South Africa has demonstrated that it can rise to a challenge. By all accounts, the 2010 soccer World Cup was a resounding success. The venues did not collapse; transportation more or less worked; the visitors were not subjected to massive rape, robbery and pillage as some foreign newspapers had suggested would be the case for anyone foolish enough to make the trip.
So why can’t South Africa rise to its social challenges? Why is it that more than 40% of the population is unemployed? Why is it that economists keep saying South Africa is falling behind the rest of the continent in terms of education and skills development? Why is it that this country cannot get a handle on HIV/AIDS?
I’m not the only one asking these questions. Helen Zille, leader of the opposition party here, raised the same issues yesterday as the South African parliament listened to President Zuma praise the country’s stellar performance during the soccer tournament. Zille said the World Cup was a success because for once, government officials worked together, committed to delivering on time. In her analysis, all spheres of government pulled together because “every other risk paled into significance compared with the catastrophe of missing deadlines set by Fifa,” the international soccer federation.
Do-gooders always complain that hosting mega events such as the World Cup detracts attention and drains resources from social programs. I don’t subscribe to that argument. I believe that sports are important in terms of social cohesion and physical fitness and that mega events can produce economic benefits, if managed properly.
What I do not believe is that South Africans might consider the World Cup to be more important than their own health, education and welfare. Because I don’t believe that, I do NOT understand why people here do not demand more of their government. Even the poorest people in the world know that others live better. It does not take a lot of education to want more for yourself and for your children.
Every now and then, I see signs of hope that South Africa is trying to meet its social challenges. For instance, the government last year launched an ambitious program to test 15 MILLION South Africans for HIV by April, 2011. To facilitate that effort, lay counselors were taught to conduct the finger prick test for the virus to make up for the shortage of trained doctors and nurses. It sounded good.
Now, we find that the lay counselors are threatening to walk out of clinics because they haven’t been paid. Lay counselors in two provinces say they have been without a paycheck for five months! Counselors from Johannesburg and Soweto plan to march to Pretoria today to present their demands to the national health department.
It seems that the government, in its zeal to make headlines on National AIDS Day, made promises without identifying the necessary funds. So, here we are, a year later, and the program already is falling apart. Everyone remembers the media splash when Zuma announced the program. News of the program’s shortcomings barely gets a headline.
I’ve always believed that people get the government they deserve. If government fails you, DO something about it. Yet in South Africa, no one does much about any of this. There is no national outrage, except from the NGOs and political opposition, neither of which has much clout.
South African author and acerbic social critic Rian Malan writes that for the past two decades, South Africa “has been stricken almost weekly by scandals that would have toppled governments in the West but seem almost meaningless here…When these stories break, you think they’re going to tear the country apart and alter everything forever. But they don’t. They linger for a week or two and then fade into oblivion, blown off the front pages by the next dumbfounding scandal. The ordinary laws of cause and effect don’t seem to apply here.” (excerpt from “Resident Alien”).
It’s as if this country is sleepwalking while politicians and their cronies grab all they can at the expense of the nation. Someone needs to set a very loud alarm clock.
Vicky O’Hara
ORPHAN BRACELET CAMPAIGN (www.orphanbracelet.org)
Johannesburg
August 19, 2010
