Precarious times as Zuma ‘leads’ us to abyss

EVEN before the first tackle is made or the first try is scored, the benefits of the Sevens showpiece have been immense for the goodwill the players from all the teams have shown to local children in the form of coaching clinics and visits across the city, inspiring the next generation of Sevens players.

The city now has a blueprint for the type of event that both fills the stadium’s coffers and keeps the fans happy.

With some innovation it should use the event as a template to turn around the stadium’s financial fortunes. WHERE is South Africa heading? Millions of people are asking this question.

When the president of our country, a country that is supposed to carry the torch of democracy on behalf of our continent, laughs in front of the whole world in order to cover up for his incapacity to process his muddled thoughts and to turn them into a coherent answer, we are in trouble.

I wonder if he is aware that he really controls the destiny of South Africa. Everything he does, and does not do, points at a person who has become an impregnable fortress with special, dark, safe little doors for his acolytes and general sycophants to access the sanctum sanctorum of his gift-giving office.

Highly paid positions in all of our public enterprises are given to friends of his as a reward for their loyalty. Ethical considerations are ignored.

Deploying cadres continues unabated and executive positions are given to individuals who gratefully accept their appointments as payment for their unquestionable loyalty to the ANC.

Meanwhile, South Africa burns and neither Zuma nor his ANC sponsors see the smoke. Where there is smoke, there is fire.

From an idealistic Mandela who wrongly assumed that the ANC was full of patriotic leaders, we moved on to a Mbeki always in denial, and then came an opportunist, Zuma.

We have strikes, riots, demonstrations and chaos in our “informal settlements”, “shacks”, “backyards”, etc, where more than 12 million people live in precarious circumstances, hoping that the ANC will deliver them from hunger.

The students revolt; the hungry revolt, the underpaid revolt, and what does the ANC do? Nothing.

The question is, though, what will they do when a power-hungry person, say Malema, is able to channel the hunger, anger and frustration of those millions of people and direct them to their source, the government?

There are more than 30 riots in South Africa daily. People are protesting, rightly or wrongly, against poor service delivery. They burn, they destroy, and they even kill.

Xenophobic acts are nothing else but frustration at a system that does not honour promises made more than 20 years ago. It is a long wait for people who see that the future of their children is not going to be better than their own miserable present. We live in precarious times. We are hardly able to produce half of what we consume and, minerals aside, the ANC has closed down all our small and medium business and manufacturing enterprises, forcing us to import practically all manufactured items needed for our daily life with the exception of – for the time being – farm produce.

Our unemployment continues unabated and hunger prevails.

The ANC is blind to the misery of the people who they are supposed, nay, are obliged to, look after, to educate, to supply with job opportunities, to train in order to become tomorrow’s leaders.