South Africa's Political Disease

South Africa’s Political Disease

Can South Africa’s Ailments still be cured?

Stes de Necker

South Africa's famous heart specialist, the late Prof. Chris Barnard, once said that the one thing he learned in medical science is that most of the diseases or ailments, will progressively degenerate until it reaches a certain point where curative treatment is no longer possible.

A certain "point of no return".

Once the degeneration has passed this limit, then all that remains is death of the patient or drastic intervention to operate and remove the affected body part.

For example, a hole in someone’s tooth can be filled, but once the rot became too much, then all that remains is to remove the tooth.

The current political situation in South Africa is certainly ideal comparable to Prof. Barnard's theory.

The question is: Can South Africa's political disease be cured?

Never in the history of South Africa, has the socio-economic outlook for South Africa looked so grim. If this land was a human patient, it would have been admitted to an intensive care unit long ago!

After eighteen years of ANC rule, we are experiencing the most labor unrest, murder, theft, corruption and civil disobedience this country has ever seen.

More worrying is the fact that political opportunists and radical elements like Julius Malema and the Youth League, effectively abuse the volatile political climate to promote their own socialist ideologies.

South Africa surprise the world in 1994 with it’s peaceful transition to a new political order and the relatively peaceful progress that has been made thus far.

It is unfortunate that the country's president, Jacob Zuma, and the current government, do not realize that the serious socio-economic unrest experienced in South Africa today, is not the prime illness, but merely a symptom of a much more serious underlying cause.

Radical elements within the ANC managed to enforce a totally unrealistic wage demand to the Lonmin mine, blame the police for the unrest that occurred, discredit existing labor unions and rendered the government powerless to control the situation.

Lonmin was forced to concede to the strikers's wage demands, the police were forced, under severe provocation, to defend themselves and experienced trade unions were discredited as not representing their members. A deadly recipe to overthrow the current system and to place it in the hands of irresponsible and uneducated radicals.

Patchwork, whenever trouble arises, will not solve the problem. On the contrary, it only give those radicals, who want to overthrow the existing order, more power in their quest for revolution. Forced economic adjustments, adjustments in the education system, changes to agricultural policy and a host of other “laslappies” only aggravate the situation even more!

Drastic changes in government policy is needed to restore the situation. Drastic changes which are unfortunately impossible to introduce under current government policy.

For example:

• To end strikes and riots with force when the nation's security is under threat;

• To give the police full power to defend themselves when their lives are threatened;

• To restrict so-called freedom of speech when domestic security is threatened;

• To effectively eradicate corruption and self-enrichment when the country's economy is threatened;

• To get rid of inefficiency when service delivery doesn’t happen.

Since 1994 this government could not manage to grow South Africa's economy by more than 3.5% pa. At this rate of growth there exist no possibility to solve the unemployment problem, which lies at the root of all other socio-economic disorders.

Distribution of income between rich and poor is much more un-evenly than in 1994, the country's food supply has drastically decreased, real inflation has soared and South Africa has one of the world's highest unemployment rates.

Unfortunately, the South African government for too long has neglected to treat ailments in the system effectively. Since 1994 un-popular decisions were postponed, serious deficiencies were not addressed and painful corrections were not done.

The question is:

Is the situation in South Africa still treatable, or are we already past the point of no return?

I, for one, believe that we are already past that point. South Africa faces a total political meltdown and still the ANC government is busy dancing around the fire of political opportunism and denial of the reality.

The day will come when the word "Comrade" will also be a slang word in this country as is currently the case in Russia.

When the world still thought communism was indestructible, it was already just an empty shell.

It will serve the government well to realise that, like communism, "ANC-ism" is not infinite and indestructible!