Reality really sucks, most of the time

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

In the movie Sully, based on what is better known as the “Miracle on the Hudson”, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger goes from national hero to a pilot whose every decision and action are questioned by the Federal Aviation Administration. Sully, having managed to land his Airbus A320 on the Hudson River and safely evacuate all 155 passengers and crew members after being struck by a flock of birds, suddenly faced intense questioning of his qualifications, sobriety, even his personal relationships. At the centre of these accusations: Did Sully react the way he was supposed to react or did he blunder, slow to react in the face of great danger and in the moment when exactly the opposite was expected of him?

To the uninitiated, the argument was pretty convincing: the simulations, flown by experienced pilots, easily returned safely to LaGuardia Airport. Why could Sully not have done the same? Was he really such a good and responsible captain of the flying ship full of people?

The devil, as always, is in the details. As Sully explained, the simulations had a single action plan: to return the plane to LaGuardia immediately after the strike. But the real world doesn’t function like that. First, there are legitimate questions. What has just happened? Can we restart the engines or are they dead for good? Try it again! LaGuardia Flight Control, we have a problem. What do you suggest we should do? What can we do?

Sully’s accusers forgot about something called real life. It is never ideal, never clean or clear-cut, and only exceedingly rarely do we immediately know exactly what to think, feel or do. So when the flight simulations were run taking this into account, the flight could no longer get back to LaGuardia. Sully was fully vindicated, his great skills unquestioned once more.

Simply put, life is not ideal. There are always impurities and mud and crazy flocks of raptors to make it a lasting misery.

Watching Cyril Ramaphosa’s Zondo testimony this week and reading many reactions to his statements, recollection of events, strategic omissions and practised obtuseness, I also see a lone figure sitting on the hottest of chairs, in the heart of a maelstrom that could bring the country down any day now. We all think we know what he should have done and when he should have done it. I see, and am pretty sure he can see it too, a badly ravaged country that is one move away from a collapsing Jenga tower.

I may or may not agree with Ramaphosa’s politics. For what it’s worth, I see in his attempts at limited reform more than a reminder of Mikhail Gorbachev’s years of futile attempts to save the Soviet Union under the leadership of a party that had lost its legitimacy long before he came to power. I see the clear intraparty constraints that Ramaphosa still cannot find the strength to break away from. I see a deep and troubling inability to concoct a workable solution for South Africa’s future while we remain the same rapidly failing “democracy” that, in its essence, was always an accountability-free one-party state.

Ramaphosa’s act reminds one of a man juggling several balls, some of them explosive, in the air. If he drops any one of them, the others will soon follow.

I consider my job not easy or simple, and in many ways extremely complex. And yet it pales into insignificance compared with the complexity of the state president’s job, even in stable countries in normal times. South Africa has no such luxuries. Guiding our badly damaged ship to a safe port, or just continuing to juggle all these dangerous balls in the air, is not a job for faint-hearted or reluctant players.

Accordingly, it is much more comfortable to look at the world in the rear-view mirror, once in possession of all-important hindsight. But the events we’re talking about now at Zondo were just a bunch of future possibilities. It was not at all a done deal that Zuma & Co would be out of power. What was a done deal was that JZ surrounded himself with a bunch of extremely dangerous people whose loyalty was not to South Africa but to him.

For all the reality of Zuma’s tumultuous closing years, I see Ramaphosa as the man who could not afford to be too loud in 2016 or 2017, even as he watched the Guptas and their trolls ravage the country. Whether he will be vindicated as Sully was remains to be seen, of course.

Every one of us has the absolute right not to forgive such a course of action, and in an ideal world there would be no excuse to land this crowded plane called South Africa in the middle of a river and make us all wait for salvation, all these years later.

But this is no ideal world. In real life, in a country that was systematically decimated for so many years, landing in the middle of the river is still better than nose-diving to our demise. Such is our luck. DM168

Branko Brkic is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Daily Maverick.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.