The South African government is concerned by the volume of anti-transformation talk it is encountering, but it’s not really the government, as that’s supposed to be a unity group. It’s one partner, the ANC, and it’s puzzled that the country just isn’t getting the majesty of “transformation” and its bountiful gifts.
“We are non-negotiable on the economic transformation of our country,” Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni sneers, with echoes of the defiance once witnessed from the likes of Tina Joemat-Pettersson and Bathabile Dlamini in fifth gear.
Watching people fall victim to their own delusions used to be intriguing, then it was sad. Now it’s just annoying, because it always leads to the same destination: when the ANC transforms stuff, it makes it worse.
But it isn’t alone. One of the most understudied “transformation” disasters occurred within the UK police − also with race as its foundation.
It was the 1993 murder of a young black man, Stephen Lawrence, and police ineptitude in investigating that enabled it. In 1997, a High Court judge and hereditary aristocrat called Sir William Macpherson (who studied PPE at Oxford − obviously) led the public inquiry into the murder of Lawrence and the failure of law enforcement.
The event prompted mad flexing, complemented by craven expedience. The Daily Mail, newspaper of Middle England, championed the hounding of the suspects − even inviting them to sue it. This wasn’t in the name of justice; rather, Stephen Lawrence’s father was a handyman who worked in editor Paul Dacre’s home. Sensing an opportunity to redeem the newspaper from its reputation as aloof, white and angry, Dacre set about some racism-hunting, framing it in a way acceptable to his subscribers.
But if these were performative, they could not compare to the conclusions of the MacPherson Inquiry. The police’s failure to investigate adequately, Sir William found, was because of a culture of “institutionalised racism”. Having studied PPE, he would have known that there’s nothing an Englishman fears more than being called a racist. The finding prompted urgent “transformation” within the police. It was akin to splitting an atom.
Rhythmic cycle of cocking and upping
Only it didn’t split an atom, it split a cock-up, and decades later the implications of the “transformation” demanded by the MacPherson Report were to leave the entire state of UK law-enforcement in one rhythmic cycle of cocking and upping.
The first major implication involved the recruitment of new coppers. These, then newly Prime Minister Tony Blair recommended, should be university graduates. With degrees. Because nothing quite de-escalates a machete attack at an underground station like peer reviewing, or the ability to recite the first four pages of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch by heart. The second implication came later, and involved major amendments to the guidance issued by the Royal College of Policing: police now had to be “empathetic,” “compassionate,” and “represent underserved communities”.
The “community” that got most of the new police’s empathy and compassion was the LGBT crowd − whether they wanted it or not. As Pride found itself in the UK mainstream, egged on by sly corporates eager to use identity as a tool to outwit opposition, so the dregs joined in, dancing in marches, blowing whistles, wearing high-heels and painting their cars in the Pride flag colours. But the basis of all the change, lest it be forgotten, was race.
This was emphasised in 2020, when two coppers knelt before a baying mob at a protest. In Bristol, a statue was bashed off its plinth and rolled into the harbour waters. One portly, bearded copper wearing a rainbow lanyard witnessed the vandalism, but refused to intervene: “They have a point,” he went on record saying.
MacPherson didn’t live to see the fruits of his report rot, but they are rotting everywhere – from the failure to respond, to supermarkets now selling cheese and meat with security tags, to the rejection of preventative initiatives that worked in other cities like New York. Things the UK police have excelled at in its new disposition aren’t many, but 12,000 people are arrested annually for social media comments, filed under “non-crime hate incidents”. I suppose that is something.
Just like the ANC’s transformation methodology, UK policing has benefited a handful of people, most of whom are right-on police commissioners, who are able to return to their families at night and boast that they’ve just embraced a man wearing a pink G-string at a street party. Shop keepers, meanwhile, don’t bother to report theft anymore. Transformation has resulted in institutional incompetence, fear and denial.
Rid our lexicons
So we must rid our lexicons of that word, even at the cost of irritating business journalists. The reality is that very little “transformation” can be spoken of with admiration. Javier Milei hasn’t “transformed” the Argentinian economy − he’s done what any clever, sensible person would have done. Countries like Poland and Hungary haven’t “transformed” their societies to be safe and clean – they’ve responded to their own electorates.
Our world is bursting with NGOs, governments, corporates and media fixtures intent on projecting the idea of “transformation” as exhilarating renewal, preparation for the future, equality. It’s none of those things.
[Image: https://www.needpix.com/photo/856582/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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