‘Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law.’ – Proverbs 29:18
A vision of the future, of where we would like to be and what we would like to be doing, will not come from politicians. Their focus is on attaining and holding on to power within the constraints of society’s differing ideas about what the state should be doing, or whether it should even exist. Politicians – especially in democracies – respond to the incentives we provide.
If the short-sighted in society make up a working majority, then that is the path politicians will take. We have seen this time and again in South Africa, from bailouts for state-owned enterprises pushing the country towards bankruptcy, to the hiking of VAT by a percentage point to appease Fees Must Fall protesters, and quality education being sacrificed for the sake of trade unions.
While most of us rightly criticise politicians for such short-sighted and damaging decisions, it is also true that they wouldn’t be making them if we the people had a vision of the future we want. Those with vision alter their actions to match the future they seek. This explains why someone like Nelson Mandela chose to forgive the state security officials and policymakers who had oppressed him throughout most of his adult life.
It is also true of the people Nelson Mandela was negotiating with; FW De Klerk could have reasoned that the SADF’s military superiority over MK meant that he didn’t need to talk. He knew that a new political compromise needed to be forged if any chance of a lasting peace were to come about in this land. He was thinking about the future, and so was Mandela. That is vision.
The example of these two political leaders also shows us something else: The people themselves cared about the future and thus these politicians were rewarded for acting in a way that would not destroy their future. This is illustrated by the fact that the 1992 whites-only referendum showed high support for negotiations. Equally, the ANC had always sought negotiation since its founding, because its constituency then cared about the future.
The struggle, at its founding at least, was never about erasing the past but rather ensuring that everyone could be a part of this country, and have a future here.
This meant retaining and preserving from the past whatever might help ease our path into a shared future, while abandoning whatever made it harder for us to achieve this shared vision. So out went destructive things like the Group Areas Act, the Population Registration Act, the Land Act and so on.
The political leaders then came together and forged a constitution for the whole country, based on their constituents’ demand for a peaceful resolution. That is the main difference between those with vision and those without: peaceful resolution of conflict, or violence. The people had a vision of the future and bravely sacrificed the temporary gains – the feeling of being right, of achieving victory over an opponent – in order to pursue a brighter future they themselves might not see. It is, indeed, a future no one has seen yet.
Which brings me to the point of wondering whether the people of this country are gradually abandoning the peaceful path in favour of the path of violence and destruction. We see this in such things as the proposed 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which would legalise theft, a destructive act if ever there was one. We also hear increasing calls to nationalise more of the economy, to prescribe assets managed by pension funds, to levy more and more taxes.
These are all destructive acts and they can only come not primarily from the politicians but from the people, people who lack vision. Growing numbers no longer care about preserving wealth for the future. Indeed we take on more debt so that we not only destroy the wealth we and our ancestors have created, but also the wealth of those who will come after us. And the more wealth given to the state, the more inefficiently that wealth will be used.
Governments are one of the means employed by people to destroy their own wealth and this is the path South Africans have seemingly resolved to follow themselves, too. Where we once cared about property rights and the rule of law as critical institutions for the achievement of our shared vision of a prosperous and safe future, we now scoff at them and deride them as colonial inventions (ignoring the fact that pre-colonial African societies had the concepts of property ownership and the law). We have South Africans openly calling for the release from prison of those who attacked property during protests because their cause is deemed to be just, therefore the rule of law is undermined.
The growing evidence of lawlessness – ranging from the looting of trucks that have been involved in accidents to land invasions – is reflected in the proposals crafted by our political ‘leaders’.
The problem is not the African National Congress or the Economic Freedom Fighters; the problem is the people themselves. If history is any guide, that particular problem is one that very few people are ever willing to confront, let alone solve.
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