Bruce's call ignores reality

Peter Bruce’s imploration to our president to take charge is pitiful and ignores the reality that besets the presidency and the party he leads they are – all complicit in the systemic corruption of the Zuma era, which strangled the economy (Take charge, Mr President, and do it now, September 5). To expect Cyril Ramaphosa to become the saviour and sweep away the deep state is unhistorical and without any precedent. British prime minister Jim Callaghan, who Bruce quotes, was the last of those technocratic Labour Party breed who had a belief, quite misguidedly, that the reliable English bureaucracy that resided in those imperial offices on Whitehall could somehow come up with solutions to the crisis that engulfed Britain.

In SA we don’t even have a functional civil service that can turn the wheels to prosperity. To make it worse, we don’t have a Margaret Thatcher, who had the vision and obstinacy to deliver the bitter medicine Britain required.

Our official opposition under Mmusi Maimane and the heir apparent to the youth wing of the ANC, Julius Malema, are too wet behind the ears to come up with any credible solutions that could put the country back on a growth trajectory.

Bruce would be better off motivating a call for a government of national unity that would allow the best of the breed to take back control and reach a new accord on what SA should be. The alternative will be what we see in Nigeria, a predatory state whose only skills are to prey on wealth through the abuse of laws and regulations.

John N Catsicas

Johannesburg