Why is it that no one in our political life, our corporate and business life, or among our religious leadership, or even the man in the street seems to be seeing the bigger picture and doing something about it?
It has been said that people get the government they deserve – but surely South Africans deserve better than we currently have (or have any immediate prospect of getting)? Or do we?
In South Africa, our “system” has long “dealt with” (and still does) those who stand up against the powers that be – the motivation for this obviously being to silence naysayers and have carte blanche to proceed full steam ahead.
The history of our country is littered with powerful self-interest groups that garnered sufficient control to enable policy decisions and actions which had a dramatic effect on the lives of large numbers of our people.
Although this statement immediately brings to mind the Zulu, colonial and the apartheid eras, it is also applies very much to our post-1994 South Africa, where the ANC, as a self-interest group, have been looting the public purse of untold billions of rands on a wide front – the “public servants” became plunderers of the public purse.
At every step, incumbents were pushed to one side, and compliant people appointed to key positions or “parachuted in” to open the floodgates to allow for tenderrigging and corruption.
While proceeding with gay abandon, the ANC made no pretensions of even attempting the rudiments of good governance, except in the case of the public fiscus, this being the cow that they ultimately milk.
All the foregoing has had a devastating effect on South Africa and its people.
The problem now is that the damage the ANC has inflicted on the key critical success factors of the South African economy runs so deep that the effect on our national life has become devastating.
Poverty and crime are everywhere; companies – large and small – are failing; joblessness has gone (and continues to go) through the roof; and despite consuming huge amounts of taxes, education and health systems continue to deteriorate.
We have fallen ignominiously from our position of economic standard bearer for the continent to being a long way down the pecking order in terms of direct foreign investment, economic growth and other indicators.
The quality of life for all South Africans continues to deteriorate, while hopes for a better future for this and future generations lie in ruins.
And the astounding fact is that, had South Africans been able to “get it together” as a nation of one people (sure, very diverse, but South Africans first and foremost), the country would have progressed rapidly (and still can?) to be a world leader, or, at the very least, be right up there as a nation of great achievers, punching well above our weight.
But for the foregoing to be remotely likely, we need our leaders to be on the stage. Where are they?
Or are we reaping that which we have sown and must now lie in the bed that we have made for ourselves?
-Sandy Johnston, Nelson Mandela Bay