‘No one is coming to save us’

When stage 6 load shedding hit the country, the president had to cut short his international trip to get back because of the “crisis”.

It was not as though his arrival in the country would make the slightest difference to the immediate power problems that the country faced, but the president had to be seen to be doing something, rather than out gallivanting with global leaders when the country was facing its worst power crisis.

And therein lies the problem: when the current president was deputy president, he was charged with overseeing Eskom. He had a chance to actually do something back then, not just be seen to be doing something.

As 2024 approaches and the country starts preparation for that general election, it is clear that South Africa has been moving in a trajectory in which its citizens have increasingly become disillusioned. The country’s power woes are simply the latest in a long line of unacceptable legacies which the last three decades of ANC rule have bequeathed the country.

ALSO READ: Higher load shedding stages loom if diesel not delivered, warns Eskom

High crime rates, broken state institutions, decaying state infrastructure and a broken economy are but some of the other ills with which the country has to contend. But the worst of these ills is the powerlessness that has accompanied this general decline.

This powerlessness comes as a result of noticing that even the faction of the ruling party that was supposed to be the faction for good has turned out to be a mirage.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s faction was installed into the Union Buildings on a Thuma Mina (send me) promise: the promise that where others are stealing the country blind, carrying out corrupt activities with impunity and hurtling from one scandal to the next, the Thuma Mina function volunteered to go forth and stop the rot.

Instead of stopping the rot, the faction has seemingly continued from where last one stopped and in addition to that, the president has got himself entangled in a self-created unnecessary mess that has effectively hamstrung him and his government.

The only cure to this hopelessness would be the emergence of something new and untainted by all the past scandals in government. A new movement or party or platform that is far less concerned with being seen to be doing something, but one that actually does something.

Former Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane launched his Build One South Africa (Bosa) party this past weekend and as with all new movements, their promise is one of change. There is no guarantee that Bosa will not go the way of the Congress of the People, which these days has sunk to the level of fists flying live on television during a press conference.

New formations come all the time, some survive while others do not. One thing is certain though, it is only in new beginnings that this country will carve out a new future for itself. Not in the old formations. It is not as though there is a shortage of new formations, there is a lot of them.

ALSO READ: Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: ‘Step-aside rule unjust and unfair’

Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA being the last one to cause some commotion at the polls. Even though the Rivonia Circle has not clarified its electoral intentions yet, together with Maimane’s Bosa, they bring a different dimension to the electoral landscape in the country.

The coalitions that come as a result of these new formations might be unstable in the short term but they are sign of the changing times. A sign that South Africans are learning that they are the solution to the problems they face. Nobuntu Webster, Bosa’s cofounder, sums it up quite nicely: “No one is coming to save us.”