This week’s guest writer, Zakes Mda, speaks to skilled black professionals about why they’re planning to leave the country
`I DON’T feel guilty at all,” says Wilson Mokgadi. “I feel angry instead. This is not a chicken run. This is a second exile.”
We are in a restaurant at the Johannesburg International Airport. He is on his way to the United States, where he intends to settle permanently. He has no job there yet, but he has the all-important green card, which he got during his “first exile” there, after he had become a permanent resident. This time he will apply for citizenship and forget all about South Africa. People of his profession, he says, are in demand in the US, and he will get a job within a week of his landing at JFK Airport.
It was by sheer chance that I met Mokgadi at the airport. Although I had not seen him for many years, I recognised him at once. He had grown older and looked wiser, but he still had the same scrawny body that made schoolgirls call him “Scarecrow”.
I first met him in 1976 when he became my student at a Catholic high school in Lesotho. He was among a group of students, barely in their 20s, who sought exile in Lesotho. He was a bright student who passed the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate examinations with a first class.
He went on to do a BA degree at the national university. I later met him briefly at Indiana University in the US after he obtained a PhD in mass communication. He went further to do post- graduate diplomas in media law and in the law of intellectual property in the United Kingdom.
He later worked for National Public Radio and for a number of Public Broadcasting Service affiliates on the east coast of the US. He was a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, dispensing his wisdom on issues ranging from the politics of change in South Africa to international communications. He also became a consultant for various agencies of the United Nations.
Mokgadi returned in 1994, just before the elections, and was caught up in the euphoria of the new South Africa. He hoped his qualifications and experience would come in handy at an institution like the SABC, or in the civil service. So he applied for every communications-related post that was advertised in the papers.
Sometimes receipt of his application would be acknowledged, and that would be the last he heard of the matter. In a few instances he was called for interviews. “We’ll let you know,” the bureaucrats would say. But to this day he hasn’t heard from them. So he ended up teaching part-time at one of the private schools in dilapidated downtown Johannesburg.
“It was obvious to me that the interviews were just a formality the government was required to go through by law. There was no transparency. Advertising the jobs and interviewing candidates was just a front. They already had their people for the jobs,” he says.
At one interview he was told: “You are too qualified. Why don’t you start your own consultancy?”
I chuckle. Over-qualified is the story of my life too, I tell him. Before I decided to be a full-time writer, after I’d left a professorship at Wits University, I used to apply for advertised jobs. I had accumulated a number of degrees and a lot of experience in the field of communications, and I thought I would contribute something to the development of my country. Alas, in instances where I was called for interviews, I was accused of being over-qualified by both black and white bureaucrats.
“I learnt the hard way,” Mokgadi says, “that, in this new South Africa, there is a patronage system, where all important jobs are reserved for members of the African National Congress and those of the liberation aristocracy – their offspring and other relatives of important party officials.”
He thinks perhaps he is being punished for not being politically active enough in exile. After they “skipped the country” in 1976, most of his comrades joined the ANC in exile. A smaller number found a political home in the Pan Africanist Congress, and others in the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania when it was later formed. But he remained politically neutral, although he participated in important events such as June 6 and Sharpeville commemorations, or in various demonstrations and campaigns for disinvestment that took place in the UK and the US.
“In this patronage system, people have to lobby for jobs through party channels. I could have got an SABC job if only I had agreed when friends I knew in exile, who are now high up in the government, wanted to lobby for me. But I was too proud. I thought my experience and qualifications would speak for me.”
Now he sees people with less qualifications getting top jobs and becoming directors in various government departments. He is the sort of person who should be in the Independent Broadcasting Authority, he says, for he is more qualified than the whole bunch there. Although he was nominated to the IBA, he was not even called for the hearings by the parliamentary select committee.
Things are in a mess because incompetent people have been put in important positions as a reward for being good party loyalists. That is why the government has to hire consultants at such a high price to do the work of the overpaid but ignorant political appointees for them.
“For instance,” says Mokgadi, “a woman is a senior manager at the SABC because she is the daughter of a senior ANC official. That is her only qualification for the job. She herself admitted as much at a meeting of television producers at the Parktonian Hotel early in 1996.
“She lamented that she was new in the industry and was made a manager overnight. She said she was grateful to the white staffers of her channel who had made her look good in front of her superiors. Now, tell me, why the hell is she there if she is not qualified for the job? And you know what? I had applied for that job long before she was appointed. But obviously it was already earmarked for a member of the liberation aristocracy.”
Surely any government must have political appointees, I argue. You don’t expect the spokesman in the president’s office, or his speech writer, to be non-political or someone from the Inkatha Freedom Party. It must be a party man, someone with whom he shares a political vision.
He agrees. “There will always be political appointments. But the director of communications in the department of lands, for instance, must be someone who is an expert on land affairs and on communication. Membership of the liberation aristocracy must not be a consideration.”
