The Disgrace of SA’s Post-Colonial ‘Mimic Men’
IN 1967, a book by Caribbean writer VS Naipaul examined how newly-created elites in newly-independent countries that had laboured under colonialism began acting with as much greed, cruelty and ruthlessness as their former colonial masters.
Naipaul named his book ‘The Mimic Men’.
It was an appropriate title then – and, in many ways, ‘post-colonial mimic men’ (although in today’s world there is a sprinkling of mimic women too) is a sadly apt description for the thieves, looters and thugs who have helped to push the economy of South Africa into tailspin.
Let’s be clear about this: Many South Africans have been watching mainly ANC-aligned witnesses testify on ‘state capture’ at the Zondo Commission in Johannesburg with a sense of horror.
The country’s governing party has a lot to answer for and to make right.
Forget all the talk about the ANC being the party of the poor and about being proponents of a developmental state. What is being heard at the commission is a story of the most vulnerable section of the country being betrayed by a party in which the majority of its members attached more importance to closing ranks behind an incompetent and dishonest president than to fighting to alleviate the plight of millions of their poverty-stricken compatriots.
What has become clear too is how far too few party members disagreed with what was happening. And even then, most who did, could not find it within themselves to muster the courage to raise their objections sufficiently loudly and clearly.
The consequences have been devastating.
Evil men and women created opportunities with a brazenness that beggars belief to steal billions of Rands from a range of government institutions.
Those involved are criminals of the worst kind. What they have done is unforgiveable. They must be arrested. They must be charged. They must be tried. And, those who are found guilty, must be jailed.
Since the advent of democracy, South Africa has struggled to alleviate poverty, mainly because the ANC was out-manoeuvred in the negotiations that ushered in the new democratic era.
In these negotiations, it could boast about winning the fight for universal suffrage. But it was the National Party that secured a much more crucial victory: it won the fight for control of the economy.
The ANC quickly realized that the vote was not a substitute for an empty stomach. But by then it was too late.
This was not the end of the story, though…
In a classic case of divide and rule, the old controllers of the economy (wearing new coats} began dangling some enticing carrots to ‘high-ups’ in the new ruling party – just as the English had dangled carrots to Afrikaners in the decades after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
The building of a black middle-class became a key exercise for those who controlled the economy.
And so, like in Ghana, like in Nigeria, like in the Congo, and like in a range of other countries, a new batch of post-colonial ‘mimic men and women’ was cultivated.
Quickly, South Africa’s black poor, who had greeted democracy with such high hopes, were deserted and forgotten.
Their wait to be dragged out of poverty, would take longer than expected, they were told.
StatsSA has devised ‘three poverty lines’, each representing a different degree of poverty, ranging from ‘food line poverty’, in which, according to 2017 calculations, approximately 14 million people have to get by on R531 month, to ‘upper line poverty’ in which around 30 million people live on about R1,130 a month.
News of state theft and, more recently, the heist by politicians and business people of about R2-billion from VBS Bank – the deposits of mainly poor people – has resulted in a disgraceful display of ‘what aboutism’ by Zuma and Gupta supporters, the EFF and other motley groups.
Suddenly, ‘white monopoly capital’ (WMC), a brainchild of former Gupta marketers, Bell Pottinger, has been thrown into the mix. WMC is far worse than what Zuma or the Guptas are involved in, is the way the narrative has been put together.
Of course, those who devised the business practices of corporations during the apartheid years – and let us be honest, they collaborated with the apartheid system and contributed to poverty – have a lot to answer for.
But surely, corruption should not be countenanced because, well, the National Party and those who voted for it, were guilty of it.
Many will argue that white business got off far too lightly in the discussions, negotiations and investigations that followed the collapse of apartheid.
But for any black South African to want to become a ‘mimic man’ or ‘mimic woman’ would be a betrayal of millions of their compatriots.
The State Capture Commission has already driven home an important lesson to the ANC government, a lesson in which it will need to ask itself: ‘Who are we supposed to serve? The party or the mostly poor voters of the country?
Its answer will determine its future.
The tragedy, most of that looted money spent in white owned businesses and just further extenuated the pre-1994 imbalances.
Maybe ‘WMC’ has some validity, beyond just a smokescreen for Govt ineptitude?
