This is a commentary on two ‘anti-Zille’ pieces

This is a commentary on two ‘anti-Zille’ pieces.

“An open letter to Premier Zille” by Zubeida Jaffer http://www.thejournalist.org.za/spotlight/an-open-letter-to-premier-zille  

and

“Zille, tweeting and inanity: more reasons for white South Africans to shut up” by David Everatt https://theconversation.com/zille-tweeting-and-inanity-more-reasons-for-white-south-africans-to-shut-up-75326?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%2028%202017%20-%2070775322&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%2028%202017%20-%2070775322+CID_16c67227ee81f1b6304646dafef4b577&utm_source=campaign_monitor_africa&utm_term=Zille%20tweeting%20and%20inanity%20more%20reasons%20for%20white%20South%20Africans%20to%20shut%20up

The world suffers from brevity.  It is inherently short, but not sweet, and certainly not rich in information.  This is epitomized in Twitter communications and short pieces like the ones under discussion, that may (or may not) be published without editorial and/or peer review.  The shorter the piece and ill-considered (or just plain stupid) the emphasis on sensitive issues, the greater the danger of entering what might be described as the ‘Zille/Trump Zone’.

The tragic similarity between Helen Zille and Donald Trump is their proclivity to ‘shoot from the hip’ with their head ‘up their ass’, while ‘jerking their knees’.  There are, however (thankfully for the Western Cape) diametrical differences between them.  Zille has integrity, honesty and vision, and has resolutely transformed them into service delivery.  Trump has neither and is equally resolutely undermining the USA, nationally and internationally, and will – probably sooner than later – be held accountable for his actions.

Having said this, Zille is no saint/messiah, and her ‘hard-ball’, “toe stomping’, ‘put up or shut up’, ‘my way or the highway’, egocentric tactics offended some at UCT (her and my past employer), in her own political party (that she propelled into significant power) and in the Western Cape (which she transformed from an ANC-driven den of corruption and cronyism into a functional entity) when they failed to deliver.  But, if one removes her from power, beware of what might follow.

You ask: “[H]ow could she possibly go wrong?”   The answer is: “By allowing her frustration and sense of urgency to get the better of her, slipping into the ‘Zille Zone’, and then egotistically trying to dig herself out of the mire.

What should have been Zille’s starting point in a long, carefully-considered report on her trip to Singapore?  My suggestion is that she should have said/written that:

despite a hundreds of years of horrible colonization and a post-colonial poor human rights record (its leaders have not “throw[n] human rights out the window”), Singapore has indeed been transformed in 50 years from

“a dirt-poor country [with] mass unemployment, lack of education, almost non-existent sanitation, a dearth of natural resources (not even sufficient water), squalid shack settlements prone to major fires, opium addiction, the absence of a sense of nationhood and national pride among people with myriad languages, “races”, cultures, religions”

into a much-admired nation characterized by

world-leading, highly competitive global commerce, finance/investment/trading and transport; proactively high-technology; sought-after venues for top International meetings; top oil refining capacity; world-leading basic/tertiary education and healthcare services; long life expectancy; high quality of life, personal safety, and home-ownership; and extremely low corruption and unemployment.

Then she should have said that this enormously successful transformation, in part, was based on inheriting (and ‘cheery picking’) infrastructure and practices from the colonial era and most importantly, ruthlessly following policies of meritocracy and good governance.

Why should she have said/written this?  Because this is what she believes in a possible (not an add-water-and stir, microwaved) strategy for South Africa.  Read her autobiography: Not without a fight.  https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-10-11-review-the-world-according-to-zille/#.WNuVOWe6LIU  As a product of German refugees who lost family in the Holocaust, she is not the neo-colonist her critics make her out to be.  All the authors do is provide fairly accurate descriptions of “barbaric” colonists and their nefarious acts.  What they do not provide is a connection between them and her life’s work.  If they want some sort of revenge, they need to dig up some British corpses and string up the apartheid leaders and murderous minions who implemented their despicable policies.

I almost certainly would not want to work for the never-satisfied Zille, but I hope that she will continue to work for me, my family and the vast “silenced majority” of  South Africans of all ‘self-identified groups’ who would love to live in a nation like Singapore, but governed with Mandela’s Constitution.

A less-than-150-word thoughtless missive does not justify the accusation that she believes that reconstructive post-colonialism is just colonialism ‘done properly’.

Let’s get to some specifics.  South Africa’s independent judiciary isn’t “because of colonialism”.  But, it was also not created in a vacuum. Its world-renowned constitution also was not written de novo and most definitely not “drawn up in large part by the African National Congress”.  It incorporates elements of Euro-Americo-sourced documents chosen to complement those necessary to rebuild a non-racial South Africa and was crafted by a broad cross-section of people who, five years, earlier would have fought to the death.

Given its violent history, the minibus taxi industry (too often connected with murders and rapes) is not a great counter-colonial-Singaporean alternative example of a long-term solution to South Africa’s transport needs.  Indeed, South Africa’s post-colonial transport infrastructure and other positive infrastructural developments are very much a combined, non-racial effort achieved in spite of the predatory activities of an increasingly kleptocratic government and cronyism-infused civil service.  Perhaps the greatest failure of the post-colonial government has been its horribly dysfunctional Basic Education System, described by some eminent black scholars and educators (e.g. Jonathan Jansen, Moeletsi Mbeki and Mamphela Ramphele) as, in some ways, inferior to the emasculating Bantu Education.  If this system is not ‘constructively decolonized’, the country is doomed.

Finally to politics, which is clearly the primary motive of Zille’s would be ‘executors’ within and without the Democratic Alliance.  Her and the DA’s success in Cape Town and latterly Western Province (and soon to be in a bunch of other key municipalities) is not an “unhealthy wedge between this province and the rest of the country”.  It’s an example of what can be done by hard-working honest people, regardless of self-identification, when they replace party-picked incompetent kleptocrats.  The worst thing for the country would be to revert to anything resembling the pre-colonial ‘model’.

When “Zille tells [all, not just] black people how stupid they are for electing the corrupt ANC and for not following the Singaporean path”, she’s not “quintessentially white”, she’s right.  The very real danger facing South Africa are the neo-fascist demagogues who would really “throw human rights out the window” and doom the perhaps still hopeful oppressed masses to perpetual poverty and marginalization. The choice facing South Africans – that currently features very strongly at its teetering universities - is excellence through non-racial meritocracy and good governance vs aspirations of mediocracy through authoritarian rule by the racially self-identified who govern by context.  Limiting power to arbitrarily designated “indigenous people” is nothing but re-incarnated Apartheid.

Yes, I agree with the author who proclaims that it is now time to ‘draw a line in the sand’.  But I, and I believe most of South Africa’s “silenced majority”, want it to separate an ethos based on academic freedom and free speech generally, non-racial meritocracy and good governance founded on the rule of law from one that embodies racialized nationalism (i.e. xenophobia), rampant mediocracy and kleptocratic/cronyistic ‘governance’.

One of the women who is attempting to wield the line-drawing sword is the egotistical, arrogant, opinionated Helen Zille.