And the private sector? Why didn’t he get a job there?
“Same over-qualification problem,” he says. “Affirmative action is a farce. They would rather have someone who is under-qualified there, who has no prospects of taking over, or even of doing a better job than they are capable of. That’s how they safeguard their positions. When you come with the kind of experience I have, black affirmative action appointees in managerial positions feel threatened. They will fight very hard so that you don’t get the job.”
Although Mokgadi is not a member of any political party, he voted for the ANC in the last election. He will probably vote for the ANC again in 1999, since he doesn’t see any viable alternative. His admiration for some of its leaders, such as Albertina Sisulu, has not been diminished by the cold shoulder his country has given him. He hero-worships the Sisulu family, whose members, he says, cannot be classified in the ranks of the liberation aristocracy. “They have humanity and have paid their dues,” he adds. “They are wherever they are on merit.”
Another one of his heroes is Thabo Mbeki. He thinks he will make a great president. But Mokgadi is a wounded man, and has no intention of ever coming back to live in South Africa, even under his hero.
There are many other black professionals who feel the same. Some have their suitcases packed, and are waiting for any offer from abroad.
One person who will not leave, even though he has been sidelined, is Phil Mtimkulu. “I am a bit old to leave South Africa,” he says.
Mtimkulu has a masters degree in political science from Rand Afrikaans University, and has been a lecturer at the University of South Africa for the past 11 years. After 20 years as a student and a teacher of African politics, he is regarded as an expert in his field. He applied for an advertised post of assistant director for the African desk in the Department of Foreign Affairs.
He would not lobby for the job since he believes people must be employed on merit, not for their political affiliation. After a farcical interview by interviewers, some of whom had not even read his CV, he did not hear anything from the department. A colleague who made inquiries told him: “Forget it. That post has already been filled. It went to the family. Don’t bother applying anymore.”
But, surely, can the government be accused of nepotism when it has employed in senior positions people like Professor Itumeleng Mosala, Majanku Gumbi and Dr Ishmael Mkhabela, all leaders of the Azanian People’s Organisation, which has rejected the Government of National Unity as a sham? Are important jobs not given even to people who defended the apartheid system – members of the National Party, Freedom Front and Conservative Party?
“Those are high-profile people who have been embraced by the government in pursuit of President Nelson Mandela’s goal of reconciliation. People who are non-aligned and unknown like me will get nothing. Whether I am unemployed or not, I will not cause a stir, since no one has heard of me,” says Mtimkulu.
He does not blame people like Mokgadi for leaving, and thinks more black professionals will leave.
“We don’t like to be saying these things, because they play into the hands of racists who would very much like to see a black- dominated government fail. This is our government and we must support it. But we cannot just keep quiet when it makes its own black people suffer like this.”
One of the most important people who have been sidelined by the present government is Dr Gordon Sibiya, perhaps the most qualified nuclear-reactor scientist in South Africa. He has a BSc degree in maths and science from Fort Hare University, an honours in physics from the same university, a BSc and a masters degree in electrical engineering from Nottingham University in the UK, and a PhD in nuclear engineering/nuclear reactor physics from the University of Stuttgart in Germany.
He does not understand why he is not at the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC). He was nominated by three organisations for the membership of its board, but was not chosen. Instead, non-nuclear and non- scientific people were selected to the board. The chairman of the board is not even a scientist. Sibiya finds himself marginalised from energy policy-making, though he is the most qualified. He is very unhappy that he is not using his skills in the nuclear arena in South Africa.
“In any normal technically aware society, I should have been approached to be the chairman of the board at the very least, or the chief executive officer, so as to lead the AEC to a new era.” Instead, he was overlooked, and a Zimbabwean was recruited to a senior post.
Sibiya believes that in a free society people are appointed purely on merit, not for political affiliation. For instance, the scientific adviser to the president of the US is not affiliated to any political party.
“I am not politically affiliated because I would like to be capable of expressing a professional opinion that is not affected by party political thinking, but that derives purely from professional judgment,” he says.
He has had two tempting offers to leave South Africa. He is now busy marketing himself to the private sector and to the government.
“If something doesn’t happen by the end of this year, my family and I are leaving South Africa for good. I am looking for opportunities in any country where I can practise my profession. I can’t be criticised for acting rashly. For the past 15 years, since my return to South Africa, I have suffered the most humiliating experience of being sidelined in my own profession in my own country.”
He has made representations to the energy ministry and to the office of the deputy president, indicating his readiness to assist the government in the area of energy – of tapping South Africa’s energy resources for the benefit of the country. He is hopeful the government will consider the matter at the highest level, and probably within weeks he will hear from it.
“I hope this will work out,” he says. “I hope you won’t be interviewing me at the airport like Wilson Mokgadi.”
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