What a tumultuous couple of weeks we've had here in Southern Africa!
That was the view I had from the plane heading into Lusaka, Zambia the evening of 13 November. Little did I realise it was more than weather - it was portentous. Southern Africa was about to undergo a change of such phenomenal proportions we're still working out the significance.
Bob got dejobbed
Yes, that's right, Robert Mugabe, now former President of Zimbabwe (oh, how that trips off the tongue), he who said he would never retire or resign (I don't believe he ever tempted fate by saying "over my dead body"), was forced to resign in the coup/not coup organised by his own political party, ZANU-PF. After over three decades of life under Mugabe, Zimbabwe now sits with the unenviable record of third poorest nation in the world with over 95% unemployment, and arguably the best educated workforce in Africa. Thanks to Bob, most Zimbabweans know their Shakespeare. They just don't have any money to travel to the theatre to enjoy seeing plays live. Informal reports were telling us that Bitcoin was trading at US$18000 in mid-November.
The next day was also spent running from meeting to meeting, but this time we spent our car time with our ears glued to the radio. Expert after expert came onto talk radio to expound on the tumultuous events and muse on whether it was really a coup if everybody was overjoyed about it, even though it was patently unconstitutional for the military to swarm into the capital city in armoured personnel carriers (first reported as tanks - apparently on a scale of causing terror to civilians, armoured personnel carriers are much friendlier than tanks, but being Canadian I'm not convinced), intern the President, make the Finance Minister disappear, and do a bunch of other things which made the whole affair walk and quack just like the proverbial coup.
Talk radio was more exciting that day than it had been on my previous visit, when Global Handwashing Day featured prominently on the airwaves. Don't get me wrong, handwashing in a time of upcoming cholera is important. Coups/not coups are just more exciting.
We had no water for 3 days in Johannesburg last week
But that was okay, we're kinda used to that now and it was good exercise carrying the bucket upstairs from the pool to the bathroom so we could have flush water. If it's yellow, stay mellow, but if it's brown, it goes down is what the water conscious South African says these days. And yes, we're REALLY grateful we have a pool.
Besides, we had electricity which meant we could watch the coup/not coup news for hours on end.
In case you're wondering, the cause of the outage was a failure in a main supply pipeline which some idiot engineering team in the apartheid years had decided to bury 40m under a non-engineered landfill. Not only that, apparently they encased it in concrete so it would be impossible to access once the impossible access problem of clearing 40m of slippery slopes of years of landfill problem had been dealt with. Fast forward to eejut politician of current days promising exact times for the water to be restored the day after they had dewatered the system. This is the supply to the whole of the north of Johannesburg, which is reasonably hilly. Even once they had finished the complex repairs a day later than the politician had unfairly promised, it took another half day for the pressure to build up again in the system.
Oh yeah, some other stuff
Eskom inquiry
The former chairman of South Africa's national electricity utility directly implicated the President of the country in fixing the board to load it with members handpicked by the Gupta family to serve their interests in "State Capture". South Africa watchers will be aware of the great Advocate Thuli Madonsela, heroine to many as the author of the report in that link (State of Capture). She coped with death threats and threats on her children as Public Protector.
The Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown, shone with her denials of meetings happening at her house with the Guptas and the extent to which she apparently knew nothing about what was going on in the public enterprises for which she was (is!) accountable. "I don't know" was a refrain we heard over and over again in her testimony.
The new Minister for State Security shone with his attempt to bribe the Evidence Leader to throw the investigation into the capture of Eskom.
Life Esidimeni inquiry
This one might be a bit parochial for non-South Africans, but bear with me, since it's about an important inquiry into why 143 (yes, 143) psychiatric patients died when they were unceremoniously removed from competent care to NGOs which in many cases not only did not have the capacity to care for them, they didn't even have the facilities. Worse, it took the families many months to find out where their loved ones had been moved, and it was only recently the death toll was upped from 67 dead (August 2016) to 143. The response of the project head for the (province of) Gauteng department of health Dr Makgabo Manamela was "I don't know" to so many questions I was wondering if she and Lynne Brown were working from the same playbook. Not only is she director of the Gauteng mental health directorate and a qualified medical doctor, she is also a qualified psychiatric nurse. Watching her testimony was chilling as she seemed completely Teflon-coated - although she ran the project, which nobody has explained the rationale for yet, she denies all accountability and responsibility for the lives lost.
Watching the former chief justice, Dikgang Moseneke, tear into her and remind her of her duty as a public servant (not to mention a doctor who has sworn the Hippocratic Oath), was nothing short of inspiring. It seems in cases like this, where our public interest is so threatened, just as we see the Teflon-coated, self-serving (arguably) criminals caught in the light, so we see heroes such as Thuli Madonsela and Dikgang Moseneke proving over and over that a strong, independent judiciary is vital to a healthy democracy - not to mention inspiring to a jaded and exhausted citizenry who don't know what scandal is about to hit them next.
Junk status
Or not a scandal. Just getting downgraded to junk status last Friday was enough of a body blow, even though we fully expected it. That's terrific - now the cost of servicing South Africa's debt will skyrocket, eating into our capacity to pay social grants. Yippee.
And apparently there's an ANC leadership conference coming up in December
It's impossible to believe anything anyone says about it, other than seven of the candidates had a rip-roaring time at dinner with President Zuma last Thursday, during which he warned them there might be violence after the elective conference.
So rejoice, our brothers and sisters to the north in Zimbabwe
You have a real chance to put your bruised and damaged country back together, and we hope for your sake that the heroes and heroines of your society, like the Thuli Madonselas and Dikgang Mosenekes and those less known but fearless and good like them, come to the fore. I've said nothing about he who has been appointed President in place of Robert Mugabe. Interested people will know it's not obvious which way the "Crocodile" will play his cards.
And Harry finally proposed to Meghan
Which is completely irrelevant to developments in Southern Africa, other than he actually spends a lot of time here and had a Zimbabwean girlfriend for six years.
...and here's a miscellaneous photo of Lusaka by night from the air
There is light in the darkness....
