What Went Wrong in South Africa

The book surveys and pinpoints the failures in governance over the past twenty five years. These range from poor leadership to institutional shortcomings, but most of all, to social disintegration, a failure to take into account the country’s psychohistory, and inappropriate Western structures of governance. The conclusion is that the mix of a modernist value system with traditionalist values has resulted in hybrid values which are characterised by feelings of inferiority, disorientation, vacillation, greed, mismanagement, an absence of ownership, and policies that promote nation-destroying instead of nation-building. A new Euro-African model of governance characterised by a massive devolution of power to nineteen “kraals” is proposed, along with a National Family Week, in which the values of communal solidarity instead of rampant individualism, voluntarism, ethical goals and leadership by example, are encouraged. A radical re-modelling of affirmative action, traditional rule and foreign policy is proposed.

About the Author
The writer, Dr Sandy Shaw, bases his survey on his 34 years as a South African diplomat, serving in Germany, Italy, Scotland, Lebanon, Malawi and Ethiopia; on his stint as Director of Human Rights at the Foreign Affairs Department; on his academic studies which include 120 articles on current affairs published in popular and academic journals; on his MA thesis on foreign aid in Africa, and his PhD thesis on nation-building in the Middle East; on his politics lectureship at the UKZN; on his current affairs columnist career at the Witness in Pietermaritzburg; on his 6-years as a Consultant Classifier at the Film Board in Centurion; on his on his 5-year secondment to the Department of Constitutional Development where he was a speechwriter for Roelf Meyer, the Chief Government Negotiator at the Codesa negotiations from 1991 to 1994.