We are leaderless and we have not created a better life for all as promised

It is when your country is in a state of disaster that you realise a number of things such as: the future is in our own hands. We can do better than this – and we will.

We should, without fail, live and breathe the honest values of the constitution. We are a Rainbow nation and the country belongs to all who live in it, black and white. There are distinct areas where the private sector is better equipped to deliver services than government.

We see around us the many disasters of load shedding, and of the collapse of infrastructure, most visibly manifested by pothole after pothole in town after town. Tragically, it illustrates a disaster in leadership and an absence of competent public management.

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In a situation where we pray, hope and demand leadership, we are told that providing electricity is not the duty of government. If that is true, then why not allow the private sector to take over the provision and management of it?

Instead, we now have three ministers tasked with the provision of electricity. I propose that we formulate an amendment to our country’s constitution that clearly spells out the duties of government in this regard and the rights of the electorate.

We shockingly witness that a chief judge finds a president probably acted unconstitutionally, but then the governing party uses their numbers in parliament to shield him from scrutiny, transparency and accountability – all the values that our liberation heroes fought and died for.

We are told that being greylisted is not such a serious issue – we are “dealing with it”. We are told that government is serious about fighting corruption, but we see no concrete sign of it.

By either incompetence or sleight of hand, the Guptas are still not back here to explain how they captured large numbers of public decision-makers and stole hard-earned taxpayers’ money.

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We are told that it is okay to elect deeply tainted leaders into leadership positions and appoint them to government. Is that what we fought for? Is that what our struggle heroes and heroines died for? Is that what you, as future leaders, of our country study, hope and pray for?

The brilliant Russian writer/ philosopher Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: “We know they are lying. They know they are lying. They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And they still continue to lie.”

The simple truth is that the lies, the lack of electricity, the potholes, the water shortages, the criminal public sector corruption reaching into the highest echelons of government is a symptom of something much more serious.

That is a deeply concerning lack of leadership that cascades down to lazy and ineffective management of crucial programmes of service delivery.

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Our government thinks it is okay to make us wait, that it is okay to attack private sector leaders who want to contribute, that it is okay to lie and that we will not punish them at the ballot box for concealing corruption.

We are leaderless and we have not created a better life for all as promised. We are leaderless and we have not illustrated that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. We have, in fact, done quite the opposite of what our election slogans proclaimed.

Democracy must fulfil the promise of government that politicians have a responsibility to serve the people and not themselves, their families and friends. They have to be accountable to those who elected them, or else…

I am convinced that a government of national unity could be the best way forward for us and also the best way to restore our constitutional values.

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This state of disaster is not the ANC that I joined, nor the broader liberation government that I once was a part of. This is not what I fought for or what comrades and friends of mine died for. Proper procedures and due process have become meaningless phrases in the public discourse.

In local government, the most important level of delivery, mayor after mayor walks through the revolving door of “leadership” while we anxiously wait for water, electricity, food, transport and better roads. Everyone has become the enemy but ourselves. The electorate does not buy that argument any more and will not do so in 2024.

The spectacle of rows of luxury vehicles pushing normal drivers off the road with blue lights flashing while hungry and jobless pedestrians watch from the side of the road is a telling symptom of our dark disaster.

More and more proud and innovative South Africans are defining their own future, without help from government. We are, through necessity, becoming our own masters. And rightly so.

You can and must stand up and change your own lives even if it means peacefully confronting an inept and dithering government.

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Hopefully, in next year’s election, we will vote for change and a new government will look to partner with those of us who want to make South Africa the company that Madiba and other visionaries dreamt of.

We are better than this. We can shape our own future. We can be successful, but we must stand up, find our voices and proudly walk into this leadership vacuum that has been created. The future is in our hands, yours and mine.

As Victor Hugo reminds us; “Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.”

-Phosa is a former freedom fighter, activist, political leader and provincial premier. He is an attorney, a businessman and an international consultant.