“Do you know where you are going?” was the question my three sons continuously asked me in 1989?
I was reminded of this question when Abba Omar, who is the director of strategy at Mistra, giving his closing remarks on the Indlulamithi Day, commented that his children often asked, “When are we arriving home?” on the long trips between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
This common question is relevant as any South African from the top to the bottom always asks, “When are we going to arrive?”
Obviously this is on a heroic assumption that we know where we are going. Or does the country know where it is going? This is a more realistic question.
Border posts are a good example of problems encountered in planning, despite knowing the direction you are going.
In December 1989 I was heading to Cape Town from Mahikeng. On my way there I branched off to Lesotho to visit my parents and the next day headed to Van Rooyen’s Gate to proceed to Cape Town.
As fate would have it, I picked a squabble with the police officer at the passport control desk. I objected to not being served while others pushed in front of me.
In the queue behind me was a lady who used to be our Sunday school teacher. I had just greeted her after many years of not seeing her.
When the trouble started, I picked up from her body language that trouble was imminent. It was clear that I ran the risk of my passport being destroyed before my very eyes. To avoid this, I went back into my car, did a U-turn and turned tail back to Lesotho.
That reminded me of yet another run in in 1976 with the border control police. At that time I had gone to fetch a cow from my elder brother’s holding pan which my elder brother and I had bought the previous day at the auction in Wepener, in the Free State.
Over the afternoon we had to get the permits in Mafeteng, Lesotho, and off I prepared to go to Olivier’s farm, which is a stone’s throw from the gate to collect the cow the next day. But, at the border the policeman asked me where I was going. So I said to Olivier’s farm.
Seated behind the desk he saw my top attire, but did not see the gumboots I had put on for purposes of walking 20km with the cow to my village. He concluded that I could not be fit for going to a farm and rejected my request.
A squabble resulted in a white officer being summoned to intervene, who then called me a k****r. After a few heated words, that led me to declare things about his ancestry, I also walked away.
Back to my 1989 trip to Cape Town, that resulted in yet another squabble and retreat.
What triggered the unpleasantness was not my manner of dress, but because of the car I was driving. The black policeman almost my age just out of the blue felt infuriated by this frills of material life and blocked my journey.
So I took a U-turn back into Lesotho and headed to Sterkspruit and crossed at the Telle Bridge, a border post located between South Africa and Lesotho.
It was gravel all the way. Cattle, goats and sheep decorated the road. Herd boys lined up the road riding on donkeys going to mill corn. My three boys had lost confidence that this could represent a road to Cape Town. They asked me repeatedly whether I knew where I was going.
Certainly many South Africans wonder whether the government we elected to lead knows where it is leading us to.
The question is not one of when we are going to arrive at our destination, but whether the destination is known.
Perhaps as a nation we may just not know that our leaders picked up a minor squabble with a policeman at the policy design gate and out of frustration might have and have taken a short left to get to their destination.
According to the Indlulamithi South Africa Scenarios 2030, the Gwara Gwara scenario is where social inequality is at its highest, embodies a demoralised land of disorder and decay, most characterised by a steep decline in trust and belief among fellow South Africans, the state and social institutions.
But Indlulamithi South Africa Scenarios 2030 said we have arrived not only in Gwara Gwara, but we have gone into Gwara Gwara plus that is perhaps where our policy short left us.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
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