Scrap the policies that are killing us

In many cases, the ANC’s abject failure to run the country to any acceptable standard has been something of a “victimless crime” because it is difficult to see a direct link between the looting and incompetence and death or injury to ordinary South Africans.

Collapse of SAA? Who uses the airline anyway? Destruction of passenger rail infrastructure? There’s always the taxi industry to transport people. Collapse of Eskom?

Water resources

Apart from one or two people who may have died when power went out on hospital machines, did people die in droves? However, it will not be able to gloss over the dreadful state of SA’s water resources and infrastructure.

A government report shows the collapse of our wastewater treatment works and a sharp rise in the number of local authorities failing to meet minimum compliance standards.

Assessments conducted by the national department of water and sanitation showed that, of the systems sampled, more than 60 (41%) had bad water quality. Another 13 systems (9%) had poor water quality.

Contamination

This meant that they didn’t meet clean water standards because of high levels of contaminants, such as wastewater and excrement.

Contaminated water poses acute health risks. It is responsible for water-related illnesses such as cholera. Only 50% of the assessed treatment plants produced drinking water of a suitable quality not contaminated by sewage or other pathogens or chemicals.

Just 5% of plants surveyed had a “high state of compliance” with required standards. This, it is abundantly clear, is what happens if you deploy unqualified and inexperienced cadres to technical management positions and where similarly useless ANC councillors are allowed to get their fingers in the till.

The ANC’s policies of cadre deployment and transformation need to be reviewed or scrapped because they’re killing people.

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