Ratings downgrade. What Next?

The second set of Ratings downgrades has set the scene for the unfolding of the disaster that the ANC has been working towards since it came to power. The ANC seems to be oblivious to the likely consequences of its several sets of policies, all aimed at turning the country into a communist oriented tribal society, in complete contradiction to the world-wide experience of numerous countries. Nowhere in the world has a country been successful under an economic system that relies on Marxist principles, while every country that has applied capitalism as its guiding light has enjoyed at least some growth on a sustained basis. Equally, no country managed under the tribal system that seems to be the objective of the current President has enjoyed either freedom for its citizens or strong growth. The reasons for the insistence of the ANC under Jacob Zuma to apply these systems in what used to be a progressive democracy might appear unclear, until one looks at the background to the man.

Zuma grew up in a tribal society, where education was parlous, wealth was indicated by the large car driven by the local strongman while everyone else walked, and where the man in the family enjoyed all the power and made all the decisions. Zuma’s ambition was to become one of those strongmen, and his early brainwashing in the ideals of Marxism, imparted by his comrades in the Soviet-supported Freedom Struggle was convincing to a mind not opened by exposure to any other understanding. Mandela was similarly brainwashed by experts, but Mandela was an intelligent, learned man, with the ability to understand what he was told and what he saw, and the mental capacity to apply that knowledge and understanding to his actions when he came to power. Zuma is neither educated nor intelligent. His driving force remains the desire to be the village strongman, although he has shifted his aim from the village to the continent, and his understanding of how to reach that goal has not changed. He believes that a leader is a ruler. He slyly works out his political moves to gain power, and he has gathered around him a group of yes-men and women who have as little understanding and intelligence as he, and who recognize that the reason they are in that position is entirely their support of Zuma. They cannot contradict him, even if they had enough understanding of what they are doing to know that what he proposes is a sure way to disaster. They cannot take the risk of offering good advice, as this will be seen by him as a subversion of his authority, to be punished by removal from the source of their good fortune. The result is a frightening mix of servility and incompetence, at an extremely high cost to the citizens.

Zuma is not a leader, but then, in his warped view of the way the world works, his position is reliant on an exercise of power, not on making decisions that are good for the majority. In his tribal background, the chief was the ultimate authority, with the right to receive obeisance from his subjects as well as the proceeds of the rule of law. The Constitution is, to a very large extent, an inconvenient fetter on his freedom of actions, to be subverted in its words as in its spirit, and he works tirelessly to disempower the safeguards for the citizens imposed by it. Where that cannot be done, he takes steps to redirect the aims of the Constitution by appointing stooges to key positions, as he has now done in virtually every important Ministry and every Chapter 9 institution. He, and Mbeki, his predecessor, have, to a very large extent, removed Parliament by refusing to indulge in a meaningful debate, the very essence of a Parliamentary system, in which the mental capabilities of every Member should be applied to resolving the needs of the country. He and his Party use Parliament as a rubber stamp for what Zuma and his stooges want done. The fact that this does not work to the advantage of the country appears to be lost on this strongman.

With his background, and supported by his successes in gaining an unprecedented level of raw power in the society, Zuma is now confronted with a situation in which the previously compliant suppliers of funds will be withdrawing those funds. Such international lending and investment is the lifeblood of a modern economy, but Zuma has no background of education or experience, education or reading to understand that. His comment during the State of the Nation Address, that, if the Ratings Agencies chose to downgrade South Africa, they would be replaced by a BRICS Rating Agency, is a very clear indication of his lack of understanding, and the comments by a Minister, Nomvula Mokonyane, that the withdrawal by foreign investors from the country is a good thing, because the ANC could then allow them to invest in the future on our terms, presumably a comment deriving from Zuma himself, is a frightening demonstration of the lack of mental capability present in his Cabinet.

Given all of this, coupled with the statements by the Minister of Police encouraging a more militaristic approach and the reports that the nuclear deal, with Russia, will now proceed at full steam, regardless of the parlous state of the country’s finances, and capped off by the seeming impossibility of Zuma being able to protect himself against the imposition of criminal charges after he steps down as President, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to understand that Zuma will do whatever he must to remain in the position of power that he so enjoys. There can be little doubt that he will set his Military Veterans and Youth League thugs to work to terrorise the population into accepting the extension of his ‘leadership’ indefinitely, as a dictator in the form made popular by Robert Mugabe. The only difference between the two ‘leaders’ is that Mugabe is an intelligent man, although devoid of principles. Imagine what the life dictatorship of Zuma, a man in whom slyness and cunning take the place of every good trait embodied in Nelson Mandela, will make of the Rainbow Nation.