Where to now?

So today Michelle and I joined the rest of the Southern Suburbs at Parliament where we chanted “Zuma must fall” in our reedy white voices.

                  On the way there (two of us in a car that could comfortably seat five), I remarked that the march would probably consist of herds of middle-aged whiteys ready to head for the beach afterwards, and Michelle told me to stop being such a cynical old goat.
                   Turns out I was right. A guy about my age started toyi-toying as we made our way from Roeland Street to the Company’s Garden, where we were to meet up with the contingent from the Atlantic Seaboard. Like me, he clearly remembered the grittier, scarier days of the late 80s, where the thrill of a protest march lay in throwing kerbstones at the cops, and the risk lay in being arrested and soundly fucked up in a dark room somewhere. If you escaped the security police, you found an arm around your shoulders, hauling you into a shack and insisting you sit on the only bed and share a warm Black Label quart. Nothing like that to remind you of your whiteness. Or of how you shouldn't toyi-toyi.
                  I’m ambivalent, if not confused, by this morning’s mass white (with a bit of coloured, and some token blacks thrown in) action. There was a man with slicked-back hair from the anti-corruption thing, who got the crowd going to the point where most of them politely shouted “Zuma must fall” on cue. Mpho Tutu brought tears to our eyes. There was a muttering of Nkosi, which cringingly swelled to Welsh choir proportions once the Afrikaans and English bits kicked in. There was on the air a taint of Chanel and Dior and Ambre Solaire.
                  And then there was something of a lecture by another white guy who, I’m sure, peaked while he was a member of the banned ANCYL back in the day – back when the ANCYL still meant something. It was the white privilege thing he went on about, and I have to admit, I rolled my eyes in sheer political incorrectness. Yes, I am previously privileged. Yes, I still benefit from my whiteness, my education, my rambling old house with its mature plane trees in the garden. But in my defence, my eye-roll was directed at the ANC, and how it has facilitated white privilege for the last 21 years. It’s human nature – provide people with opportunities, and they will take them. I’m not saying our new rulers should have chopped down my plane trees, or confiscated my too-big car, or through BEE enriched a few smart black people on the way – but you can’t make the poor rich by making the (relatively) rich poor. What the ANC should have done is to have spent the 55c (at least) in taxes that I pay on every rand I earn on what the they promised they would spend it on in 1994.\
             Back then, when for the first time we stood in multiracial queues to vote, laughing and joshing each other like kids on a first date, not one of us on the colour spectrum foresaw the arms deal, Nkandla, R27bn in “irregular expenditure” for the 2015/16 financial year alone. Nobody foresaw the train tender, the inept girlfriend at SAA, the Airbus deals, Hlaudi With A Chance of Meathead totally fucking up the SABC, the Russian nuclear contracts on the horizon, the desire to spend billions on a personal fucking jet. Nobody foresaw a degree of nepotism,  patronage, the appointment of totally inept cronies to vital positions, that would have taught the Nat government a trick or three. Nobody foresaw the impending crackdown on the media – which alone will be worse than the restrictions and censorship of the 80s, with every word put into the public domain assessed by an idiot aparatchik with a red pen. 

If that’s what we see in the daily media, imagine how deep the rot really goes, probably all the way down to tenders for pencil-sharpeners and toilet paper. 
Here’s the rub: it’s not just Zuma, it’s the ANC. It’s the ANC, which is nothing like the ANC of twenty years ago, and light years removed from where it was a hundred years ago. 
So why is the party bolstering this man, why is it building laagers around him, why does it keep him at the head of the long table? Because they’re all on the take, feeding off the scraps that Zuma drops on the ground, and the fear is that when he goes, so will the gratuities. Zuma obviously has to fall, but seriously, what the fuck is next? Will it be better, or worse?

And there we were, ten thousand (apparently) of our country’s ten million tax-payers on the lawns of the Company’s Garden, polite fists in the air, demanding the recall of the despised president. Not so much because we of Contantia and Fresnaye wanted to preserve our ways of life, which of course we do – it’s instinct, it’s survival – but because a collective light-bulb turned on, and it shed light on what could have been achieved with all that money over the past two decades, and what hasn’t.
                  The saddest thing, standing there in my sweaty Woolies T-shirt and my Geox takkies, was the realisation of how the ANC has betrayed the people to whom it promised the most. Moi, I’ll be okay, I think, in my employment at a fantastic company, and with my all-powerful neighberhood watch. But what I hoped for on that fresh April day in Jo’burg in 1994, as some wag inflated a few condoms that the queue of voters bounced between them, was more than anything to see an end to 1993. And near fuckall has happened since.
                  As we peacefully dispersed in our Tommy Hilfiger sneakers and our Calvin Klein underpants to get into our Audis and Jags and head off for a well-earned flat white and a chilled glass of Valpré at Truth or Haas, I was left wondering what I could do. A something, no matter how small, that would make a difference to just one person the ANC has lied to and betrayed. How could I use what I do best, those things I’ve been educated to be good at, to help nudge someone from despair to hope? And as I passed the Book Lounge, which has neither of my books on its shelves, a thought occurred, and I liked it. What are a few hours of a Saturday morning anyway?
                  I do hope I have the balls to implement this little idea in the new year. After all, we’re all in this together, and if those of us who can don’t, we’re collectively fucked. So what are you going to do? We’ve run out of continent – south of Agulhas is only water, folks.