Cry, the beloved country: Of elections and South Africa

“There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa.

"About you there is grass and bracken and you may hear the forlorn crying of the titihoya, one of the birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg to the sea; and beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill... The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil… It is well-tended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil.

"Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator… But the rich green hills break down. They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature. For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry…. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it… The titihoya does not cry here any more… The men are away, the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them anymore”.

These words are from Alan Paton’s novel entitled Cry, the Beloved Country. It’s a cry for South Africa, the beautiful rainbow nation — a yearning for the not-yet and what could have been.

South Africa is a magical, promising place. One that could possibly gallop, not trot in development. And yet…

Read: ANC, Africa's oldest liberation movement, is 'broke'

There is probably as much beauty as pain. Paton’s prose is beautifully measured, subtle and sober, full of emotional appeal and reverberation — taking readers into the caverns of a country’s griefs remembered.

South Africa has been in the news recently because Wednesday, May 29, 2024, was the day it held its general elections.

And it’s now a far cry from the land Paton described with “a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills”.

Politicians have ruined and laid it to waste in their effort to claim it for themselves. It’s now a land on fire, in a fountain of sparks and embers.

The country has been engulfed by the rippling flames that have bedevilled other African countries (Kenya included) like high unemployment (especially among the youth), poor quality public education, inadequate infrastructure, corruption and lack of government accountability and wanton lawlessness prevailing in the streets especially in some cities.

Read: How South Africa’s ANC became just a regular political party

The May 2024 South African elections were a time for hope like many other elections in Africa — an opportunity for reset and rejuvenation.

However, elections can also bring despair. As the South African Adrian Gore, Group Chief Executive, Discovery, writes, “The optimism paradox — the gap between private hope and public despair — is an intriguing idiosyncrasy explained by behavioural economics … On the one hand is our belief, that in our personal lives, our future will be better than our past, known as the optimism bias… Counter-intuitively, however, this private optimism is contrasted with a persistent and pervasive public pessimism, known as declinism — the belief that our world (or country) is on an irreversible downhill trajectory”.

When Paton describes the land as having “Too many cattle feeding upon the grass, and too many fires … The titihoya does not cry here anymore,” that’s his version of declinism, what Adrian Gore calls “a seemingly irreversible downward trajectory”.

And South Africa, according to media reports, has been on a downward trajectory so much that power outages have been almost routine. 

Voters seem to have seen the country on a downward trajectory because they delivered a stunning rebuke to the incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa and his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party where only slightly over 40 per cent of voters voted for the ANC.

Besides, the ANC seems to have other challenges because it now seems split after former President Jacob Zuma started his own political party — umKhonto weSizwe, or MK — that got more than 10 per cent of votes in the recent elections; a percentage that was big enough to deny ANC an outright win.

Read: The slow death of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress

Reports indicate that the ANC has begun closed-door negotiations with other parties with the aim of forming a coalition government.

Hopefully, the new coalition will be able to arrest the downward trajectory to set the rainbow nation on a path of growth, tackling the myriads of challenges facing it. 

May South Africa again become that beautiful land that Paton describes in Cry, the Beloved Country, with “hills… grass-covered and rolling, and… lovely beyond any singing of it”.

A land in which, “you may hear the forlorn crying of the titihoya”. For this is the land of milk and honey that could have been had South Africa taken a different path.

The reality is more rugged and brutal but the new political formation can change the country’s course.

All the best, land of Mandela, where the moon glows behind speeding clouds and the distant hills — great hill after great hill — bristle green and orange and velvet in the evening sun.

The writer is a book publisher based in Nairobi. [email protected]