Thamsanqa D. Malinga
Cape Town - If there is one thing that history has taught us through documented evidence as well as through fiction, like the pen of George Orwell, is that when slaves “gain independence” by any means, they tend to go overboard in terms of their assimilating the master who has “fled” the plantation.
Before you get lost in the slaves and master metaphor, let me get straight to the point. The State of the Nation Address that takes place in the Republic every February is one of those Apartheid legacies that should have been cast to the bin, the Founders Day and those Apartheid Celebrations where Die Groot Krokodil used to stand in Front of Military Parades and marvel at South Africa’s military prowess. But no, the South African Native National Congress, with the slave mentality, had to keep this pomp and just add the glitz.
Every year, taxpayers fork out millions for politicians to walk on the red carpets to have their egos all inflated as they try to be some form of Hollywood star in a country that they have run down, and they perhaps can’t bear the stench that is coming from it. The stench of poverty they have caused and is now nauseating to them. This event is probably their form of escapism from the roads they can’t drive without hitting potholes and the pavements they can’t jog on because they are filthy with rubbish that is uncollected for days on end. So, it’s better to splash out money and have a make-believe event, where they are stars at whose feet we kneel for autographs. Poor slave-mentality.
In 2022, the expenses for the Sona were budgeted to cost South Africans R4m, and the budget for 2023 is R8m. In some previous years, the event is also known to have been allocated the amount of R9,2m. This is in a country where its statistics body said, “as of 2022, an individual living in South Africa with less than 945 South African rands (roughly 54.69 U.S. dollars) per month was considered poor.”
Yet its government believes that dishing out an ad hoc R350 South African is “poverty alleviation” and sees nothing wrong with splashing millions in having parliamentarians walking down the red carpet some of whom accompanied by girlfriends, boyfriends, concubines and gigolos – at the taxpayer’s cost, to listen to a two-hour long speech laced with promises and lies.
In my treatise “Blame Me on Apartheid”, I touch on the La Sape culture in Congo, which started as a result of how “The French had set out to civilise African people by providing them with European second-hand clothes as a bargaining tool to gain the devotion of the superiors” (Lyns:2014). I argue that: “although the Sapeur evolved over time, we can understand how the colonialists saw native Congolese as ‘uncivilised’, just like the early South Africa missionaries in the Cape frontiers saw those still wearing their traditional clothing and using red ochre as ‘uncivilised’ and induced those that they had converted to change their way of dressing and adopt European-style clothing.
This then led to the ‘us’ and ‘them’ culture of amaqaba and amagqobhoka. This ‘us and them’ perpetuated the Being (centre) and ‘non-being’ (periphery) as espoused by Dussel. The native Congolese houseboys, like the South African amagqobhoka, had, unbeknownst to them, been psychologically made to see their fellow countrymen, who were not dressed like them, as outcasts and as the uncivilised ‘other’ who were not in their league or class, and was still an ‘uncivilised’ barbarian (the latter being my own emphasis). Unaware of it as they were, this was self-hate, although they just hated the notion of being uncivilised.”
This pomp and glitz of the Sona is nothing short of the La Sape culture of the French slave master that was introduced to the Congolese. It is nothing short of the “us and them” culture of the Colonialist that divided South Africans into the civilised and the uncivilised. The parliamentarians are reflecting their hate of the poor South Africans – “them” who are poor, ragged and smelly and living in squalor and holding them back from the luxurious life they want to live – mind you, at the taxpayer’s cost.
So, the better slaves are now roaming the massers’ house, wearing the massers’ clothes with so much pomp. Is there anything better that they are bringing to their fellow downtrodden?
Nothing!
I have followed the ANC’s NEC Lekgotla, and I noted the narrative that came out of the side lines. Hot air. Writing this piece just 24 hours before the head of state delivers his address, I can tell you what will lace his speech is rhetoric such as cushioning the poor against the rising costs and load shedding, Deepening social cohesion, forgotten people in the townships, strengthening the economy, fighting unemployment – I can go on and on. It’s the same script.
You might be reading this piece a day after the Sona and might feel a sense of anger and despondency at the truth, or, on the contrary you might feel I am just blowing hot air as the Sona was what you expected. The question, though, remains is all the pomp necessary? Are the expenses necessary? Do we really need to see Minister Bheki Cele and Minister Godongwana emulating Die Groot Krokodil, and his Broederbond, with their Fedoras and remind us of the red-carpet Sona as the last symbol of Apartheid that has been pimped up by the latter-day natives who have betrayed the aspiration of their people?
We need to have a serious discussion about the relevance of the pomp and glitz and expenses that come with the annual State Of the Nation Address, which has lost credibility and has deteriorated into a circus without any substance.
The only thing befitting to say - if I were to borrow something worth saying from President Matamela, “cancel that thing!”
Malinga is a Director at Mkabayi Management Consultants, Columnist, Political Commentator and Author of “Blame Me on Apartheid” as well as “A Dream Betrayed”
Cape Times
* The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.