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South Africa: not civil war but sad decay

Rian Malan

Wednesday, 11th October 2006

Rian Malan, acclaimed author of My Traitor’s Heart, says that the rise of Jacob Zuma as a serious presidential contender is a terrible symbol of his country’s inexorable decline into disorder, political corruption and maladministration

Alas, poor Thabo. I’m no great fan of our remote and autocratic president, but the charges emanating from the red brigade �” ‘betraying the poor’ and ‘tolerating inequality’ �” are asinine. A former communist, Mbeki saw the light in the late 1980s and cajoled his comrades into a historic compromise with capitalism. His saturnine manipulation of business and labour led to a massively increased tax harvest, which in turn financed the creation of a welfare state, with 11 million poor now receiving subsistence grants of one sort or another. This is amazing. A welfare state in Africa!

Unfortunately, such goodies are the fruits of gradualism, and I can’t see us staying the course. Jacob Zuma wants the big job, so he promised to resurrect the ANC’s revolutionary tradition, whereupon the movement’s most dedicated activists immediately rallied to his standard. As I see it, the only way for Mbeki loyalists to block Zuma is by promising even more loot to the masses, and once they do that, Zuma will surely move even further leftward. Nobody (save DA leader Tony Leon, who is white and therefore irrelevant) is going to stand up and say, ‘Sorry, folks, this isn’t the answer, we have to work harder, exercise self-discipline and bring white technocrats back into government so as to make things work again.’

And besides, if by some miracle Mr Leon started swaying the electorate, would our rulers put up with it? The ANC dominates almost everything else, but it has never won an election here in Cape Town. This enrages the city’s black power faction, which has prevailed upon the ANC to oust DA Mayor Helen Zille and impose a multi-party government. The stated reason for this initiative, launched two weeks ago, is that Zille’s coalition is weak and unstable. Maybe so, but we all know it’s really a power grab, inspired at least in part by fears that Africa’s last white- and Creole-controlled city will continue to prosper while all else hurtles into a black hole of dysfunctionality. What can we do? Some in the ruling party have a peculiar view of democracy. They see it as a system designed to put themselves in power. If voters fail to understand this, their mistakes must be corrected by fiat.

No, there won’t be civil war. Whites are finished. According to a recent study, one in six of us has left since the ANC took over, and those who remain know their place. For apartheid-era law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, this turned out to be on his knees, washing the feet of those he sinned against during the struggle. Truly! He carried a briefcase and a basin into various government buildings and performed acts of abject contrition in public. No doubt Mr Vlok’s bones were warning him to repent before the end came.

Ah well. Let’s look on the bright side. Osama bin Laden has no beef with us, we are not sinking into a Mesopotamian quagmire and the weather is wonderful in summer. Anyone want a house here?

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