How much longer must we live with this rotting fish?

Years ago, I became a foreign correspondent in Africa because the apartheid government withdrew my official Press card. And thus I became limited in what I could report in my own country.

Not that I had written anything that wasn’t honest or accurate. But it was critical of the policies of separate development, the segregation of people because of their colour.

Thus I was surprised when the same government approved my application for dual citizenship, allowing me to get a British passport to travel freely in Africa.

I knew the sub-continent well. For a year, I had worked on a newpaper in Zimbabwe, when it was Rhodesia. Later, I had reported on UDI from Zambia’s perspective. I had covered the independence celebrations in the three former British protectorates – Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. I had travelled extensively in Namibia, then South-West Africa, and Mozambique.

All that exposure to social normality I had enjoyed. It was refreshing to escape South Africa’s stultifying politics, to be where people behaved naturally, where attitudes were not directed by race or prejudice.

In 1975, independence came to Portugal’s African provinces, Angola and Mozambique. When would what seemed inevitable, democracy, happen in South Africa? Not in my lifetime, I thought. As confirmation, the apartheid government sent the army into Angola, at the behest of the CIA, to try to ward off communism. And when the South African forces were in a position to occupy Luanda, the capital, the CIA asked it to withdraw.

Then, in 1990, came the great “Rainbow Nation” transition. President F W de Klerk – under considerable economic pressure from world sanctions – unbanned the African National Congress and freed Nelson Mandela. I was in Lusaka when ANC leaders began 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 while they were alive.”     Evidence of that unreadiness (and immaturity) came early. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. Instead, the new government approached the International Monetary Fund for a huge loan. It announced there would be free health care for children under six and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers. And a raft of social grants.

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 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.

Introducing these grants may have been a naive mistake but they have become an area for 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 twenty 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 provincial 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, but not paid.

Well, if an official is intent on feathering his own nest, he is very likely to be derelict in his duties. And the chronicle of neglect grows almost daily.

The Electricity Supply Commission’s lack of preparation for the future, which resulted in regular power cuts, did huge damage to commerce and industry. The dyke seems to be plugged, but how effectively?

And now we have critical water shortages. The drought is to blame for much of that. But in twenty years the ANC government hasn’t built a single new dam. Worse, some of the biggest municipalities haven’t kept existing dams and reservoirs in proper repair. So, for example, supplies are available from Lesotho’s Highlands Water Scheme to alleviate some problems. But the pumps that would carry that water to the reservoirs need replacing.

It is all a tragic state of affairs for the millions of us who had such high hopes for our country in 1990 and beyond. But cynics would say that is the nature of rainbows. They are a trick of the light and they don’t last. And there is no gold at the end of them.

South Africa’s own gold, for so many years the mainstay of our economy, now accounts for a few percent of the Gross Domestic Product. And that economy looks less stable with every budget. It does not help that university students are now clamouring for a free education, worthy though their campaign may be.

If all the money lost to graft, lavished on unnecessary grants and benefits, could somehow be recovered, we would be in a better position to meet such demands when they arise. It would also help if our glorious leader would pay back the R246 millon squandered on what he calls “just a house”.

Jacob Zuma admitted this month that he puts the interests of the ANC ahead of the interests of the country. If he was honest, he would have gone further and admitted that he puts the interests of Jacob Zuma ahead of both.

Now he wants a four billion rand presidential jet capable of intercontinental flight, with a seating capacity of 30 and a conference room capable of holding eight. Why? Is he planning to hold secret party meetings  at thirty thousand feet with his top incompetents while they hob-nob around the world?

Political commentator Justice Malala observed this week that “a fish rots from the head down”. That is certainly true in our case. But how much longer must South Africans live with this stench of corruption and avarice?