Published on Linkedin on October 5, 2016
My first rant, published in 2010 in the book ‘Stepping Stones’, has largely gone
unheeded and many of the problems enunciated then are worse six years later.
As a country we continue to follow an economic model and government strategy that
collapsed in Berlin a while back. Foreign Direct Investment, upon which our economy
is critically dependent, is drying up.
The South African voting public is today in a worse financial position than it was then
and the country is poorer by billions lost through incompetence, corrupt activities and
mismanagement. Our standing in the world community has been denigrated but the
Government is still proceeding on a nuclear energy path which will seriously burden
future generations.
Foreign nationals have compromised our politicians and usurped government
functions and authority taking with them offshore the proceeds of their ill-gotten gains.
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Our population has grown to fifty-four million, our economic growth is zero and our
national debt has spiralled. Our currency has weakened against the Dollar, the Euro,
the Pound and almost all other currencies. Our State-Owned Entities are a hotbed of
patrimony, inefficiency and corruption and our leaders are self-serving, clueless and
without direction - one even holds office despite having a hole in her head.
We have the most bloated Public Administration in the world. Wrong–doers are put
on suspension on full salary and sometimes sit contentedly at home for years.
Employees, disgraced and discredited in legal proceedings, simply return to work or
are put on special (presumably paid) leave.
When called to account to Parliament for misdemeanours they merely hand in a
doctor’s sick note.
The Chinese and British Press mock our President and Ministers in world-wide
television interviews, our Cabinet is divided and paralysed, the Judiciary and Media
are besieged and the Parliament is a war zone. The Treasury is under attack from
kleptocrats, our national airline is bankrupt, our trains don’t fit on the tracks, our
planes don’t fly, our boats don’t sail and our mineral resources are depleted. Our
productivity is laughable, the lights don’t always work, our RDP houses don’t have
cement, the rural poor are yet to get anything more than the occasional food parcel
at voting time, we have the most number of vacations in a year and every dog and
his aunt gets a bonus, an increase and a blue light brigade.
The National Prosecuting Authority, certainly acting with fear and favour, has an
embarrassing prosecution rate in the twenty percentile and is manned by
sycophants, liars and criminals. The Hawks and Police are run by gangsters and
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thieves. Sars employees now bank tax collections directly into their own personal
accounts. Probably claim back the bank charges too.
Our President lives in a palace funded by taxpayers. He diligently avoids his inevitable
day in court on seven hundred plus charges through hopeless legal appeals. He has
breached the Constitution and his oath of office and is treated with disdain in
Parliament. To-date he has cost taxpayers tens of millions in fruitless litigation - yet
he is still there.
The government success rate in the courts, in defending a raft of other cases, is under
thirty percent.
Fifty percent of our youth are unemployed; near thirty percent of the workforce can’t
find jobs and we run a bloated welfare system accounting for about a third of our
population. Our soccer, rugby and cricket teams are a joke and the one true hope of
re-vitalisation – a vibrant education sector – is in turmoil. Our teachers’ union racks
up the highest number of days on strike of all unions. Our economy stands on the
brink of junk status and the rural poor are now poorer despite religiously voting the
ANC to power over the past twenty-two years.
All this mayhem is funded by a small percentage of honourable personal and business
taxpayers who are presently threatening a tax revolt.
At what point do ordinary South African citizens draw a line in the sand and demand
their dignity and their country back?
Looking back to 2010……….
‘The report card, since Mr Mandela’s inauguration 16 years ago, is abysmal. Despite
favourable worldwide economic conditions throughout this period and vastly improved
collections by the Fiscus (through more of the country’s emerging economically active
population contributing) progress on the above key issues has at best been pedestrian,
and at worst extremely regressive.
Our Parliament has been responsible for a litany of corrupt, self-serving and dubious
decisions including the Travel Scandal, the HIV/Aids Debacle, the Arms Deal cover up,
cover up of the Police Commissioner’s shady dealings, silent support of a neighbouring
tyrant, with the blood of his opponents still on his hands, turning of a blind eye on the
illegal immigration problem and the soaring incidence of crime and corruption which
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takes its lead from Parliament and infiltrates South African society, not only as an evil,
but also as an arrogant entitlement.
The audit trail also reveals crime, fraud and corruption amongst the new officers in
national and provincial spheres of government and serious insolvency and bankruptcy
in local government spheres. The legal system, as a result, is creaking under the strain
of trying to maintain justice. A Constitutional Court aspirant is currently under
suspicion of favouring a contender and of accepting pecuniary inducement to favour
a commercial enterprise. The jury is still out on this one but the last bastion of
democracy, fair play and ‘good’ is about to be subverted. Watch this space.
In this regard, the moral stalwarts of the struggle, Madiba and Tutu, must be cringing
at the behaviour of some of their fellow countrymen. The newly appointed group of
leaders are not listening to their moral mentors and should be setting a better example
for the youth of South Africa.
These are the challenges that you young Democrats, of whatever colour and
persuasion, face in the not so new South Africa. Your challenge is not only to become
productive taxpayers, but also to ensure that state funds are honestly allocated and
used for upliftment of the poor, support of the infirm and aged, creation of self-
sufficiency in the country, creation of a stable business environment, honest
administration and so on. In pursuit of these moral objectives the perpetrators of
elitism, sloth, greed and the rest of that ugly family of vices, should be rooted out,
and voted out.
Icons of the struggle on the African continent against colonialism, racism, white
domination and cultural oppression are to be admired and revered – and then
committed to history. Their victories have been celebrated. The freedom that some
died for has been attained. Now the surviving heroes must graciously bow out and
hand over the spoils of war to the communities that they served. They did not suffer
for their own glorification and edification. They fought so that their sons and daughters
could grow up in a non-racial, democratic environment which would ensure a new and
economically viable South Africa within Africa and the world.
The history of Africa shows that when the oppressor leaves, he is replaced by an even
greater oppressor. In South Africa, colonialism was replaced by apartheid, which has
been replaced by African nationalism. Sadly, African nationalism does not mean
devolution of power to the lowest common denominator, you the voting South African
citizen. African nationalism has shown itself in other African countries to be the worst
of the previous white regimes, merely dressed in an elite black face. Our closest
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neighbour boasts a narrow, super-rich, black class that, whilst blaming former white
regimes, has plundered the coffers of the country to leave the once rich and fertile
country of Zimbabwe starving, bankrupt and bereft of hope.
Before our all partying, all singing, all dancing former struggle heroes, now elite black
rulers, bask too long in the sun with their snouts in the trough, you ordinary voting
citizens of South Africa should point north and remind them of Africa’s shameful record
of black on black oppression.
Remind them to, instead of swapping war stories at the country club over claret and
grilled partridge wings, enjoin the new struggle against African elitism, against
illiteracy, disease, ignorance, starvation, corruption and the moral decline amongst the
youth of this country.
If they do not, the next oppressor may well be from Beijing.
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