Another Warning About the Ticking SA Bomb

In the last while several Black leaders/commentators have used the "time bomb" analogy in the context of where SA is headed under ANC leadership. Zwelenzima Vavi referred to a "ticking bomb" Moeletsi Mbeki says the ANC is like kids playing with a grenade--sooner or later one of them will figure a way of pulling out the pin and then there will be loss of life. Now Rhoda Kadalie has also used the bomb analogy: "we are sitting on a time bomb," she wrote.

Moderate Blacks are realizing where we will end up under the current leadership, or lack of it rather. This is hugely encouraging. We need to spread the word. I don't think the current power mongers in the ANC will heed the call--it is hard to change your ways when you perceive it as successful and the ANC believe they are successful. So this, like their process of getting rid of apartheid, is going to be a bottom up struggle by the youth and by those who value progress rather than power.

We are tired of the excesses of those in power at the cost of the poor and those who want to be the best they can be.

Here is her article. Thank you Rhoda for speaking out and waking us up to the possibilities that the ANC has completely lost sight of.


The dumbing down of our youth
Rhoda Kadalie
08 June 2011


Rhoda Kadalie says the ANC's gravest error was to mistake change for progress


The ANC has failed South Africa's youth.

Its Youth League is more concerned about the conspicuous consumption and instant wealth of its leader, Julius Malema, than pressurising government to address the needs of the youth. A month ago I spoke at a university graduation. The comment that received the most applause was my advice to students not to let "Julius Malema derail them from achieving their dreams."

The fear that he will become president one day is deep, and thousands of young people are tired of having him thrust down their throats. The sooner the ANC refrains from using its youth leaders as pawns in their political games, the better for all of us.

It should, instead, invest energy and resources in the holistic development of young people to prepare them for a better future. In the meantime, our white counterparts are continuing on an upward trajectory, getting on with life, educating their children, creating platforms for them to excel in sports and the arts, and sending them abroad when there is no work for them here.

I see how they excel in the orchestras, the eisteddfods, at public speaking, classical music and maths and science competitions.

Black SA, on the other hand, is on the decline. And Parliament, as the body that represents us, is itself a display of mental vacuity. The inanity of public discourse seems almost deliberate and the youth has become a casualty of the national "dumbing down" process.

The South African Institute of Race Relations' Fast Facts (May 2011) reveals a picture that is grim and bears repeating. Teenage pregnancies are rife and resulted in some 50 000 of school girls dropping out of school in 2007 - a 151% increase since 2005.

Equally alarming is the result of a survey conducted in KwaZulu Natal of 14 - 22 year-olds which revealed that 54% of young men left school because of fathering a child. "Girls aged 17 - 19 account for 93% of pregnancies among 15 - 19 year olds and research cited by LoveLife has suggested that teen pregnancy is much more likely to occur after school drop out." "... Abortions among under-18 year olds rose by 124% from 4 432 in 2001 to 9 895 in 2006."

Poor education results add fuel to the fire. Of the one million students who enrolled in grade 10 in 2007, 51% wrote the matriculation exams. Of those 31% passed grade 12 in 2009, and only 10% shockingly gained matriculation exemptions.

On average 17% of 16-18 year olds were not in school in 2006. University throughput rates are no better. Of 138 000 students who enrolled at university in 2002, 52% gave up while 15% were still studying after five years.

SA's dysfunctional school system and poor university throughput rates explain the high unemployment rates amongst the youth. In 2009 48% of SA's of 15 - 24 year olds were unemployed; by 2010 unemployment in that group increased to 51%. Some 3.3 million are not in employment, education, or training.

This bleak scenario coexists with high rates of HIV, sexual assault, rape and crime, and dysfunctional families, where fathers are mostly absent and mothers and grandmothers bear the brunt of child rearing. With 36% of the entire prison population aged 25 and under, the future looks bleak indeed.

The ANC's magnificent victory over apartheid paved the way for it to undo the carnage that the group areas act, forced removals, relocation and resettlement wreaked on black families. Dominated by an educated black male leadership, the Party was uniquely placed to create role models for young black men by adopting policies and programmes to heal family dysfunction caused by the past.

