Recolonised without a single shot being fired

THOSE in charge of the state and its key institutions, under the leadership of President Jacob Zuma, inherited a country that generations of freedom fighters and honest citizens had won back from adventurous colonialists – only to hand it on a platter to a different set of colonialists.

Without a single shot being fired. Instead, small-change inducements have undone the work of generations of progressive citizens.

The individuals leading the state, useful instruments in the hands of the most ambitious of thieves, are all very lucky they don’t live in North Korea. In that country, rogues are often quick to meet their maker. Luckily, we don’t live in such lawless climes.

In South Africa, these supposed servants of the people and their minions have effected with reckless arrogance and ruthless efficiency their masters’ ambitious agenda of robbing generations of South Africans of current and future prosperity.

From the most “insignificant” of thefts, when a lowly constable stops you on the road to extort “a cool drink”, to the daring train robbery of Transnet and the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) locomotives, to the pillaging of Eskom, certain individuals seem to have bred and nurtured the kinds of corruption that would have earned them death by hanging in places such as China or Julius Caesar’s Rome, where treasonous rulers were punished by the masses, with permanent consequences.

Generations of freedom fighters – organised in countryside impis and armed with stones and spears, and later with basic AK-47 rifles and eloquent, persuasive words – for centuries defied death to bring freedom to the land of the ancestors. With true self-sacrifice, many never saw the promised land. They perished in front of the barrel of their ruthless apartheid foes. But, given the true patriots that they were, the idea they died for did see the light of day. For not even the most sophisticated of weapons could stop an idea whose time was long overdue.

In contrast, today’s shameless league of lootocrats, masquerading as statesmen and aided by comrades in parliament and at Luthuli House, has over the space of 10 years handed the future to a different kind of colonialist. A small army of family-based colonialists seems to have taken control of the country and all it represents. In the process, former freedom fighters – heroes of the people – have become today’s sellouts. Villains. Oongcothoza (sellouts). Abathakathi (witches). Vhaloi (witches).

So looted are the assets belonging to the people that Eskom cannot even present financial results. Billions of rand must first be accounted for. But the masters of looting sleep easily in a comfort that is paid for with the people’s assets.

The Eskom saga is likely to lead to further credit downgrades of both the sovereign and the entity itself. With almost R480-billion in outstanding debt, and the electricity to power any national endeavour, Eskom is the life and engine of the economy. Snuff out its light, and woe betide the nation.

Transnet and Prasa are limping along with impaired balance sheets, while entrepreneurs in the land cannot move their goods for profit. SA Airways and SA Express are barely flying. And PetroSA has dried up. These companies and others have, to all intents and purposes, been looted to the point of insolvency.

Only with real changes in the political administration, followed by layers of investigations headed by retired judges, will we be able to get out of this morass of corruption and destruction. The former freedom fighters, heroes of the people, have become today’s sellouts.

Sikonathi Mantshantsha is deputy editor of the Financial Mail