End of the Rainbow?

I am gradually adjusting to life in South Africa. I realise that my first few blog entries have been on the light side. Don’t get me wrong, we do live in an urban idyll here in Killarney, but it is the idyll of the privileged few.

I have been pondering on the focus of this piece and there is a lot to choose from. Between ongoing township protests at the lack of delivery (the provision of basic services such as housing, electricity and water to township residents) and government ineptitude and corruption (the department of home affairs is a basket case), the emerging class of tenderprenuers (those who use government connections to win government tenders they do not have the skill or wherewithal to fulfil thereby making large amounts of money), the murder rate (50 a day seems to be an accepted figure), rape, road safety, crime and security in general, the inane and inflammable utterings of Julius Malema. And then Eugene Terreblanche got murdered.

Bad old days
The trial will give us better insight into what actually took place but the past week has seen a number of theories emerge, the zaniest being the suggestion that ET was gay, or lat least engaged in some kind of sexual relationship with the accused. Things seem pretty calm though after the rather disturbing scenes outside the court house last week. The ANC and AWB have appealed for calm from its members but the appearance of swastikas and the Nazi slaute at the funeral didn’t help.

Terreblanche was an unapologetic extreme racist and what his death has done it seems is to give air to an organization and ideology very much at the periphery of South African politics. A facebook site in his memory does have more than 6000 fans although not all are supporters of the AWB. I cannot mourn his death quite frankly.

His murder however comes in the wake of an ongoing debate and controversy about the singing of the struggle song "kill the boer” by the ANCYL head Julius Malema. My immediate concern is that some Afrikaner extremist will make an attempt or kill a high profile ANC leader as some kind of revenge. That would be a problem.
Urban-rural divide
A more worrying danger though is the unseemly behaviour of Malema. Holding Zimbabwe as a model for the future would be funny if it were not so tragic. What really disappointed me about the scenes beamed from Ventersdorp last week was that it seemed this country had not moved very far in the last twenty years. The old South African flag, the polarized racial groups etc. I think this is a major problem in the more isolated rural communities.

In most large urban centres people of different races mix in a more informal or professional manner even thought the divide between rich and poor is still very much a divide between black and white.

We will have to see how this pans out. I think President Zuma has to come out with something on the nature of race and society in South Africa. It is suggested that 3000 farmers ( This figure is disputed as records are not comprehensive) have been murdered since 1994.

Unfortunately the killing of farmers is just one small piece in the appalling jigsaw that is murder in South Africa. They do feel isolated but at the same time if the Boers, and by this I mean the old school racists who want their own volkstaat (not going to happen) then when they say they are "here to stay", then they must adapt to the new rules and not use "here to stay" as a threat. They are welcome to stay if they pay their workers a proper wage, stop living like apartheid still exists and end demands for a volkstaat.

Time for new thinking
Still the onus is on the ANC. They have been in government since 1994 and they have failed their constituency, the urban and rural black poor. I hope that the current tension between the youth league and the ANC will encourage some serious discussion within the ANC and the COSATU/SACP alliance partners on the kind of South Africa it wants to build.

The rainbow nation is dead. It is time to start building a national identity that goes beyond slogans and window-dressing. Repairing a few roads, adding a few bus routes in preparation for the football world cup will not do it.

One piece of good news. The road death toll for the Easter long weekend was 105 (28 drivers, 48 passengers and 29 pedestrians), down from 197 last year.