Debating the legacy of Nelson Mandela

Many years ago I had an unsettling conversation with my friend a black African South African, she told me, “Nelson Mandela did nothing for black people in South Africa!”. To her Robert Mugabe was better because at least he managed to educate Africans and gave land to his people. My friend had finished her degree at one of the top universities in Cape Town, she told me she owed fees and had not been given her certificate. We both ended up in a call centre. I am not sure whether it could have made any difference if she had been given that certificate as my experience in South African private sector qualifications do not really matter. I have seen so many qualified African citizens frustrated in their careers. It is even worse if you did not get your degree from one of the previously white universities. It is no coincidence that EFF gets its support from mostly black middle class educated Africans as well as the working class.

Of course as a Zimbabwean, I have a different opinion when it comes to the subject of Robert Mugabe. Although I credit Mugabe with not playing politics with the education of Africans which is something that successive ANC governments have failed to do since 1994. Mugabe also managed to impart skills to many Africans and he insisted on transformation in the private sector. The same South African corporates that are resisting transformation their subsidiaries in Zimbabwe have been led by Africans for more than 3 decades now. 25 years after attainment of freedom, the private sector in South Africa has failed to transform and Africans have barely made it into the top management structures.

My nearly 12 years experience living in South Africa tells me that the biggest threat that this country faces is the increasing in-equality. The face of poverty and unemployment is mostly African. The in-equality in South Africa should trouble the conscience of all us. I have seen around Pretoria residents in affluent suburbs booming off public roads and putting fences and barriers making some public roads no go areas as a coping mechanism against violent house robberies and crime in general. My gut feeling is that this won’t work. As long as the in-equality gap continues to increase the crime will get even worse unfortunately. The only sustainable solution is to bring more black people (Africans and Coloureds) out of poverty. This can be done by improving quality of education especially in townships and rural areas, sticking to the targets set out in the employment equity legislation and paying fair wages to workers. A lot of people are leaving the country because they are fed up with the crime.

Over the last months many corporates have been rushing to announce massive retrenchments. As someone who has spent more than 20 years in the private sector I understand that. The companies have to churn out profits for the shareholders. However shareholders must understand that high unemployment in South Africa is counter productive to everyone’s future. Companies should be getting out of their way in providing learnership opportunities for many black citizens who are currently not employable. I also do not support for example the automation at Mcdonald’s restaurants or even self service at retail shops or fuel service stations given the huge unemployment in South Africa.

History has many examples of why in-equality is dangerous. From the rise of the Nazis before the second World War in Germany, the election of Donald Trump in America and the disastrous decision to vote for Brex-it in United Kingdom. It should not only be about profits at all costs as a lot of struggling people start to resent the noble goal of globalisation. I have shared my experience in Zimbabwe when the wheels finally came off. After the Zimbabwean dollar fell at the end of 1997 the economic situation became worse. Robert Mugabe was forced by civil society to draft a new constitution. The constitutional referendum was slated for the beginning of 2000. Robert Mugabe was facing defeat and one of the sweeteners that he introduced in the draft constitution was the expropriation of agricultural land without compensation. We still voted against Mugabe’s draft constitution.

Unfortunately for us Zanu-PF government had a two thirds majority in parliament and they went on to amend the constitution and gave itself powers to expropriate the land and forced out Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay. The government then amended citizenship laws to deny citizenship to citizens who had foreign parentage in order to disenfranchise perceived supporters of the opposition. A plan was hatched to invade commercial farms. In 2000 I had joined the farming claims department of AIG (American International Group) Zimbabwe Limited. Our company insured the majority of the farmers in Zimbabwe. Our village in Murewa was about 4kms from the white commercial farming district of Virginia in Macheke. Dozens of my unemployed cousins back in the village were part of the mob that was commanded to go and invade neighbouring farms. The situation played itself across the country. The police was instructed to look the other way whilst the commotion was going on. The shocking scenes were beamed through-out the world by CNN, BBC, SKY News etc. My cousins and other hundreds of thousands of youth in Zimbabwe were able to be manipulated by Zanu-PF when the party was facing defeat during the coming parliamentary elections in 2000. Within a few years the economy of Zimbabwe imploded and now Zimbabweans are scattered throughout the globe.

My message to the corporates, shareholders and anyone who has power to effect real change in South Africa is that you need to bring more people aboard. When you watch news on service delivery protests in African and Coloured areas you see many unemployed young people leading such protests. The government, labour, business leaders, civic society, religious organisations, academics must put their heads together to solve this problem. More and more citizens needs to feel like they belong in this economy and must feel that they have a stake. At the end of the day people ask themselves, “What is in it for me?”. In Zimbabwe if you compared life in our village and the affluent lives that commercial white farmers lived, you can see why it was very easy for the unemployed villagers to be persuaded that they were the problem. It was only later that many people realised the domino effect that their actions had on the rest of the economy and more importantly their own welfare.

As we sit debating the legacy of Nelson Mandela and his generation of leaders. My take is that his generation did its part in bringing about freedom, drafting a very fair constitution as well as laying strong foundations for important institutions such as the independent judiciary. It is now up to our generation to rise up to the occasion and solve the current problems such as inequality, unemployment, dealing with climate change, continued emancipation of women’s rights. Nelson Mandela understood that you did not have to dispossess someone to help someone but you have to grow the cake more. South African economy has grown since the end of Apartheid and at the same time the inequality gap has widened and that to me is the danger that we must guard against. Just as it was in Germany before World war 2, in early 2000s when Mugabe convinced mobs to destroy the agricultural industry, in United Kingdom when the electorate thought Brexit was a good idea or in USA when someone as incompetent as Donald Trump was elected. The majority might be convinced to elect someone who will destroy the country.