Dumbing down the collective

I was sitting at a dinner table on Saturday night in Rosendal (a place that has become one of the best kept secrets in South Africa) and the talk turned to American politics.
Apart from taking the mandatory pot shots at the moose-shooting Sarah Palin, there was the usual consensus about the conservativeness of Middle American voters and the general dumbing down of that society.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends are American. And they’re very clever. And with travelling in the States, I’ve never come across anyone who actually voted for Dubya or who intends to vote for John McCain and his hapless sidekick.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen - I have never trawled the towns of the Midwest where old-fashioned thinking (or pure idiocy) appears to run riot.
If America does choose McCain after two terms of bumbling, war-mongering George Bush, then that country will have to be officially declared stupid. As an aside – I think Barrack Obama will win.
But just as people were having a good go at the backwardness of many US voters, it struck me that South Africa could also be viewed as having actively dumbed down the collective.
From an educational system that is still struggling to teach the nation, to a lack of cheap communications and restricted access to lighting and water, South Africa has not done terribly well when it comes to nurturing its citizens and ensuring skills development.
But to my mind the main culprit is empowerment itself. Let me say upfront that I think empowerment is a social and a moral imperative. It’s just that South Africa’s model of empowerment has been lacking. Sure, it takes time to formulate a concept, implement it, tweak it and tweak it again. But in the 14 years we’ve been at it, how many black people have lost out because our ideas about empowerment have been unrealistic? And how much has that impacted on the national psyche – if there is such a thing?
When empowerment started out the private sector did deals because it had to and it had little rand signs flashing in its eyes because those companies thought they would land loads of governments contracts if they brought in people “with contacts”. All that did was enrich a few while ignoring any sort of skills development ideals.
Then there was legislation and an understanding that empowerment had to be more broad-based. Firms hired black people, offering at times huge amounts of money, but those people were often given rotten mentors or no mentors at all. And when it came to board level appointments, the black directors were only given non executive posts – they were not involved in the day to day running of the companies they joined. In that way, they were used as a front and this practice continues unashamedly today.
By hiring people because of the colour of their skin and then not giving them well-trained mentors with precise goals, South African companies have not done themselves any favours – in fact they’ve added to the collective dumbing down.
Now the returns are playing out in our political scene. There’s a big debate raging about the lack of education of ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema. And a smaller debate about the lack of education of ANC party leader, Jacob Zuma. While education is not everything, it is important when it comes to running a complex economy. And I have a feeling that even if Malema had been given the best education in the world, he would have still been something of an idiot, spewing out violent rhetoric, but at least he might have had some sort of grasp of the tenets of democracy.
Because what we have now is an uprising of the disaffected masses who appear to have little understanding of the necessity for a strong opposition. And the likes of Malema and Zuma play on this. But it’s a dangerous strategy. There is no need to incite anyone to violence, but that’s what they’re doing. The cost to all of us may be terrible. If empowerment had worked better and faster, we may not be facing a crisis but now, if opposition parties gain enough support ahead of next year’s elections, I fear there may be a blood bath.
So before we throw stones at the trials of the US presidential system, let’s have a look at our own country. We are very far from perfect and it looks like none of us have done enough to uplift the collective.