Mandela’s dream for a better SA is in ruins

FOLLOWING the appointment of David van Rooyen as finance minister at President jacob Zuma’s behest, #ZumaMustFall is not the solution. Removing Zuma will not make the problems go away. Zuma is a symptom of the underlying malaise predicted before the 1994 elections – that a destructive socialist and Africanist paradigm will engulf the country.

I wrote numerous letters to newspapers warning about the effects of widespread and debilitating crime, cadre deployment, public sector waste and mismanagement, tenderpreneurism, nepotism, the socialist mentality of equalising everything to the lowest common denominator, no work ethic and the system of entitlement, etc.

Crime is out of control and we live at the mercy of criminals on a daily basis. Discrimination and race hatred have become worse than they were under apartheid.

Municipal service protests and burning of tyres are a regular township feature. Students have taken over university campuses and next year it won’t only be #FeeIncreaseMustFall, but it will morph into #FeesMustFall.

Eskom has collapsed. Load shedding will be back soon since cadre deployment is growing apace at Eskom, which will lead to more accidents and more failed generation units. Nearly all State Operated Enterprises (SOEs) are bankrupt.

The chickens coming home to roost now are: the growth rate is virtually zero and heading for negative territory, the rand is collapsing, we have reached junk bond status, there is not enough money for all the promises the ANC made which will fuel more protests and student activism, more criminals will hit the streets.

The next step would be to print money to solve our problems, bringing about hyperinflation Zimbabwe-style and then the proposed nationalisation without compensation of the commanding heights of the economy.

While all this is happening, the ruling party will live in their own corrupt, sanitised cocoons of pretence and make belief.

No, we are in a pre-revolutionary stage and things will get worse every year until the country explodes and South Africans are roaming the streets killing foreigners and each other in a devastating race war similar to Syria.

Thanks to cadre deployment and a socialist mentality, Mandela’s dream of reconciliation will be no more than that – a dream.