In the early 1990s Mandela and De Klerk negotiated a deal that provided all South Africa with dignity. It was a golden time of equality and a miracle of bloodlessness. Co-operation was the watchword and revenge was deemed unnecessary in a vast expression of generosity by the previously oppressed.
Cracks that began to appear when De Klerk withdrew from the Government of National Unity, increased during Thabo Mbeki’s tenure and - under Zuma - have become seismic. This may be directly ascribed to South Africa’s rapid descent from an international moral high-ground to the insecurity of racism - not only black-on-white, but tribal Zulu-on-Xhosa and perpetuated by eleven official languages.
This is essentially because the ANC, having rightly denounced Apartheid and Colonialism, has failed in twenty years to alter the status quo inherited from these regime-types in terms of upgrading the disadvantaged and destitute. Instead, it expresses a compulsive yearning for the very worst in the Western excess of luxurious living it claims to hate.
Let me quote Wikipedia: ‘An inferiority complex, often used to mean low self-esteem, is a feeling of intense insecurity, inferiority or of not measuring up. An inferiority complex can be seen in the negative or "useless" reactions to problems in life. These reactions are useless because they do not solve the problem at hand, but only serve to guard one's self-esteem by avoiding the task or by placing the blame for the failure outside of the individual's control. Although the inferiority complex may be seen as comparing individuals or groups as one being superior to another, it more closely describes how one deals with a fear of failure.’
I believe South Africa - perhaps all Africa - is currently being governed from an insecure perspective that manifests itself in all the glitz of huge homes, luxury cars, skin lightening and daily-braided hair. Yet arbitrarily defending African culture when such greed is challenged.
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