South Africa is becoming too short sighted

By Clive Mutame Siachiyako

You call it xenophobia, I call it organised crime. That’s not “fear of foreigners” as the term xenophobia tends to mean. That’s pure criminality masked under fearing of foreigners. If it is real fear of foreigners, why is it only the fear of black foreigners? Are they more foreigners than others? Does it mean white foreigners are not getting jobs in SA? Of course they are also getting them.

That’s why I argue that this is organised crime taking advantage of weak government, weak policing system and a mix bag of short sightedness, lawlessness and absurdity. It’s very strange to see two police officers smiling, laughing, being tickled as a small boy gets burnt on the street. Adults enjoying the death, the burning of a boy by tire wrecks and to them it’s entertainment. Quite absurd!

The reasoning of South Africans attacking ‘foreigners’ is totally unacceptable under any standard; it’s not helpful to anyone. It won’t result into more jobs nor is it going to improve their livelihood. Those foreigners may leave the jobs, but they won’t give you the knowhow and competences they applied in getting things done in those jobs. The fight is aimed at wrong targets. It’s not the foreigners fuelling poverty and unemployment. It goes beyond it. Face the real cause and man-up.

What will happen after they have chased all those they are saying are nauseating them, causing intense fear in their socio, economic and financial lives?  Are those street gangs going to occupy those positions...are they going to become engineers, IT experts, legal brains, lecturers, metallurgists, or entrepreneurs running a maze of businesses run by those they are killing? Unfortunately, those who are gardeners will remain gardeners, carpenters will remain carpenters, street hawkers will remain hawkers, etc.

Trends of organised crime leave very long term blizzards on society. SA should know and mark these words, “what’s happening to foreigners may happen to you too...instigated by the same gangs, same style and same vehemence,” if you don’t get to the root of this chaos.Those criminal elements you have allowed to terrorise the streets will come for you. Once those things they are looting are finished, they will look for the next person to blame and thump out. It may be the working class, those they will consider to be failing them or denying them their good life.

It happened in India when the Bollywood, one of the most prolific and profitable film industries in the world; became the target of underground mob. The underground mob had initially helped Bollywood with financing when government refused to finance the industry. After a bloody decade in the 90s, the fabric of the underworld changed. The ruthless and brash gangsters who had replaced the old dons and their ‘work ethics', toned down their activities. Instead of contract killings and extortion, they got involved in the corporate sector, especially real estate.

The mob looked at the next target. They needed continuity. The system which thought was doing a favour to them by letting them do things their way to get around life’s hurdles had long term headache to bring sanity to that messy.

Similarly, Russia faced organised crime after switching to a free market economy. The Red Mafia took advantage of that economic freedom and took control of close to 40% of the Russian economy, doing all sorts of things to get what they wanted. Sadly, most of the things they did were crime laden. The Red Mafia earned themselves the name of the “the most fearsome, violent, creative, and well-educated criminal organisations in the world.” The Red Mafia has been difficult to locate and shut down [http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/]

The two examples show how allowing notorious criminal elements to reign pays back badly. It really backfires. SA leadership can now seem to be not seeing. Sit on the terraces and watch, smile and pat the gangs on their backs for systemically removing foreigners out of SA; but the day is coming when the same gangs will vent it on you. This is truer in the sense that chasing all foreigners won’t result into economic liberation or an avalanche of jobs to those hawkers on the streets. Whatever miracle one may wish to happen, it won’t turn out that way.

It’s better to learn from foreigners how they are making it while South Africans seem to be stuck. It’s valuable to adopt traits the foreigners are exhibiting that make them more employable and desired in the business sector. That could be the best fear for foreigners. It would be creative fear...well paying off use of phobia. It will then make them managers of their own economy and employers won’t have the reason to employ foreigners who could be paid at a higher premium.

