I was reading some of the comments made by Mamphela Ramphele at a press club luncheon this week. Ramphele has held the posts of managing director of the World Bank and vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town. I think in most respects she really hit the nail on the head.

She said that South Africa had “grossly underestimated” the challenges of transformation, in particular by believing in “miracles and Madiba magic”. I really believe that this is true. During the ‘Madiba reign’ we all had high hopes and believed that the future leadership would be like Mandela. We were very short-sighted!

Ramphele went on to say that the government thought only about ‘the people shall govern’ - that democracy simply meant rule by majority. They forgot that this can be tyranny. These days we can see this very clearly. The government has many times pushed through legislation which disregards the will of the people, they have pushed legislation which benefits certain segments of the population and they have an arrogance that they can do as they like because they are the biggest party.

Ramphele went on:”State corruption in combination with the government’s failure to provide quality access to public resources and social services undermined the country’s ability to be competitive as a democracy in the 21st century”. Again this is something that we have seen growing alarmingly over the last decade. Bribery and corruption have become an integral part of life now and our country has very little social services to speak of.

Another failure of the present government has been that they neglected to utilise the resources at hand - particularly the apartheid civil service. Instead of working with a professional status quo, the government put in unqualified and incompetant ‘exiles’ which has just added to the problems. Ramaphele says that this action is the equivalent of employing a donkey driver to drive your Rolls Royce. Success can only happen when the government has the necessary expertise to utilise.

She emphasised that Whites had an obligation to speak up despite fears of being labelled as a racist. “Those people who use the race card are cowards. You have to take risks and risk being wounded. You are the guardians of our democracy,” Ramphele said.

Mismanaging migration issues has resulted in South Africa losing expertise and not utilising incoming expertise. Migration management was aa vital government task in first world countries, such as Canada, where the minister knows what she is doing.

She also questioned the validity of Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s intention for integration to take place if non-South Africans were not going to be given houses and refugee camps were not going to be tolerated. The events of recent weeks and the government’s response to it has certainly shown that this issue is only going to cause further problems down the line.

It is heart-warming to see that some of the leaders in our country can think rationally. It is a pity that they are not in positions of power, or have been removed from any influential position. This government needs to wake up and do some major reorganising if they wish to govern successfully. Unfortunately I do not see this happening any time soon. Perhaps it is up to the people to force through some of these changes through the next election by supporting candidates that actually do think about this country and the people in it.

Posted June 4th, 2008 by J.S. in Government, Politics | Trackback

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