The addiction of some of our rulers to extravagant luxury, especially in their choice of official cars, is more than just scandalous. It is an obscenity.
Ours is a Third World country with millions of desperately poor people, many living below the breadline. The African National Congress purports to be the champion of those poor people. Why then do so many of our Cabinet Ministers, and even some provincial legislators and mayors, feel a need to flash their status so publicly and ostentatiously? It is grotesquely inappropriate.
Symbolism is an important aspect of politics. Nelson Mandela knew that and used it to great effect with his many shrewdly chosen gestures, such as having tea with Betsie Verwoerd and putting on Francois Pienaar's No 6 jersey to congratulate the Springboks on becoming World champions and thereby cementing a spirit of unity and national celebration that is still seen as a talismanic event in the building of our new democracy.
So why are so many of our new rulers doing the opposite, projecting negative symbolism by flashing their status and affluence and good fortune so conspicuously in a country with so much poverty; a country in the midst of a deep economic recession in which workers are striking and protesting angrily at their straitened circumstances; a country where prudence ought to be the watchword and demonstrations of frugality the public gestures?
The motor-car, after all, is the ultimate status symbol in our society.
Special prizes for inappropriateness must surely go to the Minister of Communications, Siphiwe Nyanda, and the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, who preside over two of the most dysfunctional departments in the administration.
Nyanda is in charge of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which is in a state of bankruptcy and administrative meltdown, unable to pay producers who have provided it with broadcast material and begging the government for a R2-billion bailout. Set that against the new minister's choice of transport -- two new top-of-the-range BMW 750i models, complete with body-roll stabilisation, electric sun blinds and high-gloss satin chrome, at R1.27-million each.
Our education system is one of the most expensive in the world -- it has been allocated a staggering R140,4-billion over the next five years -- producing arguably the world's worst results with equally staggering drop-out and failure rates. It has now been split into two, which will presumably double its bureaucratic costs. That is where most of the money goes, while a qualified teacher with five years experience takes home a miserly R6,400 a month, an egregious imbalance which is the root cause of the profession’s thinning ranks and diminishing competence.
Set that against Motshekga’s choice of a Range Rover Sports SUV for use in Pretoria and a BMW 730d for Cape Town, again at a million apiece.
Then we have the new Premier of the Free State, Ace Magashule, equipping himself and all members of his Cabinet with flagship Mercedes-Benz S600 cars, each with a telephone, CD, DVD and back-massage system for His Lordship in the back seat, at a total cost of R11-million. Note that these are provincial legislators, and the ANC is saying that the provinces are so unimportant that maybe they should be scrapped.
It has been said in their defence that none of these ministers has violated any regulation, which is true. Regrettably the rules provide for these extravagant perks. Yet one would have hoped that our rulers would have shown greater sensitivity in these belt-tightening times in which so many are suffering hardship, especially since these grandees represent a party which claims to identify with the poor and the working classes.
Some have done so to their great credit, notably the new Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, whose job is arguably the most exacting of all, after that of the President himself, but who settled for cars half the price of his flashier colleagues. And the Western Cape has set an even more prudent example, with the Premier and provincial executive using old pool cars and the Mayor of Cape Town his own Volkswagen Chico.
But for the most part what we are seeing is another manifestation of a growing culture of greed and ostentation that seems to be transforming a liberation movement that was once characterised by idealism, self-sacrifice and frugal living in the service of a great cause.
One has seen this elsewhere, of course. Africa seems to be unfortunately prone to such self-aggrandisement, from strutting dictators such as Idi Amin and Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the self-styled "Emperor of the Central African Empire," to lesser figures who seemingly can't resist the lure of the WaBenzi culture of big-car convoys with wailing sirens and flashing blue lights. It so distressed Tanzania's late President, the modest Julius Nyerere, that he once ordered his Cabinet to hand in their Mercs and accept more modest official cars -- but that prompted such an outcry that he had to rescind his order.
The most striking example of real modesty on the part of the great and the good, perhaps taken to extremes, was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1960s, Michael Ramsey, who rode around in a chauffeur-driven Morris Minor.
The Dutch and the Scandinavians have almost made a cult out of executive modesty. I was in The Hague a few weeks ago and stopped with a friend to buy some of the delicious fresh North Sea herring now in season at a snack stall near the Dutch Parliament. A man in a suit next to me bought some as well, then mounted his three-speed street bicycle and rode casually into the traffic.
"There goes our Minister of the Interior," remarked my friend. I gaped. No wailing sirens, no blue lights, no electric sun blinds or high-gloss satin chrome, no bodyguards even. Just pedal power.
It must be noted, though, that it is not only our politicians who are prone to this cult of ostentation. It is deeply ingrained in our private sector, too. Johannesburg must have more flashy cars and grandiose mansions that any other comparable city in the world. I recently spent three weeks travelling in Chile, a Third World country comparable to our own with a per capital GDP slightly higher than ours, and I doubt whether I saw more than half a dozen Mercs and big BMWs while I was there.
Perhaps it is an inheritance from our economic hub’s history as a get-rich-quick mining camp. Or perhaps, as Moeletsi Mbeki suggests in his new book, “Architects of Poverty,” it is because our new elitists have simply stepped into the shoes and habits of the old.
What our newly arrived elitists don't realise is that to advertise one's success so brashly is not cool. It doesn't impress members of the public that the satin chrome and flashing lights indicate an individual of high merit. Rather the opposite; it comes across as an attempt to compensate for an inner sense of inadequacy. The truly great don't show off. Only jumped-up minions do.