We must fight graft together
LL EYES will be on Parliament next week as Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan announces his much awaited budget. Here’s the news, “sinners” will pay. There’ll be bad news for smokers and tipplers, there always is – and that’s how it should be, actually.
The real question though, is how much taxpayers will be asked to cough up in the coming year.
It’s a very real question because the government has an ever increasing “to do” list and people – quite understandably – are getting restless.
We need our children to be educated, we need access to decent health care. Many of us still need water and lights provided to where we live and for our roads to be tarred (and for those that are tarred, to be maintained and the potholes filled).
But here’s the rub, the government already puts aside a chunk of money every year to do a lot of that. It’s not getting to the people it’s supposed to.
Instead, a handful of people have got exceptionally rich on government largesse, so much so that one province at least has had to be placed under the administration of national government because of a toxic mixture of incompetence and corruption.
The silent elephant lurking in the room is that Limpopo was perhaps just the tip of the iceberg and other provinces aren’t too far behind. The awful reality is that corruption and patronage are starting to threaten the miracle that we were once so acclaimed – and envied – for.
This week, President Jacob Zuma told Parliament that SA was the only country in the world with a programme to fight corruption. We certainly hope so. One thing perhaps that the president was slightly disingenuous with was his insistence that the government was uncovering all the corruption on its own and it was not being done only by the media.
If that was the case, the government would not be so insistent on implementing its controversial Protection of State Information Bill – which will effectively muzzle the media, any media, from reporting on corruption, mismanagement of state funds and abuse of power. We all know the truth is different. However, we have no doubt that if we all worked together; all the president’s men (and women) and all of our energies, in a singleminded war against corruption, there would be none. Now, that’s something to consider.
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