No African Country is Immune to The Call for Change Sweeping Across The Continent, Not Even South Africa

Africans and people of the Middle East have spoken; and in their loud and clear voices, they have unambiguously made it clear to their governments that cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and any abuse of state resources and public power for the benefit of the few will no longer be tolerated. At present, demands for political reforms are mounting in Libya despite deadly threats from the current regime, and the people of Yemen, Bahrain, and Jordan are continuing with their struggle for freedom.  As expected Zimbabwe’s security apparatus is on high alert and no one doubts its readiness to use whatever means available to crush the people’s demands for true democracy and to keep President Mugabe in power. Today, the first of March is Everybody Hates Bob Day (#EverybodyHatesBob on Twitter) and anti –Mugabe protests have been planned for Harare, Bulawayo and there will also be a demonstration outside South Africa’s National Parliament in Capetown. This demonstration is in response to the arrests of 45 Zimbabweans for watching uprisings footage. The arrested pro-democracy activists have since been charged with treason.  Without doubt, only a fearful, paranoid and desperate regimes will respond with such stupidity to a normal act of watching uprisings footage. Unfortunately, this incident and many other instances of violent abuse, intimidation and repression against ordinary Zimbabweans happen under the watch of SADC. Perhaps it is time for SADC to realise that whatever it is trying to do  in Zimbabwe is not working and the grabbing of foreign companies as Mugabe launches his “anti sanctions campaign” tomorrow as part of his election campaign clearly shows that he has little regard whatsoever for the regional bloc.

Tunisia’s wave of change currently spreading like wildfire throughout North Africa and the Middle East harshly reminds the entire African leadership that people will no longer accept anything less from them. The revolution is further proof that the people have had enough of bad governance. Going forward, it can not be business as usual and leaders need to vigorously assess the impact the revolts will have in their own countries. Long-serving leaders many of whom have poor service delivery records and dictatorship tendencies need to go back to the boardroom.  They need to realise that there is nothing they can do about the present situation. People want freedom and they want it now.  Victor Hugo, French poet, novelist, playwright once said “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”. This quote captures the mood of Africans at this point in time.  

Democratic South Africa was recently forced to engage with the implications of Tunisia’s revolt. In response to a prediction by Moeletsi Mbeki, political analyst and brother of former President Thabo Mbeki that South Africa’s Tunisia Day will be in 2020, the President’s response was “I can tell you there will never be a Tunisia in South Africa. We have a constitutional democracy here. No-one is being repressed; everyone has the right to say what he wants and to vote.” “It is impossible. I use the word again: It is impossible.”

One thing that the protests have taught us is that anything is possible. South Africans through violent service delivery protests have strongly made it clear to the government and the ruling party that constitutional democracy has to deliver on socio economic rights  and it has to make it possible for all to live a dignified life with access to basic services like water, electricity, sanitation, health care, and so on. There is widespread acknowledgement that substantial progress has been made in the delivery of basic services to South Africans, however, much more needs to be done. The youth who are behind many of the current protests in North Africa are, for example, the main victims of the unemployment crisis in South Africa. Statistics show that about 50%  of young people below the age of 25 are unemployed and have no chance at all of finding a job. Many hope the youth wage subsidy starting in 1 April 2012 will help soften the crisis, but it remains to be seen what its impacts will be. At the launch of the ANC‘s Election Manifesto for the 2011 local government elections to be held before May, the President of the ANC Youth League Mr Julius Malema correctly echoed the sentiments of many including the youth when he said that “this democracy is not a democracy of families; this is a democracy of the people of the South Africa”… “When families are exploiting the resources of this country and are enriching themselves in the name of freedom, when those in political office abuse their power to benefit friends, the youth must rise in defence of the ANC.” This statement comes at a time when there is a strong perception that members of the President’s family especially his 28 year old son Duduzane and the President’s close friends the Gupta family are getting state contracts worth billions of money. Surely it is stories like these that have brought out the wrath of the Tunisian and Egyptian people.

Whether the perception is real or not, what matters is that it exists and it was a contributing factor in the uprisings in North of Africa. South Africa despite its strong democratic institutions and a somewhat better service delivery record is not immune at all to what is happening around it.