Had they roped in religious and civil society organisations to help them rebuild families, nurture parental responsibility and build social capital amongst communities, at the inception of our democracy, SA today would have been a better place. Safe sex campaigns should have accompanied campaigns about safe relationships, mutual respect, love and compassion.

Instead, the ANC's gravest error was to mistake change for progress. It has reneged on one of its most important functions - nation-building. We are sitting on a time bomb and unless we act fast, society will unravel. To quote John Kerry: "...it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families."

This article first appeared in Die Burger.

Another Black Moderate Speaks Out Against ANC Racism

We know that Zille was against racism and against apartheid long before 1994 and she was not quiet. But I agree with Mike Mathabela, she can speak out more. I know she has recently condemned the ANC for their racist campaign and she has called for a democracy based on values rather than division. I'm glad that there are more and more moderate blacks speaking out too.

Zille owes us a courageous speech on race
Mike Mathabela

07 June 2011 Article rating:-->
Mike Mathabela says the DA leader needs to chide white racists to mend their wicked ways
Zille Owes Nation Race Speech
A day before the recent Local Government Elections, a racial incident occurred which almost derailed my resolve to, for the first time, vote for the DA. I was almost run down by a burly White male who proceeded to hurl demeaning expletives including the K-word at me after I had run to safety.
I was crossing the road at a marked pedestrian crossing in Sasolburg when he charged down at me in his Land Rover vehicle.
During that emotional moment, I resolved to resort to my old ways of voting for the ANC the next day. How could I, a middle-aged Black man, betray my conscience and painful experience to vote for a party like the DA as embodied by this reprehensible low life who almost ran me over?
Later I sobered up and reasoned that I must be sufficiently matured to still vote for the DA. My objective to help dislodge the ANC's firm grip and monopoly of the South African political space was far more overwhelming than the racist attitude of this burly low life.
The ANC's corruption streak as well as its stifling of the democratic space had to be weakened through empowering the Opposition politics; whether one was persuaded by its logic or not. The ANC's stranglehold had to be slackened. We need change!
That said and done, Helen Zille owes this country a courageous speech on race. She must atone for the painful, continuing racist attitudes of a significant number of Whites towards their fellow Black citizens.
If she must be taken seriously by the Black voters, she has to chide these racists to mend their crooked ways else they have no room in the DA, indeed in the New South Africa. She must tell the farmer to stop underpaying and ill-treating his farm workers, as if they were sub-human. She must tell the Madams to treat their helpers with respect and dignity. She must tell her White supporters to fully embrace a South African identity.
She must ask them to come out in droves to attend National events and celebrations. She must tell them to come out to her township rallies, to sing, to toyi-toyi together with their Black counterparts.
She has to cajole the business community to open up the economic space to Blacks and vigorously advance employment equity, BEE, etc. Helen Zille must lead the effort to align the national confidence levels: down scale the unrealistically high, arrogant confidence levels of many Whites riding the wave of economic success and upscale the low confidence levels of the many Blacks disadvantaged in the economic space.
The superiority complex and hoarding of resources by many Whites, must give way to a new order of mutual respect, treating others with dignity and a shared South African nationhood.
Barack Obama mustered this courage to deliver a speech on race during his previous campaign. Does Helen Zille have the courage to do the same? That will define her greatness or otherwise as a leader.
Mike Mathabela is the Chairperson of the Sasolburg Black Professionals Advancement Forum (SBPAF). He writes in his personal capacity.

Vavi Speaks Out Against Where the ANC is Heading

Another black leader speaks out against the ruling party and the dangers created by impractical strategies and extreme attitudes held by some. There is hope. But like Mbeki, he is warning about a "ticking" bomb. Moderate South Africans need to take action now. Here's a SAPA article on Vavi's views:

"Unless drastic action is taken to reduce unemployment, South Africa risks facing another 1976 uprising, Cosatu general secretary" Zwelinzima Vavi said on Thursday.

