Dwindling patriotism

It is only after I moved out of South Africa, that I started having issues with my beautiful disastrous country. It's about getting perspective - you can't see the forest while walking next to the trees. But once you remove yourself from your daily situation, you unconsciously start creating an alternate viewpoint.

Fun Fact about South Africa: Per capita, it has the most rapes, assults and murders with firearms. Crime has become a business, and it's supported by the government.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/sf-south-africa/cri-crime

This is the most over-discussed topic in the country, I don't want to go off an a tangent about it. I just want to show you this article by David Bullard. I read it somewhere during this week, and was hit by a real depression afterwards. And since, my doubt in SA has been growing by the day. I realise that a country is not it's political system, but do I really want to live somewhere where paranoia and tragedy is so common that it just becomes the norm?

Anyways. Read.

Earlier this year, a few weeks before I was shot, I wrote in this column that the ANC had ‘‘effectively become the largest organised crime syndicate in the country”.




At the time of my shooting I dismissed suggestions that it could have had anything to do with the content of this column over the years. Now I am not so sure.

Thabo Mbeki’s complex web of evil is gradually being exposed by a fearless media, and I now believe anything is possible. Reading respected commentators such as Xolela Mangcu in The Weekender, I cannot avoid the conclusion that if we don’t do something soon, South Africa will self-destruct and go the way of other basket cases.

In the past I have flippantly accused the government of state-sponsored anarchy, but suddenly things are beginning to make sense. Our violent crime figures make us one of the most dangerous places to live in the world, including countries at war. The mere act of daily survival distracts us from the monstrous scale of theft and incompetence that has occurred under Mbeki’s presidency.

It helps explain his affection for Mad Bob Mugabe, and it maybe even gives some credence to a conspiracy theory currently doing the rounds: that the ludicrous level of violent crime is of no real concern to the government because the people dying are regarded as dispensable. A few weeks ago I would have snorted with cynical derision at this. Now I find it believable.

Mangcu wrote last week that “I have never been as depressed by this country’s politics as I am this point. Not even under apartheid was I ever this depressed.”

That’s quite a statement, particularly for one who suffered under apartheid. Fortunately, I don’t feel quite as despondent as Mangcu, but maybe my sunny optimism is misplaced. I believe there is still hope, precisely because of people like Mangcu, Financial Mail editor Barney Mthombothi, The Times columnist Justice Malala, Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee and this newspaper’s gutsy editorial staff. I’m a white boy who never suffered under apartheid and my criticism can easily be dismissed as post-colonial whining; not so for the aforementioned, who all have genuine struggle credentials and integrity measured by the ton.

I also desperately want to believe that not everyone in the ANC has been sucked into Mbeki’s web of evil. I really hope that there are some senior politicians who are reeling in shock at the daily revelations.

It’s a pity they haven’t the guts to speak out, but the ANC is run along the lines of a charismatic religion, and independence of thought is not encouraged. That doesn’t necessarily make those who remain silent guilty, but it is still disappointing. Several articles have asked rhetorically what Nelson Mandela makes of this sacrifice of the South African dream. Well, why doesn’t somebody ask him — or is he, too, not allowed to break the sacred law of omert€?

Under Mbeki this country has become a quagmire of corruption and vice. The media is often accused by politicians of stooping to offensive racist stereotypes, but when your country is run by offensive stereotypes, what choice do you have? If the allegations against Mbeki are even half true, then the word “impeachment“ should be in common usage before too long.