Two items on the front page of Business Day on Thursday eloquently captured the ideological quagmire South Africa’s foreign and trade relations are trapped in, leaving us mud-wrestling in a world that has abandoned ideology for naked national self-interest, but has forgotten to send the ANC the memo.
At the top of the page, the familiar bombastic figure of Fikile Mbalula, a man once brought to tears apparently by how the Guptas had captured the ANC. He’s toughened up since then, and this week gave the world’s last remaining superpower, the US, a piece of his mind.
“We will never back imperialists to subvert our democracy, to subvert our sovereignty. It happened during the period of struggle, it will happen even now,” he raged into the dying light that is South Africa’s economic outlook.
The idea of an ANC leader ‘suffering’ through the party’s own misguided, yet self-serving, policies is plainly ludicrous
That doesn’t impress me much, but then I’ve never really fully appreciated the nationalist urge, the fierce desire to “stand up for one’s country”, which is a sentiment that belongs on the sports fields.
But even given that Mbalula is touchy about sovereignty — it is the last refuge after all — he goes from nationalist loudmouth to full-blown stand-up comic with this gem of dissemblance: “If it means we are going to suffer through sanctions as leaders of the ANC, let it be.” Speaking words of wisdom, he ain’t, and the idea of an ANC leader “suffering” through the party’s own misguided, yet self-serving, policies is plainly ludicrous.
Take Paul Mashatile as an example of the “suffering” ANC worthies might gird themselves for. The party’s integrity commission’s answer to his recent flagrant display of seemingly unearned wealth is for him to “move out” of the upmarket palace that has fallen into his lap. Closely related to “stepping aside”, “moving out” of the primary palace to a secondary mansion on a private golf estate is indeed an extra-fine calibration on the “suffering” index. And for the chicken-loving former higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane who tried (presumably not entirely of her own volition) to get ANC parasites into cushy Seta jobs? Lessons in governance! The picture of suffering.
Also on the front page of Business Day, another item that spoke of how ideology has blinded us (the ANC, that is) to national self-interest (broad-based). “Shein and Temu are already killing jobs,” it said. These two Chinese e-commerce platforms haven’t been going that long, yet have cost us 8,000 jobs, mostly in retail. By the end of the decade that could be 34,000.
In one of the better moments of his presidency, Jacob Zuma once delivered a speech in China’s Great Hall, in which he warned of a new form of colonialism in South Africa’s trade relationship with China, our biggest “trading partner”. We’re still largely an exporter of raw materials, which they rework and send back as finished products. Yet we have a soft spot for China, which has to do with the romantic allure of the so-called Global South, the underdeveloped countries that were colonies of European empire.
There’s also the notion that China is somehow a socialist country, which warms ANC hearts because it chimes with its own residual socialist notions, such as a strong state and public ownership of the lucrative heights of the economy.
In truth, China operates on strictly capitalist principles, aided by a ruthless state whose communism exists mostly in its monopoly on power and its enforced glorification of China’s past and future. But we’re happy to look past political facts and let our factories collapse as we allow their goods to flood into the country, no barriers to surmount, few questions asked.
Yes, I know there will be those who claim I’m anti-China. Don’t bother. None of my best friends are Chinese, yet on two visits to China I was unreservedly impressed with the energy, diligence and rigour that Chinese people demonstrate in their daily activities. We’re urged by ANC worthies to learn from China: I wish they would. China is a lot more than its Communist Party elite which, having “lifted millions out of poverty”, has also created a country few want to have children in.
As for the US, even without the glaring excuse of Donald Trump, they’re beyond the ideological pale as far as the ANC is concerned. Always have been. But here’s betting not one ANC leader, given the choice, would rather live in Beijing than New York. Of that I’m certain.
Yet we’ve fallen in with the soft-left wisdom of US bad, China good. Behind this choice are decades of leftist ideology, so ingrained in ANC leaders that it’s second nature. Now the whole country could pay the price for the ANC’s faux philosophies — and its leaders’ readiness to “suffer”.
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