Had the pleasure of chatting with Talk Radio 702's Stephen Grootes about the Jackie Selebi affair this morning. What struck me as I was getting my thoughts together on the topic of 'What's the impact of this on the morale in the police force?', was the awesome and messy complexity of the situation.
If even a bad script-writer had conceived a plot in which the State President, his National Commissioner of Police, his Directorate of Prosecutions (the NPA), the special investigative unit (Scorpions), high-profile criminals (Glen Agliotti), political parties, the former head of security at then Jo'burg International Airport, were all involved in some or other way, there might still be a vestige of order to it. What we have is a tangled spider-web of incomprehensible complexity. The Times sums it up quite neatly.
The news media deal with this uniquely South African debacle on a daily basis, so they're reasonably 'on top' of it. For the average citizen, it must seem like Hollywood on hallucinogenics.
Rumours proliferate in a climate of poor communication. That's why the rumour mill in SA is running faster and harder than it's done since the Broederbonders were running the country from behind the Prime Ministerial throne.
What we're seeing here is conflict and internecine warfare. Favouritism, protectionism, cronyism. Jostling for power, status and position. Operating in personal and not national interests. Spying on each other. Allegations and counter-allegations. Accusations of partiality. And big-time butt-covering.
This all leads to uncertainty, confusion, fear, mistrust and loss of faith in the remnants of leadership and inevitably, serious reputational damage to South Africa.
If any further evidence were needed that nobody's 'in charge' of South Africa, look no further than your daily newspaper. First we had a president making like the emperor with no clothes. Now we have an invisible one!
When TIME magazine devotes virtually an entire issue [read] to Vladimir Putin, who was nominated at their person of the year, it wasn't without reason. Putin speaks of 'sovereign democracy'. Meaning democracy Russian-style. Order over freedom. Conventional western democracy simply doesn't work in certain parts of the world. I'm convinced Africa is one of those parts. It's a great debate topic.
When I spoke at an African continental insurance function of over a thousand people in the Cape Town International Convention Centre a few years ago, I was fascinated, and appalled, to discover that the majority of the [largely black] audience believed that a leader should be, inter alia:
- Tough
- Paternalistic
- Willing and able to 'punish' wayward followers
- Authoritarian (NOT authoritative)
Given these attributes, any wonder why democracy as the academics and pundits would define it, simply doesn't wash in our southern neck of the woods? We have this incredible hybrid of a nanny-state interfering in the minutiae of our daily lives, but the broad brush-strokes on the canvas are blurred and the co-ordination's a total mess.
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