Eyes ahead – on the jackpot

The dice is rolling in South Africa. . The heat of winter’s discontent is upon President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government.

There are few people who doubt that former President Jacob Zuma is not behind the internal backlash being experienced within the ANC and in courtrooms - the latest being the Gauteng South High Court application which seeks to have the chaotic ANC Eastern Cape provincial conference reconvened. That conference, in October last year, was lost by the Zuma faction.

There are those too, who believe that the rebelliousness on the streets is not disconnected to the populism of Julius Malema.

Those observing from the public amphitheatre might all hold views at variance but most are adopting a wait-and-see attitude, spectating as the political contenders go at it and at each other.

There is a great danger of becoming placid, more specifically being fixated by what EC ANC provincial chairman Oscar Mabuyane has probably accurately labelled as a “plot” against the provincial executive committee he leads.

Motorcycling instructors teach that a rider who stares too long at something on the road ahead, such as a stone will most definitely ride into it. This is called target fixation, and the one blessing of Ramaphosa’s rise in the political sphere, is that we are asked to look at the road ahead, not the head on the road.

Ramaphosa has asked South Africa to conceptualise then physically create new jobs for the restless unemployed youth. There are quick wins but this is a massive and extremely complicated task, especially in this province. We can do it.

But first we need to see beyond those distracting political thrusts and klaps - the latest being Malema’s shamefully comments on the entire Indian community. His hatefilled comments on the Indian community need not be repeated here. Suffice to say that it is downright foolish to paint an entire community with a single brush - as though the entire Indian community is one homogenous block

This militancy, the quick-to-fight attitude is all around us. Random street skirmishes and road closures over service delivery issues such as the Egoli eruptions, Eskom wage seekers switching off life-sustaining power to the public, and other acts of outright public sabotage are also, in the long run, major distractions.

This volatile terrain is easy pickings for Malema. .

But we should not get side-tracked and forget what matters the most. We need to get this country working again, literally.

It remains for the people of South Africa to take a step back and to appraise themselves of our national and provincial trajectory.

This paper supports the constitutional democracy which has been the route chosen by South African voters.

While it is necessary to sometimes have heated public discourse but now is not the time to falter. We need to lift our eyes and fixate on the good things our society demands: jobs, justice, economic stability and growth.