It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only… thus goes the first chapter (The Period) to the 1859 Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities.
It triggers a moment of awareness that one is adding a notch on the stick (cane, club, tree or what-ever-you-may-call-it) of life, and the memory of those books read so far away in the past lecture hall of a university once attended so long ago in the past. It is the challenge of everyman to remember, it is the plight of the weak and the vulnerable to be forgotten in this amnesiac world. It is even worse if you are both weak and poor, because then you are forgotten even before your funeral.
It has come to this point where one looks at the year in retrospect: as needs be, as should be, and as must be if we are to make any meaningful progress. There are resolutions at the beginning of the year, and the wise and the prudent try as much as they can to abide by their resolutions no matter how hard it is. The problem comes when the resolutions are overtaken by lack of commitment or circumstances beyond one’s control. Such resolutions as these fall victim to the two conditions mentioned and any other conditions that may come along and one is then forced to look for alternative means to reach the desired goals.
One wonders if the resolutions apply only to one individual, a collective, or the more salient entity that we call the state. I am of the opinion that state resolutions are of more importance than any other because they affect everyone more profoundly than the decisions of the single or group of individuals. A right state will always ensure that the citizens are living in relative peace and harmony, that they are law-abiding but independent, that they are allowed to explore their potential to its optimum, and that their welfare is taken care of. The past year had its ups and downs, and there are a few outstanding local and global events to be noted.
The first of them is the Bebe and Cece video of a duet performed by the premier couple in State House that has gone viral and the song (hymn) they sing in the video now even boasts a few remix versions. It is quite hard not to love this couple, and one can tell the octogenarian prime minister is a man with a good sense of humour. Many of us little men won’t be able to deal with the burning and amorous advances of a young trophy wife at his age.
The humourless scorn the video clip, the self-righteous criticise the First Lady for spreading the video on social media, I am genuinely tickled by the cross generational State House bedroom church choir supplicating the Father’s mercy in these troubled times. It is a good piece of entertainment to a year that has at been best tumultuous for the ruling government and coalition partners. It is a year that has revealed the level of rot in the system, a year that has revealed a picture of utter pride and ingrained narcissism from a certain quarter of the political sphere, and it has been a year that has exposed the cowardice of a nation that has been in limbo from 1986 to the present day.
Chapter three (The Night Shadows) of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, bears the quote:
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
This country and the continent are run on a cloak-and-dagger type of pseudo-democracy, and for us opinion writers that can see into the lies spread on various mediums of communication, the frustration comes from the knowledge we gain from the constant in-depth analysis of the ‘facts’ placed for public consumption. It is frustrating when one sees whole countries and their plebeian masses sold the dummy with each passing regime. We are a nation that is very good at pretending to do something when we are in fact engaged in some other selfish pursuit.
It is therefore quite hard to know who to believe except the fact measured against facts and not wishes or pipedreams of some individuals with ulterior motives. It is a fact that the government never really cared about the plight of sheep farmers in this country, and this is measured against recent developments in November regarding the piece of legislation that controls the sale of wool and mohair. The poor farmers must brace for yet another bleak year as the authorities concerned go on pretending they are doing something about assuaging the plight of the farmers.
Another fact that has come to one’s attention is that there shall never be successful reforms in this generation; the dilly-dallying that has gone on since 2012 when it comes to the issue of national reforms means that we shall never see the day the so-called ‘reforms’ come into effect. The parliament keeps on being adjourned sine die ad infinitum and the logical question is: who will ensure that the reforms process will go on if the drivers are on indefinite leave?
The nation is just being led with a carrot like a stubborn ass by a political class that has forgotten the actual mandate that put them in parliament in the first place. African politicians are a class of individuals that seem to hold the notion that a seat of power equals invincibility, the past regime’s fall is soon forgotten by the incumbent who soon go back to the old ways that aided the regress of a state. Lobby speech is just self-righteous talk, and like the line in the Dickens novel, the intentions in the heart of the man or woman next to you forever remain a secret to you. If we were to measure what has been done against what was committed to by the politicians over the years in this land, then we would realise that we have been going around in circles after the passing of Chief Leabua Jonathan.
