New connections must be forged achieve prosperity

The bedfellows of corruption, crime, and violence have made it to the headlines once again. The Sunday Times published an article, establishing a link between the assassination of hero top cop, Lt-Col Charl Kinnear, and the illegal guns that end up in the hands of gangsters around the country.

If there is anyone who still harbours the fantasy that corruption is harmless and that it is not as bad as murder, perhaps they should repent right now. If there is anyone who still entertains the evil notion that winning elections is all about access to state resources and maintaining a certain facade of running a government, I hope reality has dawned on them. However, I suppose this would require that they care in the first place.

According to the article, Kinnear was on the verge of a breakthrough in his investigations into illegal firearms.

The director at Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, Mark Shaw, paints a grim picture of the dangers honest police officers such as Kinnear face in their admirable work.

The successful completion of Kinnear’s investigation into illegal guns and gangs is particularly dangerous as it involves high profile figures in the criminal underworld and in the police service.

“It’s literally life-threatening for them. This would put leading criminal figures and police officers in jail if the case went ahead,” Shaw said.

“The bottom line is that highlevel corruption over a number of years and several attempts to clean it have not borne any fruit. Kinnear stumbled onto this and began the process of investigation and now he is dead.”

What Shaw is saying is not new. We have been battling the scourge of corruption for decades. In fact, while we hoped the change of regimes from the corrupt apartheid government to a democratically elected government would eliminate corruption, our lived experience indicates that we have failed so far.

Instead, the violence which used to be unleashed by the then government in an assortment of direct measures onto its citizens is now being unleashed by this government in a slightly different assortment.

The violence of neglect and dereliction of duty, the violence of corruption and criminal collusion, and the violence of perpetuating poverty are the poisonous dishes we are fed every day. Surely the ruling ANC must know that this cannot last forever.

While headlines like these are splashed across the front pages of our newspapers, and thank God for our papers, we are losing confidence.

The tragedy is that we may be losing much more than confidence in the ANC government. I fear that we may be losing confidence in ourselves. And once that is gone, it’s game over. So what is at stake here is far more than most of us can imagine.

The difficult choice we have to make therefore is between reclaiming our government and establishing entirely new connections across SA which will render this regime and all its dirty networks needless.

But both propositions are difficult to execute. Reclaiming our government may require a vote away from the ANC, and we know how difficult that has been.

At the same time, establishing new networks requires high levels of trust among citizens, and we know how the ANC government has decimated trust among us.

In the end, whatever choice we make will require long term commitment and consistent execution. However, the demands of our predicament are rather urgent.

A third choice is still possible though.

This would require a concerted attempt to both reclaim our government and at the same time establish new connections across the country. It is not any less difficult than the other two choices and perhaps more complex.

It is not a job for any one man or organisation, perhaps all the better so no-one could claim the hero status which has rendered the ANC irrelevant.

It is a mission for people and organisations who truly love this country and would like to see us living in peace and prosperity.

These new connections would have to cover every aspect of South African life from economic, cultural, social to spiritual connections.

The economic connections would have to play a prominent role here.

This is the only area of society that requires participation from all people, producing and exchanging products and services across the nation and beyond. Who will have time for violence and dysfunction in a gainfully engaged nation?

The tragedy is that we may be losing much more than confidence in the ANC government. I fear that we may be losing confidence in ourselves