Zuma can reverse tragedy facing SA

President Jacob Zuma was in a bullish mood yesterday in Ventersdorp at the ceremonies to commemorate Youth Day. It was as if state capture, the trove of leaked Gupta e-mails and the growing opposition to him within the ANC did not exist. He was large and in charge, chuckling and even quoting Shakespeare’s Macbeth as he deliberately emphasised that he was an “uneducated” man who had succeeded in life.

Even the choice of Ventersdorp as the venue was significant. Home of the late Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, it is close to the farming town of Coligny, where a young black man was allegedly murdered this year by two white men.

So, Zuma could conveniently raise the issue of racism, something he and his clique have increasingly done with alacrity in direct proportion to the mounting accusations against them.

As evidence of the bright future ahead of South African youth, he trotted out a number of successful young people, celebrating their achievements almost as if the ANC was the sole enabler of their success.

That appropriation of other efforts was reminiscent of what actually happened on the ground on June 16, 1976. The ANC was taken aback by the protests, which involved groups like the Pan Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement. Today, though, clever ANC propagandising leaves the impression the ANC held the match which lit the spark in Soweto.

Instead of emotional and political sleight of hand, Zuma needs to focus on the bleak future ahead of our youth.

Our future generations need decent education and jobs, as well as a government structure which is free from corruption and committed to making this country into the world-beater it can surely be.

You, sir, have the power to reverse the tragedy – Shakespearean or otherwise – which South Africa is rapidly becoming.