Letter: What a mess SA now finds itself in!

NO scriptwriter 20 years ago, using every scrap of imagination possible, could have drafted a more disastrous and compelling screenplay for South Africa, depicting the reality of today. Fact is truly stranger than fiction!

What a mess we South Africans are in: one step away from junk status and a depression, most parastatals not functioning, billions being squandered and pillaged by inept cadres, bordering on a runaway inflation rate, the gap between the have nots and the haves widening day by day, corruption rife in every sphere of governance, education in a horrendous state of affairs with students out of control and in their frustration burning down the very seats of learning they aspire to, parents of primary school pupils boycotting classes, unemployment worsening, starvation staring us in the face, quota sports teams, dysfunctional parliament sittings making a mockery of democracy and, to crown it, a very sad litany of ineptness in the report in the weekend’s papers stating that out of 100 000 South African children between the ages of five and 14, 77 will die.

This is the highest by far of any country in the world!

We are now a country bereft of any morals. We kill our very own!

Then we have a president who, with his cronies, thinks this is all so funny and just a good old giggle! Now the vision of a rainbow nation, our ultimate utopia, as envisaged by our founding fathers, lies shattered.

The wonderful dream of prosperity, hope and dignity for all of us is just that, a wonderful dream!

In utter frustration for failing, dismally, to manage their future, our leaderless people lash out like petulant children blaming everyone and everything else but themselves for their ineptitude. In a state of denial, the hackneyed race card and legacy of apartheid again become the scapegoats, for the umpteenth time!

Heightening the racial tension is playing with fire and will lead to a catastrophic situation if firm leadership is not evident soon. Perhaps it is already too late?

Heaven help us as our president’s leadership capability is so woefully weak, in fact it is non-existent! One cannot believe Nelson Mandela, or Thabo Mbeki for that matter, would have sat in silent surrender while honourable members made a comic show out of the recent parliamentary sittings! Has our president no pride left at all? Has the ANC no pride? Where are the men of integrity and moral fibre of yore? The silence especially from someone of the calibre of Cyril Ramaphosa is deafening.

He, after all, played a significant role in the drafting of our wonderful constitution which our president and his sycophants now disregard at will! How can he and any ANC member be silent?

Is the silence an acquiescence of their approval? Has the party sunk so low – the ANC first, then South Africa?

I see no public denial from any party member either countrywide or in Port Elizabeth, so they must all agree. The country is crying out for firm leadership!

Instead our government chooses to remain leaderless. It must be spending an inordinate time in damage control putting out the fires of scandal after scandal instead of putting its energies into restoring our economic situation, unemployment, education, etc.

Leaderless, our people now do as they please: murder, rape and lawlessness are reaching epidemic figures. Even our quota sports teams have seemingly lost the will to win – we have become a bunch of pathetic losers!

From being an example to the outside world, we South Africans have become a comic strip. I am outraged when an overseas acquaintance recently asked me what “showerhead’s” latest scandal was!

As the ANC’s wretched education record will ensure an illiterate electorate will once more keep it in power, this country’s only hope lies in ANC men and women of strong integrity and national pride removing the sick malaise of the present regime. But I cannot see any leaders who have Mandela’s charisma and moral fibre emerging.

The sad fact is that in today’s ANC there are none left.

Am I proudly South African? Well I was once but now? “Hope springs eternal in the human breast . . ” (Alexander Pope).