South Africa's fatal flaw in ignoring lessons from the past

IOL News

6 hours ago

Shacks erected on the central line just outside Langa train station. The 'throwing out of the baby with the bathwater' extended to the homelands and self-governing states. Good infrastructure that had been built inexplicably became white elephants.
Image: Henk Kruger/African News Agency (ANA)
'Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.' — Thomas Edison
ONE of my favourite Japanese proverbs states: 'If a man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.'
I hope everyone has had enough tea to see clearly where the democratic government may have gone wrong since taking power in 1994, and not to react with unnecessary emotion to the views this piece advances. If a nation decides to change principles when what is truly needed is to tweak its techne, it will have succeeded in nothing more than throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
We must embrace what we have learned from experience and tradition, as much of it comes at a dear price. We should also value what we discover in research, for it is incredibly valuable and accurate. However, we must be mindful not to discard wisdom along with data.
There is tremendous wisdom in what used to be called common sense. One of the most important pieces of advice comes from the technological advances of the 1800s. Back then, homes typically had a small porch or enclosure off the kitchen to house the bathtub. On Saturday night, the matron of the household would heat water on the kitchen stove and fill the tub. The head of the household would take the first bath, followed by the matron, the oldest son, and so on, until the baby was bathed in what was often cool sewage. After the baby was bathed, someone had to throw out the bathwater, giving rise to the saying, 'don't throw out the baby with the bathwater'.
Arthur C Clarke, the science-fiction writer of 2001: A Space Odyssey, said we stand now at the turning point between two eras. The democratically elected South African government must have confronted several scenarios regarding what to retain and what to discard. The democratic government's policy changes risked building on weaknesses while disregarding the strengths of past work, resulting in the baby disappearing along with the bathwater.
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In his book Black Economic Empowerment: 20 Years Later, Phinda Madi argues that the new government needs to distinguish between the valuable baby and the — at times — dirty bathwater. It seems the democratic government started on the wrong foot. The proliferation of general advice and the lack of simple, practical, area-specific information were major concerns, leading to slapdash performance. When someone breaks a leg, it is normally put in a cast; it is not cut off. In 1994, politicians wanted to chop off the legs instead of mending them.
In our euphoric fit for 'anything but black' when we took power from the apartheid regime, we committed egregious errors. We were intent on discarding anything associated with apartheid, even some of its remarkably well-crafted policies on governance and administration.
We did this without a proven record of administering a country. As the saying goes, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. On complex issues like governance and administration, especially if a political party has never governed, uncertainty, ignorance, and indeterminacy are always present. Serious reflection should have been exercised before discarding both the apartheid baby and bathwater.
The 'throwing out of the baby with the bathwater' extended to the homelands and self-governing states. Good infrastructure that had been built inexplicably became white elephants. Bophuthatswana was the 'Dubai' of the time, with excellent infrastructure, as was Transkei. Today, these areas are shadows of their former greatness. In KwaZulu-Natal, once a mecca of education, the misguided mentality led to several colleges becoming white elephants, with some now used as hostels.
My view is that regarding some credible apartheid-era policies and principles, especially on governance and administration, all that was needed was to dust off and possibly tweak and sanitise those policies. In short, the 'baby' should have been retained, while only the dirty apartheid bathwater should have been discarded.
We continue to throw the baby out with the bathwater when our universities fail to invite former president Thabo Mbeki to give lectures on governance and administration. This is done in the United States with great success. Former US presidents, depending on their health, criss-cross the country giving lectures at different universities.
It is important to remember that being president does not mean one should not express personal views on national interest matters. Although the line between the private and public is often blurred for public figures, it is necessary to keep this in mind, especially in this age of the unscrupulous press and paparazzi.
As South Africans, we must reorient our expectations of what a president ought to be. There seems to be a perception that politicians and intellectuals make strange bedfellows, creating an unwarranted dichotomy between public life and a life of the mind.
We continued to throw the baby out with the bathwater by failing to tap into the vast experience of Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi on governance and administration, as well as the workforce that was the backbone of the KwaZulu government. The counsel of Buthelezi on Zulu history and traditional leadership was disregarded. The democratic government threw out the baby with the bathwater when it overlooked many positives of the erstwhile KwaZulu Government.
The democratic government and our universities lacked the foresight to invite figures like Buthelezi and Inkosi Lucas Mangope to share their knowledge and practical experience on governance matters.
We also threw the baby out with the bathwater when we disregarded the expertise of seasoned public servants from the homelands and self-governing states. Some became redundant and chose early retirement. The blind approach of discarding expertise gained during the apartheid government has had a debilitating effect on our country, particularly from an infrastructural standpoint. The expertise of the apartheid-era workforce should not have been disregarded or thrown out with the bathwater; instead, it should have been built upon.
In some instances, when the democratic government was formed, the 'baby' should have been kept while discarding the water with caution. The irony is that the phenomenon of throwing the baby out with the bathwater continues unabated in various forms, especially in the public service.
* Dr Vusi Shongwe works in the Department of Sport, Arts, and Culture in KwaZulu-Natal and writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, IOL, or Independent Media. Get the real story on the go: Follow the Sunday Independent on WhatsApp.