Last year, the Kenyans passed a law prohibiting any person without a university degree from occupying high political office. In Kenya today, you cannot be president, parliamentarian or mayor if you don’t have a university degree.
2014 is election year in South Africa – so let us begin to imagine how things could go.
Imagine yourself holding a ballot paper with three pictures of presidential hopefuls: Jacob Zuma, Helen Zille and Mamphela Ramphele.
PRINCE MASHELE
Two weeks before election day, imagine Zuma, Zille and Mamphele standing before a well-behaved audience, watched by millions of South Africans on SABC1, explaining why each of them believes they are fit to lead South Africa.
Imagine this new presidential debate being advertised on all radio and TV stations a month before it takes place.
Imagine ordinary people at taxi ranks, shebeens, stokvels and churches talking about the debate they will not miss.
And finally, we are all at home, at 7pm, watching our top journalists Redi Tlhabi and Jeremy Maggs introducing the pretenders to the throne: Zuma, Zille and Ramphele.
All three are grilled mercilessly. They are forced to explain what they would do personally to use taxation as an investment incentive and how they would mitigate the potentially negative impact of tax adjustments on the fiscus.
Imagine Zuma unpacking serious economics, while Zille and Mamphele punch holes in his poor argument. And all of us at home excited about what we are watching.
Imagine Maggs pressing Mamphele hard to explain her own economics instead of reacting to Zuma’s. And some among us think: She is not that good.
And the subject turns to corruption. Zuma is asked by a member of the audience why he spent more than R200- million of public money on renovating his house in Nkandla, while one million South Africans go to bed hungry every night. Zille is asked sharply by Tlhabi why her party, the DA, accepted a donation from the Guptas.
Both Zuma and Zille are visibly irritated by the questions and Tlhabi is not happy with their answers. She switches to another subject.
The reader of this column is by now thinking: All this sounds American. No, it is Kenyan.
This kind of an open presidential debate took place a few nights ago in Kenya. Eight presidential hopefuls stood before TV cameras presenting their offers to the Kenyan nation.
Some among the eight appeared like clowns. Others were more dignified. And there was a professor who looked like a real academic – incapable of popular politics.
No question was prohibited. Uhuru Kenyatta, for example, had to explain his views on the International Criminal Court indictment hanging over his head as a result of the 2008 ethnic killings that followed the 2007 presidential elections.
Whatever we might have thought while watching the Kenyan debate last Monday evening, the truth is that the Kenyans are far more progressive and advanced than we South Africans.
Last year, the Kenyans passed a law prohibiting any person without a university degree from occupying high political office. In Kenya today, you cannot be president, parliamentarian or mayor if you don’t have a university degree.
In South Africa, a person with only matric can be appointed by the SABC as chief operations officer. Worse, a person without matric can be president. And we wonder why our country is in a mess today.
If we were to appraise our parliamentarians properly, we would be shocked to learn that there are illiterates sleeping right in our parliament.
That our president does not have matric is not necessarily a problem. The real problem is that ordinary people begin to believe you don’t need an education to qualify for public office.
When this happens, a person with matric also believes he can serve as chief executive of the SABC.
In this regard an uneducated president becomes the new standard. Uneducated citizens get to the point at which they think they, too, can become teachers, nurses or clerks.
Such a state of affairs naturally results in a dramatic drop in standards. The most qualified in society get de-motivated and demoralised, since they are forced to work under people who are not qualified.
Imagine an educated journalist at the SABC, reporting to a chief executive who does not have matric.
Do you think educated journalists would be highly motivated?
Back to the Kenyan presidential debate, there is political value to be derived from an open political system.
When those who seek political office are made to explain themselves before the whole nation, citizens are enabled to truly know the quality of the individuals they are to vote for.
While such a system cannot be said to be perfect, it eliminates surprises. The emptiness of a politician is exposed for all to see.
If we elect a fool, we do so having had the opportunity to know the depth of his foolishness.
Some may argue that the Kenyans have copied from the Americans. Yes, they did. But which country has never copied from other countries? We all learn from others.
Hopefully, the 2014 elections will make South Africans imagine a better way of reorganising our politics.
- Prince Mashele is executive director of the Centre for Politics and Research and a member of the Midrand Group
Putuma
February 18, 2013
Prince Mashele is always on point ! Man ! I am grateful for this kind of writing. Simple, informative, non-ideological and unbiased. Mr Mashele just knows how to deliver common sense and make it sound so easy. Well, until it registers, that in such a parallel universe like ours, this kind of reasoning may not even be considered common sense after all. And therein lies the rub. What’s normal and common sense in the rest of the world is not necessarily so in South Africa. I remember in 1996 having a conversation with one of my academic colleagues about a new law or Green Paper, or something pertaining parliament that I don’t remember now. Anyway, I remember my colleague just shaking her head dismissively at this new law, quipping that here in South Africa, we just keep on reinventing and redefining not only the English language, but reality itself. It was a funny observation then, but 17 or so years later, one can discern the intellectual damage and recalibration that has been left in the wake of the policy failures, and revisionist education. The backward miseducation of the South African public, accidental or deliberate, has hurt us the most, far beyond Verwoerd’s wildest dreams. As a result, we have become less intelligent and poorer over the years, as all international indicators seem to show, so much we are no longer shocked anymore that South Africa is the intellectual bottomfeeder in the continent, let alone the whole world. We may be the strongest economy in Africa, but we are not intellectual nor ideological leaders by any stretch of imagination. If anything, any semblance of excellence and intellectual leadership is scorned here. How many times have we listened to idiot hecklers shouting down, say, a Professor Mangcu, or a Bishop Tutu, simply because they don’t share his opinion ? When did having an advanced education become an insult or something worth of scorn, by a public that hardly performs on average with their peers in the subcontinent, let alone the rest of the modern world ? SA stopped celebrating intellectualism and common sense and knowledge, when we knowingly paraded illiterates to the rest of the world as the best we had to offer. Thereafter, folks didn’t have a choice but to fabricate all kinds of nonsense to defend and justify the fact that we populate the highest decision-making structures of our body-politic and economic engine with stooges and idiots. We had to stand bold and declare to the world that the “black” mural everybody is watching is actually “white”, that if they saw things the way we saw them, they’d also elect Zuma as the best and most talented leader this country had. Then the assault on all common sense only intensified. You wish something into existence, and spend the rest of the time doing nothing else, but fabricating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If only real life acquiesced. to this costly experiment. Hence, as much as I get reminded pleasantly of the potential of this country every time I come across such writing as Prince Mashele’s, I inadvertently get moderated in my excitement by the harsh reality of the lack of common sense in our public space. In the real world, Mr Mashele’s suggestions should have been in parliament by now enjoying the majority public opinion and promising a much welcome amendment to our immature political system. Unfortunately, as logical as Prince Mashele’s suggestion sounds, it will take nothing short of an electoral defeat for the ruling party to have a system like this implemented here in SA. An illiterate and inferior public space favours the hegemony of the ruling party, hence it is unlikely that the architects of the dumbing down of South Africa would want to change the status quo. An informed and intelligent public is a threat to a fundamentally corrupt oligarchy and its crony-capitalist network like the one we have in power at this moment. Hence, expect lots of partisan intellectuals and party hacks to risk whatever is left of their compromised reputation to dismiss and stop such a suggestion from seeing the light of day. However, we need to keep on making the case for these ideas and common sense politics, because one of these days we will reclaim the country from the neo-colonialist stooges and their nationalist parasites, hopefully before it is too late. I have to remain optimistic that this will eventually happen.