Almost all texts on state formation and nation-building emphasise the importance of the evolution of the process and how, while individuals can play a role, it is legitimate institutions that should sustain it.
Nowhere in the world is this more evident than in our country. Our first president of a democratic SA, Nelson Mandela, gave us a sense that ours is a “miracle” nation that eschewed war for reconciliation. Desmond Tutu, in those formative years, made us believe we were a rainbow nation.
Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, reminded us of the economic realities that separated us. We were, he observed, two nations — one rich and white, the other poor and black.
Jacob Zuma then showed us how vulnerable we are to a “not-so-hostile takeover” by the gangsters that are his Gupta friends. The tomes that chief justice Raymond Zondo is struggling to finish writing simply tell us that South African exceptionalism is based on nothing much, and that if we want to secure our future we must do much more than just hope. We must build formidable institutions.
All we seem obsessed with is making sure functionaries in key roles are aligned with the dominant faction. Even the DA in Johannesburg is now caught up in a maelstrom occasioned by this focus on replacing people instead of building institutions.
All we seem obsessed with is making sure functionaries in key roles are aligned with the dominant faction
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s slow-motion reconstruction demonstrates how arduous state formation is.
Sections of the media, and the judiciary — bar Western Cape judge president John Hlophe’s adventurism (asking judges of the Constitutional Court to help Zuma) — appeared to be committed to acting in the interests of our democracy, rather than merely trying to please whoever is in high office.
Our constitution acknowledges the divisions of the past and urges healing. As a people, we seem steeped in our pain. We are struggling to shake off the suffering and obstacles that history has dealt us.
Whatever Mandela and his generation bequeathed us, and however contested the legacy, we are here now. We can look back for context, but must forge a new path to create the SA we want. We must make something out of what we have now — which, frankly, will be a major challenge.
We are a nation struggling to become. We want to celebrate our diversity, yet we keep wondering whether we belong. We keep tearing each other apart. We keep othering those who don’t look like us.
The SA Human Rights Commission inquiry into racist conduct in the advertising industry talks directly to this.
We want to forgive, yet our realities keep reminding us how uneven the playing field is. How unequal our society remains.
TimesLIVE ran a special report on Sharpeville on Friday that tells a sad tale of people who gave this country so much, and endured pain so publicly, but are wondering today if the democracy we now have was worth the pain and sacrifice.
In his book Discourse on Method, René Descartes says: “Although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents ... for it is not a dictate of reason that what we thus see or imagine is in reality existent.”
We want to forgive, yet our realities keep reminding us how uneven the playing field is
However we choose to understand this, we know that the sun is nothing like the image we have of it from the Earth. And so it is that what Mandela regarded as a rainbow might not look like that to everyone. Indeed, what’s the point of beautiful concepts when one’s reality is perpetual unemployment, living in a shack, trying to survive violent crime and enduring crumbling health services, as we see in the degeneration of Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and the chronic problems at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital?
Ours is a nation in gestation. How we approach the process depends on the prism through which we see Descartes' sun; as he reminds us, it is not always reason that guides us.
How, for example, does the advertising industry see the shades of the rainbow? The testimonies coming out of the inquiry into the industry tell a sorry tale of a lack of transformation, but it's not only this that is important. Yes, to revert to Descartes, the sun exists; but have we established norms about how to understand it?
Simply, the reasons for the lack of transformation in the ad industry are those that impede our process of nation-building. The sector is easy to target because its work is public. It creates narratives that inform how we understand ourselves, our changing rainbow. But what about sectors whose work isn’t that public? The Estate Agency Affairs Board has said it, too, will hold public hearings into transformation failures. Many others operate under the radar.
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama says the legitimate role of the state is to protect the weak against the strong. In our economic context, this translates as protecting the poor against exploitation by the rich. In political majoritarian terms, it would be protection of minority communities against the black majority. Yet ours is a country where the majority needs protection. If nothing else, this ought to help us appreciate the importance of institutions.
As our country evolves, hopefully for the better, may our progress not depend on who is at the helm. May we build institutions that hold leaders accountable regardless of who they are. May we evolve to see each other’s humanity, and not only in terms of race. If we leave the nation-building process to the whims of political leaders, it is doomed to eternally repeat the shocks of the past 28 years.
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