"When you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favours; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than work and your laws no longer protect you against them but protect them against you, you may know that your society is doomed." Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
I’m not normally a fan of Ayn Rand, but if one examines that statement in the context of life under the current government in SA, I’d say we’re all well and truly stuffed.
What, you ask, brought us to this lamentable state of affairs? Things were going so well in the nineties. Madiba was not only our president but a true statesman. We were the flavour of the month. Then we got an Africanist, and if things couldn’t get worse, he was booted out and replaced by a Populist. The slide has been both precipitous and ferocious in its erosion of human rights, freedom of expression, abuse of power, economic common-sense and social cohesion.
As a society we are verging on becoming more, not less fragmented than we were before democracy.
The rich, which now include the new Platinum Class tenderpreneurs and BEE beneficiaries, the First Class new Black Diamond bourgeoisie, and the Business Class former-kasi-now-suburban entrepreneur, are getting richer, but the poor are not only staying poor: they’re getting poorer.
You can’t say ‘a better life for all’ when ‘all’ refers only to that apple-skin thin layer of society that so visibly flaunt their new bling in the face of the poor as they flash past in their brand spanking Range Rovers.
I recently found myself behind one of the new money moguls in a queue at an iMac store. His pink and yellow shirt with purple detail on the cuffs had a double-layered collar, triple cuffs and enough buttons to send an S&M fetishist into orgasm.
His shoes blinded you with the combined reflection from patent leather and tiny inset mirrors. The 18 carat gold hardware around his neck was heavy enough to fund a small country’s GDP. His man-bag had Louis Vuitton logos on so large you could see them from the other side of the mall, and if you still didn’t get the message, his LV belt-buckle screamed it even louder from a midriff that threatened to swallow it whole, but for the fact that the buckle was the size of a frizbee.
But the final straw was what was on his wrists. Not content with the two-tone Rolex on his left wrist, he also sported a gold Breitling on his right wrist! Two watches? What, one for cattle-class-time and the other for his fashionably-late-time?
It was this new consumerism that made me think about cultures and conquest, not only here in Africa but thousands of years ago, in Europe. It’s got almost nothing to do with race, and a lot to do with power. As a jeweller once told me, ‘You know the Golden Rule? He who has the gold, rules.’
What happened to Africa under the colonialists had little or nothing to do with race. The Scramble for Africa had everything to do with conquest and resources. The colonials behaved no differently from oppressors over centuries of history.
Under the Caliphates, the Muslims did the same to most of North Africa, Southern Europe and the Middle East. Before them, the Romans did exactly the same to the Goths, Gauls, Britons and the Middle East. Before them, Alexander the Great did it to most of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and bits of India. And before him, the Egyptians did it to the rest of the Middle East, and before them the Persians and Assyrians did it too. (Remind me to avoid buying real estate in the Middle East...)
So please, let's forget about race.
And nothing's that black and white - if you'll excuse the pun. Not everything the "oppressors" of history do is bad.
Take the Romans: mass crucifixions, gladiators, slavery, horrible abuses. But they also gave us: the most efficient road network ever built (you can still use Roman roads in parts of Europe), aqueducts, a well-regulated civil society, efficient schooling, water-plumbing, under-floor heating, and if you've been to Law School you still study Justinian's Institutes to this day: the Roman Law system. And what about Virgil, Seneca and Ovid? The Romans did more than any other global power to civilize Europe.
How things have changed. To the Romans, the Goths were the most barbaric savages of the lot. (Okay maybe the Picts (Scots) as well, but the Goths were on their northern border and therefore more of an imminent threat). Nowadays, the Italians have become better known (I've got to be careful how I say this because I'm married to one) for their pursuit of la dolce vita than their ability to run a country, much less an empire. Pasta, wine and curvy women are far more important to the average Italian male than efficient government.
It's the former Goths - those "barbarians" in the Bundesrepublik - whose work-ethic and organisational skills are keeping Europe afloat financially.
But I digress. What has all this to do with South Africa? Lots.
Empire builders leave a legacy. Rome left predominantly usable stuff not because they were unbeatable militarily (which they were almost all of the time), but because once they had conquered a territory, they followed up conquest with governance - highly skilled bureaucrats and creators of infrastructure.
They built roads, implemented Roman Law (and enforced it ruthlessly), created structure, kept peace - the famous "Pax Romana". Their ability to govern created civil society in every territory they ruled.
The Nats weren’t Romans, but their system of oppression carried many similarities. They even called their capital Pretoria, after the Praetorian Guard – bodyguards to Caesar. But no matter what horrors the apartheid regime was guilty of - and there are plenty - the one thing you cannot accuse them of is inefficiency. They were racists, but they were methodical, organised racists, who ran efficient bureaucracies and created efficient infrastructure. That’s why they lasted so long, in the face of years of international sanctions and pressure.
While I celebrate the defeat of apartheid, I also deeply regret the current government's inability to take that particular leaf from the book of their former oppressors: ability to govern.
Almost two decades into our fledgling democracy, they are doing more and more of the bad things the whiteys under apartheid did, and less and less of the good.
Particularly in terms of ability to govern, the ruling party is leaving chaos in its wake - infrastructure is collapsing and bureaucracy is now mired in corruption and inefficiency because of cadre deployment. If they showed any inclination to replace cadres with people - I really don't care what colour - who are capable of doing their jobs, there may be hope.
But as things now stand, I'm afraid I have to agree with the acerbic Ms Rand.
It's this short sightedness that will cost us dearly in the long term. I don't see any real maturity in government - it's as if they still haven't graduated from struggle politics (all this "counter-revolutionary" “anti-imperialist" crap from the likes of ANCYL) to what it takes to run a country: boring stuff like good bureaucrats and efficient infrastructure-maintenance?.
That's what builds empires. Not toyi-toyi and tenderpreneurs.
