When a patient is on their deathbed, desperately clinging to life, the patient and their relatives just want a doctor — any qualified doctor — to come in and save them. It matters not who the doctor is. What matters is that they at least try. In SA’s case, the government seems to be blind to the reality of the dying patient — in this case, the economy, which needs to be transferred to intensive care, with specialists, whoever they may be, to resuscitate them. But it may very well be too late.
There is no more powerful example of such desperation and pragmatism than businesswoman Basetsana Kumalo. Her recent book, Bassie: My Journey Of Hope, includes a chapter on her mother’s last years and the family’s desperate fight to keep her alive. A lifelong heart patient, Beatrice Makgalemele was introduced to cardiologist Wouter Basson, who successfully performed a delicate, life-saving operation on her.
In a normal situation, the Makgalemeles would never have allowed Basson anywhere near anyone in their family. Dubbed "Dr Death" by the media after it exposed his evil work as head of the apartheid regime’s secret chemical war programme, Basson had dedicated a large part of his professional life to killing black people as part of the military’s attempts to contain freedom fighters. His unit even experimented with poison that would target only people with black skin.
A brilliant heart surgeon, Basson later entered private practice in the Western Cape, where he met Makgalemele. Kumalo writes about the family’s trepidation, of wondering why they would allow such a man to operate on their mother — and pray for him to succeed. But Basson had no equal. Makgalemele would allow nobody else near her heart afterwards.
That is the nature of life and death. But this seems too complicated for the government to comprehend.
And the government pretends it still has time to decide the terms on which the doctor may operate
Instead of bringing in the doctor, the SA government keeps pretending it still has the time for such niceties as choosing the skin colour of the doctor. And the terms on which the surgeon may operate. It seems to think it can decide what equipment the doctor will use, and what price he will charge. There are none so blind as those who will not see …
A national emergency
The patient, the SA economy, is choking from lack of electricity. Among all our many problems, generating sufficient electricity is the most urgent and critical. For without electricity, all the other problems will not be resolved. It is a national emergency. It should have been attended to 12 years ago. Of course, had the government known what it was doing, the problem would not have arisen in the first place.
Now a whole generation of young South Africans are being made to think that rationing something as basic as electricity is normal. Those under 15 have grown up with load-shedding. The chance to address the crisis has been wasted time and again. Yet it can still be solved, sooner than we are led to believe.
The constitution empowers the president to summon a doctor to save the patient. Section 37 says the president may, through an act of parliament, declare an emergency when "the life of the nation is threatened by war, invasion, general insurrection, disorder, natural disaster or other public emergency …"
The president can use this part of our supreme law, the part referring to "disorder ... or other public emergency" to immediately call for industry to generate electricity and sell it to the national grid. Generation infrastructure equivalent to 5,000MW is what SA needs urgently to get over the costly, disastrous spectre of load-shedding. Only then can we go back to our usual ways of doing business.
That is, slowly-slowly.
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