‘They couldn’t run a bath’

In Lusaka, leaders of the African National Congress were returning from exile. In four years, they would be in charge of South Africa.
With the party was a member of the anti-apartheid movement who had been close to them for several years. I asked him what sort of government he thought they would make.
“They are good people,” he said. “But right now they couldn’t run a bath, let alone a government. They’ve got some quick learning to do.”
The man explained, “The ANC has never really prepared itself for this. Before sanctions seriously began to bite two years ago, many members had come to believe that change would not happen in their own lifetime.”
Evidence of that unreadiness (and immaturity) came early, with the announcement of free health care for children under six and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers.
One effect of that has been to clog queues at hospitals and clinics with youngsters and mothers suffering from minor ailments, while chronic patients are delayed or even denied treatment.
Another is much more serious and even tragic. Teenage girls, many of them still at school, have become pregnant in order to get the grants on offer. And hundreds of those have abandoned their babies because they lacked the will or the proper funds to carry on as mothers.
Just a few weeks ago, a two-year-old boy was dumped by his mother in the traffic on a motorway. Fortunately, a truck driver was able to brake as the child ran into the path of his vehicle and the police were on hand to contact the welfare authorities.
Babies have not only been abandoned. They have been battered too. And not only by young mothers driven to their wit’s end by constantly crying infants. There seems to be a boyfriend or partner syndrome in some cases: “If you don’t shut that child up, I will!”
Introducing these grants may have been an honest mistake by honorable men but they have become a point of corruption ever since. Old age pensions continue to be claimed long after the death of the original recipient. Many thousands of rands in social security funds have been embezzled by officials down the line.
The incompetence of civil servants has been another major problem in the 20 years of democracy. A recent independent report showed that less than 20 per cent of municipalities were properly managing the funds allocated to them. Hence all the protests over the non-delivery of services.
Mismanagement is rife at province level too, particularly in the education departments. Witness the scandal in Limpopo a few years ago where hundreds of pupils had to go without school books for most of a year because a consignment had simply been dumped in the veld by the company contracted to deliver them.
Another issue has been the quality of teachers appointed. If they are appointed at all, for there are instances where posts continue to go unfilled, year after year.
This is particularly true in the rural areas where pupils have to write exams on work they have never been taught.
Where money is there, yet no one is sure how it should be apportioned, major corruption can readily flourish. And that in turn is fed by a sense of entitlement that has almost become endemic. If you don’t know where that cash should go, just help yourself! You deserve it, after all, after apartheid.
And that path leads us right to Nkandla, and to a shameless president we legally may call a liar now.
Political commentators differ on how much Jacob Zuma will suffer at the polls through the folly of his R246-million homestead. I believe it will be considerable.
More than a million of the “born free” generation (whom Zuma and company must have come to regard as their party’s voters-in-waiting) are so disillusioned they haven’t bothered to register. Julius Malema’s EFF group should attract a fair number of the former ANC Youth members. And Ronnie Kasrils’s “don’t vote” call to ANC voters at large must be a barometer of how many of the older leaders feel.
If the new ANC leaders had any common sense, they would have called for Zuma’s impeachment ahead of the Democratic Alliance. But then common sense seems to be a commodity in short supply among the present ANC hierachy.
As are honesty and integrity.