If these were the open seas, then our country would have the most pirates, usurping a position here, stealing a substantial amount of donor funds there, silencing those that speak there, then pretending to be sad at their funerals. A friend and ex-classmate of mine passed away under dubious circumstances this year after bearing witness to the rot in the ministry he was employed in on some public accounts commission’s hearing. No one questioned his death, all kept silent and speculated instead of confronting the issue of his death head on; he had revealed the pirates’ cache of gold in front of a panel and the nation and it is perhaps no news in a country now notorious for having one of the most violent police forces in the world.
That police brutality still goes on unchecked, and it will probably go on in this country where the police have become a law unto themselves. We shall never progress, not with the hidden agendas that form the core of everyday speak when it comes to the issue of discussing vital economic development strategies. This means that we are a perpetual beggars and it will take ages before we change.
To forget the kingdom and turn our eyes to the republic, this is the year that proved to whoever cares that racism in South Africa will never go away. It has just transmogrified into other forms. The xenophobic attacks in this country are at their most basic racist and ethnic in form. The current South African seems to hold the false notion that they are superior to everyone on the continent. It is a behaviour that came as a result of apartheid, and it seems that it has now become a part of the self-righteous black majority who do not find it wrong to judge and to attack people from neighbouring African states on the basis of their not being locals.
The manner in which the issue has been discussed by the authorities concerned leaves little to be desired, in fact, the passive manner with which the issue of xenophobia is being treated by African states means that xenophobia will never go away and the attacks on those considered ‘foreigners’ will only escalate as the poverty on the continent deepens. If we had a political class that genuinely addresses issues, occurrences of xenophobia would have by now become history.
This is the year where the early dangers of unmonitored technological advancement are being revealed. It is true that we shall progress as the human race, and the technologies that we use shall advance with us. The sad reality however, is that some of the technologies we design and implement become a Frankenstein that comes back to haunt us. Advances in technology have led to the creation of adventitious encounters that however insignificant they may seem have a profound impact on the general population’s outlook on serious issues. Before the technological age of the current times, issues had to be dealt with head on, and matters were solved timeously.
In this age, a real issue soon loses its substance in the melee created on social media platforms where serious issues soon fade into nothingness because of their being over-chewed by different minds of different levels of profound or dubious intelligence. What should be an issue of concern soon fades away because a new trending topic or video-clip takes over. This means that we shall at the end of the day have a pile of unsolved issues that will prove hard to deal with due to their age.
It does not matter how we defend our errors, it does not count whether we argue over non-issues over the social media. What matters is that the African population should start being aware that they should begin answering uncomfortable questions on issues that are prevalent in their time and age. Resorting to defensive tactics will never get us anywhere, just as much as associating the ownership of land with wealth. Land needs hands to work it, and the touch screen of an individual tweeting their opinion on social media platforms does not mean that they can work the land when the time to till and to sow comes along. We have become a highly individualised entity as human beings, and the altars we build to this form of narcissism mean that the continent will go on regressing. Unless the welfare of the majority comes before that of the individual, then we shall be stuck with a continent where every individual wants to be noted as the ‘first’ to achieve something. This is an old imperialistic sort of thought-pattern; the sad thing is found in the fact that the political police hold it as their standard.
The individualistic tendencies are coming to the light, and whether or not we like it the results shall be bitter. It helps no one that hunger and poverty have driven a large part of the human population into defensive mode, with almost everyone feeling that sharing is personal sabotage. Those that speak against the selfish tendencies of the leader class are silenced, or are labelled as fools content with starving.
I am well and fine with hunger, as long as it means that my children will not be slaves tomorrow.
The external influence on the running of this state is just too much, and the leader class should be aware of the fact that the concessions they are now signing will come back to haunt us when this land we own is sold off as surety for non-payment of the loans disguised as aid.
This is the year that one realised that the smart individuals never believe political opinion but actually bother to take a close look at the facts on the ground. The idea of class division has come back in the form of politics, and the ruling class are masters who actually care nothing about the opinions of those that elected them into office. I am just glad it is gone, would rather stare into the hopelessness of a bleak tomorrow and the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution Africans are entering into unshod.
By:Tšepiso S. Mothibi
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