POINT OF ORDER | Government talk of optimism misplaced in current economic storm

In his speech in Kimberley,President Cyril Ramaphosaindirectly reminded us, in many ways, that nostalgia is eating us alive, even as we commemorate this Human Rights Day 30 years after our leaders signed our democratic constitution into law. Instead of building a new world, our present-day leaders are regurgitating a past of fully enjoying freedom that never existed, in which instead, in the eyes of the unemployed, unfulfilled electoral promises dishonoured the memories of those killed in the struggle for human rights. They want us to go back to a time when we could be spirit-filled by chanting freedom songs and political slogans, without thinking about the state capture, poverty, inequality or whatever Ramaphosa refers to as “a covenant for dignity” symbolised by our constitution.

There was much talk in his speech about our hunger for a return to optimism and how important that we remember that the “signing of the constitution into law was the most significant act of our democratic era”, and that our constitution sets “the coordinates for a journey towards a just, inclusive and united future for all South Africans”. Yet, our world, overshadowed by government shortcomings, has been too real for too long, and we all desperately want a bit of shelter from the economic storm battering us. Through his speech, we look back in patronising nostalgia at the significance of former president Nelson Mandela’s choice “to sign the constitution into law in Sharpeville, the site of one of the apartheid regime’s worst acts of brutality”, and that “the constitution-making process was the most extensive public participation exercise ever to take place in our country”.

The great irony in this regurgitation of old aesthetics is that the old aesthetics looked forward, insofar as the constitution obliges us, to restore what was lost or taken by colonialism. The joy and optimism of the reconstruction and development programme era showcased the marvellous possibilities of progressive policy and legislative frameworks. That was before we knew that those same frameworks, under the crippling weight of abuse of the BEE and affirmative action by corrupt, politically connected individuals, would slowly start choking our good governance atmosphere. Nobody imagined our nation would be trapped in high levels of poverty requiring more than 29-million unemployed South Africans to receive old age, disability and child support grants But now, after decades of doom storytelling and hope erosion, we want the dream back.