ANC’s cheap distraction- 30 years later

If you are poor, miserable, unemployed and don’t have access to even the most basic services, you can blame the faction inside ANC’s three decades of corrupt and failed leadership and the devastating and dysfunctional trajectory it has chosen.

If you are hungry, cannot pay for your children’s education, or if you are the victim of a crime, you must begin to question how you voted.

Crime is totally out of control, as the recent kidnapping of a US pastor by masked gunmen during a sermon in the Eastern Cape. Given the SA government’s constant anti-US rhetoric, was targeting the US pastor part of a political statement?

Fortunately, he was rescued before our new mission to the US to mend fences took place.

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Crime and chaos

The party that has been dictating our dysfunctional and failed politics and policies for three decades chooses to blame the whites, coloureds and Indians for the failures they have created.

They have yet to realise that blaming others for their faults and failures does not equate to a policy – it is a cheap distraction.

The only policy they seem to have adopted is “steal, steal and steal more” until there is nothing left to steal.

They must surely deserve a place in Guinness World Records for the most corrupt, greedy and failed political party ever.

Their single, self-serving approach appears to be: “If we cannot have it, the rest of the people will have nothing.”

This is a party that has loudly proclaimed it is not afraid of any nation in the West. But they forget the critical elements of diplomatic posturing: it must be real, it must be credible and it must be sustainable.

They claim to speak for the “entire country” and claim “we” will face any sanctions head-on and willingly struggle on.

Such a baseless statement can only be made by those who have corruptly enriched themselves and their cronies to a point where no form of sanction will matter to them.

They have neither the authority nor the right to claim they represent the entire country. Nor is the country willing to “struggle” alongside these corrupt and super wealthy politicians, who do not understand the basics of politics.

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Promise to collapse

The transition from apartheid to democracy allowed the ANC and its communist allies to inherit a country with a First World infrastructure. Despite the perverse racial policies at that time, things worked.

The majority of people were employed, basic services existed for many people, our borders were protected, schools were built to ensure education, hospitals worked, the cost of living was reasonable, and we became the darling of the world after 1994.

Things are changing as the government has embarked on a policy of isolating South Africa and deliberately impoverishing its people. And the world has noticed.

Thirty years ago and despite the Western-led sanctions against the then government, encouraged and driven by the ANC, our economy now looks far worse than it did during those days. The rand has collapsed and our economy is in tatters.

Our education and health care continues to fail the people. Our infrastructure is deteriorating by the day. Claiming it doesn’t care if sanctions are imposed on South Africa, the government is merely showing its inability to grasp what it is calling for.

Sanctions imply mass unemployment, an escalation in crime, trade and travel restrictions, economic collapse and, ultimately, total impoverishment. Just ask North Korea what sanctions mean.

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Way out?

It also proves the government is prepared to make sure South Africans suffer so they can cry victim in parliament and their luxury homes and unaffordable motorcades. And while our country crumbles away, President Cyril Ramaphosa is calling for militancy and land grabs.

His motivation is that everything that has gone wrong must be blamed on apartheid. And while the president’s call is that the land must be seized, the social unrest pot is bubbling and will soon reach a boiling point.

South Africa faces a growing social unrest danger, much of it politically and economically motivated.

It will impact the safety of companies and employees, result in massive business losses, add to already unacceptable levels of unemployment and crime and encourage further disinvestment.

While social unrest is simmering, the government continues with its racist rhetoric and claims it will “struggle” through any sanctions imposed on the country.

Targeted personal sanctions against those who have set the foundations for our economic and social misery will, however, be very good for South Africa.

If such sanctions include asset an bank account freezes, travel restrictions and bans, South Africa has a chance of surviving.

If the political miscreants are also brought before the International Court of Justice and charged with gross human rights abuses, South Africa can survive.

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