In the cold light of day, some of the stuff the Guptas have been up to beggars belief. It’s the kind of stuff authors wouldn’t consider including in their novels because you just can’t make – it’s just too far fetched.
My Biznews colleague Quentin Wray is often faced with this reality when my near neighbour here in Surrey gets engaged by the locals on our homeland.
Quentin writes: “When Brits hear me murdering my vowels in the distinctive way we do, they ask me about South Africa’s prospects. This should be easy to answer. After all, the government, the Guptas and their assorted proxies in state-owned entities and quasi-revolutionary movements are doing their utmost to prove the expression “going to hell in a handbasket” was coined specifically for us.
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We’re all reading the same news and unfortunately there are not many ways to interpret it. So it should be easy enough to answer the question. But because I don’t ever want to be one of “those” expats who run the country down at every opportunity, I tend to be uncharacteristically circumspect. Which is difficult because I also don’t want to look completely delusional.
My answer is always the same. I say I’m bullish in the long term but bearish in the short. It’s obviously easier to use the data to defend the latter position than the former, but I genuinely believe that historians who get to write our story will look at the 2017 as an inflection point. We are witnessing the slow reversal of an inexorable slide into full-scale kleptocracy. Or at least we’re watching it become less inexorable. Caveats obviously apply: it is just as easy to see how it could all get even worse. But we won’t go there because, as I said, we don’t want to be “those” people.
Watching the Zupta narrative evolve over the past several months has shown a mettle across the country that has transcended race and class in a way that nothing has since the 2010 World Cup. The arms deal came and went and while there was an almighty row in the media and one or two high-profile scalps, the ANC pretty much carried on regardless. But this smells different. After years of us waiting for people to get properly gatvol with what is being done in their name, they are. It’s happening. Sure, it’s taken far too long, but it’s finally happening.
We have yet to see anybody jailed for being complicit in the latest bout of industrial-scale malfeasance and, even with all the mounting evidence, I am doubtful that there will be any more than a few token prosecutions. But that matters far less to me than the fact that it is also only a matter of time before a different faction of the ANC takes over and, if that doesn’t sort things out, a non-ANC government does so.
Change is coming and I am confident it’s going to be good. If I’m wrong I’m going to have to reclaim my Zimbabwean identity and have no view on the matter whatsoever. I’m still not going to become one of those guys.”