Throwing insults at your neighbours, killing them and scorning them won’t add value to anyone’s livelihood. Collaborating and learning from them would be cooler than this heinous approach. If one may ask, from the time xenophobia started; how many South Africans got jobs after killing job holders? How many businesses were started and sustained after haunting out the owners? It would be nice to know.

SA needs good phobia. A phobia that drives them to learn from those they feel are taking their jobs and be part of the race. It’s not helpful to be sited sipping tea and expect to be part of the race. Winners get involved. They become part of the race. They get dirty. They apply themselves. They don’t wait for freebies to fall from somewhere. Manna only fell from above during biblical times.

What is happening in SA is not good for anyone. If some South Africans think they are helping create employment for their unemployed, they are using a wrong formula. You don’t thrive on bloodshed. You don’t empower citizens using violence. What’s happening is planting a seed of hate, violence and criminality with impunity.

Prepare those people to apply themselves in the economy. Prepare them to work and earn. Don’t prepare a generation of criminal minds. It will cost the country badly in the long run, if in the short term is seems working for you. The President has to get the grip of things. Traditional leaders should shake off Stone Age mindsets and try to fit into a competitive and modern society they have been ushered into. It’s time to sober up and end the rot!! 

Democracy v Psychology: Why People Keep Electing Clods

Clive Mutame Siachiyako  

A Turkish friend once said “good people; those who are more sober minded or with good leadership qualities never rule because they tend to be too moderate. Evil ones however, rule because they cunningly sweet-talk voters and make them fall for it.”   

I thought those words were too strong until I took interest in elections goings beyond mere campaign messages during and after; in different countries. I read political campaign rumblings from Africa and other continents. I listened also to what those candidates were saying during campaigns and few days after they were in power. It's surprising how voters’ patience and loyalty is taken for granted. Politicians simply puke in their faces in mockery for voting them into power through bizarre pronouncements, policy blunders and sheer uncaring attitude for the masses.

It is clear that doing or saying unintelligent things is no barrier to political success. Unfortunately, there are several psychological mechanisms that lead to apparent clods being elected into powerful positions.

POLITICIANS

Their reputation is very poor. In fairness, this is largely their own fault, but it would be foolish to assume every politician is like this. If they were, the whole infrastructure would collapse before you could say “can I claim this on expenses?” Still, everyone assumes they’re despicable, so always assume the worst.

Politician enacts a bad policy? They’re a terrible person. They change their mind and reverse it? They’re weak and not fit to lead. Politicians promise improvements (cut taxes, increase spending)? They’re obviously lying. Politicians promise to do something unpopular (raise taxes, cut spending)? A cast-iron guarantee it will happen. It’s a lose-lose situation, so why do they bother? Many politicians are clearly in it for themselves, but there surely are plenty who really do want the best and just put up with the negative opinions they get.

Suffice to mention that not all politicians are idiots (although your definition of idiot may vary). But plenty are. Mostly, people whose idiotic musings managed to sustain businesses have a nuclear arsenal at their command to win elections. This has worsened by “needs and rights illiteracy, daftness of voters, lack of proper education beyond graduate edification, rurality illiteracy, etc.”, which when coupled with manipulation, lies and misinformation from the politik creates a maze of chaos in the voting system. Voting has proved less paying off to voters. They merely do it and life goes on without seeing any change.

Some people are often quick to point out that X politician is actually very intelligent or dangerous...and are pretending to be a buffoon. But this underscores the point; an intelligent person has to feign stupidity to achieve political success. It’s the rule of the thumb. That’s how it goes. It seems “no daftness, no winning elections.” Politicians have to engage in several unwise and bizarre activities to fit into the election winning rhythm. 

What’s going on here? Logically, you would want an intelligent person who understands the best approach and methods for running a country in the best possible way. But no, people seem drawn to demonstrations of questionable intellectual abilities. There are a wide variety of ideological, cultural, social, historical, financial and other factors involved, because politics incorporates all of these things, but there are also some known psychological processes that may contribute to this phenomenon.

