Cry, the corrupted land

Our young-generation leaders from all walks of life and political persuasions need to stand together and make their voices heard as our old-guard bourgeoisie fails the country.

The government has corrupted our democracy, tarnished our constitution, emptied the state’s coffers, neglected our infrastructure and totally ignored our people. In fact, everything our government has touched has been either bankrupted or destroyed.

Our murder rate is higher than many war zones across the world. If police stations are vulnerable to criminal attacks,
law-abiding citizens are even more prone to being attacked.

Currently, private security contractors outnumber the police. Our citizens live in fear of criminals. Our farmers are murdered daily – impacting on our food security. Tourists are robbed at gunpoint and shopping malls attacked by armed gangs who operate with military precision.

Public safety is, however, of no concern to the minister of police, as is evident in the escalation of crime. Citizens are being hijacked, murdered, kidnapped and attacked by armed gangs, yet the minister wants to disarm citizens. He has famously decided that law-abiding citizens do not need firearms to protect themselves.

But without public safety and national stability, investors will be scared off. This is no problem to our government – they will simply increase taxes and costs of basic services while continuing to destroy what’s left of our economy.

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The government has mismanaged, bankrupted and destroyed every successful SOE it took control of. This includes strategic SOEs such as Eskom, Denel, SABC, SAA and others.

These once-successful SOEs are now dysfunctional. Debts of billions of rands are the order of the day for the majority of SOEs.

We boast one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. School leavers know that they are entering a marketplace where jobs are nonexistent and many graduates find that after leaving university, the best they can do is only find menial jobs – if they are lucky.

Yet, astonishingly – and with almost 40% of the nation’s workforce unemployed – the government “imports” workers from Cuba.

There are currently more protests and riots across the country than at any time in our history.

Wanton destruction of infrastructure and buildings is a daily occurrence, yet our government has its head up its nether regions.

It apparently doesn’t see what is happening.

Despite the rush to push South Africa into the realm of a failed state, our political leaders always find someone or something to blame – as long as it is not themselves.

The choice is narrow: state capture, Covid, or apartheid.

They consistently blame the whites, coloureds and Indians for the huge inequality gap. Whereas this gap is very real, there are three times more middle- and upper-class black citizens than “others” of the same status.

This disproves the government’s lies as the inequality gap is not between blacks and “others”, but between rich blacks and poor blacks.

Despite this, and the litany of other failures and disasters, the government claims it is not a failed state.

It claims it has made giant strides. It claims it works hard. It claims it stands for an equal society.

It doesn’t. As a country, we can no longer afford to pay for a parliament that thrives on school-ground politics.

To turn our disastrous national trajectory into a positive one, our young leaders need to put aside the many political and racial differences the government has worked so hard at creating.

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We must unite our people and not strive to divide as the government has done. These leaders must lead by example and exercise vision.

They must reassess our failed national strategy, make corrections, find solutions for the many problems our current
crop of failed leaders have created, and take action to rectify the mess we are in.

Government appointments must be made on merit and not on cronyism or fake struggle credentials.

The process of playing musical chairs and claiming it is a Cabinet reshuffle must end.

We cannot afford leaders who have no understanding of leadership and the responsibilities that go with it.

– Mashaba is a political advisor