The scourge of absent fathers in South Africa has been studied, academically explored and discussed in many a forum. This issue has been seen as a major contribution to the disintegration of society and its values.

In fact, the assertion I am making about the latter is not only uniquely South African; volumes of academic studies the world over always come to the same conclusion about absent fathers and societal fragmentation.

I hate to disappoint you, but this piece is not a psychological commentary on this overly explored subject. However, I would like to explore the Republic of South Africa, as represented by its government and its actions, as that of the absent father — a subject of study for many years.

With much pain and unhappiness, I have been an observer of and commentator on our government’s policies and actions (read service delivery) towards South African citizens. To say it is heartbreaking would be an understatement. It is an emotional torture to every day observe the shameful actions of our elected representatives and their actions and lack thereof towards the South African citizens who go to the polls every five years.

As a point of departure into my analysis, let me indulge you and paint you a picture, based on true events of two people with whom I have journeyed in life and their experiences of the absent father.

I must make a disclaimer that, using these stories and the thorny subject of absent fathers in society in articulating my political commentary, is in no way undermining and reducing an important societal and psychological issue into a simple simile to score commentary about a political subject. For me, they are not far from each other.

Imagine having your father telling you to go to the mall on the weekend and wait for him outside a clothing shop so that he could buy you some nice clothes. He promises you an unparalleled shopping spree. Your naivety as a child drives you not to heed your mother, who tells you that your father will not fulfil his promise. Come the weekend, you are at the mall, and you stand there for most of the day waiting for the man who promised you a shopping frenzy, only for him not to show up.

Let me present to you another scenario. You see your father, who is a wealthy businessman, driving around in the latest coupé. As an innocent child, you call out to him and run after the car, only for him to ignore you as he cruises past with his girlfriend. Every time you see him drive by, there is a new girlfriend, and every time you call to him and run after the car, he ignores you.

These are true and very sad stories of people I know. Sad as they may be, they have inspired me to reflect on our government in South Africa, as represented by the African National Congress.

Observing our government and listening to the outcry of the citizenry for not being prioritised or constantly lied to, I could not help but liken our administration to the two fathers whose stories were relayed to me.

Having participated in many discussions about the conditions in which South Africans find themselves as a result of the government’s actions — or lack thereof  — I have listened to stories and observed pain when people talk about how they have had it with South Africa and the state.

If you have spoken to people in townships and other forgotten peripheral spaces; if you have watched television interviews of people in destitute situations or have driven around former glorious business districts that have been reduced to squalor, and towns forgotten to an extent that they are slumping to their deaths, you will have no words but to ask what did we do wrong to deserve such neglect by the so-called “government of the people”.

Jurist and outspoken social activist Vuyani Ngalwana SC writing in his prologue to my book, Blame Me on Apartheid, shoots from the hip by opining that: “Sadly, since 1994 that most evil and enduring apartheid achievement seems to be perpetrated by successive governments of what used to be a liberation movement, sacrificing the cerebral development of the black child at the altar of political expediency. It is a fact that ruling over an ignorant population is less complicated than having to account to a population that thinks, and therefore can reason and make informed choices, especially when the ruling elite has nothing to offer except promises of ‘a better life for all’ which often translates to food parcels and poverty trap social grants.”

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Since the advent of democracy, we have received one promise after another — laced with fancy tag lines developed by advertising agencies. From “a better life for all” to “vuk’ uzenzele” to “a good story to tell” — and the latest “thuma mina”, and the much-revered “radical economic transformation” — we have heard all sorts of promises. Typical characteristics of a deadbeat father’s modus operandi.

With these taglines, which most times come funded with exorbitant amounts from the public purse at the expense of service delivery, we have heard and lapped up every promise. 

If it’s not free houses, electricity or water, then it is millions of jobs — none of which ever come to fruition. In fact, those whom we’ve entrusted with our vote would even stoop so low as to steal money earmarked for emotive events such as funerals, and prioritise procuring the cheap yellow T-shirts dished out like the heavenly food of angels as recounted in the holy book.

In this country, children born after 2004 will tell future generations of how they have never experienced a full year with running electricity due to load shedding — that’s assuming they were born in an area that had electricity in the first place.

Those who experienced the 2022 floods will tell a story of how they were abandoned in community halls.

Those who were born and grew up in the townships will tell of how drugs ravaged their peers and alcohol became a remedy to fight depression as a result of despondency caused by government neglect.

As it is said that history has no blank pages, it will be known that children drowned in pit latrines in our schools and others were swept away as they tried to cross raging rivers to get to school. Others were still learning under trees, old buses and other decrepit structures.

Generations will be told of how the so-called “people’s movement”, the one that holds the claim that it is the “liberator” of South Africans, dangled a carrot in the form of social grants, all in a name of being perceived as a present father.

The ANC’s recent return to the helm of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council and the party’s likely return in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and possibly Mogale City, is reminiscent of the father who makes an appearance out of the blue, claims paternal rights, and delivers nothing.

I feel no “Wow!” with the incoming of the ANC in the City of Johannesburg. Its government has been absent for years. Like the unashamedly absent father, they will be living opulent lives while the citizenry continues to suffer.

Who can forget the mayor of Ficksburg who was asked by a journalist about the service delivery protest in his area being due to people saying they do not have drinking water. The unapologetic mayor said, “let them drink Valpre. Like a deadbeat father being told of the suffering of his child, and his response being some condescending bile.

Those who refuse to see it in the present — that the Republic of South Africa as represented by its ANC-led government is no different from the father who promises his child heaven on Earth and then never shows up to fulfil his promises — will unfortunately be scorned by future generations who would have inherited a country ravaged by many ills.

That generation will remind those who are still alive that the beloved and glorified government of South Africa as led by the ANC — the party whose lies we kept on believing and who we retained in power — was no different from the father who drove by in a fancy car while we, the children, were constantly running after him in our ragged clothes shouting and asking to be acknowledged — or at least be fed. DM