Institutional Corrosion: Nelson Mandela’s Legacy Dies As South Africa Descends into Chaos

south-africa-protests

“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”

— Nelson Mandela


Mere days after the 25th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela, and the 20th anniversary of the fall of apartheid that heralded in his historic rainbow coalition in the African National Congress (ANC), the CEO of South Africa’s crippled and cash-strapped nationalized electrical provider, ESKOM, practically begged that nation’s corporate leaders in an email to reduce their electrical consumption 15% (later reduced to 10%) between 6 and 9:00 p.m. on February 12, to assure the lights would not go out during President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address.

It was a sad symbol of a third-world crisis in what was once Africa’s largest economy (prior to being eclipsed last year by Nigeria); a country where dealing with government corruption, rampant crime and crumbling infrastructures has become a way of life. President Zuma presides over a grab bag of dire social and economic calamities: poverty, crime, unemployment, inequality and now a crippling electrical crisis. Today’s South Africa is a country in decline; where Standard Bank Group chief economist Goolam Balim told a Fin24 reporter that “Institutional erosion seems to have been a hallmark of South African public life over the last couple of years.”

Many South Africans believe President Zuma’s “one-man wrecking ball” (according to columnist Max du Preez) leadership is corroding the power and international appeal built by Nelson Mandela. Prior to the 2015 State of the Nation (SONA) address, Zuma – who has four “official” wives, reportedly fathered up to 40 children and bizarrely has remained in power despite groaning under the weight of over 700 corruption charges – solicited input from the public for his speech. The tactic backfired in a stunning display of national discontent, with thousands of calls for him to either resign or pay back an estimated $21 million of taxpayer money he used to build a swimming pool, auditorium and other luxuries at his private residence, Nkandla. He most recently was called on to apologize for stating that “teen-mothers should be sent to Robben Island,” the notorious prison that once housed Nelson Mandela, as a response to the unwed teen pregnancy problem there.

“He and his cabinet is a disaster for this country,” wrote a South African citizen in an email, adding that Zuma has engineered the political scenario in such a way that all prosecuting authorities have been paralyzed and opposition to him and the ANC has been silenced. Independent senior officials are routinely placed on suspension, then dismissed and replaced with “voices that sing the praises of Zuma and the ANC” (called having “a good story to tell”).

Zuma considers himself immune from corruption because to him, that vice is particular only to western societies.  “Please understand, Honorable President,” Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane said when he took to the podium during the 2015 address, “when I use the term “honorable,” I do it out of respect for the traditions and conventions of this august House. But please do not take it literally. For you, Honorable President, are not an honorable man. You are a broken man, presiding over a broken society.”

“His only talent … was that of a political street fighter and manipulator, a talent he had perfected as the head of intelligence of Umkhonto we Sizwe while in exile,” wrote du Preez of Zuma in Pretoria News December 30, 2014. “He masterfully outmaneuvered those who stood up to him and instilled a culture of fear in his party. He richly rewarded those loyal to him through a vast system of patronage and massively enriched his own family and clan in the tradition of Robert Mugabe and Mobuto Sese Seko (former president of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo).”

Rather than refute du Preez’s accusations, Zuma’s office instead stated in part that “the piece smacks of prejudice and racism given the manner in which Mr. du Preez describes the President.” Accusations of racism is a common tool used by the ANC to marginalize and vilify the country’s 5 million whites, who have retreated inwards, frequently behind barbed wire-topped gated communities.

The “broken society” stated by Maimane was in full evidence at the 2015 SONA. Protests by members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, led by Julius Malema, and others led to the deployment of riot police on the streets outside the parliament. @brankobrkic tweeted “Water cannon just arrived. Shape of things to come? #SONA2015.”

Numerous arrests were made, both outside and inside the auditorium. Fifty percent of the Parliamentarians left the room before Zuma was able to deliver his address, and parliamentary procedure was abandoned when state police (not standard parliamentary security) were brought in to remove EFF protestors.

