A shrinking economy holds dangers to the country and its people

A recent article in the media covered our broken and destroyed economy that was initiated and overseen by our increasingly inept and corrupt government.

As shocking as this may be, our economic collapse is a reality many South Africans experience daily as they trudge the path of the unemployed and poverty-stricken people of this once great country.

This collapse has influenced everything from agriculture to defence, from development and education, from success to failure. Then there is the possibility of South Africa being greylisted due to its failure to comply with and oversee international financial regulations.

A broken economy placed under sanction by the Financial Action Task Force will be a call for the last person to leave South Africa to switch the lights off – that is if we still have lights.

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The government continually comes up with new plans claiming that it wants to boost, invigorate and rectify our economy, some of them good plans. It says it wants to cut red tape.

The problem is that a plan, despite the cutting of red tape – that cannot be implemented or that simply remains a plan on paper – is worthless. But to oversee the plans that are never implemented, committees are established at great cost.

The country can no longer afford committees that are paid money we don’t have. This is more of a delaying tactic than a help to overcome the mess we are in. We are, furthermore, probably the only country in the world that wishes to grow its economy by marginalising certain sectors of the population based on race, nepotism, or political loyalty.

The beneficiaries of corruption and state capture remain free to practise and continue their looting of the little that is still left in the state’s coffers. They are the major drivers for our collapsed economy, itself a driver of crime, dissent and poverty.

The shocking footage of a train being looted by both desperate people and criminals is indicative of where we are heading.

As usual, the looters were allowed to act without fear of the police attempting to stop them. Tourists are attacked, raped or murdered. Farms are attacked and farmers are being forced off their land by a lack of security. Crops and livestock are put to fire. Cash-in-transit robberies and ATM attacks are daily occurrences. This has a dramatic impact on our economy.

To understand why the country is in such a downward spiral, one needs to go back to the root causes of our failure. Our country is where it is today because of many reasons, most of which I have highlighted over the past months – corruption, crime, failed governance, inept civil service, collapsed infrastructure, disinvestment, nepotism, cronyism, unemployment and poverty, general incompetence … the list goes on.

Those who have benefitted most from these failures are those who created and exacerbated the many problems we now have. They know the judiciary has been attacked and politicised. They know that, at worst, they will only face a “commission of inquiry” which will take years to complete, cost the country millions of rands and will result in a lot of empty words with no action.

Those who consider blowing the whistle on the corruption and pillaging of the state’s coffers are afraid to do so as their predecessors have all suffered mysterious deaths. But so many whistles have been blown with no action that many wonder if it is even worth it all.

It can be argued our failed economy has degraded the entire state machinery. It can also be argued that those who have undermined and sought to collapse the entire economy still drive around in their fancy cars.

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The revenue service has warned that the working class is disappearing, thus shrinking the tax base. Increasingly, those who have worked to be successful are punished with increased taxes. Many of them simply leave the country, creating more layoffs and unemployment – and more economic degradation.

The government seems to be unconcerned at the disaster it has created, and every Cabinet shuffle is a case of musical chairs. The conflicted political deadwood remains firmly in place and are simply given new portfolios from where to continue with their destructive economic actions and policies.

A shrinking and broken economy, about to be greylisted, holds many dangers to our country and its people. It poses a severe threat to our national security. As long as we have two hostile factions in the ruling party but operating under the same umbrella, we will continue to see our economy suffer and decay.

-Mashaba is a political advisor