What happened to the dream of 1994?

WITH arguably the best mascot and leader in the great Nelson Mandela, pictured, South Africa once stood on the precipice of a frontier that would have catapulted us to far beyond our wildest imaginations.

What then has gone wrong? Where have all the men and women of honour, integrity, patriotism and discipline who struggled with great fortitude to liberate us all, disappeared?

From a glorious dream to the trepidation of an impending nightmare, we wrestle with our conscience and loyalty to our country for yet another liberation – another struggle.

The once-mighty ANC that promised so much has degenerated at a rate of knots, so much so that its president and the country are reduced to a caricature.

The power hungry within that institution evoke a bleak yet harrowing image of what the lust for greed and power can do to even the best of us.

Jacob Zuma, whose oath to the highest office of this land has betrayed and betrayed again. His consummate ineptness as president reverberates with an uncanny gloom that has permeated and diffused even the most steadfast cadres of his organisation.

Whether by delusions of grandeur, or the innate and despicable lust for greed and power, many have sold their souls to the devil – much to the detriment of us all.

The wave of discomfiture and restlessness could well be a portent for anarchy as any dissent or dissidence is being viewed as treasonous, and those for and against a presidential change are squaring up for a fight that will have more of the vanquished than victors.

What is so galling about the once-glorious ANC is that many feeders at the fiscal trough have no qualms or pangs of a guilty conscience to see that the country is teetering on the brink of a precipitous chasm, about to disintegrate.

Yet the ANC cadres want to scrape as much as possible from the State. At whose cost?

What has happened to the oath of office of the MPs?

South Africa was once on the vanguard of a miraculous democratic order lapping up the veneration of the world over.

What has gone wrong? What has gone wrong?

Alan Paton wrote, Cry, the Beloved Country, and yet today my beloved country bleeds. NARENDH GANESH

Durban North