Part of my preflight ritual before I travel long distances, as many other people do, I assume, is searching for, and downloading, relevant reading matter fit to consume on the plane. There was a time when you could just take a printed book, but given the steady shrinkage of space in planes, taking an iPad or Kindle is just easier.
My search led me to an essay on UnHerd, titled “Britain is Turning Into South Africa: From Schools to Prisons, Our State is Crumbling”.
You’re probably having the same reaction to that headline that I did. Is someone genuinely trying to convince us that our failing state, with its litany of problems ranging from load-shedding to state capture, with extraordinary poverty and violence wedged in between state incompetence and political corruption, is anything like the UK? Are you having a laugh, mate, as I believe the British say? Or is that Australians? I can never remember.
For some reason — and forgive me this digression — the headline reminded me of one I’d read on the Independent website a little earlier in the day: “Sharks Repeatedly Attack Yacht off Australian Coast, Forcing Sailors to Abandon Damaged Vessel”.
That sounds horrific, especially if you’ve ever watched any of those shark horror films. You read that headline, and you imagine these monstrous killer sharks viciously ramming the yacht again and again, trying to devour the humans quivering on board.
The title on the Independent’s video coverage was even scarier: “Yacht’s Stern Ripped Apart after Shark Attack off Australian Coast”.
One of the rescuers “was quoted as saying by ABC News that ‘the sailors were very lucky because they had an emergency distress beacon … which enabled us to tell the most appropriate and fastest response to rescue them. They were very well prepared, they were calm, but of course, they were elated to be rescued.’”
Reader, at no point in this gripping tale did the Independent see fit to mention that these were not the great whites of our imagination, but cookie-cutter sharks that are about 15cm-20cm long. The shark in Jaws, perhaps the classic shark phobia movie, was 7.62m long, and this is the sort of shark the headline was invoking. Not the little sharks described in the Guardian as “pencils with teeth”. Apparently they have a history “of trying to eat inanimate objects, including submarines”, which basically makes them the chihuahuas of the sea.
Of course, whether your yacht is sinking in the middle of the ocean because of killer sharks with an inexplicable taste for human flesh or because of little cookie-cutter sharks in what marine biologists believe was “‘a classic case of mistaken identity’ from a ‘supercool’ little shark that glows in the dark and has a very big attitude, despite its size”, you’re still going to drown.
In the same spirit, if you see that your country is increasingly failing its citizens, and veering however imperceptibly from the ideals of a democracy, I suppose it doesn’t matter if you’re as execrable as South Africa. You’re still going to drown, even if it takes a lot longer.
It’s a crying shame that South Africans are now spending their considerable energy on solving the problems of other countries, instead of their own
But still, I was in no mood to have such an unlikely comparison made. We South Africans have so little left to call our own, it seems unfair that we now have to be just a run-of-the-mill disaster rather than a special failure.
The UnHerd article was written by an expat South African, one Wessie du Toit, and he says that “these parallels will doubtless seem absurd to many Brits, and doubly so to South Africans. Earlier this year, when I mentioned to some friends over there that the UK has its own problems with government incompetence, they literally laughed in my face.”
Well, yes, buddy. Because that’s like saying to someone dying of starvation: “Chin up! There’s a bit of a truffle shortage in the UK this year, so, really, we’re all in this together.”
When the writer touted his article on X, the social media platform formerly known as fun, he tweeted (xeeted?): “I wrote for UnHerd about the disturbing realisation that the kinds of dysfunction I associate with South Africa are now appearing in Blighty.”
For some reason, that irked me. We’re all familiar with those expat South Africans who spend their time bemoaning the state of the country they’ve left. It’s fine when they’re doing it among themselves, but it becomes tiresome when you meet them on your travels and they talk about it to you. Yes, dude, I spent a fortune travelling halfway around the world so that I could share one of those so-called pints of British with you and have a doom-laden chat about the depressing mess that is our shared homeland.
But for some reason, probably because of an unhealthy South African psychological attribute it’s best not to dwell on, I’m even more annoyed that our expats are now using us as an object lesson to comment on the conditions of their new home. One of the reasons I’m annoyed is for humorous effect: sheesh, can’t you at least let us keep the deluded exceptionalism of our problems?! Do you have to take everything we hold dear?!
But the other is perhaps more sober. It’s a crying shame that South Africans are now spending their considerable energy on solving the problems of other countries, instead of their own. It’s yet another consequence of the government’s many, oh so many, failings. And sadly, this is echoed in the way Du Toit describes the decay.
“Metaphors for this failure are everywhere. Railways that took my parents to their summer holidays as children now lie rusting and abandoned. Supermarkets sell asphalt for drivers to fill in potholes for themselves (the product is marketed as gatvol, which means both ‘hole-full’ and ‘fed-up’). Criminal gangs, their numbers buoyed by an unemployment rate above 30%, cut down traffic lights for scrap, steal transformers from power stations and collapse roads with illegal mining operations. Eskom, the national power monopoly, is so ravaged by corruption that daily blackouts now last as long as nine hours.”
These aren’t metaphors for us, are they — they’re reality. We live in the failure. And this is the effect distance has. For some of our expats, we’re now just a morality tale. And to be clear, I’m not criticising this. It’s a healthy development, I would think. Just an unfortunate loss to us.
We can draw parallels between South Africa and apex democracies, and seek omens and portents … But there’s a big difference between cracks in a democratic edifice, and having sold out the whole structure for a share of the rent
Speaking of failure, Du Toit uses that merry gang of democratically elected looters that preside over us in an interesting analogy. “The Tory party does an increasingly passable impression of the ANC. Apparently convinced it will be in power forever, it has become little more than a vehicle for personal advancement and influence peddling, disguising its aimlessness with an occasional bout of populist rhetoric.”
There are parts of Du Toit’s argument you’ll find compelling, and he supplies some trenchant examples of the similarities between the two countries’ trajectories. He describes what he calls “a subtle form of the South African disease. The state fails to maintain and improve infrastructure, while allowing the asset-stripping of national wealth by private interests.”
Still, sitting on my British Airways flight to London, the analogy seemed ludicrous. But on the walk from Paddington station to my hotel, the little camps of homeless people sleeping on the streets were noticeable. Not exactly the tent cities of San Francisco and Cape Town, but there.
I met up with a colleague for coffee later that day, someone I hadn’t seen since she’d moved to London eight months previously. It was noticeable that she had transformed from a sedentary person into a healthy one. How had moving to London effected that change, I asked. After all, one doesn’t usually associate moving from an apartment next to the mountain to a bustling metropolis with a surge in fitness. “I can go running here,” she said. And we shared a moment of South African understanding.
All of which is to say, yes, we can draw parallels between South Africa and apex democracies, and seek omens and portents. There were warning stories by South African expats in 2016, drawing parallels between our own beloved leader Jacob Zuma and the emerging horror that was Donald Trump. People probably sneered at that at the time, and yet here the world is. But there’s a big difference between cracks in a democratic edifice and having sold out the whole structure for a share of the rent.
In the end, I suppose, as Du Toit points out, the cookie-cutter politicians nibbling away at that old democratic dream will land us all in the water, drowning not waving.
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