Things fall apart – between a Buffalo and a hard place

Firefighters react to a fire outbreak at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital on April 16, 2021 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The fire at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital (CMJAH) was set on purpose. (Photo: Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Morapedi Mashashe)

By Mark Heywood

13 Sep 2022

Let’s start this week’s editorial by putting the obvious in plain language: our country is fast falling apart and there’s nothing any current politician is going to do to stop it.

It’s coming to pass

My countries coming apart

The whole thing’s becoming

Such a bumbling farce

Was that a pivotal historical moment

We just went stumbling past?

Kae Tempest

It seems pointless to provide yet another inventory of the collapse, when it’s in front of our noses. What is important is to join the dots and see each new crisis as a manifestation of a deepening breakdown of the rule of law and constitutional governance, rather than as one more isolated and unfortunate tragedy.

On certain key indicators, South Africa is fast sliding towards failed state status, defined in Wikipedia as:

“a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. A state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly.”

Weekend reports of the so-called construction mafia (this investigation by the Global Initiative Against Organised Transnational Crime) may well explain why an expert police forensic investigator concluded that the fire at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was set on purpose, as we reported this month.

The Jagersfontein dam wall burst was just another disaster waiting to happen. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)

This week, Brigadier Brenda Muridili, SAPS spokesperson in Gauteng, provided us with this lacklustre statement: “Following the province’s receipt of the forensic report, the initial enquiry which was registered after the incident has been changed to a case of arson. Investigations are still under way and no one has been arrested yet.”

This lack of will to investigate prima facie evidence of grand arson can be explained by the fact that a significant part of the SAPS now pursues the profit it can make through shake-down criminality and extortion rather than catching criminals.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “The end of compassion and the price of indignity”

The Jagersfontein dam wall burst in the Free State was just another disaster waiting to happen. Like the Enyobeni Tavern. The poor are becoming cannon fodder for state incompetence and contempt.

What’s next?

A government with no intelligence

Criminality or collapse is hiding in plain sight, but one striking thing about all of these reports is the lack of police or government intelligence to prevent it, or administrative concern once it’s happened. Politicians only rush to the frontline of disasters if they can make political capital out of it.

As veteran activist Kumi Naidoo says, 'it’s no longer time for activism as usual'. (Photo: Ian Forsyth / Getty Images)

Key ministers seem to have given up hard work in favour of populist grandstanding and intraparty plotting.

At this point, repeatedly appealing to a compromised President and his mostly incompetent Cabinet to do something won’t work. As we get closer and closer to the ANC’s December congress it’s clear we are between a Buffalo and a RET place.

As a result, South Africa feels like it’s heading towards a cliff without a driver.

We can’t let that happen. We have too much potential to allow our country to be crashed. The question is: where are those people and powers that can pull us back from this situation?

Where are the church leaders?

Where are the trade union leaders?

Where are the academic and thought leaders?

Where are our artists, poets, dancers, writers?

Where are the business leaders?

Where are our young people and women’s leaders?

At this point, repeatedly appealing to a compromised President and his mostly incompetent Cabinet to do something won’t work. (Photo: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Jaco Marais)

One major problem is that civil society is spending so much time firefighting that it is unable to sustain a focus on the bigger picture. Organisations and coalitions come together for conferences, make grand declarations, and then dissipate.

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Many organisations are so focused on their sectoral interests that they can’t see the national interest.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Snatching away Mandela’s gift of health and the return of medical apartheid”

More elite conferences on State Capture, while worthy, won’t change the balance of power.

Ordinary people in South Africa need to see a force for good, that is independent, has integrity and can act decisively within the rule of law.

Ordinary people need to see that good people can stop squabbling over the points they disagree on and unite and act on what they do agree on.

There is a national interest.

Ordinary people need to see the Constitution not just as a stick to fight political battles (however necessary), but as being made to work for their rights to food, jobs, dignity and well-being.

An expert police forensic investigator has concluded that the fire at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was set on purpose. (Photo: Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Morapedi Mashashe)

As veteran activist Kumi Naidoo says, “it’s no longer time for activism as usual”. Or as English poet Kae Tempest puts it in People’s Faces, the poem with which this editorial started:

“There are no new beginnings

Until everybody sees that the old ways need to end”

But it’s hard to accept that we’re all one and the same flesh

Given the rampant divisions between oppressor and oppressed

But we are though

More empathy

Less greed

More respect

All I’ve got to say has already been said

I mean, you heard it from yourself

When you were lying in your bed and couldn’t sleep

Thinking couldn’t we be doing this

Differently?

So, will someone step up to the plate before it’s too late? DM/MC

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South Africa

A government with no intelligence