It is dawning on South Africa that there are two very separate and distinct mindsets at work in the country, and it seems never the twain will meet. Newspaper columns and letter pages, as well as talk shows and phone-ins, are replete with what “should be done” and ”why is this not done?” and the now over-used word “unbelievable”, from citizens aghast at the unfathomable behaviour of the ruling classes.
The logic of one mindset is not the logic of the other. Who would think that after the abysmal failure of the South African land redistribution programme, the government would continue with it, albeit under different guises? Who would believe that after wantonly destroying Zimbabwe and rendering his people to grinding penury, the South African government would ask the United Nations to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe’s president, a perpetrator of human rights atrocities? Who can fathom a government that month after month - indeed year after year - places advertisements for desperately-needed municipal staff, stipulating that they are “equal opportunity employers”, meaning skilled whites need not apply?
How is it that despite embarrassing service delivery failures, the wholesale plunder of taxpayers’ money by tenderpreneurs and government employees, the nepotism, the lowering of standards in health and education, the failing feeding schemes and the abuse of the social welfare system, the miscreants simply carry on as if nothing happened. There is no shame, no sense of accountability to those who pay them and indeed to South Africa as a nation. Indeed, when many are fired for incompetence, mismanagement or fraud, or all three, they go to court to demand huge payouts that they believe are their due! Denialism is at work here, and this brings us to an interesting explanation of this phenomenon now doing the Wikipedia rounds: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
THE D K EFFECT
The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think they know more (or have more skill) than they do.
Wikipedia reports that Justin Kruger and David Dunning of the USA’s Cornell University first performed a series of experiments in 1999 which suggested that ignorance of standards of performance is behind a great deal of incompetence. One of their 2000 reports was entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of it : How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments”.
They say that,
- Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
- Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
- Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
They conclude that poor performers do not learn from feedback that suggests a need to improve.
Wikipedia gives numerous examples of others who have completed works in this field, including Bertrand Russell’s “The Triumph of Stupidity” (1933) and other more current academic writings about “the absence of self-insight among the incompetent” (Ehrlinger) and “among the inept, researchers discover ignorance is bliss” (Goode). Many of these findings have been widely published in the US national media, including the New York Times.
These syndromes of denialism and self-delusion are pervasive within SA’s ruling and BEE classes. People blithely take on a job that everyone knows they cannot do, but which they themselves don’t seem to realize they cannot do! We see this in the land redistribution policy where beneficiaries agree to run productive farms when they know they are incapable of doing so. They then blame the government, or mentors, or each other. We see someone in an expensive suit perched on the corner of an expensive desk being photographed as the new CEO, or the incoming “human resources manager”, or the new chairman of an organization. In many cases, this person is a token, it is well known that he is a token, but the subject himself seems to think he’s entitled to be there!
Self-delusion and denialism are not new in South Africa. A report in the magazine YOU of 12 October 1995 revealed the degradation of small towns that had once thrived in the erstwhile Transkei. After the ANC took over in 1994, the decay set in and the town of Butterworth, for example, was described as “a wreck, with littered garbage in the streets and potholed roads. The century old town hall is neglected and the parks are overrun with weeds and rubbish.” Corruption, bad management and political infighting had taken their toll, said the article. Municipal management was “abysmal” and a debt of R50 million had already accrued. Nobody was paying for municipal services. Shortly after he arrived, the town clerk gave himself a salary raise R126,000 a year - from R20 000. (This pattern of deterioration repeated itself all over the old Transkei, and has been replayed all over South Africa since then).
SHAME AND APOLOGIES?
Was there any public acknowledgement by the ANC that it was not on top of the job, any requests for help, any promises to mend its corrupt ways?
On the contrary, denialism was the aggrieved reaction. Then President Nelson Mandela declared there was “no crisis” in the Eastern Cape. After a two-hour meeting with officials on 10 September 1995, Mandela declared there was “no crisis” and that in fact the problems of civil servants “were not discussed”, nor was a report to the parliamentary finance committee on the situation in the former Transkei. Provincial premier Raymond Mhlaba was “totally trustworthy”, declared Mandela - “Mahlaba had been involved in the struggle for more than 40 years”. So that was that! Problems in the Transkei were due to “untrained staff”, said another provincial report, despite evidence that there was wholesale theft of funds. (How do you train someone not to steal?)
This was the mindset then, and this is the mindset now! (Interestingly, the Eastern Cape from where the ANC’s chosen emanates, is the most decrepit, corrupt and incompetent province in the country. They even steal from their own children – from the budget to feed 1,42 million E.Cape children, the government department involved cannot account for more than R180 million of this budget!)
Even the most accommodating liberal supporter of the ANC’s South Africa has turned, and they have turned with a vengeance. Noseweek’s editor says SA’s leadership is “corrupt and delusional and irrational”. Others say the government is “out of touch” and a “bunch of mental midgets”.
CABINET RESHUFFLE
President Jacob Zuma’s recent cabinet reshuffle was simply a ploy to enhance his chances of being re-elected in 2012 by removing political antagonists and replacing them with acolytes. (Citizen editorial 2.11.10) His administration has now been further bloated by extra appointments, and really incompetent persons such as Lulu Xingwana have remained as they are loyalists. Zuma is simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!
The implications of this denialism are far-reaching. Erstwhile honest taxpayers are now finding ways to avoid paying tax for more wives, more overseas trips, higher salaries, larger luxury vehicles and summits at Sun City!
Our farmers are under siege, farmland is being destroyed by coal mining because top-level ANC friends have shares in coal companies, BEE has resulted in nothing more than the self-enrichment of a few, our health services will be destroyed by delusional dreams of a national health service underpinned by a shrinking tax base, threats to nationalize mining are taken seriously by investors, school and university certificates are in many cases not worth the paper they’re written on, farmers are accused of shooting labour inspectors without a shred of evidence, our water is polluted, our police force is corrupt and untrustworthy, our defence force a shadow of its former self, but the denialism is so entrenched that no advice is taken by government to alleviate the problems, and none is sought.. On the contrary, those who speak up are racists who don’t want to see blacks succeed!
If present-day South Africa is an ANC success, then their failures are too terrible to contemplate!
Source:- http://www.tlu.co.za/
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