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Affirmative resistance to state capture

THE continued leaking of emails on the brazen extent, width and depths reached by the toxic Zupta tentacles into the privileged corners of our government and state institutions seems far from over.

The involvement of known people, some of whom have become usual suspects, has now been buttressed by recent revelations and, going by the increasing pace of developments, the identity of more will be known in the coming weeks.

The lies we’ve been told all along can no longer fit comfortably in the dark crevices they’ve been forced into. The leaks are unstoppable.

Acknowledging our knights in shining armour

Thanks to excellent South African investigative journalism, the rest of us, helpless observers for now, should continue connecting the dots made up of events and people who have been serving as frontline mercenaries for the capturers of our democracy.

Each of us has a role of sorts to play in all of this. The media must continue digging and unearthing the facts to corroborate widespread suspicions of wrongdoing; whistleblowers must continue exposing what they see and hear if none of it is designed to protect and enhance our democracy - for the media cannot do what it does best without the assistance of these silent heroes and heroines who have had enough of the madness.

Missing in the pro country script is clear action from the Hawks, the Public Protector and the National Prosecuting Authority, the only institutions with the mandate to use available information to probe the alleged perpetrators and, if necessary, bring them to justice.

We should keep an eye on the recently announced investigation by the Hawks, whose credibility has taken huge knocks in recent times, and hope it will contribute to restoring our confidence.

Need for affirmative resistance

Having managed to unmask the well-financed programmes aimed at sowing racial division in our country, the rest of us should continue to affirmatively resist the politically opportunistic attempts to open up old fissures in our society.

We should invest energy on initiatives that forge unity and celebrate the good deeds of South Africans of all backgrounds, across the country, to build bridges and contribute in ways big and small to lessening the burdens of everyday hardships on their less privileged countrymen and women.

There are many such people throughout the country, black and white, who are silently going about making positive differences in the lives of others. These are the acts we should be highlighting to remind ourselves, and those who have been enabling state capture, of who we are as a nation and who we can still be.

In these times of senseless racial and institutional onslaught driven by greed, the only lawful antidote we have on our side is to remain together as a nation and to push back.

All is not perfect

But let’s not fool ourselves. We know our negative legacy issues and fault lines as South Africans. We know that issues of race, the still unresolved land ownership issue, real or perceived inequalities in accessing economic opportunities, racial profiling and subliminal discrimination in some hospitality establishments, as well as stubborn and ethnically biased corporate cultures in many big companies, all need very little to be blown out of proportion for the right or wrong reasons.

But abused and emotion-laden concepts like white monopoly capital and radical economic transformation in the hands of the current bunch of opportunistic sloganeers can only serve to pull away at the glue that has been holding us together since the dawn of our democracy.

Rejecting these concepts as currently bandied about should not mean that we’re not aware of our basket of unfinished business in building the South Africa we all dreamed about and hoped for, at the dawn of our democracy.

SA needs nation builders

What it means is that South Africa needs leaders who are credible and can be trusted by citizens and residents from across all backgrounds to bring them together again.

Such leaders must be level-headed, less angry in their manner, emotionally intelligent, driven by the supreme need to assure us all that they recognise the inalienable right of all South Africans to continue feeling that the country is their home and that there will be opportunities for their children to remain here and contribute to making it the best country to live in.

Such leaders must also respect our institutions and act only within the parameters prescribed for the positions they occupy.  

Embarking on long-term affirmative resistance does not mean that we should stop being vigilant and pointing it out for all to see when the current crop of state capture enablers continue doing what they have been doing.

It means that we put all measures and attitudes in place to prevent them from taking advantage of our legacy issues and national fault lines to break us up, in order to justify their theft and abuse of public resources to benefit only themselves and their families.

It cannot be that we should allow the madness to continue and irretrievably dim our lights by tarnishing the domestic and global image of our country. 

* Solly Moeng is brand reputation management adviser and CEO of strategic corporate communications consultancy DonValley. Views expressed are his own.

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