Dear Mr President, stop throwing stones at other governments in our name

Dear Mr President, I, like many patriotic South Africans, wonder how you sleep at night.

But then we remember that as our president you have the best protection possible and are not left to become a victim of our spiralling crime situation.

The irrational and highly stupid comments made by some members of your government are eroding the little respect some countries and their people still had for us.

Lately, you have chosen to discard your role as the president of South Africa and instead show that you are only really the president of a select group of ministers in the governing party.

In fact, you have become a president in name only as you have lost the respect of a very large number of South Africans.

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You and your shrinking cadre of ministers have stolen the hopes of many of the underprivileged – white, black, coloured and Indian.

When you address the nation, people switch off their radios and televisions because you keep making empty promises while removing all hope.

No-one voted to have their hopes and dreams removed. It seems your only desire is to become the richest president in Africa.

To achieve this, you sent underequipped, poorly led South African soldiers to protect personal and other business interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as opposed to ensuring an end to the conflict there.

All the basic considerations for successful military action and intervention were ignored. And that at the expense of the taxpayers.

Taxes ought to be for the good of the country and not for the good of personal wealth.

For some time now you, along with a very select group of your ministers, have chosen to constantly and viciously attack the West and in particular the United States and Israel in favour of several pariah states.

Such actions have dire consequences – maybe not for you but definitely for our country as a whole. Whatever happened to our supposed non-alignment?

Threatening economic giants is not very smart.

But nor is clinging to pariah states as allies. Why on earth would those economically powerful countries continue to support South Africa when your inner circle spew anti-West rhetoric whenever they open their mouths?

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And now that foreign funding is being cut off, you all wonder why.

Or do you? After all, it won’t impact your little team, only those who are already impoverished and increasingly disillusioned with the style of government being forced on us.

Mr President, are you aware of the anger and disillusionment you have created at grassroots level – an anger that is also steadily growing within your own party?

Are you aware of the embarrassment you have caused South Africans by threatening a small country such as Rwanda without considering the consequences?

Did you really think they would shrivel up and go away? The threat the president of Rwanda countered with has made you all go quiet as you know he speaks the truth.

President Paul Kagame openly called you a liar. Why haven’t you responded and proven to him that he is indeed lying?

Why aren’t you defending your good name? After all, it is not only your name that has been dragged into negative commentary but our entire country and its people.

If not your own name, then we demand you defend our name. The inability of your chosen cadres to practise good diplomacy is increasingly astonishing.

Instead, you want to rely on hard power when we have none to project as it was dismantled and underfunded by your government.

Do you not realise what a laughing stock you and your ministers have turned South Africa into? Let us not even go down the road of you threatening powerful presidents.

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What can you threaten them with when you cannot even contain the out-of-control crime that is steadily devouring our country?

Successful diplomacy relies on a large measure of reciprocity and not on unfounded arrogance.

It is obvious that this is neither understood nor practised.

If you don’t have the people in your circle who can practise diplomacy to the betterment of our country, find them – they are out there.

But please stop constantly attacking other governments in our name.

We are becoming the collateral damage of this pettiness – and we never voted for this. Besides, the revolution has long passed.