I'm getting that sinking feeling again

2011-09-12 07:46

I have always been the eternal optimist. Especially about South Africa. I really try hard to see the positive side of things.

But, I must admit to getting that terrible sinking feeling in my gut again about this country. Something I haven't experienced since 1994. I can't help it. It's just there - sitting in my gut like a piece of hot coal.

I first had that feeling when I was a 5-year-old and my father came in to breakfast one morning with his usually jovial face as dark as an afternoon thunderstorm over Pretoria.

"Smuts is out," is all he said. At the time I was too young to understand that what he was so depressed about what the fact that those South Africans who were entitled to vote had made a really bad mistake by voting in the Nats.  He was so angry, he made a coal fire start up in my stomach.

The next time I had that feeling was just after Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated and I waited among a group of journalists outside parliament in Cape Town to see who the Nats had chosen as the new prime minister.

The talk among the journos had been that this was the ideal time for them to choose someone a little less dogmatic than Verwoerd. We all agreed that no-one in their right minds would select John Vorster.

Out walked John Vorster, the newly elected prime minister and the smouldering coal in my gut burst into flame. How could the Nat caucus be so incredibly stupid as to elect him?

From then on I got that feeling with every general election when the early results showed gains by the opposition only to be lost as the platteland voted Nat en masse.

How could so many white South Africans be so short-sighted?

I got that terrible feeling again when PW Botha was widely expected to cross the Rubicon and instead stayed anchored in the mire of apartheid.

FW De Klerk finally doused the fire in my gut when he announced that Nelson Mandela would be freed and that all South Africans would be able to vote for the first time.

Ever since then, the coal has been cool.

But last week, when ANC portfolio committee members voted in favour of the Protection of State Information Bill,  that fire piece of coal burst into flames.

It was that old feeling again. A feeling I cannot help. I have no control over it.

And I always get it when the South African government makes a monumental mistake.

But,  what really makes that coal burn even hotter nowadays is when I see the ANC starting to behave, in so many ways,  exactly like the regime they spent so much time,  effort and blood getting rid of.

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