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.
