A Nation in Crisis. Paulus Zulu
The year 1976 was the turning point not only in South African politics, but in public morality. It was the year that saw the concept of gradual evolution completely abandoned in favour of instant revolution. The youth took over in politics and this has had a profound impact on public morality. By the mid 1980s, social analysts had introduced a new concept into the South African lexicon – the lost generation. But how did this impact on public morality? The answer is not hard to find. In a revolution, ethics are abandoned in favour of the expedient, but it is the cultural residue that post-revolutionary societies have to live with. And there is the rub.
The revolution of the 1980s collapsed not only structures of local government but the concept of accountability as well. Above all, it compromised moral leadership. From ‘making the country ungovernable’ to ‘liberation first and education later’ the youth were on the ascendant. In general, in areas that experienced intense turmoil, parents completely lost control over their children. Sacred occasions such as funerals, which marked the union between the here and now and the hereafter in both traditional and Christian observances, became platforms of political rhetoric dominated by the youth. While adults might have disapproved, as in many instances they did, silently, they had to acknowledge the dawn of a new era. Rejecting the new era meant accepting apartheid and its consequences; accepting it entailed a compromise between the tumultuous transition and liberation at the end of the tunnel. And the compromise prevailed.
There were other factors inherent in the revolution of the 1980s that compounded the public morality of liberation. Liberation movements are by nature broad churches that accept diverse characters into their congregations. There are no rigid entry criteria to the fold, although the ANC in exile tried to develop control mechanisms in an effort to prevent if not limit infiltration by agents of apartheid. The absence of selection criteria did much damage to the discipline in the internal resistance movement as ‘comtsotsis’ and agents of apartheid infiltrated internal organisations. It is not clear even to this day who the inventors of the horrible ‘death by necklace’ were. However, both ‘comtsotsis’ and apartheid’s secret operators were generally very powerful actors, who quickly ascended to local leadership positions in the cells and shaped both the tempo and direction of activity. It was the hegemony of the ‘lost generation’.
A new political culture, therefore, developed from the 1980s onwards, which minimised if not trivialised important attributes in the old system. Various factors contributed to shaping the new revolutionary morality. First, the glaring material inequalities between those in and those out of power, predicated on exploitation and emasculation of the oppressed, encouraged a diffuse myth of repossession. Whereas the old tradition had emphasised reclaiming the land, which by definition would have entailed negotiation and legalities, the nascent culture was triumphalist and demanded immediate transfers not only of the land but of material possessions. As a result, protest marches often culminated in the looting of shops, businesses and other material goods that the revolutionaries could get their hands on.
Revolutions and wars do admittedly carry a looting element but in this instance the enemy was diffuse and at times included the very people to be liberated. Since security forces were regarded as agents of apartheid, the first victim in this vicious cycle was the rule of law. In the townships, street committees replaced the state security apparatus and at first were generally effective but, in a number of cases ,they were soon infiltrated by comtsotsis and by agents of the state. A number of them soon turned upon the very communities that had created them in trust.
While the lost generation reigned in organised chaos and near anarchy, a parallel development in the labour movement gravitated into organised normlessness. If liberation movements were a broad church, the labour movement was a miscellaneous congregation. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was and still is an amalgam of shop floor workers and other employees who, in conventional Marxist conception, could not be regarded as producing surplus value. These include professionals, such as teachers, nurses and other allied workers in the education and health sectors, united only by the common rubric of employee. Such surface solidarity was bound to bring in both contradictions and moral problems. This could not be demonstrated more fully than in the strikes by the public sector unions in 2007 and 2010, where “groups of strikers evacuated pupils from schools including pupils writing examinations, wrenched oxygen tents including intravenous drips from very sick patients and managed to close down schools and health institutions.”16 And these were children of working class parents, and working class patients since the elite patronise private institutions where workers were not on strike. The problem with all formations starting from professional organisations down to worker and civic organisation is that mere lip service is paid to the concept of democracy.
Protest marches have always entailed a measure of coercion on those not willing to participate and often have been accompanied by violence, looting and other forms of undemocratic behaviour. Once out of control, the organisers put the blame either on unruly elements or on the third force, thus avoiding moral accountability.
During the 2007 strike by public servants, columnist Christine Qunta wrote an article entitled “How quickly they turn violent”, questioning the trade union movement leadership’s apparent condoning of violence, including the use of abusive language by strikers. In the final analysis, just as the lost generation has contributed to the general state of moral decline in South Africa, the organised trade union movement has played its part in displacing the moral authority and accountability of individuals and locating it in an amorphous movement. The result is that no one takes the blame for the wrongs committed yet the organisation takes the glory for victories won.
Earlier in this chapter my thesis was that democracy is the best system of governance to ensure an equitable allocation and distribution of finite and scarce resources. Over the past few years, the media has published a number of articles describing apparent transgressions by public officials, in which they have gone beyond the norm in apportioning the public goods to themselves or have blatantly engaged in acts of corruption. Surprisingly, despite the fact that South Africa is a protest-ridden society, there has been no visible protest against the apparent and actual transgressions by public officials. However, there have been murmurs, as when Vavi, general secretary of COSATU, declared that the trade union movement could not sit by and exercise restraint simply because the country was going through an economic recession while members of cabinet were buying expensive vehicles using the public purse. In August 2010, Vavi questioned the self-enrichment by the political elite and coined the term, “predatory state”.17
Despite the strong stand taken by COSATU, the strikes are about wages and conditions of service and not about the profligacy of public officials. Could the complacency that has characterised the public response thus far be interpreted as tacit approval, an acceptance by the general public that such actions are expected and therefore condonable? Public officials have responded rather amusingly to criticism, citing government polices and the rule books in their defence. It reminds me of Eddie Murphy’s movie Coming to America in which the queen of Zamunda confronts her husband over an ancient custom. In sympathy with the prince who is in love with an American commoner but is prevented from marrying her because of the law in Zamunda, the queen declares, “He loves her”. The king responds, “It is the law. Who will change the law?” to which the queen retorts, “I thought you were the king.” In our case, if the parliament of a democratic state cannot change inequitable policies and obsolete rule books, who will?
Finally, how have the three roots of public morality cited above conspired to construct the new public moral order in South Africa? The first explanation is premised on a breakdown in the ethical continuum when the logic of both Christianity and ubuntu was replaced by a secular morality of politics and power. The culture of entitlement generated in the first place by colonialism and then by apartheid, where political elites instantly became economic elites, gave rise to a culture of self-enrichment. Politics and power became synonymous and these were demonstrated in the lavish lifestyles of those who had access to them. State power became a gateway to economic and material wellbeing. Hated as the apartheid elites were by the general public, they were envied for their material possessions and soon became material although not political role models. They presided in local functions and in most cases by invitation from the very public that detested them for their collaborationist stance. Accusations of impropriety