‘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.
What will the old guard do?
If Jacob Zuma thought Nelson Mandela’s death would somehow shift public attention from his personal problems, or repair a fractured African National Congress, he must be solely disappointed.
For the many testimonies to Mandela’s integrity and humanity at the memorial service served to lay bare the flaws in Zuma’s own character to the point that he was booed by ANC supporters.
The Nkandla cloud still hangs over him like the ghost of Christmas past. His ministerial lackeys have tried to move the blame for the compound’s excesses on to their predecessors, claiming that Zuma was not party to the planning of them, but those scapegoats have refused to lie down.
Trying to row back against these turbulent currents, Jacob Zuma recently turned down a five per cent salary increase. But people are asking why he didn’t insist that the whole Cabinet did the same.
Now the biggest trade union in the tripartite alliance, the Metal Workers Union, is calling for his resignation and threatening to withdraw its support for the ANC at the next general election.
That election is less than four months away. Surely the ANC old guard – Cyril Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki and others – cannot just stand by and watch their party fragment ever further. Surely they will try to persuade him to step down before the poll or even threaten to impeach him if he refuses.
After all, with much less justification, Zuma himself forced Mbeki out five years ago.
A crime against humanity
If it does at all, history should remember Jacob Zuma for his obvious belief that the State Treasury is his personal bank account.
And perhaps for his ability to surround himself with sycophantic ministers whose job seems to be to defend him against those who challenge his indulgences instead of calling him to account for them, as those holding their office would do in a true democracy.
Nkandla ought to be Jacob Zuma’s Watergate.
Even though there have been attempts to conceal the evidence of his private excesses, it is there and bare enough: a huge estate consisting of a house for every one of Zuma’s wives, towering security fences, a tunnel leading to an underground bunker, a clinic and tuck shop, reservoir, a million rand cattle kraal and an adjacent helipad.
All of it paid for by public money.
But added to that, Nkandla represents a crime against humanity.
An estimated 160 000 people live in the Nkandla area. Nine out of ten of them are unemployed. The rate of HIV is almost the highest in the country.
Outside of Zuma’s laager, most dwellings are without electricity and adequate water. At two-thirds of the cost of his R260-million estate, they could have both.
Jacob Zuma must know that, for these are his neighbours, his own people. Which can only mean he doesn’t care.
This gallery contains 3 photos.
A wing and a prayer
LUANDA – Perhaps because of their maritime background, the Portuguese display a healthy cynicism about airlines and flying.
Many still maintain the acronym of their national carrier, TAP, stands for Take Another Plane.
And in the old Lourenco Marques, Mozambique, expatriates from the mainland used to say the name of the internal service, DETA, was equally cautionary. It warned travellers: Don’t Expect To Arrive.
What slogan, one wonders, would they apply to the present-day TAAG (Transportes Aereos de Angola) line in this other independent province?
Terror And Anguish Guaranteed? Transports Arabs And Goats? Either would be apt.
Travelling TAAG is like being on a mid-quality indigenous bus in almost any part of the continent, with the essential difference that the trauma is all taking place at 30 000 feet.
The impression that this may not be your ordinary everyday shuttle begins with a small maul at Luanda Airport at six in the morning – a crush of humanity, of people violently intent on being somewhere else.
To say the aircraft eventually becomes packed would be a laughable understatement. Every seat is taken, three-quarters of them twice over. The additional numbers consist of children, lap-held. Some are sucklings, noisily having breakfast. Most of the rest could qualify as the oldest babies in the world.
Such congestion makes it difficult to slap at the mosquitoes and flies that screen anxious first-timers from the demonstration of how they would be expected to conduct themselves should the aircraft end up in the drink.
A subjective appraisal of conditions suggests that prospect may not be too far distant.
Outside on the apron, a hefty queue of passengers snakes its way to another TAAG 737. Following it is a tractor and trailer bearing that flight’s luggage.
A man in overalls is riding shotgun on the trailer. It hits a rut in the tarmac and several suitcases and parcels fall off. This amuses the trailer attendant to the extent that he tosses a few more over the tailgate for good measure. He continues to chortle as he arrives and helps load the hold.
After the plane to Malanje takes off, five cases and two parcels remain scattered on the apron.
While the cabin doors of our aircraft are about to close, two white men clamour up the stairs. “We’re with the commander,” they say. Immediately, two seats are cleared in the front row and the congestion ebbs back to compensate.
Coffee, tea or milk? A ridiculous prospect on Flight 016. Although there are five hostesses aboard, adding madly to the overload, no trolley would be able to negotiate the aisle.
TAAG captains seem to have a width of discretion on public safety. The man who flies us to Lubango takes the direct route, right over the war zone. And he does not bother with the tight-circle descent, the internationally accepted way of keeping missiles out of posteriors.
We eventually return to Luanda by a deviation further out to sea, taking in distant aspects of Benguela and Lobito. That pilot should go far; the other, the further the better.
Lubango airport is like a scene from MASH, abuzz with helicopters, hospital planes and MIG-21s and 23s. The MIGs are enthralling with their low sweeps and parachute-assisted landings. We have a fair opportunity to appreciate them. The plane from Luanda is an hour late.
But its lateness is less surprising to the government officials who have delivered us to the airport than the fact that it has arrived at all. Apparently every day at Lubango airport contains an element of lottery.
Just ahead in the queue is our commander himself. At the foot of the stairway he is stopped by a private in the Fapla army, who says he may not proceed until the aircraft is searched.
“But I’m the captain!” says the captain.
“Maybe you’re the captain in the air,’ says the soldier, ‘but I’m the captain on the ground.”
TAAG advertises 15 regular flights out of Luanda. Insofar as it is within my power to decide, the airline will be at least one passenger short on every such occasion.
From “One Man’s Africa”
John Ryan 