South Africa desperately needs the right stuff of an unsung hero like Michael Collins

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and do our jobs” – Stephen King

Two unconnected moments from headships in two different schools come to mind as a result of recent unfoldings (they certainly can’t be called “developments”) in this country of ours.

The first was an assembly I ran some years ago, on or close to an anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. I gathered an array of bits and pieces that represented the various stages of the Apollo rocket, and step by step I jettisoned a cooldrink bottle, a tin can and a toilet roll as I made my way up the aisle between the students, explaining about the rocket’s stages and its journey across space as I went.

Eventually, I was in the last stage of the outward trip, holding only an Argentinian mata gourd and its tripod stand – a reasonable low-budget replica of the spidery lunar landing module. At that point, I said to the students that I now needed someone to represent the moon, whereupon the school’s maintenance manager, Dave Moon, entered on cue from one of the hall’s side entrances. There was a pause of a few seconds and then the students brought the roof down.

That irresistible comic touch, though, was not the purpose of the talk. Nor was it the bravery of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in going where no person had ever gone, and it wasn’t about the power of shared vision in JF Kennedy’s galvanising challenge to fly men to the moon and return them safely before the end of the 1960s, as inspiring as that story is.

Instead, I chose to focus on the third Apollo astronaut: the more or less forgotten pilot of the Columbia command module, Michael Collins. While Armstrong immortalised himself with that famous “small step” quotation, and Aldrin’s supporting act ensured his fame, Michael Collins flew alone, unsung, resolutely doing his unglamorous job to the best of his ability, yet without him, there would have been no safe return to planet Earth.

My point was that we desperately need the Michael Collinses of this world: solid, dependable, dutiful men and women who just do their jobs, without the need to be monitored or even acknowledged, or thanked in writing for just turning up to work or having their vacuous selfies “liked” on social media.

The second moment, back in 2017, was triggered by two things: the Esidimeni Life debacle and yet another disastrous and embarrassing Jacob Zuma State of the Nation Address, marred by dishonourable behaviour from so-called honourable members, a giggling president and a refusal by the House to acknowledge the deaths of more than 140 vulnerable patients as a result of incompetency, corruption and downright cold-heartedness. To me, some vital part of South Africa’s fragile soul died that evening, in Parliament, the very seat of our democracy.

So, I took it upon myself to fly the school flag at half-mast the next morning. I recall shaking with emotion as I did so, and I recall how that sense of outrage coloured the imperfect email I then drafted for the school community. While there was an immediate surge of support for this symbolic action from many parents and staff, there were also a few angry mails that came in, accusing me of using the school’s symbols to make a partisan political statement.

In the cold light of a subsequent dawn, I could see why it might have been interpreted in that way, but lowering the flag was never intended to be a political statement. For me, it was about ethics and decency; it was about a sense of loss; that our country was suddenly, somehow, in a different, heartless space, and that people’s attention needed to be drawn to that. But it was clear the lines were blurred, and there was a mild knuckle-rap as a result.

Right now, I would drop that same flag to half-mast if I were still at the school. (I might do two things differently, though: inform my boss that I intended doing so, and I’d catch my breath and read and reread my communication with the school before pressing “Send”.)

That a senior minister (Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu) can ensconce herself inside a police casspir (with all of those connotations) and sanction the use of a water cannon on the most fragile of our citizens, is appalling. They are in, and have been in, those desperate, interminable queues month after month because of her department’s lack of delivery. That she has not yet, apparently, been brought to book is disappointingly unsurprising.

The lack of outrage and the comparatively muted reaction by society and the media have been surprisingly disappointing: it seems that yet another part of our country’s fragile soul has died. 

This is the self-same public servant who berated Community Action Networks for robbing the poor of their dignity by distributing food packages and aid in the early days of lockdown last year, while her department couldn’t get its act together to provide relief on any scale at that stage. We all now know that nothing restores one’s dignity better than being knocked off one’s feet and given a good soaking…

And we seem to look on in relative silence. It’s not good enough.

Which brings me back to the unsung, reliable Michael Collins, just doing his job. If there were more people in ministries who simply did their job, reliably, ethically, proactively and empathetically, with no need for public kudos and no need to be overseen or monitored, we might no longer see endless, desperate Sassa queues. If they could take their cue and inspiration from our health workers, we’d be in a different space.

We’d see municipalities working. We’d see quicker delivery of housing, water, sanitation and emergency kits for fire-ravaged communities. We’d see less carnage and disregard for the law on our roads – or just any law anywhere. 

We wouldn’t have had the desperate plight of truck drivers at Beitbridge. 

We’d be delivering a world-class education to every child in the country. 

We’d see things like roads and dams and power stations maintained and attended to before they’re broken beyond repair. We’d have seen PPE going to the right people and on time. 

We’d have seen public and private collaboration for the benefit of all our people. We’d hear less talk and noise, and see more delivery. 

We’d have vaccinated a million people or more by now, and we’d know how and when the rest of that programme would unfold.

I could go on.

The frightening thing about all of these is that they should simply be part of normal public service delivery. For us South Africans, though, normality is fast becoming a pipe dream. We are the proverbial frog in boiling water.

If we had all of the above, through people simply doing their jobs, we ordinary citizens would trust more – and with that trust would come the hope that is so needed right now. DM