{UAH} The view from Mandela Square: SA is finally learning some African lessons - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/South-Africa-is-finally-learning-some-African-lessons-/-/434750/2325150/-/tu9tcr/-/index.html

The view from Mandela Square: SA is finally learning some African lessons - Comment

Does it get any more posh than Mandela Square in Johannesburg? Not for a voting station, I don't think.

Purely by accident I happened to be there of an afternoon this last time South Africa went to the polls, trying not to look like a refugee from a city that is plagued by dengue fever.

If being an election observer is a career, then surely watching over the bourgeois citizens of that particular catchment area as they casually stroll to the local library to carry out their democratic duty must be the VIP end of the job.

On one end of the square there was Madiba's statue, shiny at the legs where the tourists flocked to take pictures, displacing the pigeons.

On the other end was another massive picture of Mandela hanging over the voters' heads as they stood in line casually waiting in their flip flops and extreme haircuts to, like, vote.

It was a rather great piece of advertising work on the part of the ANC, tacitly reminding everyone who was there or watching the square to vote for them without having to actually say so.

Pity about the ANC though, isn't it? I don't believe in comparative politics, but sometimes there are things. It isn't uncommon for the affinities between Tanzania's CCM and South Africa's ANC to get some attention.

The great revolutionary parties, the strongholds of pan-Africanist sentiment if one ignores the xenophobia problems, the last of the historically proud leftish-but-not-really institutions — by reputation alone the two are impressive.

I was surprised by how popular Julius Malema's party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), actually is on the ground. Can't say that I am a fan of the man, the best defence I have ever heard on his behalf is that he's an intelligent and committed man who somehow doesn't come across well in the media.

I think that he comes across perfectly loud and clear as a self-styled liberator of the common man from a corrupt government being run by a party that has lost its way. Which doesn't make him a good man so much as a shrewd politician.

Anyways, the EFF is popular and there are plenty of reasons why. With the kind of investigative journalism that runs rampant in South Africa, stories of corruption at all levels of government make up much of the fodder of the news.

And the ANC just hasn't delivered on the promise of redistribution, so life is still very hard for many people with no real end in sight.

It is disappointing to see this happening. I think that many people bought into the Rainbow Nation for valid reasons. The hope of a democracy gone good is a valid reason.

I certainly wanted to believe that South Africa would make it, would keep leading the way as a shining example of a modern African statehood that was evolved beyond anything we have seen before. Such a weight of expectation from inside and outside the country, all of this largely resting on the shoulders of the ANC.

Maybe that is part of the problem, the stories we tell and the expectations we have of democracy, which can be a very fragile system. CCM, ANC, all revolutionary parties, even the EFF, they seem to start out with clear missions and good intentions usually of the patriotic kind. But once they come to power, within a decade or two they give their people a good reason to start seeking alternatives.

Perhaps South Africa is just going through an accelerated version of the post-Independence experience of any number of African nations. It is our precocious African nation.

They have some nice advantages though: A robust media that keeps everybody on their toes, not just the ruling party. A willingness to get out there and demand their rights, hotly contested elections at all levels and a number of ex-presidents under the belt so they don't suffer too badly from Father of the Nation-itis.

However, the unstoppable popularity of Julius Malema and the continued presence of Jacob Zuma are just a few of the off-key notes that give me pause.

Precociousness can only get you so far, and it is South Africa's right and privilege to learn all the lessons on the difference between charisma and goodness, between actions and sloganeering, that the rest of Africa has learned all too hard.

We might look a bit frayed at the edges and carry an embarrassing touch of inexplicable tropical disease, but the history's always worth studying if only to avoid the more obvious traps of democratic development.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: elsieeyakuze@gmail.com

The view from Mandela Square: SA is finally learning some African lessons - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/South-Africa-is-finally-learning-some-African-lessons-/-/434750/2325150/-/tu9tcr/-/index.html

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