From Biznews community member John Stegmann*
In many democracies most citizens are in the lowest income groups. And in SA the overwhelming majority is poor. Pre-election promises for collecting X’s on ballot papers are therefore directed in some way at this X-rich community.
Since everyone seeks protection from threats of injury, harm, piracy or unfair discrimination, fear is possibly the biggest X-field exploited in the run-up to elections.
Is Xenophobia – an ancient word meaning irrational fear of strangers – a morally defensible way of collecting X’s when we all know that it has disastrous consequences?
- Swart gevaar swept the National Party to power in 1948 and made apartheid
- Mugabe stoked hatred of white colonialists to entrench despotic rule and destroy Zimbabwe.
- Britain’s, and the world’s economies, are reeling after xenophobia won the Brexit vote.
- American Republicans have elected Donald Trump as their presidential candidate to ring fence America against foreigners…
- Julius Malema considered Mandela a weak negotiator, making far to many concessions to whites, and Jacob Zuma’s Mugabian tactics too tame. The EFF will be a party for blacks.
- Jacob Zuma, clearly a Mugabe admirer, appeals to black South Africans to rally around the ANC. When the EFF announced that it would take land from white-skinned people without compensation, Zuma immediately made his land reform policy more favourable for blacks. Instead of continuing to dismantle racism, under Zuma the ANC maintained the apartheid classifications to promote people on the basis of colour.
The truth is that poverty and fear are common features of every society, worldwide, and the politician’s job is to break down irrational xenophobia, through example and education (rather than by humiliation, decree and punishment), and to unite the population for their communal benefit. Another truth is that everyone on this planet is descended from Africa. We are all Africans, and our behaviour is not predetermined by skin colour.
Nelson Mandela is the universally acclaimed and celebrated example of statesmanship. Jacob Zuma’s style is Mugabian and in sharp contrast to Mandela’s. Under Zuma’s watch South Africans have once more been polarised and the country taken back to the dark days of violence we last saw before 1994.
The ANC’s top brass are implicit in this abandonment of the moral high ground, failing to X him on any of the appropriate opportunities when it ought to have. Presenting Zuma as their face of their election drive and having him pretend he’s upholding Mandela ideals is a Xumaresque denial of reality and responsibility. If past behaviour is an indication of future behaviour the ANC has been far too deeply infected by Zuma to be trusted with the job of eradicating apartheid divisions and reuniting the Rainbow Nation.
- John Stegmann is a fourth generation South African, architect & inventor. And an activist for attractive and safe dedicated cycleways open to all, and for bicycle technology. He’s not a political commentator or budding politician, just a concerned citizen expressing his views.
