How the government fails

It is noteworthy that the recent series of bomb blasts by suspected right-wingers in Soweto and Bronkhorst-spruit should roughly coincide with reports of the deplorable racially charged outburst of sports minister Ngconde Balfour.

Whereas the former were engaging in a quixotic campaign to restore legislated white supremacy by aiming their terror at black targets, Mr Balfour himself practised crude racism in a misguided and unappreciated show of black exclusivism.

While one cannot justify the violent actions of those who absurdly still regard apartheid as a viable option, we can draw comfort from knowing that their endeavour has no chance of succeeding.

However, Mr Balfour’s comments, even if unpremeditated and uttered in fit of pique, illustrate a more immediate plight: one of a government that has largely lost touch with reality. Indeed, the actions and inactions of the Mbeki administration give rise to an impression that the government largely exists only for its own good, divorced from the people it is supposed to serve and from the principles it is mandated to sustain.

Where the government should declare war on Aids, it advances bizarre and eccentric theories why it should not do so adequately.

Where the government should provide housing and infrastructure, it spends billions to buy its president a luxury jet and its army new weapons when the country faces no external threat.

Where the government should uphold democracy, it perverts the mandate of the voter by introducing self-serving “floor crossing” legislation.

Where the government should seek to protect its citizens from crime, it presides over extensive corruption.

Where the government should safeguard human rights, it tolerates fascism and nascent fascism on its own doorsteps, in Zimbabwe and Namibia respectively.

Where the government should foster non-racialism (the ANC’s struggle manifesto after all), it tends to respond to criticism by playing the race card.

The inventory of government deficiencies is by no means complete (and we have, of course, not listed the government’s sporadic accomplishments).

Signs of disunity within the tripartite alliance point to a disaffection even from the government’s own support-base. Alienation from the Mbeki administration is so widespread, its incidence can no longer be attributed to racial or ethnic polarisation.

At the root of this is the growing notion that the government, like the apartheid regime before it, has lost sight of its obligation of accountability to the public.

In a democracy, there is only one reliable remedy for lack of accountable and transparent governance: a genuine threat of losing power in elections. In absence of a viable opposition party that might pose an electoral threat to the ANC, the growing discontent with the government’s performance is unlikely to translate into power changing hands in 2004.

Nevertheless, it is an urgent imperative for South Africa’s young democracy that a potent opposition party should emerge, in order to constitute a functioning balance of power.

In the interim, it is vital that the various arms of civil society (including the Church and its agencies) collaborate with the government when this serves the common good, and act as guardians of the common welfare at all other times. And for this, civil organisations require our sustained support and engagement.