Dear Sir,
Having spent a lot of time over the years in Zimbabwe, a question I am sometimes asked is whether I think South Africa is going /will go the same way as Zimbabwe, i.e.’ the Mugabe/ZANU-PF route’. My response always is “No chance, my friend, our country differs from Zimbabwe in ways which ensure that we will not chart the same course, or suffer a similar fate!”. With such a small economy (the Zimbabwean economy at its height, when it still functioned, was roughly the size of the economy of Pinetown, KZN), the means available to Mugabe to oil the wheels of his ‘patronage’ machine were always going to be severely limited. The crunch finally came when the cost to Mugabe of his political hangers-on increased in number and became more demanding to the point that he started hitting on the private sector more and more, squeezing the very life-blood out of the economy. As a result of this and the resultant loss of business confidence, economic stagnation set in. Consume- spend, revenue from taxes, excises, etc., started to dry up. The rest is a matter of recorded history – privately-owned farms and businesses were taken over, banks were interfered with, mines were ‘nationalised’ and Mugabe’s Reserve Bank began printing money in huge quantities to pay the government’s wage bill.
Will we produce a ‘Mugabe-type’ leader? – could a similar sequence of desperation politics occur in South Africa? I don’t believe so. Why not? Our history is different, our demographics are very different. The background and history of the territory and nation now called Zimbabwe are very short in terms of time and transient in nature when compared with that of South Africa. Will the South African ’pillars of democracy’, i.e. the executive, the judiciary, etc., become the personal fiefdom of a Mugabe-type leader? No, I don’t believe so.
May it be, however, that South Africa represents a closer parallel to Kenya? That nation is a country with a longer history, comprising some 45 million souls, with a broad, balanced demographic spread. Certainly more similarities exist than between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Could we end up with a ‘Daniel Arup Moi-type’ leader? Does this represent a far greater danger? As opposed to the ‘Mugabe’ scenario, is an ‘Arup Moi’ scenario a more clear and possible danger?
According to the Kenyans, the affect of Daniel Arup Moi’s15-year reign as leader of their country was devastating. When he took over from Jomo Kenyatta the country’s infrastructure was fully intact and the economy vibrant. Arup Moi changed all that. Widespread nepotism, corruption and tribalism became the order of the day, infiltrating every facet of national life. The country’s infrastructure, comprising transport, national power grid, education, health services, etc., all but collapsed, and remain in a parlous state to this day. As things stand, unless the dynamics in the political life of the country change dramatically, it’s highly unlikely that Kenya will ever recover – rather, it more likely will continue down the slippery slope. The political hegemony that runs the country has its hand on the jugular vein of the body of the Kenyan nation. When the governing party ostensibly lost the democratic election to Raila Odinga’s party some six years ago, the Arup Moi / Kibaki axis refused to let go the reins of power. What amounted to a civil war on tribal lines erupted – this didn’t bother Kibaki at all. To prevent huge bloodshed, Raila Odinga’s party, the winner of the election on the votes counted, stepped aside by accepting the ‘prime minister-ship’ of the country, i.e. lower in authority to ‘President’ Kibaki.
Our dilemma in South Africa is ‘how do we stop the Jacob Zuma-led express train of corruption, lack of accountability /responsibility and apparent disregard for the welfare of the ordinary people of our beloved nation?’.
Sandy Johnston
Rivonia
Johannesburg
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