STEINKE: A glimpse in the mirror of South Africa should trouble Canadians

As a currently unemployed graduate student, I can clearly remember singing songs about our ‘African dream’ in school. This was a dream of a ‘rainbow nation’ where we were encouraged to look forward to a free and diverse society. In South Africa’s annual State of the Nation Address a month ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa offered confident assurances, including that a consistent electricity supply, among other essentials, would be provided to us. But not much has changed. And the dream, that of the new democratic state that emerged in South Africa in 1994, is also fast fading.More revealing than the speech, was the spectacular scene that surrounded it. Politicians arrived in expensive cars, with their wives dressed to the nines. A red carpet was rolled out from the Cape Town city hall, which ordinarily faces a square filled by hawkers selling second hand clothes, and other odds and ends. And Ramaphosa travels in a presidential jet, where he entertains guests with meals costing over R20,000 (roughly 1440 CAD) per head. This is reminiscent of pre-revolutionary France, where Marie Antoinette ate sweets and cakes while her people starved. A statue of our famous struggle hero, Nelson Mandela, greets passers-by from the balcony. The irony is surreal.More disturbing yet, the references to climate change, COVID-19 and gender-based violence in Ramaphosa’s address indicate that even at the bottom of Africa, the globalists’ grip is firm. Yet, the solutions to these apparent crises were given in vague terms. In a long ramble filled with references to our troubled past and to the few notable successes of the current ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC,) the only apparent redeeming feature of the president’s speech was in his honest assessment of the consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown.Roughly two million South Africans lost their jobs as a result of the authoritarian measures implemented in April 2021. Out of a population of more than 60 million people, only 16 million are formally employed. No surprise perhaps, Ramaphosa didn’t refer to the numerous South Africans who were shot and assaulted by security forces for not social distancing. The impact of these events on the May 2024 elections remains to be seen.Whether in North America or in Africa, the principle remains the same. Unless a government chooses to face the hard facts, it has no chance of shaping reality, or of being able to make any changes for the better. To Canadians and other westerners, South Africa is a blaring red light. When the elites take over, shame their citizens into silence and feed them blatant lies and corruption and crime goes unchecked, the dystopian state is no longer a work of fiction.Kate Steinke is a graduate of Stellenbosch University. She comments from South Africa on political themes that are all too familiar in Canada

STEINKE: A glimpse in the mirror of South Africa should trouble Canadians

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