THAMSANQA D MALINGA
Durban — The scourge of absent fathers in South Africa has been studied, academically explored and discussed in many a forum. This issue has been seen as the major contribution to the disintegration of society and its values. Volumes of academic studies the world over always come to the same conclusion about absent fathers and societal fragmentation.
I hate to disappoint you, but this piece is not a psychological commentary on the overly explored subject.
However, I would like to explore the Republic of South Africa, as represented by its government and its actions, as that of the absent father who has been a subject of many study years.
With so much pain and unhappiness, I have been an observer and commentator on our government’s policies and actions (read service delivery) towards South African citizens.
To say it is heartbreaking would be an understatement. It is emotional torture to, every day, observe the shameful actions of our elected representatives – or lack thereof – towards the citizens who go to the polls every five years.
As a point of departure into my analysis, let me indulge you and paint a picture based on true events of two people with whom I have journeyed with in life and their experience of the absent father.
I must make a disclaimer that using the stories and the thorny subject of absent fathers in society in articulating my political commentary is in no way undermining and reducing a societal and psychological issue’s importance into a simple simile to score commentary about a political subject. For me, they are not far from each other.
Imagine having your father telling you to go to the shopping mall at the weekend and wait for him outside a clothing shop so that he could buy you some nice clothes.
He promises you a shopping spree unparalleled. As a child, your naivety drives you to not heed your mother, who tells you that your father will not fulfil his promise.
Come the weekend, you are at the mall, and you stand there for three-quarters of the day, waiting for the man who promised you a shopping frenzy – only for him not to show up.
Let me present you with another scenario. You see your father, who is a wealthy businessman, driving around in the latest coupé.
As an innocent child, you call out to him and run after the car, only for him to ignore you as he cruises with his girlfriend. Every time you see him drive by, there is a new girlfriend, and every time you call on him and run after the car, he ignores you.
These are true and sad stories of people I know. As sad as they might be, they have inspired me to reflect on our government, as represented by the ANC.
Observing our government and listening to the outcry of the citizenry for not being prioritised or constantly lied to, I could not help but liken our administration to the two fathers whose stories were relayed to me.
Having participated in many a discussion about the conditions in which South Africans find themselves in as a result of the government’s actions – or lack thereof – I have listened to stories and observed pain when people talk about how they have had it with South Africa and the state.
If you have spoken to people in townships and other forgotten peripheral spaces. If you have watched television interviews of people in destitute situations or have driven around former glorious business districts that have been reduced to squalor, and towns forgotten to the extent that they are crouching to their death, you would have no words but to ask what wrong we did to deserve such neglect by the so-called “government of the people”.
Jurist and outspoken social activist, Vuyani Ngalwana, SC, writing in the prologue to the book Blame Me on Apartheid: Colonialism, apartheid and the legacy of townships as peripheral spaces for “non-beings” shoots from the hip by opining: “Sadly, since 1994 that most evil and enduring apartheid achievement seems to be perpetrated by successive governments of what used to be a liberation movement, sacrificing the cerebral development of the black child at the altar of political expediency.”
It is a fact that ruling over an ignorant population is less complicated than having to account to a population that thinks and therefore can reason and make informed choices, especially when the ruling elite has nothing to offer except promises of “a better life for all” which often translates to food parcels and poverty trap social grants.
Since the advent of democracy, we have received one promise after another – laced in fancy tag lines developed by advertising agencies. From “a better life for all” to “vuk’ uzenzele” to “a good story to tell” and the latest “thuma mina” and the much revered “radical economic transformation,” we have heard all sorts of promises. Typical characteristics of a deadbeat father’s modus operandi.
With these tag lines, which most times come funded with exorbitant amounts from the public purse at the expense of service delivery, we have heard and lapped up every promise. If it’s not free houses, electricity or water, then it is millions of jobs – all these never come to fruition. In fact, those whom we’ve entrusted with our vote would even stoop so low as to steal money earmarked for emotive events such as funerals and prioritise procuring the cheap yellow T-shirts dished out like the heavenly food of Angels as recounted by the Holy Book.
In this country, children born after 2004 will tell future generations of how they have never experienced a full year with running electricity due to load shedding – that is, provided they were born in an area that has electricity in the first place.
Those who experienced the 2022 floods will tell a story of how they were abandoned in community halls. Those born and who grew up in the townships will tell of how drugs ravaged their peers and alcohol became a remedy to fight depression as a result of despondency caused by government neglect.
As it is said that history has no blank pages, it will be known that children drowned in pit latrines in our schools and others were swept away as they tried to cross ravaging rivers in order to get to school. Others were still learning under trees, old buses and other decrepit structures.
Generations will be told of how the so-called “people’s movement”, the one that holds the claim that it is the “liberator” of South Africans, dangled a carrot in a form of social grants, all in a name of being perceived as a present father.
The recent return of the ANC to the helm of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, and the impending ones in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and likely Mogale City, is a clear indication of the father who comes out of the blue and claims paternal rights and yet delivers nothing.
I see nothing wow with the incoming of the ANC in the City of Johannesburg. Its government has been absent for years. The only places where they have been constantly present, they are shining in their absence.
Like the unashamedly absent father, they will be splashing and living opulent lives while the citizenry continues to suffer.
Who can forget the Mayor of Ficksburg who was asked by a journalist about a service delivery protest in his area due to people saying they do not have drinking water.
The unapologetic mayor said, “let them drink Valpre”. Like a deadbeat father being told of the suffering of his child and his response being some condescending bile.
There are those who refuse to see it in the present that the Republic of South Africa, as represented by its ANC-led government, is no different from the father, who promises his child Heaven on Earth and then never shows up to fulfil his promises. They, unfortunately will be scorned by future generations who would have inherited a country ravaged by many ills.
That generation will remind those who will still be alive that the beloved and glorified government of the Republic of South Africa, as led by the ANC, the party whose lies we kept on believing for it to retain power, was no different from the father who drove by in a fancy car while we, the children, were constantly running after him in our rags shouting and asking to be acknowledged and at least be fed.
Thamsanqa D Malinga, director at Mkabayi Management Consultants, columnist, political commentator and author of Blame Me on Apartheid as well as “A Dream Betrayed”
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