Government intends to enslave us while stealing our money

The government is in process of amending the National Health Act to quietly and systematically erode and reduce the constitutional rights and freedoms of all South African citizens. While other governments have lifted their Covid restrictions, our government wants to silently increase them.

There are strong suspicions this move comes as part of a plan to increase the powers of government’s National Disaster Act and exercise total control over the citizens whenever it pleases. If so, it has exposed itself as the true enemy of the freedom and democracy it advocates.

It has also put us on par with known pariah states.

We are, after all, adopting a policy of befriending and openly defending and sponsoring pariah states, while deselecting and criticising our friends.

Gradually and stealthily, the government has been making use of the draconian pages out of the pariah-state playbook. Its apparent intent is to ensure we become its slaves and are kept under unbearable economic conditions while it indulges itself on stolen investors’ and taxpayers’ money while trashing everyone who does not agree with it.

We are positioning ourselves both locally and internationally as a pariah state in the making. We bend to the wishes of fellow pariah states and support them wherever possible. Have we become an outlying province of other pariah states?

ALSO READ: Solidarity launches PAIA application regarding NHI

We have even chosen to support and become part of the smaller economies of the pariah states at the expense of the massive economies of both Africa and the West.

Government ministers have become willing parrots of other pariah states while trying to act as though the government is nonaligned. They are only successfully fooling themselves as everyone else can see through the money-driven deception.

Our ministers continually launch verbal attacks on the West, yet turn to the West when they go begging for money for projects they don’t intend on implementing. It is forgotten that the West gave safe harbour to many in exile and helped them in their war of information against the pre-1994 government.

This seems to have been deleted from their selective memory. To justify their deceptive political direction, government has (again) played its worn-out race card along with white monopoly capital.

In the process, it is the government that has driven the failed policies of economic and educational exclusion and forgotten to explain that white monopoly capital lives under the shadow of black monopoly capital, tenderpreneurs and champagne-swilling elite.

Stating that “South Africa is open for business” is another ruse to grab the money of “white capitalist investors” and squander it on themselves. This deception has not been lost on the international community.

It seems the atrocious behaviour by our politicians is a vital prerequisite to ensure an almost endless supply of foreign financial assistance. But it miraculously disappears and enables the government to continue with its policy of national economic destruction.

After almost 30 years of a ruling party’s destructive-style of governance by deception, the lives of an increasing number of our people are worse off than ever before. Hunger, poverty, uncontrolled crime and corruption and rising unemployment, along with despondency, top our daily media reports.

The euphoria that engulfed our country when we thought we had entered into a state of democracy has been shattered. We are, at best, a pseudo-democracy where criticism is barely tolerated.

It is also apparent that South Africa has now become an outlying province of Cuba and other pariah states. Our government has been quick to choose sides in the current Ukraine/Russia conflict although it claims it is nonaligned.

Could it be because South Africa has already received very large sums of money from Russia? Our youth understand that good governance requires knowledge, competence, commitment and honesty, something our politicians are unaware of.

They understand that we need to ensure our food security, water security, citizen security and secure our future.

Our youth also understand the constant blame game practised by our inept politicians is merely an approach to trying to distract from their own incompetence.

The new Employment Equity Bill will allow the minister to set race quotas above competence. Incompetence over meritocracy.

Enforceable by multimillionrand fines, the Bill intends to do away with merit and competence and follow the government’s example of incompetence above all – and more cadre deployment.

To sustain our country, we need to reconsider who our true friends and who our lesser friends are. We also need to focus on an inclusive economic policy if we are to survive.

The trajectory our country is on – one of pariah-state alignment – holds no good for either our present, or our future.

-Mashaba is a political advisor