Africa-Press – South-Africa. South Africa’s once inspiring Rainbow Nation ideal has dimmed over time. That’s the view of global affairs specialist and senior fellow at the Montreal Institute for Global Security, Terence McNamee, whose latest article examines whether the country can still reclaim its unifying national vision.
Speaking to 702’s Bongani Bingwa, McNamee said: “I think there’s many reasons why the Rainbow Nation has dimmed but really if I had to identify the most important factor, really it is the ANC government over the last 15 years or so.
“You know the story was an incredible asset for the country, which was leveraged to great effect domestically and internationally but if you were to use the metaphor of a garden that you plant, you have to take care of that story, you have to prune it, you have to water it, you have to pull out the weeds because if you don’t take care of that garden, it’s just going to grow wild or it’s going to die and I think that’s the situation that we have today.”
Bingwa noted that there are those who would argue that the Rainbow Nation ideal and myth was really a plaster over a gaping wound and what time has revealed is just how mythical it always was.
McNamee explained: “The Rainbow Nation obviously was one of the more idealistic of founding stories. But the point is that people like Mandela, Tutu – they knew it was a destination for society more than a genuine reality on the ground in the 1990s. But I think what they understood intuitively was the power of the story to begin to shift mindsets and that’s what’s crucial to begin to change the way people envisage the future. And once you do that, once you shift mindsets, you can make that path easier for really concrete, real world substantive changes and reforms. And of course the problem with massive looting and corruption and leadership that is only pursuing their own self interest as opposed to the national interest of course that’s going to breed deep cynicism and erode any belief in stories like this.”
Bingwa contrasted this with a list from a Stellenbosch professor noting the many positives in South Africa: “We’re off the grey list, the GNU seems to be settling down – there are fewer public squabbles, initiatives like Operation Vulindlela are yielding real results, load-shedding seems a distant memory, we’re moving when it comes to logistics and freight.”
McNamee said while it was important to emphasise those things, one couldn’t ignore how far things have fallen.
He added that there was not much diplomatic cover for South Africa at this time when it is the target of US President Donald Trump’s ire on a regular basis.
Bingwa asked him if he expects the upcoming G20 in Johannesburg to be successful and if other world leaders would attend or follow Trump’s lead and stay away.
“The reality is of course that countries understand that… they’re hardly oblivious to the mercurial nature of Trump’s perception of the world and foreign policy, so none of them take seriously the administration’s baseless claims about widespread persecution and white genocide.”
However, he questioned how South Africa is perceived in the G20. “Inequality is supposed to be a main platform of the G20 but is South Africa really being honest about itself? Is the president being honest about the nature of inequality in this country? I mean it seems a strange platform to base the G20 on.”
The theme for the G20 Summit is ‘Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability.
To listen to global affairs specialist and senior fellow at the Montreal Institute for Global Security, Terence McNamee’s full conversation with 702’s Bongani Bingwa click the link below:
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