"I have already over and over again pointed out the danger of a ticking bomb, that unless we can do something drastic about the crisis of unemployment, in particular youth unemployment, we risk another 1976 uprising," he said in a speech delivered in Johannesburg.He was speaking at a discussion themed "Critical conversations on prospects for a non-racial future in SA".There could be no "genuine reconciliation" if the status quo was maintained."Our argument is that we need a new growth path that can address all the structural fault lines of the colonial economy."Such a path meant breaking up the concentration of power and production."Shouting neoliberal slogans such as saying that there must be economic growth and everything will then fall into place is not only reckless but narrow and irresponsible."Vavi said affirmative action was still essential to achieve reconciliation."But it will not work if it simply means condemning more people from the minorities to unemployment and poverty, while enriching a tiny number of people from the majority.
"True reconciliation and true reconstruction will happen when whites accept that the current inequities are not sustainable, politically, in the long run."Equally, reconstruction and reconciliation will happen the day the black majority accept that equity is of critical importance, but that precisely because of our past the white minority has better education."He said it was up to the black majority to extend the hand of reconciliation."After all the only ones with a better chance to achieve national reconciliation are the victims of the past racial segregation." -- Sapa

When you're in a hole, stop digging

I'm posting here an article by Moeletsi Mbeki. It is this kind of thinking and comment that I hope will find resonance amongst our ordinary people and hopefully move us to real leadership, real freedom and real democracy before, as he puts it, "the bomb explodes" In fact, I'm not hoping, it's already happening. The ANC leadership has a choice, continue digging the hole they find themselves in--in which case they will go down, or heed the words of Mbeki. Either choice is fine with me, because it relieves the ordinary people of what's going on presently.


South Africa: Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes





by Moeletsi Mbeki: Author, political commentator and entrepreneur.

I can predict when SA’s "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded. For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China’s current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA’s minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes. The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkerings with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed. A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. In the civil war that ensued, 200 000 people were killed. The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse.

? Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the ANC came to power;
? In 2007, SA became a net food importer for the first time in its history;
? The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to the loss of 600 000 farm workers’ jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and
? The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor people into SA, which has led to conflicts between SA’s poor and foreign African migrants.

What should the ANC have done, or be doing?The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what SA’s strengths were; identified what SA’s weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses. A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time — even an hour a week — to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels. What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA’s strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE). BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country. It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business’s interests in the upper echelons of government. Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations. Let’s see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE. The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in SA. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business. The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates. That was the design of the big conglomerates. Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates. But what is wrong with protecting SA’s conglomerates?Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy.

? The economy has a strong built-in dependence on cheap labour;
? It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary resources;
? It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our general population;
? It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic solutions; and
? It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large, marginalised underclass.

Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates. The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos. My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground. But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates. The third worrying trend is that the ANC-controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed. What is the state distributing? It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor. This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in SA. This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment. So what is the correct road SA should be travelling?We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for SA today. The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for SA or for many parts of the world. Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors. Mbeki is the author of Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing. This article forms part of a series on transformation supplied by the Centre for Development and Enterprise

The Malema Disgrace--The Hofmeyer Disgrace

I have been thinking about what I wrote in my previous post. Malema has a right to sing about killing "ibunu", but I would ask, how does this serve the best interests of reconciliation and how does it best serve the concept of nation building?

For Steve Hofmeyer to sing about "kaffers" is also his right, but I will ask him the same question.

Who will stop the process of deepening division? How does either action compare to Nelson Mandela's open and energetic support for a rugby team consisting of 14 white players?

Compare that to the silence, and in instances the open support of extremist behavior, that our leaders are showing. It is a disgrace to moderate South Africa and it is a disgrace to the common principles of democracy--I'm talking here about the silence. Our leaders, to warrant the name "leader" need to show leadership and speak out for the values of democracy by acknowledging the right of Malema and Hofmeyer but by openly distancing themselves from the behavior.

Current events around these incidents are serving to polarize our nation further into a democracy based on group support and separation. Democracy based on values, the right of individuals, the right of minority groups, human dignity, equality under the law and above all the right of individuals to strive towards being the best they can be should be our aim. We can all, black, white, no matter what our religious conviction, associate with these values. The impracticality of a democracy based on division and maintaining political power is clearly reflected in our past. Do we want to now allow the pendulum to swing too far the other way? How do we stop the spiral of domination/revolution? Who has the guts to stop perpetuating this?

