Everybody loves a winner, the saying goes.
Well I guess the statement is not always true of everything because, as a certified Kaizer Chiefs family member (we are not just fans, isegazini lento – it is in the blood) I'm always annoyed to see Orlando Pirates win. Which is every weekend and, these days even Wednesdays.
Imagine how relieved I was to learn that the PSL had to postpone another sure victory for the Buccaneers on Wednesday due to Shauwn Mkhize and her Royal AM football club’s entanglement with the taxman.
A temporary relief, I know, because not only do Ezimnyama look destined to finally put a stop to Mamelodi Sundowns’ monopolisation of the league title, the current generation of players and coach are so superb they can even turn 2025 to their 1995 by securing a second continental star.
Enough of this Pirates praise-singing now, my name is not Mondli Makhanya.
Back to loving winners.
For many of us around the world, US politics is a kin to a reality TV show or sports tournament. That is to say, we relate to it in the same way we do to the Formula 1 Grand Prix or the Australian Open. We may have strong views about Lewis Hamilton dumping Mercedes for Ferrari or Erling Haaland signing a record nine-year contract with Manchester City, but we see it for what it is – entertainment. Nothing that directly and seriously affect our lives.
Every four years, we gather around our television sets and communication gadgets to witness millions of Americans go to the polls. Those with a gambling bent even take bets over who will win between the Republicans and the Democrats.
As in sports, we pick sides. This being SA – and given our troubled history with race and racism – the majority tends to be generally sympathetic to the Democrats, who are perceived to be more “progressive” on such issues.
However, in the November 2024 US presidential elections as well as the inauguration of Donald Trump as president on Monday, there seemed to be a greater admiration of the winning Republican candidate than usual in SA.
Listening to call-ins on radio and reading social media posts, one came across a lot of messages that were complimentary of the controversial Trump.
At first one put it down to the euphoria that usually accompanies the grand television spectacle that is the inauguration of a US president. After all, when Barack Obama made history by becoming the first black US president, many of us were carried away by his moving inauguration speech and erroneously claimed that the “problem of the colour line” – as eloquently described by WEB Du Bois in his 1903 essay – had finally been resolved.
Du Bois had written in The Souls of Black Folk that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line”, meaning racial oppression and discrimination in the US and most of the world that was still under colonial rule.
At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, and with the election of a black man as president of what is perceived to be the most powerful country in the world, many were seduced by the idea that they were now living in what some called “a post-racial” world. But as the police killings of the likes of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd as well as the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement would later demonstrate, the world – let alone a racialised society like the US – is still far from being “post-racial”.
However as one listened carefully to what people were saying about Trump’s election, it became clear that they were not just being carried away by the theatre of the inauguration proceedings. To them, Trump personified what they felt they do not have in SA – a leader and government that “puts South Africans first” by talking tough against undocumented migrants and promising to impose trade tariffs that Trump claims would protect American jobs by reducing the country’s dependence on imports.
The failings of the post-apartheid SA – especially in its ability to create jobs and transform the economy into a truly non-racial one – is causing too many of our compatriots to lose hope in the democratic project.
Many of them are beginning to be seduced by the idea of Big Men politics – where one strong individual determines the direction of a society without being constrained by democratic institutions set up to keep in check those in power.
Instead of hankering for a Trump, a Paul Kagame and other strongmen whose names are being bandied about as alternatives to what we have, we ought to be strengthening our democratic institutions and choosing better leaders who can work as a collective with all sectors of society to build the kind of SA promised to us by the constitution.
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