We are a country that works. The year is only seven days old and all aspects of our life, including politics, are slowly picking up.
We can either wake up imbued with confidence that this country will continue to function or with anxiety over possible racial wars, imminent nationalisation and the consequent flight of foreign investment or the real possibility that the poor — left out of the benefits of the “new South Africa” — will finally rise up.
The ANC is meeting this weekend in Polokwane to decide what our priorities will be for the year. It’s the democratic system we have chosen.
About 65% of South Africans put their confidence in the ruling party to make decisions on our behalf and they will decide accordingly. We’ll have to ride along on whatever route they choose.
It is not a perfect arrangement, mainly because, in line with our electoral system, we have no means of recalling those governing us and have to abide by their whims until 2014.
The president will read out the annual statement on January 8 and probably reiterate the ANC’s five priorities and talk about the government’s intensified focus on them without really saying anything that will shake our world.
The party man
President Jacob Zuma is the quintessential party man, with the remarkable quality of refusing to say anything that gives him a unique identity and personal stamp.
He is a president whose philosophy we are still trying to decipher. But we can get by and muddle along with him — as the Americans predicted pre-2009, according to the WikiLeaks documents, when many South Africans were worried about a man who had survived a rape rap and still faced fraud and corruption charges.
For those who don’t want him to continue, there is still a possibility that the ANC, as it did with Thabo Mbeki, could decide that he must not come back. But that would be up to the ruling party, not us, to decide.
We have no reason to believe that Zuma will want to stay forever, but even about that we’re not certain.
It is quite inconceivable to imagine an Ivorian Laurent Gbagbo situation here with the incumbent president refusing to hand over power to a successor after losing elections and using the military to suppress dissent.
If Zuma were to go tomorrow there would be no reason to panic about his successor and write a book titled “When Zuma Goes”, as we did with When Mandela Goes.
On their way
Bitter recriminations will surely arise as politicians square up and jostle ahead of the local government elections this year, pencilled in for some time around May. But the fights will start now as the process to decide who is retained and who stays gets under way.
You can easily predict what is coming. Chairs will be thrown at town halls, someone’s party membership will be summarily terminated, a meeting will be disrupted and abruptly ended and friends will turn on one another and leak damaging information as they all attempt to be nominated as candidates during the elections.
But of one thing we are almost assured — the elections will take place with little violence, and no lives will be lost. The fact is South Africa works.
Aids and crime are still embarrassingly high compared with the rest of the world but statistics point to a steady decline in both over the years.
The year 2011 will see whether the ANC and government will persist with their foolhardy attempts to curb freedom of speech through the mooted media tribunal and the Protection of Information Bill. But last year proved that the media and civil society would not fold their arms and allow these freedoms to be eroded without putting up a fight.
The “engagements” with the government on these issues included submissions to Parliament, high-level discussions with Cabinet ministers, street protests and the mobilisation of the international media.
Of course, the courts remain a last resort to ensure that the democratic gains made since 1994 are not lost to politicians bent on enforcing a secretive society. We can speak confidently of the independence of the judiciary in this country, even if it is periodically labelled counter-Ârevolutionary and still faces transformation challenges.
The ruling party is also clearly not united over this media tribunal. Some of its leading figures, including Pallo Jordan, Tokyo Sexwale, the Minister of Human Settlements, and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe have been openly critical of the over-Âzealousness on this matter.
‘Fear no more’
There is much panic about the racist and sexist rants of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and fears that he will wreck this economy through nationalisation. But I say fear no more — this country is far bigger than Malema and it is unlikely the rest of South Africans (even those in the ANC) will allow him to run riot.
There will simply never be a wholesale nationalisation of private companies such as Zanu-PF is pushing for in Zimbabwe. But to avoid agitation on this issue, the government must accelerate the process of changing the living and economic conditions of the majority black people who remain trapped in poverty, although not necessarily Âdestitute as was the case with many before 1994.
We all rightly complain about service delivery but, unlike in ZimbabÂwe, where people suffer in silence, communities here, whether in Khayelitsha, Khutsong or Balfour, make their voices heard in very powerful and sometimes disturbing ways.
We sincerely hope that ministers such as Aaron Motsoaledi (health) and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (home affairs), who dominate headlines for their work rather than business deals and wastage of taxpayers’ money, are providing positive role models and inspiration to up-and-coming small-time politicians.
While we find it easy to create a rogues’ gallery or rattle off the names of corrupt politicians, we must remember this country still has the likes of Gwen Ramokgopa, Jeremy Cronin, Nhlanhla Nene and Yunus Carrim as a second layer of governors who are competent enough to step into the shoes of the incumbents.
There is also an underutilised welter of experience among opposition party members who are currently limited to shouting from the sidelines and whose potential is not being realised.
Talking of opposition parties, while we are grateful for their presence at every level of government, this democracy could be even better if they stepped up their game a bit more.
The push and pull on economic policy is regrettable while most of our relatives and neighbours remain trapped in “the second economy”. There are competing interests among those mandated to craft an economic policy that will lift economic growth and enable job creation, with some opting for short-term populist measures such as more welfare and others who really want the country to work in the long term.
We must all get in there and attempt to make this country what we want it to be.