People key to hope for SA
Every so often South Africa breaks your heart. Sometimes this beautiful country fills your heart to bursting point with hope and inspiration, then the next moment it – and its politicians, in particular – will drive you to despair.
On Saturday Siya Kolisi and his Springboks came back from 20 points down to an exhilarating, unbelievable victory that made fans of the national team believe in it again.
For a few moments, a country that has descended into mainly destructive social media racial warfare was reminded that we are all human, all South African.
For a moment, hope beat hard in our hearts.
For a moment, we united behind a bunch of young people representing our nation, forgetting that it was just a few days before that Floyd Shivambu, a leader of the EFF and member of parliament, had insulted the minister of finance, the director-general of the national Treasury and other officials by saying that they were cowed by specifically a South African of Indian origin.
His racism was palpable as his party started circulating propaganda about “Indian influence” in the ANC.
Idi Amin, where are you?
Despair settles in hearts at the utterances and actions of politicians like Shivambu.
Meanwhile, the economy contracted 2.2% compared with the prior three months.
The rand took a beating last week. Jobs are and will be lost, food prices and the cost of living will continue to increase.
This is what the delegates to the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal provincial conference on Friday should have been obsessing about.
Instead, they prevented their own leader, national chairman Gwede Mantashe, from addressing them, singing their favourite ditty: “Tell us what [Jacob] Zuma has done!”
The conference collapsed.
The party’s provincial leaders – themselves illegitimately elected two years ago and their structure nullified by the courts – are now hoping to mount another conference in the next few weeks.
Don’t hold your breath for success of that meeting, either, as they have been implicated in the collapse of this past weekend’s conference.
This is leadership? One despairs.
And yet, also, it was such a joy to see South Africa represented by Cyril Ramaphosa at the meeting of world leaders in Canada at the weekend.
With all his shortcomings and lack of support from within his own party, Ramaphosa is the sort of president one wants to see representing our nation rather than the sordid, incoherent, scandal-soaked mess who has soiled our leadership on the world stage over the past 10 years.
From the United Nations to the African Union, Zuma destroyed whatever credibility South Africa had.
He was a joke wherever he went.
He made one despair.
Zuma was in court again on Friday, claiming that those who spoke against him must not “provoke” him or he will fight back.
The man can say this because for 10 years the ANC allowed him to destroy the Scorpions, the National Prosecuting Authority, the intelligence services, the SA Revenue Services and other key state institutions and remake them into his own tools.
Of course he has “the dirty goods” on all his comrades: they kept quiet as he used the intelligence services to spy on them and on civil society.
Meanwhile, across the North West, residents have no water, no electricity and no sewage disposal.
The Sunday Times reported that the mayor of Koster constructed a road to her business rather than to the local health facility.
The man who destroyed the North West, Supra Mahumapelo, stood by Zuma on Friday and sang his praises.
Mahumapelo should be in jail but no, he is in the North West helping Zuma foment dissent against Ramaphosa.
Where is the opposition? Shivambu is playing dirty race politics while the DA’s leaders are fighting over their shrinking cake when they could be sitting on a much bigger cake after next year’s elections.
Thankfully, Zuma taught us that our future is in our own hands.
Over the past 10 years, civil society has become more organised, more vocal, more prepared to stand up against corruption.
South Africa will sail through its myriad challenges not because of its so-called leaders, but because of its people.
What ordinary people achieved over the past 10 years, against state capture and rampant corruption, is testament to the fact that our future is in our hands, and not politicians’.
FREE TO READ | Just register if you’re new, or sign in.
Questions or problems? Email helpdesk@heraldlive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00.