CONFIDENCE INSPIRES CONFIDENCE

Confident people are more convincing. This is has been demonstrated in many studies. Most studies focus on a courtroom setting, and suggest a confident witness is more convincing to a jury than a nervous, hesitant one (which obviously has worrying implications for justice), but it can be seen elsewhere. It’s a phenomenon used-car salesmen and estate agents have exploited for decades. And politicians are clearly aware of it, hence all the media training and PR management; any politician that doesn’t come across as assured and confident gets (metaphorically) destroyed. So confidence is important in politics.

However, the Dunning-Kruger effect reveals that less-intelligent people are usually incredibly confident. More intelligent people, by contrast, aren’t at all. Self-appraisal is a useful metacognitive skill, but one that requires intelligence; if you don’t have much of it, you don’t consider yourself flawed or ignorant, because technically you don’t have the ability to do so.

So if you want an intrinsically confident person to publically represent your political party, an intelligent person would be a bad choice in many ways. This can backfire though; studies have shown that when a confident person is shown to be wrong/lying, they are then considered far less reliable or trustworthy than an unconfident person. This may explain the negative image of politics, which is mostly a series of confident individuals making big promises and failing miserably to keep them. That sort of thing really puts people off.

POLITICS IS COMPLICATED

Effectively running a country of tens of millions, all of which have different requirements and demands, is an incredibly complicated job. There are just so many variables that need to be considered. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to condense all this into a convenient soundbite for use with the modern media, so personalities tend to come to the fore more often. And the less intelligent personalities are more confident, so are more persuasive, and so on.

People are often put off by intellectual and complex subjects and discussions in any case. They may have no experience with the issue, or may find it too daunting to want to engage with, because doing so successfully would require a lot of time and effort. But politics, particularly democracy, requires people to be involved.

Personality studies suggest that many people demonstrate goal orientation, a “disposition toward developing or demonstrating ability in achievement situations”. Feeling that you are actively influencing something (e.g. an Election) is a powerful motivator, but if some knowledgeable type starts spouting big words about interest rates or health trust deficit management, this is going to alienate those who don’t follow or grasp such things. So if a confident person says there’s a simple solution or promises to make the big complicated thing go away, they’re going to seem far more appealing.

This is also demonstrated by Parkinson’s law of triviality, where people will spend far more time and effort focussing on something trivial that they do understand than something complicated that they don’t. The former offers far more scope for contribution and influence. And people do love trivial things, ergo less-intelligent people condensing down the big issues into brief (but inaccurate) snippets is a potential vote-winner.

One of the often-cited qualities of George W Bush was that people felt they could “have a beer with him”. Ergo, they felt they could relate to him. By contrast, elitism is a negative quality. The idea that those running the country are outside the norms of society is alarming to many, hence constant efforts by politicians to “fit in”.

The majority of people are prone to numerous subconscious biases, prejudices, stereotyping and prefer their own “groups”. None of these things are particularly logical and invariably are not supported by actual evidence and reality, and people really don’t like being told things they don’t want to hear. People are also keenly aware of social status; we need to feel we are superior to others in some way to maintain our sense of self-worth. As a result, someone more intelligent saying complicated things that contain uncomfortable (but accurate) facts isn’t going to appeal to anyone, but someone demonstrably less-intelligent is not challenging to someone’s perceived social status, and if they’re going to say simple things that support inherent prejudices and deny uncomfortable facts, then so much the better.

It’s an unfortunate situation, but it just seems to be the way people’s minds work. There’s a lot more to it than what’s mentioned here of course, but including that would make the whole thing more complicated, and that’s no way to get people to like something, as should be obvious by now.

In conclusion, Dean Burnett (a doctor of neuroscience and a tutor and lecturer at Cardiff University) thinks democracy would be perfect if it weren’t for all the people involved. http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015 [April 3, 2015]