Come home, Mr President

DEAR Mr President,

We acknowledge with deep gratitude the work of reparation you have been engaging in to restore normality to our beloved country.

Your work with investors and especially now at the global summit makes good financial sense in a stable society. But the context of SA at the moment is not one of a stable, normal society.

With many South Africans I celebrated the great weekend of sporting victories we just experienced. But the slogan so often used in the apartheid period which says no normal sport in an abnormal society needs to be reinvoked.

The Western Cape has been crippled with gang violence and land disputes. Tyres burning, the destruction of property and road closures are not the problem but symptoms of an unjust society.

I am a hopeful person, Mr President, but I cannot be hopeful when together on the stands we celebrate sporting victories, but I go back home to the township where people are shooting and the affluent go back to their secured uninterrupted living circumstances.

I am a hopeful person, Mr President, but I cannot be hopeful when together on the stands we celebrate sporting victories, but when the previously disadvantaged elderly is in need of medical attention there’s a waiting period of a year while the previously advantaged enjoy the fruits of apartheid through access to medical aids.

I am a hopeful person, Mr President, but I cannot be hopeful when together on the stands we celebrate sporting victories, but our president meets separately with the so-called old Afrikaner Broederbond to comfort white fears and insecurity while people of the Cape Flats live in fear, struggling to put bread on the table.

I am a hopeful person Mr President, but I cannot be hopeful when together on the stands we celebrate sporting victories, but on a Monday morning the poor and disadvantaged cannot access employment opportunities because of an inadequate, non-dependable transport system while the previously advantaged still enjoy the comforts of being geographically, strategically and purposefully placed close to town and easy transport routes.

Come home, Mr President, your country needs you! Praying God for you and your Cabinet, Mr President. STEVEN-JOHN BAM Grassy Park

PICTURE: HENK KRUGER/AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY (ANA) TIME TO BE HANDS-ON: After fixing relations with the Afrikanerbond, perhaps President Cyril Ramaphosa should now turn his attention to the electorate and fix South Africa’s many other problems, as the writer suggests.