Craig, I don’t disagree that white corporates have a lot to answer to – and to pay for. The ANC was prepared to accept WMC when they negotiated with the racists. They knew about. The Zumalytes in the ANC and the EFF should not now act as if they’re finding out about WMC only now that so many of their numbers have been caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.
Agreed but you missed a few important things. You haven’t looked at the reasons why the blacks have never been able to generate wealth. This has always been blamed on apartheid. Socialism and tribalism are the same and don’t allow for individual land ownership and title deeds. Tribalism doesn’t allow for individual entrepreneurship to develop because jealousy of others becomes violent. People must be the same? Their inability to create wealth for their citizens is because tribalism doesn’t for sharing. I can’t give you a piece of land because tribalism doesn’t allow you to own it. This is why the elite don’t want to disturb tribal land. They get rent from every squatter like in medieval times. Their motivation is to strip whiteness of all it’s wealth and wave it high above their dumbed down uneducated masses claiming victory over whiteness. So they’ve got all this loot created by successful whiteness. They can’t share it so they keep it for themselves. Now they’ve gotta hide it from all their starving people because tribalism doesn’t have a link with the poor people they have to send in the goons. Enter Malema. Oh fuck but it’s okay he’s black .
Thanks, Jeremy. You’re right on every point – and those who insist on holding onto everything they acquired by illegal and dubious means during apartheid will pay for their dishonesty in the end. Here’s my problem though: The ANC knew all these things when they headed for the negotiating table pre-1994. But they were totally enamoured by political power. For Christ’s sake, they were even happy to give the whites sunset clauses. Another thing I just can’t stomach when it comes to corruption – and there’s no doubt it has occurred on a grand scare – is to defend the crooks with a ‘yes, but what about…
I disagree with most of your views on this matter, but I believe everyone should have a voice so that good, honest, calm debate can be encouraged.
Thanks Dougie. We let the white collar criminals off too lightly. The Marius Joostes, the J Arthur Browns, the Porrits. We allowed the Oppenheimers to keep the loot that they stole from beneath our soil because a system of laws enabled them to do that. To do it with the stolen lives of men, reduced to boys in single-sex mining dormitories. Men robbed of their families for none of the wealth at all. They paid dearly so that the Oppenheimers, their army of white corporate soldiers and a broad whites-only co-conspirators could have nice houses in nice suburbs kept spotlessly clean by another woman, reduced to a girl. They would have nice garden tended by another man reduced to a boy. White guilt is abating because too many of us former boys and girls either aspire to be like them (and in some instances become worse than them) or because they outsource their guilt to the DA or Black Sash, or OUTA or the very many NGOs where they go to serve soup on a Winter Wednesday. But they will never, ever question their right to the intergenerational wealth they have or its origin.
I agree with you. But the CODESA negotiators knew about these scumbags then. Remember even Joe Slovo was prepared to offer National Party negotiators sunset clauses (which is to say: continue feeding at a whites-only trough for another couple of years).
We overestimate the ANC’s negotiating instruments and at the same time we underestimate their level of desperation during CODESA. I believe the opportunity to develop a cast-iron strategy was severely limited and as a result they made huge concessions in order to realize political power. When negotiations opened in the late eighties the Freedom movements where banned, members imprisoned and families scattered, on the other hand, the apartheid government controlled every aspect of society, they could move freely and live luxuriously. Can you imagine the mental, emotional and psychological condition of the ANC negotiators at the time, being within touching distance of the ultimate goal and not wanting to test the ‘goodwill’ of the Nats for fear of protracted setbacks? I honestly believed that this was well understood by the Nat’s who always knew what end-game looked like. I think they used the uncertainty and presented the ANC with political power at the expense of economic power.
I believe this potentially saved us all from early onset corruption, this was always going to the case, when you have hundreds of billions of rands sitting in various departments nation-wide and the lack of administrative experience together with the internal mechanism of the revolutionary organization unable to fight the humanitarian disasters in their own Rebel Camps, which included starvation, assassinations and murder now having their hands in the coffers of a sophisticated economy.
It is simple maths what happens next, “we didn’t join the revolution to be poor” Tony Yengeni.
Thanks Dougie. We must deal with all the pre- and post-apartheid mimic men. Yes, they all are mimic men.
We shall not be able to make progress if we do not redistribute the apartheid wealth and if we do not dismantle corruption and patronage brought by the post-democracy elites.