South Africa is not a 'banana republic'

By Madibeng Kgwete: 28 January 2007

Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya is rightly not shy of speaking his mind on matters of state incompetence and other issues of public interest, but the comparisons he makes between South Africa and so-called “banana republics” in “Slip-ups put our country in the company of banana republics” (January 21) taste sour.

As if he had foreseen widespread government failure as early as February 2006 when President Thabo Mbeki delivered his State of the Nation address, Makhanya writes in his I-told-you-so tone: “Those who were not moved by that speech were those with hearts as dead as ancient rock.”

Makhanya then goes on to suggest, obviously falsely, that Mbeki, after his 2006 State of the Nation address, “promptly disappeared behind his Union Buildings barricades and let us get on with being hopeful by ourselves”.

You’d think that Makhanya would follow his criticism of Mbeki with the latest incidents of state incompetence or denialism, but he relies heavily on recycled news items retrieved from previous editions of the Sunday Times.

He blasts Mbeki on the controversial Film and Publications Bill, whose enactment the state has already reconsidered following intense opposition by media freedom organisations, and the police’s reported attempt to centralise communication (also reconsidered after media opposition).

Whether or not the government had a hidden agenda behind each of the above plans and others is hard to fathom, but that the government has listened to critics should make the distinction that South Africa is not in “the company of banana republics”.

South Africa may be doing not so well on critical aspects such as crime and corruption, but to compare the country to “banana republics” is like applying for membership of a doomsayers’ choir.

A copy of this article was published in the Sunday Times newspaper on 28 January 2007.