A Rough Guide to saving South Africa

For so long, the ANC NEC’s meeting pronouncements could have been guessed in advance with great precision. Reported blood-curdling fights would puncture a weekend for our political elite every eight weeks or so. Despite knowing we all knew that lies were being presented in those statements — truthfulness usually ending with the opening sentence that noted when and where the meeting was held — despite all that, the ruling party communications officials would sing Kumbaya, dosed with an attack on the evil media that terrorised their serene lives and disrupted their perfect harmonies.

It is funny how, throughout the years of State Capture, the accusation against media “agendas” was the last remaining cry they could subscribe to – even as most kept their lines of communication open and often served as valuable sources. Looking back, it should have been more obvious to us that a lack of individual ethics and misshapen values could never morph into a common spirit to transform an already grotesquely unequal society. And, yes, it was of course obvious to all of us in the media that this creaking circus of an incompetent national government and nose-bleedingly corrupt local administration would have no choice but to end its run in tears and destruction.

Deep down, most of us knew the events that burned KwaZulu-Natal and large swathes of Gauteng and traumatised everyone, simply had to happen. There was no way we could have avoided it, we knew, and yet we hoped some kind of Deus ex machina would jump from behind the curtains and save the day, sparing South Africa from devastation and despair.

But this was a Shakespearian play, not a Greek tragedy – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are all gone, their often-used divine saviours perished with them. No, this was a tragedy written as if penned during a medieval pandemic, the bubonic plague: the main characters die, the masses suffer, the gods are useless.

No-one wins.

As we emerge from this week of horror and disbelief, in the shortest of terms we have a massive humanitarian crisis on our hands to attempt to solve: the spectre of hunger, as I write this on Thursday night, is already menacing the very communities that were involved in looting. The supply chain has been disrupted, severed in many places, making resupplying a herculean task. The medicine stockouts are real, the vaccination drive has been halted. Crucially, the SASSA grant payments have been frozen, turning millions of people in the worst-hit areas into the worst-hit individuals.

In the medium term, we need to figure out a way to get the economy going and help both large corporations and SMMEs get back on their feet and resume their activity. 

Perhaps the greatest challenge we face is the task of great political realignment that this explosion of hatred has made necessary.

To emerge from this crisis and build for the long term, we must go back to the drawing board: we must ask ourselves, what is the fundamental commitment to which the overwhelming majority of us can subscribe.

And it is not brain surgery: it is there in our Constitution’s preamble:

“We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

“We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

• Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;


• Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;


• Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and


• Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.