South Africa, child pretending to be an adult
Mood: Abnormally pessimistic
Listening to: Heinken Cup Rugby
I've been standing at the front of the line with my banner raised high for some years now, defending the country where I chose to live, South Africa. I have done this with a certain sense of the enevitable I guess, but also with a large degree of hope and confidence that this time, yes this time, Africa will come to rights.
Alas I feel like the emperor's new clothes right now, looking at the circus that is pretending to be the electoral process for the leader of the ANC. One side stands a man with a grade 5 education, a machine-gun toting man who has unprotected sex with young women who he knows has Aids, takes a shower and thinks it's fine. He also has 4 wives plus one deceased, a young girlfriend and a corruption chargesheet as long as your arm hanging over his head. On top of this he has visions of communism being Africa's answer (of course some will be more equal than others).
On the other side a man who refutes that Aids is a threat, a man whose wife is Robert Mugabe's niece and a man who by all accounts is a raging alcoholic - I can live with that at least, half of our leaders have been drunkards... including the present leader of the free world. He also defends a woman who denies anti-retroviral treatment in favour of garlic and was also charged with theft and corruption in Mozambique 2 decades ago. A liar and a man who serves his god of money he has totally turned his back on what the ANC stood for.
On both sides freedom and liberation have become rhetoric, politcal speak for corruption, bribery, self-indugence and lack of duty backed by the knowledge that any criticism can be called racist. It seems Africa has performed it's great miracle of smashing a once prosperous country again... in this regard Africa has a 100% success rate.
Former president Mandela won't be at the conference, he is probably too ashamed. The truth is that the men who know run the party are not one hundredth of the calibre of the Madiba's, Sisulu's and the like, educated men who stood for change. These men are peasant stock, frontline fighters who have come to claim their pound of flesh and, in the process, have destroyed, at the cost of their people, the very notion of an African renaissance.
When Winnie Mandela suggests that Mbeki should remain until 2009 and then hand over to Zuma, as long as he doesn't prosecute Zuma is reported and not held up as a serious breach of ethics, a move that would have them all thrown put and arrested for corruption in a normal country, you have to know something is seriously wrong. Reporting has started to talk openly about bribes for votes, deals, counter deals etc as if this is the norm - well it is, in Africa.
And Africa shouts and condems the west for not helping them more - do what I ask. I see it with my own eyes a country being destroyed by bigots who hide behind racism and old cultural norms. Africa will never be a success as long as Africa continues to oppress their own people and blame everyone else.
Cry, the beloved country. I need to leave and it makes me cry inside.
