SA leaders’ state of denial: Rhetoric vs reality

There are subtle hints that keep reminding me that I turn 41 next month and none of them make any sense to my nimble and plump-faced 16-year-old twins.

Quite involuntarily, I let out slight groans each time I bend over to pick something up or lift my legs to get on and off my bicycle.

Quite weirdly, I am becoming more invested in how young people never have an emergency jacket, just in case the weather turns.

But the worst has to be the most illogical: while driving, I find myself turning down the volume in order to see better.

Deep down, I know that Tyla’s Water has nothing to do with my sight. I just cannot help but do it anyway.

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I think it is the same spirit that drives our politicians when they prepare for their State of the Nation/province addresses.

They just cannot help but offer rhetoric that is disconnected from what the average South African is facing.

Take President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Tintswalo analogy about how much progress his ruling party has made since 1994 and you see just how disconnected he really is from reality.

As someone in his 40s, I know all about romanticising the past, as I often tell my children that the battery for my brick-sized Nokia 5110 with an antenna could last a whole week.

I never add the very relevant facts that all I could do on the phone was to make and receive calls and play Snake. It had no GPS capabilities, e-mail, touch-screen and did not allow me to pay. By today’s standards, it is not a phone.

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Ramaphosa read from the same script when he decided not to add relevant facts that the ANC created load shedding, heavily contributed to the high levels of unemployment and dwindling quality of life. As long as we have Tintswalo in mind, we will all be fine.

Then there was Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s 37-page dream of a utopian Gauteng that is free of crime, thanks to his crime prevention wardens.

He just cannot help but blurt out what he thinks are wins, no matter what the crime statistics report.

Lesufi is like a fortysomething whose favourite answer to all their children’s questions is: “Because I said so.” Just because he says Gauteng is safer does not mean that less houses are broken into.

Just because he says “Nasi iSpani” (here is a job) does not mean there are less unemployed people, as the ruling party’s counterintuitive policies simply wipe away any gains made.

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It is as preposterous as all those fortysomethings who savour super-sized meals, with a Diet Coke.