National Lotteries Commission chairperson Professor Barney Pityana delivered an explosive lecture on human rights. Photo: Gallo Images.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, to which South Africa owes trillions of rands, will soon descend on the country to run it while President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet dithers, said Professor Barney Pityana.
From unstable municipalities, fraud and corruption, crime, the immigration crisis to the Phala Phala farm robbery scandal – the former Unisa vice-chancellor delivered a no-holds-barred lecture, accusing Ramaphosa of “missing in action”.
The lecture on the state of human rights was organised by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) at Constitution Hill, ahead of Human Rights Day next week.
The IMF and World Bank recently loaned government R65 billion and R750 million respectively in emergency loans to prop up the public purse that was battered by the effects of Covid-19.
This and billions of rands owed by state-owned enterprises, such as power utility Eskom, increased sovereign debt to R4.7 trillion. The debt servicing costs are currently at R355 billion a year.
Pityana said with the rising unemployment rate and the high debt-to-GDP ratio, the country is on a precipice.
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He said South Africans and government prefer not to think about what the country faces, “doing nothing and believing that nothing will happen”.
“More and more people are losing jobs. We have rising sovereign debt which has overtaken education as a priority.
“A debt as high as our GDP tells you this country is bankrupt. And sooner or later, we will have the IMF and World Bank knocking on our door, and as they usually do elsewhere, take over the running of this country. It’s coming, and that will reverse whatever gains we made post the apartheid era.”
Increasing labour strikes by unions and everyday protests are having a serious impact on the country, with strikes settled for a very small difference.
“What country would live with unemployment of 55% of those aged 19-35? In Makhanda, Eastern Cape, one in three residents is jobless. Where have you ever seen that? As someone previously said, if that is allowed to happen, you are sitting on a time bomb.”
Unions are losing members with their influence diminishing as more and more people lose jobs. Pityana said in order to try to stay afloat, all labour unions can do is “demand more out of nothing”.
The former Unisa vice-chancellor said governance is disappearing while democracy declines.
He laid into former president Jacob Zuma for allegedly facilitating state capture corruption and Ramaphosa, at whose Limpopo farm foreign currency was found stuffed in a couch, allegedly undeclared to authorities.
Ramaphosa’s February State of the Nation Address (Sona) speech failed to rally South Africans to wake up to the impending crisis, said Pityana.
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Pityana remarked that Ramaphosa’s government is “missing in action” while the country has become a mafia state, “about to surpass Mexico’s criminal cartels”.
“Listening to his Sona speech, you wouldn’t think we are in the same country I just described to you. There is no sense of urgency, emergency or crisis, no rallying call to wake up, telling citizens we need to do something extraordinary to get ourselves out of the mess we are in.
“There was none of that from the president. I say to the state – wake up. We can’t have a government of the day missing in action.”
He then accused the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of “trampling” on Parliament’s democratic processes.
“They have a unique role of speaking, asking questions and putting motions, and then abandon sittings of Parliament and go to the streets, [instead of using] the parliamentary democratic system.
“That would not happen anywhere in the world. If that’s their strategy, then they should leave Parliament permanently and go to the streets, you can’t have it both ways.”
The red berets will on Monday undertake a national shutdown to demand an end to Eskom power cuts and that Ramaphosa step down.
Last year, Cabinet appointed Pityana as board chairperson of the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) to clean up the entity, after the unearthing of more than R300 million in corrupt payments to non-profit organisations over the years.
Pityana is a former SAHRC commissioner, among the many positions he held previously.
An anti-apartheid activist, he also co-founded the South African Students’ Organisation (Saso) of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) with Steve Biko.
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