Steenhuisen and the DA’s Covid-19 plan and merit in contemporary SA
21 April 2020
Following that very insightful, exhaustive presentation by Professor Salim Abdool Karim, explaining in detail government’s evidence-based, analytic and scientific response to the Covid-19 outbreak, I made a post on Facebook which got me into a debate with someone on my wall, that I found to be incredibly relevant.
On my Facebook, I contrasted government’s response as shown by Professor Karim’s presentation, with that of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) presented by its leader John Steenhuisen, juxtaposing Steenhuisen’s lack of academic qualifications with the internationally renowned professor, who is a member of the elite, exclusive Royal Society based in London, which boasts such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Sir Isaac Newton.
I used Steenhuisen’s lack of academic qualifications to poke fun at the DAs plan all the while acknowledging that he must have had experts advising him of course, and strangely enough a fellow comrade took umbrage with this, saying that my argument was ad hominem and not sustainable as the DA could easily have gotten an expert to present its plan, nullifying my line of argument. He also highlighted the fact that we should interrogate the DAs plan on merit and not “play the man”, as I was doing.
He also argued that I shouldn’t make it about education or lack thereof, as we as the ANC are the ones who gave SA an uneducated president in Jacob Zuma as well as many uneducated deployees in government and said that billionaire Johan Rupert is also uneducated to further solidify his point. You see, ANC comrades are not all people of group think as most on this platform fallaciously assume.
Anyway, my counter argument was that he was missing the point. The contrast between an uneducated, white DA leader presenting a plan and a globally acclaimed expert presenting the ANC-led government’s plan, gave us a unique opportunity to expose the DA and white South Africa’s hypocrisy on the issue of merit in contemporary South African society, and hence my line of attack was relevant and not ad hominem, in this context.
I argued that symbolism is important in politics and Steenhuisen, in the context of the contrast between him and Professor Karim presenting two plans, is symbolic of this white hypocrisy about merit in contemporary SA, which must be exposed, after all by default, if the DA was to win national elections, an uneducated Steenhuisen would be the country’s president, surely a conundrum for all those whites who constantly dismiss blacks as uneducated and incompetent? It also deeply exposes the DA, who have been at the forefront of fighting for this supposed “meritocracy”, that now they have an uneducated leader at their helm, but because he’s white it appears to be overlooked or rather downplayed, even by the mainstream media.
I further argued, using an example from my days having co-founded and built a recruitment business from scratch with a mate from England, which grew to include some of the biggest clients in the financial services sector in SA, specifically investment banking, private equity, corporate finance, asset management, mezzanine finance firms and the likes. My example was one of these big firms in the financial services sector, which was known in the market as a, “revolving door for black professionals”.
The reason for this was, you would find many qualified, brilliant black chartered accountants or chartered financial analysts (this was the niche within which we operated, including MBAs and other relatable qualifications) coming to us from this firm, wanting us to find them a job in a different space because they where reporting to and being frustrated by a white Afrikaner boss (this was the most common) who had been in the system for decades but was either unqualified or underqualified for the position they held and hence felt threatened by this more educated, qualified young black person to the point of deliberately marginalising them.
Of course, this calls into question how this unqualified or underqualified person got there and totally nullifies the argument often used by the DA and a lot of white South Africans about merit in our society. It is hypocrisy of the highest order and was a sentiment I encountered a lot in my dealings with young , black finance professionals during that period working in the recruitment industry.
Finally, I argued that to use Johan Rupert (I did not even bother confirming whether he is educated or not because it really doesn’t matter) as an example in his argument was rather narrow-minded because Rupert is the son of a great Afrikaner industrialist and with his social capital from birth, it was neither here nor there whether he got a formal qualification in order to succeed in business. A story of a mate of mine, from a very affluent, well-known family bears repeating in this regard. In a drunken moment, during my days playing regular “pub golf” before becoming a teetotaller, he turned to me and said, “Mugabs bru, my pops made money so that I never have to focus on going to school like you okes. I can just focus on building my business and making more money.” Talk about having brutally honest drinking mates, right?
Finally, I addressed the issue of Jacob Zuma, saying that to compare Zuma rising to prominence and ultimate leadership during a liberation struggle era that lasted for decades, to John Steenhuisen rising within the DA is the height of ignorance about historical realities. Anyway, by the time this was all done, the argument was no longer really about Steenhuisen and the DAs Covid-19 plan, as we had managed to digress so much, however the issues raised remain profoundly germane even in a Covid-19 impacted South Africa.
Mugabe Ratshikuni works for the Gauteng provincial government; He is an activist with a passion for social justice and transformation. He writes here in his personal capacity.
