" We need leadership. We need to get back to our winning ways"

The 17th year of a hopeful new South Africa draws to a close with the words of Julius Malema ringing in our ears. It is exactly as we started: there is much noise, much heat and dust, and little substance. We seem to have last achieved anything of substance in adopting a much-admired constitution soon after our first democratic election.

We are now in the process of doing as much as possible to destroy it. State Security Minister Siyabongwa Cwele wants to jail reporters and their informants even when it is clear that their stories are for the national good. An open society of the sort envisioned in the constitution is anathema to him. All he sees are foreign spies under our beds.

Cwele is now joined in his cowardly campaign by presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj. These are the achievements of the 17th year of our hopeful democracy.

The ANC Youth League offers nothing in economic policy debates except land expropriation without compensation. Has anyone not told them of our Bill of Rights?

And so here we are, at the end of 17 years of democracy, and we flirt with mediocrity (the worst performer in maths and science education among countries surveyed by the World Economic Forum while our own ministry of Basic Education says our Grade 3s cannot read or count).

According to widely derided official figures, more than eight million young people are jobless - and a large chunk of them have stopped looking for jobs. They are desperate. They have thrown themselves at the mercy of the social grant, for those who can make it onto social welfare's books.

Meanwhile, President Jacob Zuma is building himself a bunker in his rural village in Nkandla. What on earth does he need it for?

What have we achieved this year? Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe tells us he welcomes the arrival of Walmart to South Africa. Yet three of his cabinet colleagues are taking Walmart to court, telling the company: take your R16.5-million back to where you come from. Who should we believe? Who will potential investors to our country believe? Their money will not rush to these shores.

These are some of our achievements this year.

Sad to say, we have achieved nothing much. We are falling into that dreadful category of the bright student about whom every teacher said he was full of potential and, in the harsh light of adulthood, sputters and just never gets anywhere. We' re a disappointment, not only to our friends and comrades around the globe, but even to ourselves.

Once, we aimed for the stars. Now we' re happy here, in the middle, and middling, ranks. We like being Miss Average, often lapsing to Mr Loser.

We have a leadership deficit. Crucially, we have a vision deficit. Because here is the thing: what do we want? What are we striving for? Many of our leaders can't tell you. Cwele seems to think we all should have something to hide, so the idea of an open society wouldn't rank as one of those things he would strain his every sinew for.

Our most pragmatic plan is the National Development Plan developed by a commission led by Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel's department.

Have we seen champions emerge for it in government and civil society? Within days of its release we have all gone quiet about it. What the plan has - unlike the cuckooland material of the hastily assembled New Growth Path - is the wisdom of hindsight, depth of research and the boldness of independent thought.

This vision and plan for how we build a prosperous, hard-working, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic country that is fully aware of its terrible past and works to eradicate its effects is, sadly, in danger, too, of being put on the backburner.

This would be the greatest of our failures in 2011. We need leadership, we need commitment and we need drive. We need to get back to our winning ways.

We need years of achievement, not years like this sad lost year, a year in which a vigorous media and Public Protector Thuli Madonsela are all that we have to be proud of.

I hope 2012 is better. I suspect, however, that we will spend it talking about the ANC's Mangaung conference and not the things that really matter: jobs, education, cohesion and prosperity.