These could really be the best of times. Three months after the elections, the government of national unity (GNU) is mercifully and miraculously still holding up. What we feared may be cheap Band-Aid on the GNU is turning out to be glue, and with time could perhaps even be superglue.
The currency is strengthening nicely. The employment numbers are horrendous, but can be fixed. Eskom, for so long the bane of our lives, celebrated 150 days of no load-shedding this week. A sustained Eskom performance at this rate could really lift the economic growth numbers.
A little more pressure on the accelerator by President Cyril Ramaphosa, a little less bureaucracy all round, a little more dedication to attracting domestic and international investment, and just a little more focus on fighting corruption and crime, would see this country begin to thrive. Right now, the goodwill of most South Africans is right behind this government. With the right moves, we could find ourselves soaring to heights we last saw in the mid-2000s.
This is not a pipe dream. This is a reality: the executive team is decent (if sadly bloated), the policies strike the right notes, and the will to win seems to be there in big parts of the government. The cabinet has some youngish members who seem to want to make an impact and leave a legacy.
Best of all, the DA is making every single one of its successes in the ministries it runs known to the public. That is fabulous because we finally have some competition in the executive. Suddenly you have the ANC ministers clamouring to achieve something — anything — and announce it. The people are the winners.
Yet these could also be the worst of times. The radical economic transformation wing of the ANC could still manoeuvre to undermine the government of national unity and replace it with an ANC-EFF-MK Party coalition as envisaged by the SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila. It would be a coalition of the lazy, the corrupt, the inept and the incompetent.
With its birth Ramaphosa would go and so would many of the brighter sparks in the ANC. Policy would change drastically and swing further left than what we saw during the Jacob Zuma years. The domino effect of such an eventuality would be the tanking of the rand, naturally, and the return of the uncertainty and volatility of the state capture years. Coupled with it would be an unprecedented assault on institutions of state and democracy, turning South Africa into a captured state and swiftly thereafter into a failed democracy.
South Africa must not be complacent. The dangers are still too many
We have stepped back from this scenario since the formation of the GNU. Let’s keep stepping back. We are, however, not yet out of the woods.
There is a third way, of course, and it lies between the low road and the high road we often contemplate. Ultimately, it also leads to disaster. That is the middling route, the road down which we are so satisfied with what has been achieved by merely building a GNU that we sit and congratulate ourselves.
This is the wrong thing to do. South Africa must not be complacent. The dangers are still too many. That means we must not stop making a noise about Babita Deokaran, the whistle-blower who was gunned down in cold blood on August 23 2021, for exposing corruption at the Gauteng department of health. We must not stop supporting NGOs that expose the rot at the heart of much of our political system. We must not stop empowering the media that continues to shine a bright light on rampant corruption.
As the light of hope that the country can be turned around begins to flicker in the far distance, we must ensure that the people and the actions that brought us back from the brink during the state capture years are remembered and emulated. Chief justice Raymond Zondo, who stood firm against intimidation of the judiciary, is someone whose words and actions deserve to be remembered and emulated. There are so many others like him and Deokaran.
The challenge for our country as we begin to take off is to intensify the reforms we have embarked upon. The future is ours to make. Complacency is death. Stay woke.
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