By Alec Hogg
For a brief moment last week, South Africans everywhere pulled together against the common enemy of corruption. Including here in London where, on Saturday, I was among 600 Saffers protesting outside the South Africa House on Trafalgar Square.
Recently fired finance minister Pravin Gordhan urges us to “join the dots” which is what I shared when handed the megaphone in the UK sunshine. It isn’t difficult to do. Evidence from credible sources like former PP Thuli Madonsala, MPs Vytjie Mentor, and Mcebisi Jonas; OUTA, Save SA and Gordhan himself leaves little to the imagination: SA’s president has been corrupted by the Guptas and the Russians. And it’s now payback time.
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The Guptas require a banking licence, presumably to streamline their looting of a country whose exchange control regulations makes capital transfers rather transparent. The Russians are demanding confirmation of SA’s unaffordable and unnecessary $100bn nuclear power programme. Gordhan and his team at Treasury stood firmly in the way of both. With a gun to his head, Zuma was told to remove those obstacles. Which he has duly done.
Many South Africans see through the subterfuge. They realise their country is at a crossroads and believe unless the plundering stops, the Zimbabwe disaster will be repeated. So hundreds of thousands linked arms last week in by far the biggest expression of public anger displayed in the new SA. Their rolling mass action campaign has started.
Then comes headlines in yesterday’s Sunday Times that the Zuma cohort are actually celebrating the country’s credit rating fall to junk status. They are dismissive of the uproar. They regard the marchers as an irrelevant minority. Begging the obvious question of whether Zuma and Co are really that thick – that uncaring? Or perhaps right?
Pessimistic friends say it’s clutching at straws, but I believe the Zuptoids reaction reflects how badly they have misread the public mood. Which tends to happen when you live in a blue light bubble overstocked with good news filters. And rely on the echo chamber of a self-propagated myth that “white monopoly capital” is the cause of all SA’s problems.
It is a fact that SA’s GINI co-efficient is the worst on earth. But this widely quoted measure of income disparity falls into line with other developing markets when SA’s taxes and social grants are included. And it has been moving swiftly in the right direction – the WEF’s 2017 Inclusive Growth report released in January ranks SA 5th most improved of developing countries in the past five years.
With its world-beating unemployment of 36%, it’s an arithmetical certainty that SA’s GINI co-efficient will also be among the very worst. More relevant than statistics measuring income disparity, though, is whom the masses believe to be responsible for the lack of jobs.
The blame lies squarely with the ANC. And nothing is more powerful than the truth. Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they are stupid. And that’s where Zuma is miscalculating. Badly. As we shall surely see in the weeks and months ahead.
