It’s time the tough gets going

This is the time of year when change is in the air, when you feel the first chills of the approaching winter and nature prepares its new coat for the approaching cold.

What hasn’t changed much is the sort of speeches our politicians make – and which they did again yesterday – to mark the anniversary of our freedom.

The day when apartheid officially ended and when this country went to the polls to vote in its first democratic election – 27 April, 1994 – should be marked as one of the milestones in our history … and it is.

But every year which passes highlights just how far we are from achieving those wonderful dreams we dreamed in 1994.

As at no previous time in our often tortured past, South Africans of all genders, all colours and even almost all political persuasions believed we could build a truly miraculous country from the ashes
of the unjust, race-based systems of colonialism and apartheid.

As we sit here in 2021, 27 years on, the memory of those long snaking lines at voting stations – the lines of hope – becomes more and more faded.

Where once many of us believed we could be, as Desmond Tutu proclaimed, “The Rainbow Nation of the People of God”, now many of us have retreated further into our own colour-driven worlds, making the divide between our people even greater.

We have a society where, despite the fine commitments and huge spending by the ANC government to build a “better life for all”, the gap between rich and poor is widening, not narrowing.

Many of our children go to bed hungry at night, while some of the world’s most expensive cars prowl the streets of Sandton and Camps Bay.

Our education system, despite the optimistic annual apparently amazing matric pass figures, still lags behind most of the rest of the world and even competing developing countries, especially in areas which are critically important for future technological progress, such as maths and science.

Much of the lack of progress can be laid at the door of the ANC – for two reasons.

First, its policy of cadre deployment has reduced virtually every functioning area of government – including state-owned enterprises – to poor performance at best, or a total basket case at worst.

Incompetent, lazy and greedy ANC cadres have been sent to fill important posts … as a reward for their loyalty to the party or their political connections, rather than their ability.

In addition, as has become painfully apparent, many of those cadres have been involved in looting of the public purse on an industrial scale. Literally billions havebeen stolen – some funnelled abroad by people like the Gupta family.

State capture has been the cancer which has not only eaten away at the fabric of our society, it has also weakened the very bones of that society.

In reality, there was very little to celebrate yesterday… and the future looks less than rosy. Some of our politicians, spouting Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, still worship failed states like Cuba and vow to see the triumph of communism in our own country.

At the same time, a worried capitalist private sector has continued to gouge us in many areas.

Are there any positives?

Our best asset is our people. We are the tough who get going when the going gets tough and, despite the racist talk of politicians, we can get along.

Hopefully, our people will save us from our politicians.