Common sense, it seems, is anything but common.

At a time when our economy – which was struggling at the best of times – has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, when Zimbabwe is fast becoming a Venezuela and poverty among the historically disadvantaged is reaching frightening proportions, one would have thought that the obvious priorities for our political mandarins would have been to nurse our economy back to health and to bridge the growing chasm between the wealthy and the poor.  One would have expected that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government in Zimbabwe would have had a single-minded determination to rehabilitate that country among civilised nations and to turn its economy around with the help of much-needed foreign investment.

Alas, common sense, it turns out, is very much in short supply.

Here at home, we have President Cyril Ramaphosa, who would win hands down if any prizes were offered for saying absolutely the right things in his innumerable speeches and public addresses to the nation, and we have a power-drunk governing party which seems content to focus on internal divisions at a time when it should be offering real leadership and putting the country first. Crises such as public funerals and COVID-19, it seems, are not opportunities to take charge and rise to the challenge of marshalling the forces in the same direction and to inspire confidence in a nation that has become scandal weary; instead, these are opportunities to pillage and ensure that leaders and those close to them make as much money as possible.

The opposition is not much better. At a time when the African National Congress is at its most vulnerable, the Democratic Alliance chooses to turn its back on the black majority and to return to the fight-back days of Tony Leon when its predecessor was content to represent only the country’s minorities. When it became clear in the 2019 elections that those who were in the verkrampte wing of the New National Party which was swallowed up by Leon’s Democratic Party to form the DA could not possibly countenance being led by a black man whose ambition was to turn the party into one which might one day appeal more meaningfully to the black majority, the DA chose to remain true to Leon’s values. It chose the past, rather than the future, in a vain effort to lure back those white compatriots it had lost to the Freedom Front Plus.

The DA’s performance in the 2019 elections, which was conveniently – and wrongly – blamed on poor Maimane (when it should have been blamed on Zille’s series of offensive tweets, the merciless hounding of De Lille out of office as Cape Town mayor and the party’s lukewarm – or non-existent – position on matters of real importance to black compatriots), offered that party a great opportunity to ditch its conservative past as ideological purists and reposition itself as a social democratic party which would have the potential of taking on the power-drunk ANC. Instead, it chose to retreat to the comfort of Leon’s Fight B(l)ack position, which had some modicum of success for the FF Plus in last year’s election as Slaan Terug.

Even during Leon’s days, the DA was happy to have black people support or vote for it – as long as they denied their own identities as black people, pretended that apartheid never existed and were happy to be led by their white superiors. That is why, when the likes of Lindiwe Mazibuko, Patricia De Lille and Mmusi Maimane became too uppity and began to believe that they could actually lead the party of white privilege, they had to be cut ruthlessly down to size.

In fact, Maimane’s biggest mistake, after the 2019 elections, was his choice of people to serve on a three-member team to investigate why the DA had performed poorly in those elections – if such a review had to be conducted in the first place. It came as no surprise that the review panel (made up of Leon, Ryan Coetzee and Michiel le Roux and, therefore, seriously lacking in diversity) recommended, among other things, his ousting and a return to a Fight B(l)ack-type party. 

Good luck to Helen Zille and John Steenhuizen with their illusion of a South Africa where race does not matter. They have done a great job of condemning the DA to being no more than a regional party of the Western Cape. Herman Mashaba and Maimane should move swiftly to occupy the space vacated by the DA, and leave the latter to fight for the minorities’ votes with the FF Plus.

While Ramaphosa has the necessary gravitas as Head of State and would appear to mean well with his public pronouncements, the time for speeches is over. Far more important now is the translation of his words into meaningful actions, and not just some public-relations steps such as declaring that ANC members with charges against them will have to “step aside” – while they remain in their positions and draw salaries from the public purse. We will need to see action against the blatant abuse of public resources, such as the use of a South African National Defence Force plane to ferry ANC leaders to a meeting with their Zimbabwean counterparts in Harare.

Tough public pronouncements which are vacuous and are not accompanied by action, such as Ramaphosa’s call on Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to explain herself for having transported an ANC delegation to Harare on a SANDF jet, will continue to erode Ramaphosa’s credibility. The fact is that the President will have known, even before the ANC delegation left, that they were going to be transported on a Government plane – and at a time when ordinary South Africans do not have the luxury of international travel, thanks to the remaining COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

Also, just as President Nelson Mandela was principled enough to denounce Nigeria’s military ruler, General Sani Abacha, for the execution of Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, so, too, should Ramaphosa publicly condemn the goings-on in Mnangagwa’s Zimbabwe. It is utterly unbelievable that the ANC, which correctly called on the international community to ostracise apartheid South Africa in the 1980s (and correctly dismissed the excuses by US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that sanctions would hurt most the very people they were meant to help), today mollycoddles dictators to our north and calls on the international community to lift remaining sanctions against that country because – wait for it – these would hurt most the very people they are meant to help.

Stranger still is the fact that both Ramaphosa’s Government and the ANC would allow themselves to be dictated to by Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF about whom they could see and talk to in that country. Have this Government and the ANC no pride? Does principle count for naught now?

Our country is in trouble. Our economy is shrinking and we have all become poorer than we were in 2009, and yet it is bereft of real leadership. The ANC is a house divided, too internally focused and dogged by corruption; the DA has turned its back on the black majority and is intent on battling it out with the right-wing FF Plus for the white minority vote, and the EFF is a dangerous, highly-opportunistic organisation which thrives on conflict.

As a country, we deserve much, much better. We must all stand up and put enormous pressure on the Sixth Parliament to amend the Electoral Act, as directed by the Constitutional Court, in time for the 2024 general elections so that, in addition to these damaged parties with vested interests, we would be able to have individual men and women of integrity to choose from when we cast our votes. 

Kaizer M. Nyatsumba is a senior business executive in Johannesburg. He writes in his personal capacity.

Posted on: 15 September 2020 | Author: Kaizer Nyatsumba