This We have a good story to tell campaign theme of the ANC begs to be problematised. While it must be acknowledged that we have made some serious progress in the last 20 years, I find it troubling that this is being attributed to the ANC having done good on our behalf as opposed to the ANC having done good because it must. Let me explain myself. South Afrika is a relatively more stable country than most Afrikan countries, largely because we got our independence later, and so were able to use existing examples to ascertain what we could and could not do. We were able to strengthen our constitutional institutions better than countries that had their independence in the 1960s, because they were literally fashioning an altogether new civilisation. We learned from them, when they had no one to learn from but their own trials and errors. So it stands to reason that we are better off than most countries, at least in so far as the stability of our institutions and our governance. All the things that this campaign claim are a good story to tell are in fact the only logical story to tell. It is not a good story to tell that our people now have access to water or sanitation or education etc, because if we say it is, then it means we are using the barometer of an apartheid we abhor to determine what is adequate for our people. We agree, fundamentally, that the system of apartheid is inhuman, and as such, we reject anything it represents, as we correctly reject any two-tier system that subjugates any group in society. Why then is it that when we fashion a reality in which we now have a uniform education for all races, we claim that this is an exceptional story to tell? It cant be, if we agree that this is the only story that must be told. But more than that, it cant be an ANC story, since it was not the ANC, but the people of South Afrika, who were active in the architecting of this new reality. What must be problematised is how this good story to tell seeks to suggest that the people of South Afrika are recipients of the ANCs kindness. The danger of this so called good story is that it assumes that delivering services and transforming this country is an act of kindness on the part of the ruling elite. The reality is that services ought to be delivered as a matter of right. It is afterall, a Constitutional obligation. Human beings must as a right must have a place to stay, access to water and sanitation, electricity and other basic facilities. A national liberation movement thus ought not to pride itself in doing the basics, especially when it is doing nothing else but providing these mere basics. The real test (and thats what we must be told) is that the country is being run properly. The real test is showing us that a corrupt apartheid government was removed and replaced by a moral one. The real test is to show us tha an apartheid government that was contemptuous of the poor was removed and replaced by one that does not treat the poor with contempt. But once a post-apartheid government loses R35 billion annually on corruption; once a post-apartheid government treats the poor with such contempt that it buys them food parcels near election time, we must begin to assess to what degree is this good story truly good. Surely a good story to tell would be one tested in how a country is run, not in how different democracy is from apartheid, since necessarily, it must be, and apartheid cannot be used as a measure to say: Well, during apartheid you did not have water, now you do, because that means we are wanting to be better than apartheid government, as opposed to being different from it. A good story to tell is not one whose premise is reducing citizens into receipients of acts of kindheartedness. Surely.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 17:28:12 +0000
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