by Accountability Now on 1 December 2020
In Africa we have constitutions, but very few subscribe to constitutionalism
We have rules, but very little of the rule of law in the practice of governance
In SA we have a state, but no nation (except briefly when the Bokke win).
We have civil servants who are neither civil nor of service
Our body politic has a terminal case of cancer
Bought on by corrosive corruption and kleptocracy
We harbour 60 million people with no common language,
Their identities wrapped in ethnicity
Their nationalism, if any, mainly African
Their Afrophobia vicious and inexplicable
Their dreams deferred
Their future insecure
Or possibly non-existing .
Their Mpumalanga air the most polluted in the world
Their water supply under stress
The land is ever less arable
And the creeping désertification ever greater
As biodiversity is sacrificed on the altar of greed
With ecological sustainability ignominiously ignored
And climate change subjugated to profit and consumption
The heady notions of peace that is secure
Progress that is sustainable and
Prosperity that is equably shared
Become ever more remote and unattainable
As poverty, hunger and want stalk the land
With half the people jobless and poor
A system reputedly the most unequal in the world
Our public institutions are hollowed out by state capture
By politicians who are incompetent, venal and bent
With voters ignorant or abstinent
Voting their fears and loyalties when they cast a ballot
Not their hopes and dreams of that elusive better life for all
Accountability is almost impossible in these circumstances
A pretty word in the list of values set out in our Constitution
The miraculous supreme law on an undervalued piece of paper
Not embraced by the people nor respected by the powerful
Ideologues strive for hegemonic control of all levers of power
Realists shrug sadly and head for the hills or safer climes
It did not have to be so, the miracle of the rainbow nation
United in its diversity and determined to heal the divisions of the past
Seemed so attainable when we started the new journey in 1994.
Now the lip service and insincerity of politicians are exposed
As Ubuntu becomes a distant dream instead of a lived experience
