Not all legacies are great

The greatest legacy still currently attributable to apartheid for the people of South Africa, other than the huge wealth disparity and without detracting from its significance, is political loyalty.

The ANC at Bloemfontein

Fair enough, I accept that this whole Mangaung excitement (the city is still called Bloemfontein, only the municipality is Mangaung as I understand it, but it does sound more African authentic, doesn't it!) is not about national elections... except that I think that it is.

The hero at Mangaung will in all likelihood be the president of the country and that person will represent the political party governing South Africa in coming years.

In no other country in the world would a populace vote into power a morally bankrupt, blatant thief, whose only concept of leadership is a Stalin-esque purge of those opposed and promotion of those in favour, of his leadership. In fact, have a quick peek on Wikipedia about Stalin’s purge and a few terrifyingly familiar chords will sound, including the unhealthy neurosis with "counter-revolutionaries".

Is the ANC the only future?

Apartheid appears to have resulted in many voters, stuck between increasing service delivery failure and other bitter realities, not wanting to vote at all for the once-mighty and now-pitiful ANC, and others voting for that party due to an inability to conceive ever putting their hope elsewhere.

The difficulty with this reality is that the voters, at a point in time, must accept responsibility for their own destiny.

South Africans generally accept that a finger can still credibly be pointed at apartheid for many current challenges, but the shame and blame of that pointing finger is diluted with every passing election. This is an undeniable truth, even for blind loyalists and is evident in the dwindling number of actual people voting for the ANC as against population growth.

Every few years, citizens have the opportunity to change their fate and yet, like the misconception about lemmings committing mass suicide leaping off a cliff, they follow logically inexplicable voting patterns. Even the less hysterical commentators can recognise a vote driven almost exclusively by emotion and not by logic.

As frustrating as this is for many whites without ANC loyalties, whether they realised long ago or have only come to realise recently with imminent economic failure, that all members of an economy should be participatory on an equal opportunity footing in terms of opportunities available, the blame here can rightfully still be placed on the past. The simple reason for this is the generalisation that the vast majority of blacks will either vote ANC or not at all. And to the general detractors, yes this is a generalisation I am happy to make and I await your scathing evidence to the contrary...

You see, the indubitable future president of the country (yes, I’m prepared to go out on a limb here as well and commit to this inescapable bad smell in the room) will be Jacob Zuma. This will happen if voters again sweep the ANC into power, and any thoughts to the contrary usually disappear with a sharp start when I wake up.

A clear conscience is your reward

Albeit that the ANC will most likely not have the ability to legally force through constitutional amendments and will have their victory sticker less firmly placed on any ill-conceived piece of legislation it wants to shove down the throats of the starving sheeple, any blame for a future of poverty, ill-health and lack of education, will become increasingly attributable to the people of South Africa and their own decisions. The convenient historical scapegoat will be diluted.

The few thousand beneficiaries of high-reward-for-no-contribution in government positions and the few hundred super-wealthy tenderpreneurs (I read recently that this is simply alliance-speak for fraudsters and thieves) will all sleep well at night knowing that they can thank apartheid for the blind loyalty of a few million ANC voters, while a hugely superior number of voters are victims of their internal conflict of conscience by not casting a vote.

For the record, all those smug, white, non-voters should not sit with clean thumb nails moaning while their apathy prevents them from standing in a queue at the local primary school come election time. You have no more right to moan than the non-voting non-white citizens.

Who will those non-voters all blame in a few more years when Zuma and company have obliterated all that is left of South Africa’s huge potential? Who would have thought that the ANC’s identification as a struggle party would mean that they would struggle to even know the difference between right and wrong… and who will think in twenty years’ time that their struggle supporters would struggle so much with their conscience that they would allow long deceased architects of apartheid to dictate their future so many years later?