“Zuma was reduced to a shuffling, lip-smacking, giggling caricature,” wrote William Saunderson-Meyer in IOL News February 16, “spouting platitudes and painfully sounding his way past the three-syllable words like a lazy schoolboy who hadn’t done his preparation, called upon to read aloud in class.”

“Tonight, not only did Jacob Zuma deal a deadly blow to foreign investment, he completely ignored the issues of his blatant corruption, paid lip service to the dire power crisis, [and] didn’t even touch on the failing Rand that has slipped 10% in the past year,” reported journalist Craig Pedersen, who also reported that Zuma’s SONA failed to address the widespread poverty and unemployment issues facing the country. According to the BBC there are 10 million jobless in South Africa, equaling a nationwide unemployment rate of 25 percent, with a staggering rate of about 57 percent for young township people.

Then to add further insult, all cell service was shut off during the address, leaving journalists unable to file stories and pictures inside. @KatyKatopodis tweeted “If you’re wondering how I’m tweeting … I’ve had to step out of the chamber. Absolutely no signal inside. #BringBackTheSignal #SONA2015.”

It has since been confirmed that the State Security Agency was behind the signal scrambling during SONA, but it is still unknown who instructed the SSA to do it.

The next day, while CNN, BBC Sky News, and local press trumpeted the SONA debacle with headlines declaring “House of Scandal,” “House of Chaos,” and “The End of Democracy,” speaker Baleka Mbete confirmed her loyalty to Zuma by maligning the opposition protestors as “cockroaches” who worked for western interests.

While the lights did not go out during the SONA address, the “power crisis” mentioned by Pedersen and the request from ESKOM highlighted South Africa’s inability to maintain a nation’s most basic infrastructural requirement: reliable electricity. Already struggling with the high cost of diesel and persistent, crisis-driven unplanned power station maintenance, a coal silo at the Majuba power station split open last November, dumping thousands of tons of coal on the ground. This confluence of triggers resulted in a near-collapse of the electrical grid and the nationwide implementation of daily “load shedding,” or rolling blackouts, which is expected to last up to three years.

“ESKOM is not in the business of load shedding,” spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe told News24 in a statement almost worthy of Monty Python, “We would rather focus on fulfilling our mandate, which is to provide electricity when we can” (italics mine).

Even before the recent crisis, South Africa ranked poorly in the World Bank’s 2011 Sub-Saharan African electrical efficiency report. On a scale of 0 (worst) to 1.0 (best), South Africa scored 0.72 – below lesser-developed countries as Chad, Uganda, Namibia and the Republic of Congo.

“We are running a very vulnerable power system,” said Phasiwe, adding that on February 5 all 87 power stations were “…experiencing all sorts of problems at this stage.” A Valentine’s Day story in IOL Business Report stated somewhat sarcastically that “ESKOM has assured South Africans they will enjoy a candlelit dinner tonight: it is implementing load shedding until 10 pm.”

The electricity crisis is producing unintended and unwanted consequences. Burglaries are skyrocketing in a country already wracked by some of the highest crime rates in the world, including rape, which is at pervasively epidemic levels. Criminals simply go to the ESKOM load shedding schedule website to see where and when city and township neighborhoods will go powerless. Although most suburban homes have alarm systems, many homeowners do not realize those systems also go down during power outages if they have no battery backup. Faced with increasing claims, homeowner’s insurance companies will not pay unless the homeowner can prove the alarm system was backed up and operational at the time of the burglary.

There are health consequences to the load shedding – even fatal ones. One man told News24 that his father, a state pensioner, is dependent on oxygen pumps and “without medical aid.” “He is taking strain every time the electricity goes off,” the man said. “Even his skin color changes during this period.”

Tragically, a 61-year old Bloemfontein man suffering from Asbestosis died February 4 when his oxygen machines cut off after ESKOM implemented rolling blackouts twice in one day.

