The Truth We Must Face [Post Colonial Zimbabwe, South Africa And Rest of Africa] [ Dr. Noah Manyika]

Many of post-colonial Africa’s immense challenges are the result of inordinate faith placed in “historic” political settlements that formally ended colonial rule without solving critical structural problems and systemic inequities. A case in point is the Lancaster House Conference of 1979 which  ushered in majority rule in Zimbabwe but postponed the resolution of the land question to a time when neither the goodwill nor the financial wherewithal to do so could be mustered.

Such postponements give politically astute populists who may or may not have the true interests of the people at heart the opportunity to become “champions” of the people’s cause. Unfortunately it is difficult in the euphoria of any populist movement to distinguish good leaders from bad ones, and the idea that we can only tell the difference when they assume high office has been tragic for Africa.

Part of the difficulty of putting the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) in the same bucket as the Lancaster House Agreement is because of the amount of time (4 years) invested in the Codesa process, and the thoughtfulness and goodwill displayed. The idea that those who had spent decades on Robben Island could sit down with their oppressors to hammer out a constitutional agreement was historic and a miracle.

Those of us who followed the process with keen interest recall the futile attempt to derail the process by three thousand members of the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF), Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) and other right-wing Afrikaner paramilitary groups who stormed the venue where the conference was being held, and the violent clashes between Inkatha and ANC supporters. These disruptions notwithstanding, the convention was successfully concluded,

leading to a historic plebiscite in 1994 that elected Nelson Mandela as the first president of a democratic South Africa.

Yet the reality is that not even Codesa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or the mantra of the Rainbow Nation resolved South Africa’s deep problems. Obviously South Africa is not one big Diepsloot, the Northern Johannesburg slum where 350 000 South Africans live in squalor. At the same time, it doesnt help to pretend that the problems colonialism and apartheid created were not too deep for Codesa alone, or Mandela’s historic but short presidency  to resolve. 

Rather fittingly, the name Diepsloot is Afrikaans for "deep ditch." The slum is a stone’s throw from Sandton where well-to-do South Africans and expatriates live on top of the world, as it were.  What is clear from the convulsions of the last week in South Africa is that no social perch is really safe until some deep problems are effectively dealt with, including the very very difficult discussion of wealth inequality and corruption.

The intolerance of honest conversations even in pro- democracy quarters about the depth of our problems, and the “Touch not the anointed” syndrome when it comes to critiquing political leaders, including our heroes,  only condemns Africa to repeat the same mistakes, with increasingly disastrous results. 

A few years after Nelson Mandela left office, I expressed to a group of friends my disappointment that he had retired without dealing with some deep problems only a man of his stature could deal with. You would have thought from the scathing rebuke I got from an African expatriate who was relocating to South Africa that I had blasphemed against God. The person in question’s stay in South Africa almost ended tragically because of a violent home invasion they were lucky to escape.

Now, again, not all of South Africa is the lawless “Wild Wild West.” Neither does it have to be for us to understand the need for conversations and constitutional conventions that produce social contracts and governance systems that reflect the depth of our challenges, and deal with them to the general satisfaction of and for the good of all.

The truth we must face is that it is possible to leave the addressing of these fundamentals until it is too late. It may be difficult to tell our friends that economic inequalities are a greater threat to the present and future of South Africa than Julius Malema’s  EFF or Jacob Zuma, or that the extreme poverty that we see

in many African countries represents a threat to the security of all, including those who do no see themselves as being responsible for creating it. However that is a truth that must be told.