Restless Nation: Making
Sense of Troubled Times
(2012)
By William Gumede
Tafelburg publication
ISBN 978-0-624-05592-1

DISCIPLINE, discipline, discipline is the untold secret of China’s success in the last 30 years.
According to William Gumede, African leadership desperately needs discipline to be able to rise out of failure.
“The African independence elite have always seen success not as lifting the widest number of people out of poverty, but in terms of how a ‘struggle’ individual can ‘accumulate and display wealth. Those who cannot do so are seen as having ‘failed’,” writes William Gumede in his book, Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times.
Gumede, a South African professor at the Graduate School of Public and Development Management at the University of Witwaterand, brings to the fore South Africa’s problems in a series of his articles written in different newspapers and compiled in a book.
In the book he highlights the weaknesses of the African National Congress (ANC) under Mbeki and more vividly under Zuma.
Professor Gumede blames liberation movements of being lenient with comrades with war credentials so much they get away with murder.
He blames Africa’s oldest party for ignoring its mandate of serving the people and the course ‘championed’ by Mandela.
According to the author the discord in South African politics from the xenophobic attacks to Marikana is because the citizens are not content any longer as their situation has not changed even though there is now a black government.
There is another school of thought as highlighted by Fiona Forde, the writer of Julius Malema biography, An Inconvenient Youth.
Forde contends that nowhere in the ANC constitution is there mention of empowerment and nationalisation.
Engulfed by their ‘diversity and rainbow nation’ status, the ANC is presented as an elitist party of black elite and royalty that wanted nothing more than a piece of the cake hence the party’s eagerness to embrace the Boers.
Like most African liberation movements, the ANC was blinded by ‘democracy’, a word coined by the West to create a pseudo appeal where everyone should be allowed the right to do as they please.
Democracy, a word the West likes to throw around, but never use themselves.
A word that delights hearts of ‘obedient’ developing country leaders and their citizens like Gumede when used to describe their States.
There are a lot of aspects that one can agree with in the professor’s work and many where he deviates from the pan-African thought.
He cites countries like China as successes because they have largely ignored the economic advice of the West and chose to have their home grown decisions.
“Western countries more often than not do exactly the opposite of what they tell African countries to do,” says Gumede.
“For instance, they are now bailing out commercial banks and strategic industries with public money.
“Yet they discourage African countries from doing the same.”
However, Gumede’s love for Western style governance blinds him to the reality of Africa beyond faculty debates on why Africa never prospers.
To him, Africa does not prosper because apparently we are failing to fully adopt democratic governance like America, Australia and Britain.
Multi-party democracy is a Western system that has never been proven to be efficient and China is testimony of that.
In the case of Zimbabwe, Gumede ruthlessly and blindly blames everything on the Zimbabwean Government and specifically President Mugabe.
After the name calling on the Zimbabwean leadership, he acknowledges that on the land, we got a raw deal.
“…but that is not the whole story,” says Gumede.
“The Zimbabwean was idle for at least a decade and when it finally did implement a Land Reform Programme, this consisted of giving fertile land to Government cronies who subsequently left it to fallow.”
No system is foolproof, the intellect in Gumede should know and as a former journalist himself it becomes important to sift from Western and commercial farmer propaganda and the factual truth.
Over 400 000 black families benefitted from the Land Reform Programme.
Before the programme was implemented about 4 000 white farmers enjoyed the country’s prime land.
Yet that is not the thrust of my review, it is meant only to enlighten those in the dark about Zimbabwe’s highly successful Land Reform Programme.
Professor Gumede appears to be a crowd pleaser who writes pan-African words for his Sowetan readers and something else for his Washington Post readers.
He insinuates that African leaders have failed and should perhaps pass back the baton to whites if they show capabilities.
As noted earlier, his work is a compilation of his articles from as early as 2007 to 2012.
In his Mail and Guardian article of March 2010, Gumede writes, “the policy of African leadership must be done away with, because it is being manipulated”.
African politics for a long time will remain complex.
It cannot be summed up in one fluid definition.
The distinction between liberator and dictator has been muddled by terms like ‘human rights’, ‘liberalisation’ and ‘democracy’.
There is no clear definition made by the Africans themselves as to what defines a liberator.
For example, the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi funded many pan-African movements that saw countries like South Africa liberated and yet when asked to endorse Western intervention and assassination of the Libyan leader, South Africa as a ‘democracy’ did not hesitate.
After being fed dubious economic policies that saw Zimbabwe fall as an economic giant and thereafter the denouncing of the West by President Mugabe, the country was quickly labelled as a State ruled by a despot and dictator.
Such are the complexities of African politics and Gumede should know better, especially considering that he is a Professor.