It’s not just the electrical grid experiencing trauma – many municipalities across the country are experiencing major breakdowns of all infrastructures, including roads, sewage plants, water supply, hospitals and schools. The steady erosion of effectiveness of once proficient organizations such as the SA Defense Force, The Post Office, Telkom and many others is embarrassingly noticeable, as competent managers are being fired and unskilled ministers, CFOs and CEOs are appointed in their place in order to reach government mandated affirmative action-driven “redeployment targets.” A March 8 story in News24 reports that the embattled ESKOM must fire 1,081 white engineers to match strict new regulations. A top official said that “It will be catastrophic if our affirmative action targets now lead to the estrangement of people whose skills we need.”

Despite Zuma’s election promise that land reform was tops on his agenda, the reallocation deal brokered by Mandela with the former government in 1994 is stalled. While many whites were able to keep their land if it had been acquired under previous regimes, negotiations in the mid-1990’s between apartheid and the ANC devised a “willing seller/willing buyer” arrangement, but the principle broke down when the government offered unrealistically low prices for farms, which deadlocked the process. Hundreds of once thriving farms eventually bought by the Government to be re-distributed amongst the previously disadvantaged never happened. Most of them now lie unsold or in ruins; the equipment stolen, sold off, or left to rust because Section 25 of the constitution failed to assist reform beneficiaries to obtain the skills necessary to productively utilize their newly acquired land.

South Africa spends about 6.1% of its GDP on education, a greater percentage than most other countries, yet its results are among the worst in the world, mostly because of scandal, mismanagement and a lack of qualified teachers. In the World Economic Forum’s 2011 Global Competitive Index it ranked dead last out of 133 countries in both math and science education. It also ranked 40th out of 40 countries in the 2006 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study, and 48th out of 48 countries in the 2003 Trends in International Math and Science Study.

Still, government seems unable to get textbooks into the hands of pupils, and book sharing is common in all grades. Timely delivery of textbooks to the poorest province, Limpopo, was so bad in previous years that in 2012 a vendor dumped them in a river bed rather than face the embarrassment of long overdue delivery. Last April, thousands of undelivered textbooks were found by Democratic Alliance party members during a routine visit to a teachers’ training college in Fetakgomo.

One reason why service delivery is so poor is because of the ANC policy of “cadre deployment,” where state entities – with almost no say on their behalf – have boards and council members appointed for them by a specific government department. According to one resident, incompetence of senior, middle and lower management (and workers), coupled with runaway nepotism are the main causes for so much of the breakdown of organizations tasked with service delivery.

Many South Africans insist Zuma is reversing everything that the ANC under Mandela and Mbeki worked for. His forceful ejection of the EFF from Parliament reminded many of the apartheid leaders of the past who would set police on peaceful anti-apartheid protests. “Honorable President, we will never forgive you for what you have done,” said Maimane, referring to the abandonment of democratic processes during the SONA.

Many South Africans do not view the EFF as a rational alternative to the ANC. Their agenda advocates a suspicious land-reallocation free-for-all, and the nationalization of most all South African institutions, including the revered mines.

“Things can only get worse, especially on the economic front,” wrote News24 columnist Allister Sparks. “The Treasury is already out of money and I reckon we shall hit the wall around this time next year when the rating agencies rate hit us with junk status ratings. That will be slap-bang in the face of the local government elections.”

In the meantime, a general state of malaise has settled over South Africa as the middle class population has grown angry and frustrated with living under the incompetence, nepotism and corruption of the ANC government. For example, the town of Thlolong’s water supply dried up while ministers and engineers argued for months over the proposed diameter of a water pipe. It seems to be one crisis after the next, under the leadership of a president who is there only to enrich himself. According to one resident, the South Africa of 2015 is “tiny pockets of excellence” buried in a rush “towards the gutter.” There is no desire to strive for excellence anymore. “You just quote the Constitution and Bob’s your uncle.”

A commenter on the ESKOM web site summed the despondent state of South Africa when he wrote “The ANC regrets to inform that the light at the end of the tunnel has been load shedded.”


Dale Brumfield is an author and Digital Archaeologist from Doswell, Virginia.

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