Time Magazine’s Person of the Year (2006) is persona non grata in South Africa

Hajira Amla | 7 March 2008 

In 2006, you (the general public) were given Time Magazine’s Person of the Year award. Although I still stick to my guns and say the general public only won because the online poll put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the clear favourite to win the award (and that wouldn’t have gone down well in Washington), one cannot help but admit that the world-wide web has put an astonishing amount of volume into the voices of the man on the street with something on his mind.

Between sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Myspace, FaceBook and the blog sections of international news networks, people across the world discuss topics such as the US elections, the war in Iraq, ancient maps, the pigeon conspiracy to take over the world, and to how to remove the stubborn stains in your toilet easily. Not all of it is worthy of serious consideration, but the percentage of people getting involved in web-based discussions and activities is higher than it has ever been, resulting in a higher number of people getting interested, educated and involved in current affairs around the world. 

South Africa is no exception to this trend, with bloggers literally coming out of the woodwork from all sections of our society. Our country indeed offers top quality commentary and analysis into the ways of the world, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Everybody has an opinion, everyone feels that his or her commentary is valid and important, and in a democratic society, so it should be valued as such. Unfortunately, in South Africa, any dissident voice against the government’s plan for the country is dismissed as a racist voice. Oh, and black dissident voices are labeled as “coconut” voices (black on the outside but really just white supremacist on the inside). Go figure. 

Freedom of speech is in such peril at this juncture that most of the non-parastatal newspapers, radio stations and television news teams suffer tenuous, mistrustful and dysfunctional relationships with government departments and ANC bigwigs. The state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has cut off all ties with the dissident media groups, rescinding its membership with the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) and government has effectively put a halt to all advertising in the offending publications. At any given time there are at least two high-level members of the ANC trying to sue the Sunday Times for damning articles relating to allegations of corruption and lecherous behavior. 

Never before has public opinion taken such a turn against government spin, both locally and the world over, than it has in the past few years. Perhaps a mixture of disillusionment about government in general and the feeling that one has more or less total freedom of speech and a platform on which to stand and be heard on the internet has led to the sort of rebellious sarcasm and irreverent humour about government administrations and other current affairs that we see unfolding around us. 

The upswing in blogging has certainly done much to publicise the US primaries and the mud-slinging battles between former first lady Senator Hillary Clinton and the younger Senator Barack Obama, thereby generating massive amounts of interest the world over and in-depth commentary from the public, which is always useful for the campaign team to assess where they are going wrong. 

The African National Congress, sadly, does not seem to experience the same kind of lust for engaging in debate. One wonders if this is an indication of just how patriarchal and domineering our country’s decision-makers really are. The process of democracy seems to begin and end at the national elections once every four years. When concerns are raised, they are rubbished into the shadows. “No, there’s no crisis with regard to crime in South Africa”, “No, there is no division within the ANC”, “No, there is no tension between COSATU, the SACP and the ANC”, “No, I did not accept money from Schabir Shaik”. And it goes on and on… 

If you believed the ANC-led government, you would think all these things had been made up by pessimistic members of the media who have nothing better to do with their time than make up stories. By the way, that really is how the ANC explains it all away. Those in power today seem to be forging ahead with their own plans for the country without holding themselves accountable to the people that voted them into power. And the plans seem to be altogether less than altruistic, not to put too fine a point on it. Here are a few examples: 

·         The government is in the process of dissolving the elite crime-fighting unit called the Scorpions, South Africa’s answer to the rampant fraud and corruption problem plaguing the country’s government, and pushed the proposal through the two-thirds majority Parliament as though it was lubricated with the finest of oils. It may be worth mentioning that seven of the ANC’s National Executive Committee members have been found guilty of criminal offences in the past and six others are currently subjects of criminal investigations (statistics gleefully supplied by Helen Zille of the DA).  

·         The selection of the next president of the ANC is another distasteful case in point. Although the party enjoys such popularity among the citizens of the country as well as a comfortable two-thirds majority in Parliament, they did not feel the need to hold a public referendum on which person should become the next president of the organisation and, inevitably, the country. Just over 4000 ANC members voted to change the leadership that makes decisions for approximately 42 million South Africans (and about five or six million Zimbabweans).  

·          The five ANC Parliamentary whips found guilty of being involved in a wide-ranging travel scam which cost the taxpayer R17.2 million were given plea bargains and were not fired from Parliament last year. Around R9.4 million is owed by Members of Parliament and has yet to be recovered. It is astonishing to think that those who have pleaded guilty to corruption retain their jobs while those within the party who question the wisdom of their leaders are dismissed summarily, for example National Prosecuting Authority boss Vusi Pikoli, the deputy Health minister Nosiviwe Madlala-Routledge and former National Intelligence Agency boss Billy Masethla. 

·         Floor-crossing is another practice which many have argued is downright undemocratic. In a nutshell, every year for a certain period of time, Members of Parliament are allowed to “cross the floor” and join a different political party, but still retain their seats. This makes one wonder why on earth we voted at all to begin with when they can re-arrange themselves on the board as they please – and the floor crossing usually benefits only the bigger parties such as the ANC primarily and the Democratic Alliance to some extent. Smaller parties such as the Independent Democrats are all but crushed each year when they lose the seats they worked so hard for in the national elections. Due to vehement public outcry, floor crossing is set to be scrapped sometime within the next year – we think. But then again, the ANC has already benefitted in a huge way from it for quite a number of years, so it’s not a total loss for them.  

·         Dyantyi vs. Godzille – when the Democratic Alliance managed to wrest control of the City of Cape Town during the March 2006 local elections, the ANC proposed changing the executive mayoral system of government to an executive committee, which would put control of the Mother City back in the hands of the ANC. Following the unsuccessfulness of this bid, the formidable Helen Zille has been accused of many things by the ANC’s local government MEC Richard Dyantyi to try to topple her from her seat of power, including accusing her of the following: failing to implement affirmative action in the municipality (viz., employing white people), spying on non-DA Cape Town city councilors and having links to what the ANC claims is a vigilante group, PADLAC, to which end the mayor was publicly arrested on 9 September 2007. The charges were later thrown out of court.  

There seems to be an almost ironic parallel between Helen Zille and the Democratic Alliance today and Helen Suzman and her Progressive Party of yesteryear – a lone voice of reason in the political arena among a cacophony of zealous bigots trying to force the public to resign themselves to their sometimes radical policies. The South African government’s inclusion of the public in its decision-making processes seems to be inversely proportionate to the level at which the public are willing to become involved. And contrary to good PR practices, the more criticism is leveled at it, the more the ruling party seems to cower back into its shell and plot to gain more control, all the while alienating and intimidating South Africans even further. 

The ANC, and by inference, the government of South Africa, seems to have reached a point of no return as far as undoing the damage it has done is concerned. Those who wish to don rose-tinted glasses and call me negative are most welcome to do so, but through the eyes of one who has researched the fall of the apartheid regime, the new South African government seems to have followed in the doomed footsteps of their racist predecessors by implementing extremist and high-risk laws and policies which only serve to prolong existing tensions between certain groups and create enmity among sections of society which had never previously existed.  

Government has also failed to make good on its promises at election time for jobs, shelter, water and electricity to the poorest of the poor. The only people that seem to have benefited are the “newly elite” government crowd and their BEE protégés. This is a very small section of society, and they all seem to share common surnames, like the Zumas, the Skweyiyas, the Ngcukas, the Nqakulas, the Moleketis, and of course the Shaiks of this world. Funny, isn’t it?