It was a communist tenet that capitalism would eventually be destroyed by its own internal contradictions. That reassuring dogma, still held by some in SA’s governing party, implies that the rotten edifice will crumble on its own, without too much sweat from comrades. So, until that day of judgment, they can stoically tolerate all the bourgeois trappings. Nevertheless, whatever the fate of capitalism it becomes clearer by the day that it is the ANC that is imploding from the weight of its own contradictions.
We have a party, and government, sustained by wishful thinking, obsolete alliances and clapped-out ideology. Last month SA donated R50m to Cuba, lamenting that the island was experiencing food scarcity due to US sanctions. Yet after two years of Covid-19 restrictions millions of South Africans are going hungry. Our child malnutrition rate, almost wiped out in Cuba, is 27%. That is a record the ANC has managed to achieve without any sanctions. Last week the World Bank warned about the dangerous levels of inequality in SA. When a myopic government, blinded by nostalgia, cannot see what is right before its own eyes, it is doomed.
The self-deception of gazing afar to avoid suffering at home is not new. Over the Christmas period of 1970, as the Nigerian Civil War drew to its tragic conclusion, collection tins appeared in Cape Town, appealing for donations with heart-rending photos of starving Biafran children.
As a cub reporter on a local paper I showed the news editor similar photos of children with distended bellies and stick-like limbs — but they were from Transkei. Shouldn’t we launch an appeal for them too, I asked, only to be instructed: “We would never make our readers choke on their cornflakes!” Perhaps gazing at Cuba today dreaming of past comradely aspirations, rather than looking close to home, helps cabinet ministers avoid gagging on their cornflakes.
Sometimes the contradictions pile up within 24 hours, usually precipitated by nostalgia and confusion over threadbare ideologies. This was the glaring case with the government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. International relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor swiftly issued a statement calling for Russia’s immediate withdrawal from Ukraine. This reportedly angered President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Pandor was quickly slapped down.
SA proceeded to issue a flurry of platitudes about a need for dialogue “in the spirit of compromise”. As the Russian military assault grew in ferocity, the minister in the presidency almost satirically proffered this pearl: “It is the stance of this government that we will always prefer peaceful solutions.” Ramaphosa waffled inanely about “achieving world peace through negotiation…”.
Negotiating at the barrel of a gun doesn’t quite cover it. The SACP, on autopilot as it has been for years, intoned that the party supported Vladimir Putin in standing up to US and EU imperialism. As it is now a criminal offence in Russia to call Putin’s “special military operation” an invasion, the SACP seems to think it is some kind of peace mission. They have swallowed Putin’s blather about Ukraine being run by “drug addict Nazi thugs”, and that his attack is merely a process of “denazification”.
Everyone knows the debt the ANC and SACP in exile owed to the Soviet Union. But the inability to distinguish the past from the present and see what is going on — if not before their eyes, then on our TV screens — is what will condemn these alliance partners to oblivion. Their acceptance of Putin’s desire to reclaim old Soviet satellite states makes them blind to such modern colonialism.
Russia today is neither Soviet nor remotely socialist. Instead, it’s a manifestation of authoritarian accumulation. Perhaps there’s also some subconscious envy here: dismay at the pittance for which our corrupt comrades sell their souls, while Russians close to Putin own London mansions, Mediterranean villas, superyachts and private jets.
The SACP endorsement and ANC equivocation over the assault on Ukraine remind me inescapably of Hendrik Verwoerd’s definition of apartheid as “good neighbourliness”. That’s how far we have sunk as we constantly recycle the past. However, the consequences of the invasion will have dire consequences for us too. A steep rise in the cost of food was one of the main triggers of the Arab Spring uprisings. When prices of essential provisions surge here perhaps those comfortably in power — their gaze fixed on a far horizon — will finally choke on their cornflakes.
• Rostron is a journalist and author.
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