competent ANC officials — we cannot turn a blind eye to the divisions in the party, to the obvious fact that the ANC, as a revolutionary force and as a political organisation, is running out of steam in very much the same way the Nationalist Party was running out of steam in 1960, when Macmillan made his speech.

In broad terms, the ANC government — or, should I broaden that definition even more to include the entire tripartite alliance — has become a problem in itself, a problem that needs a solution, a problem as real and as concrete and as obstructive as the problem of unemployment, the problem of service non-delivery, the problem of corruption, and the all-encompassing problem of this country not functioning properly on all its cylinders, of this country betraying its democratic principles and turning its back on the values of Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu himself.

The tripartite alliance cannot be all things to all people. The cracks in the hull of this giant ship are becoming bigger and bigger. Like the Titanic, this massive power block, this engine of the struggle, is running aground, is breaking up, and its demise, when it comes, will be heartbreakingly inevitable and spectacularly real.

The voices of dissent are growing stronger by the day. Though not all the factions calling for change have the same agenda, they all agree on one thing: we need a new Big Picture, we need a different metaphor, the ANC has betrayed the people and the people need to be heard.

It is rather amusing that, in these dark hours before the final deluge, I am even managing to find myself agreeing with some of the wild things Julius Malema is saying. Though I cannot see how the nationalism of mines could ever help the economy, I cannot help agreeing with the fact that mining companies have not done enough, not by far, to run their business in a fair way. Look at all the companies who have upped and left, leaving us stranded with the problem of acid water and collapsing sinkholes. And why, oh why, must our best diamonds, the cream of our crop, still be displayed among the British Crown Jewels in the Tower of London? Surely that’s supposed to be OUR stuff? Why didn’t they send it back when we became a democracy in 1994?

The anger of the Hereros and other tribal groups in Namibia sparked by the recent of the skulls of murdered Africans under German rule (why only now?), mirrors my own anger as an Afrikaans-speaking person and a member of an authentic local tribe formerly oppressed by colonial powers in Africa, subsequently victimised by the National Party as a protestor, and now targeted by the ANCYL as a “Boer” (though I have never owned a farm in my life).

Having said this, I must also admit that I don’t wish to be associated with the right-wing faction of my tribe. Unlike the hotheads in the new Volksraad, I understand that my tribe is by no means the only tribe in this country. My language, Afrikaans, is one of eleven official languages. Though I oppose the ANC, I am not one of that small but very vocal percentage of Afrikaners who wish to return to the old system of apartheid.

Like the tornados that recently ripped through parts of Gauteng and the Free State, the winds of change have irrevocably destroyed that old system. The same winds will destroy the present system. When those winds have done their job, I wish to stand up and be counted; secondly as an Afrikaner, but first and foremost as a South African. In fact, I would like to live in a country where race and culture is less important than the common principles of loyalty, honesty and hard work.

While these winds are raging about us, South Africa is not an easy place to be in. But after Bishop Tutu’s speech of the other day, I feel less afraid. I have started realising that I prefer the raging of the winds of change to the stagnating stench that had gone before. Like the Cape Town South-Easter, these winds are bringing fresh insights, they are blowing away the cobwebs of outdated ways of looking at things, they are showing us who our real friends are, they are helping us see through the flying debris to visualise a future together.

Yes, Bishop Tutu, I am with you on this one.