We are on the losing end of the war with the economy

We cannot talk enough about the crippling effects of the economy and the state of the country.

To bring ourselves away from the cliff of death – because petrol has increased significantly and eggs now cost much more while retailers are rationing them out to customers – we must acknowledge that as consumers, as citizens, we are on our knees and getting back up seems to be harder and harder to do.

Where will we find hope? Work has been scarce and those who are employed are working to get to work in order to get paid.

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Petrol takes all our savings and keeping our vehicles on the road and insured costs our lives. It’s just an unending cycle of make just enough to keep breathing in order to have to do it all over again the following month.

To add insult to injury, the lights may go off, not only on account of load shedding but also because of extended power cuts and then one has to employ alternative means.

Most homes use gas. A cost one hopes to avoid but cannot ignore because how else will one eat? Everything costs so much and nothing seems to be working.

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The only consistency is the near-mental breakdowns we are pushed closer and closer to.

Our system is broken and it is slowly breaking us, too. They sold our mothers and fathers a dream so beautiful that they could not resist it. They called it the Freedom Charter and then proceeded to take ownership of its realisation wearing capes of black, green and gold.

Singing melodious tunes that spoke to and of our oppressors, we came to understand the nature of the beast.

With the promises of the Freedom Charter, we were declaring a war often fought in defiance and mostly armed with nothing but stones and the spirit of Africa for Africans. We were determined to unwrap the hidden treasures of the holy grail of our time – the Freedom Charter of 1955.

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The only thing that they forgot to tell us was that in this future of hopes and dreams, the new enemy would be the economy and the bigger possibility was that we would be on the losing end of the war with this enemy.