By: Colleen Makhubele
At some point, every fool must learn. Our collective falsified thinking that education and competence are not important has proved itself. The ANC, which has deployed 80% if not more, of public servants across national, provincial and local government and state-owned entities, is suffering from a complex and a specific case of both cognitive bias and meta cognitive ability of The Dunning- Kruger effect, in which incompetent people tend to assess themselves as skilled.
This is a strange phenomenon where people with low ability and expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge, tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. These people somehow end up in positions of authority and power due to this inaccurate self-assessment.
But even more bizarre, this tendency leads them to choosing a career for which they are unfit or even choosing people that are unfit to be employed in certain critical and strategic positions. Often when expected to perform a task at hand, these people tend to make bad decisions with dire consequences.
We have over the years underestimated the depth of damage and extent of devastation that the overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task can cause. The nation and all state-owned entities and municipalities are now at the heightened state of devastation and collapse due to the psychological complex embedded and rooted deeply in the ANC deployment arrangements and those entrusted with deployment decisions within the ANC ranks.
What I found mostly fascinating and deeply disturbing is that this very same Dunning-Kruger effect is also explained by observing the tendency of meta cognitive ability, which is the ability to recognise deficiencies in another person’s knowledge or competence requires that one doing the assessment also possess at least a minimum level of the same kind of knowledge or competence.
Because they are unaware of their own deficiencies, such people generally assume that they are not deficient themselves and as such are unable to recognise incompetence and lack of skill and judgment call in another.
This ultimately becomes a vicious cycle of ignorant arrogant people with dangerous incompetence at the most critical and strategic functions or even at the leadership positions entrusted with complex tasks of building a nation or an organisation.
The initial study was published by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. This has also been termed the ‘dual-burden account’ since the lack of skill is paired with the ignorance of the same deficiency.
In many notable countries in the East that have moved from Third World to First World and those that are our neighbours in this African continent and working hard to turn their fortunes, such as Rwanda, Kenya and Ghana, politicians must possess, at least, a minimum requirement of a university degree and certain characteristics to qualify to hold public office just like strategic positions require in private businesses.
For our errors in judgment, we have paid with our rates and taxes; deprivation of basic services. We must now work our way out of darkness that we are literally plunged into called load shedding; lack of service delivery; water shedding; potholes; crime; drugs; illegal guns; collapsed justice systems; non-functioning municipalities; unemployment and illegal foreigners and many social ills.
It’s the price we are paying for entrusting our public service decisions to adolescent leaders who treat as profane sacred things such as knowledge, education and school. When, in the wisdom of our leadership, those energising human forces that built and maintained the national key assets; municipal infrastructure for many years were fired from critical positions, overlooked, retired, arrogantly withdrawn, our entire system of service delivery soon descended into deserted ruins and a haven for uncontrollable corruption.
I am struck by what seems to be rampant fear creeping also into the coalition politics, leaving strong potential leaders powerless in making any meaningful contributions and decisions for tangible change,but, with cap-in-hand go about begging for positions at all costs. The priceless value of coalitions which we desperately need to harvest in this nation is their remarkable diversity of experience, expertise and pool of skills they bring. The tremendous human resource potential that these coalitions present all over the world have now, in South Africa, been rendered useless, sacrificed for power and positions and bring no tangible solutions to our current crisis while our economy and services remain threatened.
With all these political parties purporting to stand for something different, I ask, as I ask myself, did we not leave the ANC because our thinking is fundamentally different and we want to stand out and bring solutions and real change?
We are now forced to sit and reflect deeply as various political parties, if indeed, by being complicit and enablers, we have been sucked back into the same stable of cadres who desecrated the value of education, right skills, the value of right people in right positions, and continue with our help in the name of coalition to reduce public service to easy access to resources, tenders and serve only selfish interests.
Perhaps it’s time to go back and access the wisdom we left behind in haste for riches as Africans. What have we done with our human resources, those professionals; educated and enlightened people who helped build and maintain our infrastructure for years? The Eskom infrastructure? The Municipal Bulk Services Infrastructure?
Mr President, can you help us to bring back the honour and self-respect to this nation. Can we just have Light, please. The rest we can try to figure out as we work our way out of this darkness.
* Cope Councillor Colleen Makhubele, Speaker of the City of Joburg.