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Finding national pride despite governme... Zuma's formula for destruction of SA's m... |
Finding national pride despite government's indifferenceLAST week's article calling for what could be described as a national pride campaign has met with an enthusiastic response from the business sector, from readers and from media colleagues. Strangely though, I have not yet had any response from the government. Perhaps it needs to form a special commission to investigate the idea before it says anything. It has also been suggested to me that of all the potential émigrés from South Africa, I would be the one most likely to attract presidential sponsorship for a one-way ticket. That's assuming he has any money left over, considering has just offered to pay for the defence of the ANC's favourite struggle son, errant cleric Allan Boesak. Boesak, as we have read, has absurdly extravagant taste in lawyers. It's quite possible that after another few weeks in court there will be barely enough left in the Madiba piggy bank to pay for my taxi to Johannesburg International, let alone the first class air fare I would require as the minimum condition for deportation back to the land of perpetual drizzle. A handful of readers completely grasped the wrong end of the stick. They took last week's comments as an endorsement of Mandela's castigation of emigrants and suggested I was "brown-nosing" the ANC. I can be accused of many things, but I don't think sycophancy is one of them. The whole idea of a campaign to make South Africans feel good about themselves comes from one very simple premise; if we don't take pride in our country and what we can offer the rest of the world then you can be sure nobody else will. I was at the annual Bond Market Association bash last Monday where the guest speaker was Dr Millard Arnold, the US counsellor for commercial affairs in Southern Africa. Arnold's speech was refreshingly honest. He spoke of this country's weaknesses but also praised our many strengths. The perceived weaknesses in no way inhibit him from selling South Africa to potential US investors. More important, though, he highlighted the national malaise, which is to constantly look on the gloomy side, and compared it to the US attitude. Americans are often insufferably patriotic, partly because they have been brought up to accept that everything American must be the best but mostly because they actually believe it to be true. It's a lesson that South Africans should learn. I was also a guest at the Fair Lady/Liberty Life Business Start Up awards on Tuesday. If there was ever an awards ceremony to make you feel positive about the future of this country it is this one. Against what often seem impossible odds, courageous and dynamic people work incredibly hard to start up small businesses, thereby creating both wealth and jobs. This annual award recognises and encourages such people. It is a humbling experience to listen to these people's stories. So what is the government's stance on all this? Mandela again rants against those thinking of leaving the country by hissing the words "good riddance". According to a recent Idasa report, emigration is being considered as an option by just as many educated blacks as whites. What Mandela and his merry tribe should be saying of course is that the country is sorry to lose talent but please go overseas, learn new skills and bring them back home in the future. The reason we are unlikely to hear anything like that is very simple. Our politicians inhabit a cosy world where they are not required to risk a cent of their own money or to come up with entrepreneurial ideas. Consequently, they have absolutely no notion of what life is like in the real world. They know that, whatever mess they make of governing the country, they will be back again next year. So, unlike the rest of us, they don't actually have to do anything to create wealth plus they have the added bonus of guaranteed job security which gives them more time to interfere in other people's lives. No amount of laziness and inefficiency will result in them losing their jobs and they have a unique advantage in the workplace in that they can insult their employers by calling them racist, ignorant or unpatriotic. The quid pro quo for greater patriotism and a stronger sense of national identity is a government that meddles less in people's affairs and gets on with what it has been elected to do, which is to make it safe for South Africans to go about their lawful business. Politicians have to be made to understand this. Top of page
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