Petrol price relief: Remember to praise the leadership for saving us from themselves

Remember like a year ago when petrol was around the R16 mark and two years before that, around the R14 mark?

Hell, I don’t want to pretend like I miss Jacob Zuma but in 2010, I was paying less than 8 bucks a litre.

Now of course, I’m aware of the fluctuations in oil price and the weakening of the rand that all have an effect on what it costs us to fuel our cars.

My question is, why should it?

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Sure, any relief at the tanks is going to be welcome.

Is it a worthy boast or a feather in the cap of our government? Damnit, no!

Oh yes, well, you know, thank you for throwing us off the edge of the abyss over years and then deciding to drop us a rope hoping that we’ll catch it as we’re falling.

That’s really swell of you. Oh wait, no, I have a better one.

Thank you for wrecking our electrical grid and then running a public campaign on how to save energy.

That’s just marvellous.

Praise for something you’re supposed to do?

It’s probably a bad time to paraphrase Chris Rock, but this governmental culture of expecting praise for something you’re supposed to do is exhausting.

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They’re out here boasting about how “interventions” will buffer the fuel price by some 3 bucks.

I mean, wow, thank you! But that’s before we consider the April increase, and notice how it’s still more expensive than this time last year.

Praiseworthy interventions are not interventions that are made in states of panic and only temporarily solve the problem.

Right now we will have two months of decreased costs using our reserves to fund the 6 billion, and then what? Who will be bragging when that sweet little reprieve gets lifted in June?

No! This Mickey Mouse action is hardly anything close to what we deserve from our leadership.

Top brass are mulling a 3% salary increase for themselves, and for what? What amazing things do they do other than exhaust what we have?

There’s a whole entire town dedicated to Sasol. It’s named after the company. We created the process of turning coal into fuel. We’ve done some of the most innovative things in the world when it comes to petrol.

There’s an entire financial ministry with access to top graduates from 26 public universities across South Africa.

We keep pumping more public money into free-ish education.

You’re telling me that despite all that, we have no control or even influence on the petrol price and rand-dollar exchange. Give me a break.

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I’m in no mood to thank the government for an intervention that would hardly be required if they were even remotely proactive.

I’m in no mood to be grateful for an intervention that does little more than kick the can down the road in the hope that by some miracle, the rand will strengthen by June and oil will come down.

It’s annoyingly frustrating to look at this and see so many people buying into the nonsense boast, as if all the intellectual capacity in the country has come up with this revolutionary idea of a temporary price cut offset by the sale of reserves.

A dude with no education who came on a boat without being able to speak the language and runs a corner café could give you that idea for free, and then send you on your way with Chappies in lieu of change.

Yes, thank you leadership.

You have provided leadership in doing some temporary damage control. Thanks again. Praise be.

Let’s just not forget who’s been doing the damage and who could have done something about it over many years they’ve been running the show.

A farmer doesn’t take a sledge hammer to their dam, then pride themselves in wrapping it with induction tape to do a repair job for the damage they did.

The farmer would never take a sledge hammer to the dam in the first place, and spend the capacity they have ensuring that the same doesn’t get silted up nor cracked.

If it does, they do something about it immediately.

The okes running our show have a different approach though. There’s no need to maintain or be proactive because when it breaks, we’ll deal with it then and somebody will pay for it.

What frightens the most is that the people perpetuating that kind of policy thinking, they’re what we now refer to as “leadership”.

So thanks for your petrol intervention.

I guess I may not be ungrateful for what must have been such a difficult call employing every ability to lead you could collectively muster.

I would love it if I had some real leadership that kept us away from this situation in the first place. I’d be more grateful for that.