I call on our leaders to come out of the spiral and to stand up for real democracy. Here are some real democracy values:

Common Good: Working together for the welfare of the community or the benefit of all.

Justice: All people should be treated fairly in both the benefits and the obligations of society. No individual or group should be favored over another person or group.

Equality: Everyone has the right to Political, Legal, Social and Economic Equality. Everyone has the right to the same treatment regardless of race, sex, religion, heritage, or economic status.

Diversity: The differences in culture, dress, language, heritage and religion are not just tolerated, but celebrated as a strength.

Truth: They should expect and demand that the government not lie to them and the government should disclose information to the people. The government and its people should not lie.

Our leaders prefer to uphold what works best in the context of their political power. Today Zuma spoke out against NATO for trying to uphold the above principles in Libya, but he does little to distance himself from Malema's disgraceful behavior. Consider the statement made by F W de Klerk and reported in Die Burger on June 2, 2011: “Dit is onverstaanbaar dat die regering Malema se reg verdedig om ’n liedjie te sing waarin hy vra dat mense doodgeskiet word. Die historiese konteks is irrelevant. Dit sal net so onaanvaarbaar wees as Afrikaners liedjies uit die Anglo-Boereoorlog begin sing wat vra dat Engelse geskiet word.
“Dit is ook onaanvaarbaar vir Malema om wittes misdadigers te noem.
“Dit is selfs meer onaanvaarbaar vir pres. Jacob Zuma om glimlaggend op dieselfde verhoog te sit terwyl Malema, ’n vername ANC-ampsdraer, sulke rassistiese opmerkings maak. Malema se gedrag is onversoenbaar met die Grondwet wat Zuma ’n eed gesweer het om te bevorder.” De Klerk is critical about Malema, but he, like me considers the president's reaction even more unacceptable than Malema's utterings.

Democracy is not giving every person a vote and then polarizing them so you can remain in power to do as you please. Stop hiding behind, "it takes a long time." If our current leaders don't have the guts, then I call on Mandela and Tutu, old as they may be, to re-initiate a march to real freedom and real democracy. The question is not, what do you do when it gets too much, the question is what do you do before it gets worse, what do you do now?

The Malema Disgrace

The solution to the Malema created disgrace in our land is not a court battle to shut him up. Our leaders need to come out and distance themselves from his attempts to run against the concept of living together better. I'm surprised that our president has not spoken out and pointed out that, while Malema has the right to speak out and chant his chant, his rhetoric is actually in conflict with the ANC slogan on the election posters: "Together we can do better."Our president's silence regarding this matter brings further shame. It is a silent encouragement to widen racial division. It is a shame that, unlike Nelson Mandela, he is not looking for opportunity to integrate moderates, but quietly encouraging extremists to polarize our nation further. Shame on all our leaders who can make a difference. Shame on you Mr Zuma.

We have a problem in Africa: We observe some democratic principles and ignore others.

A democracy is based on the model that not everything the individual or family needs can be provided by the individual or family e.g. roads, education, health… So the individual pays a levy, a tax and elects a central body to provide these things.

Obviously the central body, the government, has administrative expenses. These have to be carried by the taxpayer as well. But generally speaking, the big chunk of the money collected, the money that rippled up from the ordinary people needs to be spent in a way that benefits the ordinary people. You don’t collect money from everyone and then use it to benefit mostly those who are in government, those who have their hands on the money—that would be corruption. You can devise many clever ways of hiding this corruption, e.g. tenderpreneuring, but it is still corruption.

We invent a voting system to elect who will do the governing. This is democratic and the government is elected democratically.

In Africa this is where the wheels come off in a big way. The elected body abuses the money contributed by the ordinary people: They deploy cadres, they have buddies who tender and get contracts and then mess up the delivery after being paid too much for what they promised. They just mess up the whole system—the money is wasted and lost and stolen before the benefits ripple down like it is supposed to.

This is an oversimplified model. I intend expanding it. But it contains the basic flaws of a system that works upwards in the collection of taxes and election of public “servants” and falls apart in the downward application of the money so collected. This is not democracy. It is abuse.