Living in SA is like experiencing the last days of a failing business

In times of crisis, you start grasping for metaphors, equivalents in other parts of life that can help you to understand what you’re going through.

As I watched members of the ruling party being appointed to positions of power and influence, with little pretence that their goal is anything besides personal enrichment, I find myself doing the same. Trying to explain it to myself.

The closest equivalent I have been able to find has been my experience of working in a small business on its way to spiralling into bankruptcy.

Also Read: KZN floods: ‘ANC’s last chance to redeem itself’

The enterprise I’m thinking of no longer exists, but once upon a time, it was rather successful. It paid decent salaries – a few bonuses, even – it ran at a profit, and it was recognised as a respectable operation within its industry.

However, somewhere along the line it lost its way. Talented individuals were let go, and treated unfairly.

The owners became more concerned about the bottom line than the customers.

Corners were cut to maximise profits. Talented, committed people disagreed with policies and they either left or were forced out.

Fewer people were asked to do more work, demands became unreasonable, and the trickle of departures became a flood.

The product and the service suffered, and customers began leaving.

This harmed the bottom line even more, and things got worse.

We’ve all lived it. In a lot of ways, we’re all living it now.

Except instead of a small business falling on hard times, it’s a country.

Also Read: KZN Floods: South Africans won’t let political hyenas steal our spirit

At our little business back in the day, it soon became obvious to the staff that we were the last crew remaining on board a sinking ship.

To extend the naval metaphor, we also noticed that the captain was not going down with the ship.

One afternoon the MD simply did not come to work. Through the window of his locked office, we saw a pile of shredded documents.

Let me tell you, that’s not a good feeling. Pretty much everyone in the office had job sites open on their computers, and CVs were being updated furiously.

Not many of us were expecting salaries that month.

A type of looting started. People began helping themselves to reams of A4. Pens. Notebooks. The promo material in the storeroom was cannibalised.

T-shirts, pull-up banners, branded caps… all bearing the logo of a brand, a company we knew would no longer exist in a couple of weeks. Not even the sugar was safe.

Most of the office equipment was rented, or we would have had people walking out the door with desktop computers.

Basically, by the time that business officially closed, there was nothing left of it. The work we did, the brand identity, and most of the all the people who made things happen… none of it was there any more.

That’s the metaphor I found for what seems to be happening in our ruling party.

People have looked around, seen the writing on the wall, and decided to help themselves to what they can because it’s all over anyway.

The days of being a party leading a people-centric government in a developmental state are over, and coalition politics lies ahead.

In the months before the votes are officially counted, one might as well loot. After all, that is what has sealed the party’s fate, so why stop now?

Covid funds, service-delivery funds, grant money… these are the A4 reams, the pull-up banners and the instant-coffee tins of our national fiscus.

And they have been looted as surely as they were at our little office back in the day.

The difference is that my colleagues and I have been able to move on and find new opportunities. That’s not so easy to do for the citizens of a country.