Freedom’s just another word

Kajsa and I spent Sunday afternoon at the Apartheid Museum, a fifteen minute drive south of Killarney. After getting over the incongruity of the museum’s location next door to the Gold Reef City fun fair and casino complex, we endured and enjoyed a roller-coaster ride through South Africa’s past and were left pondering the present and the future.

A bitter past
A few things struck me although I needed little reminding. The first was the evil of the apartheid regime. In its initial phase as a bureaucratic project with its emphasis on banal racial classification, segregation and forced removals couched in terms of “good neighbourliness” and “separate but equal” and the attempt to de-Africanise South Africa.

The second was the utter brutality of the security state in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, that reached a crescendo in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with thousands killed, injured, arrested and tortured. I remember the early 1990’s particularly vividly as I worked for the national Peace Accord in Port Shepstone where a war involving the ANC, IFP and the various security services raged. It was called at the time a low-intensity civil conflict. In our small rural area of operations people were attacked and killed, schools closed and communities displaced almost daily for years. Normal existence for many was impossible.

No turning back
The third thing is a realisation of how far the country has come from those dark days. This country will never return to those days of institutionalised racism and fear. Lastly I was reminded of the hope and joy of the immediate post-apartheid years, the short-lived and much-hyped “Rainbow Nation”. On the eve of Freedom Day this was particularly poignant as I recalled driving out into the back of beyond on the election days in 1994 to witness hundreds of people waiting patiently to vote at the various schools designated as voting stations.

The damage caused by such an insidious and evil regime cannot be simply wished away and erased from memory. Nor should it be forgotten in history. The ANC government is still dealing with the legacy of apartheid, a psychological damaged and traumatised population. It might be an idea for ANC leaders, and the whole population of this country for that matter, to go and spend a few hours in the museum. Not to dwell on the past but rather to seek inspiration for the future and develop a clear vision for South Africa.

All is not lost
I sometimes get the impression that the ANC leadership do not give a damn about what people think and are in government solely for the purpose of enriching themselves and their BEE cronies and that this attitude permeates down into all structures at all levels. This cannot be the case, the policeman who gave me a traffic fine for having an expired license disk (We are borrowing a friend’s car) yesterday made no attempt to solicit a bribe, but the stories of wastage, corruption and inefficiency and mismanagement in many government departments (Home Affairs) and parastatals (SAA, Telkom) is sobering and depressing. Creating a few black oligarchs does not mean economic equality has ended.

On a lighter note I mentioned to a friend that The Department of Home Affairs was introducing a number queuing system at its offices to improve efficiency. The idea is you take a number and wait your turn. She replied that a friend had experienced the new system in action. Her friend arrived at her local DHA office, took her ticket and sat down. About thirty minutes later a bureaucrat came out and shouted to the patient throng: “All those people with tickets number 24-54 follow me”. And off they traipsed to form their own new queue.

Football fever
The World Cup starts in little over a month’s time. Despite the best efforts of the organisers both local and international to sabotage the event through poor ticketing procedures and greedy travel arrangements I am looking forward to a great month of football and fans. While the only new infrastructure in place might be the football stadiums, thousands of tickets have been sold, more and more South African flags are appearing and one gets a sense of football fever gradually growing.

I drove past the Gautrain Sandton station the other day and if that is ready to take passengers on day one of the Cup I will be mightily impressed. It looked a mess of metal and concrete. Oh, and the South African team, the Bafana Bafana (another of the PR creations like “Rainbow Nation” and “Proudly South African” so loved down here) are rubbish but we won’t let that stop us from having a good time. I know at least three people, two Swedes and a Honduran who are making the trip so there’ll be a few foreigners along as well.