This comment is periodically heard especially around the braai and after a few beers. But does this statement bear any truth in reality or is it merely a nostalgic yearning for the “good old days.”

Two recent episodes have brought this issue to the fore – in my mind at least. The most recent incident was an article this week by Justice Malala in The Time’s tabloid in which he berates the performance by the ANC under the all-dancing all-Zulu Jacob Zuma. Mr Malala even goes so far as question whether South Africa has not in fact “outgrown” the ANC and pointedly questions whether in fact it is now a hindrance to South Africa’s development especially when in alliance with the COSATU and the Communist Party.

But he then goes on and concedes that the ANC has indeed improved the lives of the Black population immensely since their ascension to power in 1994. For this, he avers, they deserve just credit. Unlike articles of a similar ilk, he did not then tiresomely re-iterate that it was indeed the ANC which had liberated the black man from the yolk of the oppressor, the delinquent white minority government. No. It was succinct and cogent. Just a one-line admission that the ANC had indeed improved Black lives.

I nodded in assent at his line of thought without the ­de rigeur grovelling to the ANC’s sensibilities. It bore all the hallmarks of a mature political comment.

The letters column of the following days flowed with negative comment that Mr Malala had certainly now joined the ANC and that as he was now a biased commentator they would never read his column/the newspaper again. They got on their collective high horses and berated him for ignoring corruption, the Eskom disaster, the potholes, the postal strike and a whole litany of other valid complaints.

What all of these readers had failed to do was to distinguish between failures of service deliveries of which the ANC and their nonsensical deployment policy is undoubted culpable, from the facts whether the ANC had indeed improved black lives. In fact their replies bore all the hallmarks of disambiguation of which all politicians are notorious; that and obfuscation.

Instead of replying immediately, I would like to provide a genuine black voice to provide a cogent reply. On Xolani Gwala’s evening show on 702 Talk Radio some two weeks ago, a similar debate was raging with the same arguments being bandied about. Then a black man phoned in and cut to the chase. In a soporific voice of an ixhegu – an old man – he simply replied as follows: “The ANC has provided me with a free RDP house, free electricity, free water and a pension. They have given me dignity in old age.” Then he put done the phone.

Who could argue with that? A simple man telling his life experience eloquently. In his dotage his dignity had been preserved. The basics that the government had provided might be sparse and Spartan but at least they provide one person with the ability to live out the rest of their life knowing that he will not starve somewhere on the barren cold streets or scavenging on some god-forsaken dump.

Tito Mboweni

Finally I would like to recount a comment made by Tito Mboweni in a fit of pique when he was Governor of the Reserve Bank. Perhaps it was not the most appropriate comment for him to make but the point was valid. At a meeting Tito was being harassed by a group of disaffected blacks that the ANC was pandering to the Whites instead of focusing of the needs of the indigents i.e. the Blacks.

In his irritation Tito lashed out: “Those comments by Mandela assuaging the fears of the white minority were MERELY WORDS. The actual spending is now on the black majority. In future the Whites will have to pay for their schools, their own security, and their own hospitals, in fact all previously free government services.”

It was quite an admission; one that I have never forgotten for Tito had unwittingly given notice to the whites and the burgeoning black middle class that they would have to provide for themselves and that all there taxes would in future only be spent on the lower classes.

Finally I have some personal anecdotal evidence which will corroborate this viewpoint. Having run the Soweto Marathon when it was first organised some 20 years ago, I have some understanding of the state of Soweto from a ground eye view so to speak. The roads were in a lamentable state with potholes, leaking sewage in pools. Curbing and paved walkways were also not in evidence.

Twenty years later, these self-same roads are now properly paved with curbing and pavements and even more raw sewage is no longer in evidence. What a remarkable transformation. Maybe I am mistaken but even those same houses appear in many cases to have received some attention.

In conclusion, the roads might now have potholes, the traffic lights might no longer work, the government might be coming more corrupt, the civil service might be more incompetent but who bears the brunt of such incompetence and decay? Certainly not the scavenger who previously lived in a shack but who now has some semblance of dignity living in an RDP house albeit cramped.

With a middle class perspective all of the abovementioned negatives might apply and they are undoubtedly true, but for the vast majority of fellow South Africans who previously had nothing this is like Nirvana, a God-sent gift from a caring government.

So it all depends on whether one is looking up or looking down – figuratively speaking of course.