SA’s current state: Do something about it at ballot box

What are the biggest scourges besetting our country? Negative elements transforming honest, peaceful, tax-paying South Africans, into angry and disgruntled folk?

And sadly, keeping the nation as a whole from experiencing the promised rainbow, or lately, the new dawn. Promises they’ll remain until the scourges are properly addressed and taken care of. High on the list are murder and rape. There’s no stopping killers and sex pests – the threat of prison simply no deterrent. Husbands kill wives (even burning their bodies), wives pay killers to snuff out their husbands.

We know of a case in the 90s when a school principal’s wife planned his murder (on two occasions; the first only rendering him mentally imbalanced) for which she was sent to prison. Two years ago she was released. Their son and grand-children still suffering the effects of losing a dad and grandfather.

How many rapists, having sojourned behind bars, get parole, only to rape again.

Conclusion: Prison is no deterrent – and more importantly, it in no way compensates loved ones having to go through life carrying deep-seated sorrow and disappointment. Grossly unfair.

No matter what the so-called human rights groups claim, murderers and rapists must be permanently removed from society. They don’t deserve a chance at living another life they denied their victims.

Another common crime is robbery. Let’s consider cable theft. Why is this allowed to continue unabated? Without cable, trains can’t run and power to strategic locations is cut. Here again, the odd thief is nabbed and jailed, but the big honchos, or syndicates, carry on their merry old way.

Solution: Round up the recipients (scrap yard owners), close down their premises, thus turning off the taps for would-be thieves. Easy. Wrong. Not so easy in a corrupt society – starting and ending at the top.

Then there’s white collar crime. Here again, perpetrators get away with it under the noses of so-called auditing firms. Take Bosasa as a typical example. So far, only the whistle blowers have been arrested. Not a whisper of the whereabouts of the brains behind the deed. They are probably enjoying ministerial or hey, divine protection. Here again, no lasting deterrent.

So either we accept the status quo and continue to be miserable, or do something about it at the ballot box. Then a referendum to gauge the feeling of the people regarding capital punishment.

A bit drastic, you say? But what about the desperate on-going consequences of the present situation? To quote an American president of old: The country isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat.