The Difference between Anti-Black and Pro-South Africa

It has been said that any negative comments regarding the BBEEE policy of the Government is counter-revolutionary and anti-Black.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is the duty of every South African to hold the actions and policies of the Government up to the light, to judge them according to their effect on South Africa and South Africa’s standing in the world, and to make this assessment known to those who are in a position to affect the policies and actions of the Government.  One’s civic duty as a citizen is not discharged by unthinking support of Jacob Zuma or the ANC, or of any other political Party or leader.  That uncritical support can only lead to a decline in the standard of performance of those Parties or leaders, possibly to the point where expressions of adoration of the Great Leader will become as commonplace and necessary as in North Korea.  Even though one may admire and support a Party or a leader, it remains one’s duty to call them to account fully for their actions and to provide feedback on those aspects that one does not like.  The execution of that duty is pro-South African, and should be recognized and valued as an honest attempt to assist the politicians to do the work for which they are elected.

It is a fact, although seldom recognized by the people, and least of all by those in power, that the Government is the property of the people.  Unfortunately, the ANC Government, as most other governments around the world, either does not know this, or they do not wish to acknowledge it.  They view the people as an unnecessary inconvenience, as a means to gain re-election every five years and so requiring the amount of attention to their welfare that is at the lowest level needed to gain that re-election, leaving them and their fellow politicians free to enjoy their life of luxury while they pander to their egos in Parliament and in the occasional Press conference or the five-yearly Party conferences.  The arrogance of Jacob Zuma in swapping an effective Minister of Finance for an unknown and demonstrably failed politician, in order to achieve his spending objectives is clear evidence of this, and he was supported in this arrogance by Jeff Radebe, previously viewed as an upright and intelligent politician, who declared that the President does not have to account to any other person for his choice of Ministers.

This conduct is completely against the spirit of the Constitution, which has been widely touted, by people who do not seem to have the legal or political qualifications to do so, as ’the best Constitution in the world’.  This claim has been clearly demonstrated as incorrect, as the Constitution does not have the checks and balances necessary to counter the self-serving and corrupt practices that South Africans have come to expect from those in political power over the past twenty years.  Unfortunately, Jacob Zuma is Black, and any criticism made of him is perverted by those with an anti-white agenda to be anti-Black.  Again, nothing could be further from the truth.  Almost every White South African was delighted to have Nelson Mandela as President of the new South Africa.  He was not flawless, but most normal people were willing to overlook the flaws and to support him and his efforts to make South Africa a good place for all.  They believed that he was honest and good.   His policies were also not universally accepted, but any discussion on them related to the plusses and minuses of the policies, not to the fact that he was Black.  Unfortunately, Mandela’s successor was not able to jump over his Black shadow and be the President of all the people of South Africa.  His was not the great spirit of Mandela, and much of what he did reignited the Black-White divide.  Zuma and his cronies have worked hard to promote that divide, seeing in the holding up of a “White enemy” a means to divert the attention of their Black electorate from the increasingly visible failings of which they are guilty.  The policies of Black Empowerment have done much to embitter the Whites, not for the reason that they favor the Blacks, but because they have promoted the benefit of underqualified Blacks at the cost of the economy.  Where Mandela understood that the size of the economy could be increased to give the growth portion, and even a willingly-granted share of the rest, to the Blacks, his successors have adopted the view that the size of the economy is static, and that any increase in the fortunes of the Blacks must necessarily be taken from the Whites.  What Whites believed in 1994, that the new dispensation was a way to harness the undoubted capabilities inherent in the Black population to the benefit of all was ignored and, ultimately lost in the clutter of the socialist / populist rhetoric and policies of successive Presidents and Ministers who could not understand the basic laws of economics that govern every single person in a civilized society.  The communist countries of the world have shown convincingly that communism is not capable of providing a good life for all the citizens, yet the ANC has increasingly adopted communistic principles and practices, perhaps because the practice of those systems give them the opportunity to build huge personal fortunes by using their political connections, inevitably at the cost of the increasingly large numbers of poor, rather than as a product of their innate abilities.  Joe Slovo made the statement in 1995, when, in a television debate with Gordon Mulholland, he was asked why he thought that communism would succeed in South Africa when it had failed convincingly everywhere else.  His reply was that communism needed a base of capital to thrive.  Mulholland asked what would happen when that base was exhausted.  Slovo replied:  “When that happens, we’ll try another system!”

What the Whites do not like about the present Government in South Africa is not that it is Black, or that it supposedly represents the majority of the Black population, but that it is incompetent and corrupt.  Neither of those characteristics is inherently a quality of Blacks, or of any other population group.  Most Whites would be overjoyed to be able to support a Government of any Party or racial overtone, provided they could believe that the Government was truly and sensibly working for the good of all the people of South Africa.  Most of the Whites who harbored reservations about the capabilities of Blacks in 1994 have been convinced that Blacks are capable, competent and honest.  Unfortunately, the ANC has earned the disapprobation of those people in the time since Nelson Mandela has ceased stamping his qualities on the Party.  Increasingly, the questions that most Whites have regarding the ability of the ANC to govern have been adopted also by many thinking Blacks, of all stations in life, to the extent that a Black driver remarked recently to a foreign (Black) client that “Many of my friends are now convinced that Jacob Zuma and the ANC have started to worship Satan.”

One can only hope that the present crisis in South Africa will lead quickly to the voters learning that voting for personal handouts cannot produce a country in which all can thrive, in which each person is free to achieve his or her potential, unfettered by a political system that awards patronage to the favored few, or makes laws with the main purpose of buying the votes of the beneficiaries of those laws.  We would all love to live in a country where all the people can believe that their Government is working for all of them.  Most of all, Whites and Blacks would love to put in the effort required to build that country for the benefit of all.  There is a huge untapped reservoir of capability and goodwill, waiting for the right politicians to make South Africa a world leader, rather than a declining Third World economy, striving to meet the standards of Zimbabwe.