Our leaders have failed SA

Twenty-nine years into SA’s democracy, I should be writing a column celebrating nearly three decades of development and progress.

Here I am, instead, wondering why it is that our people have not gone out on the streets, angry and desperate, because their lives are getting harder (record unemployment, inequality and poverty stalk the land) while their leaders’ corruption and lack of empathy are getting worse.

It is Freedom Week. So, let’s be honest with ourselves and ask: why haven’t there been cost-of-living riots in SA?

How close are we to this eventuality? Are we prepared for it?

The signs of stress and depression are everywhere.

Last week Stats SA reported that food inflation had accelerated from 14.0% in February to 14.4% in March, the highest level it has reached since March 2009 after the global financial crisis.

In simple terms, that means that workers must cut down on groceries because their wages just cannot keep up with the cost.

Their money is becoming worthless — it cannot buy them enough food.

It is worse for the many who don’t work and depend on government grants and their relatives.

Many households subsist on pap and a bit of relish.

Well, the Stats SA figures indicate that the price indices of maize meal and samp increased 34.7% and 29.8% respectively in the past year.

How are people supposed to survive when their meagre salaries, handouts from kin, or social grants, will soon not be able to cover their staple foods?

It is not just the poor and the working classes who are suffering.

Debtbusters ’ fourth-quarter 2022 debt index found that “those taking home R20,000 or more use 68% of their income to repay debt”.

It said these consumers are using debt to finance their lifestyles — and they are drowning: “For the top two income bands, those with R10,000 a month take-home pay and those with R20,000 or more, the debt-to-income ratios are 125% and 161%, respectively. ”

When inflation devastated

Zimbabwe, the country’s citizens moved south and elsewhere across the globe.

Our people have nowhere to go.

So why, I wonder, haven’t they rioted?

Why haven’t they vented their anger at what is happening in terms of governance, corruption, and sheer heartlessness of their leaders?

Last week, when schools reopened in KwaZulu-Natal, some 5,400 impoverished schools in the province did not receive their meals as part of the national school nutrition programme.

Children went hungry. Not a single person has been suspended or fired. Noone will be held to account. They will all receive their salaries at month-end.

Why haven’t we seen food riots in SA?

Stats SA says that in 2021, about 2,1-million or 11,6% of SA households reported experiencing hunger.

Given that the economy will not grow this year, the same plight faces as many or more people this year.

Despite the widespread looting that characterised the July 2021 riots, we know that those were not food riots.

They were sparked by a coordinated campaign, carried out on social media, for which former president Jacob Zuma has thanked his followers.

That, however, does not mean that we should discount the role of hunger and desperation in those riots.

Unemployed and desperate people, during an economically devastating pandemic, are prone to manipulation.

Those riots may turn out to be a warning, an amber light, before things turn to red.

Let ’ s take the political manipulation and shenanigans out of the calculus and think seriously about the possibility of cost-of-living or food riots in SA.

Are they likely? If they are not likely, what are the chances of political change at the ballot box coming about due to a cost-of-living crisis?

It ’ s not just food, you see. SA has no power. Communities experience hours, sometimes days, of darkness due to Eskom’s load-shedding and cable theft.

Given the ANC’s squabbling and indecision, corruption, and incompetence of the past 23 years of this crisis, the next year is not going to be better.

In fact, we know this winter will be worse, and the next year will be pretty much the same.

The politics website Politico reported recently that there was “an unprecedented global wave of more than 12,500 protests across 148 countries over food, fuel and cost of living increases in 2022”.

We have all three challenges. Yet, we have not seen food and cost-of-living riots.

Yet. This week, as we remind ourselves of the incredible breakthrough that was the 1994 election, we should be thankful for our freedom, but mindful of the precarious position we find ourselves in as a country.

We are one of the most well-endowed countries in the world: we have mineral wealth, wonderful weather, beautiful wildlife, and the friendliest and most resilient people on earth.

Our leaders have failed our country.

They shouldn’t fail us again by allowing this country to be engulfed by the fire of food riots.