We will punish the ANC in 2019 poll

IREFER to “Ministers behaving badly — Mantashe” (September 4). Indeed we have a dysfunctional cabinet, when you listen to ministers Des van Rooyen, Faith Muthambi and Mosebenzi Zwane. Looking at how they were appointed, it shows that they are serving the master, Mr Jacob Zuma, not the Presidency, cabinet or this country. The president should fire them to save the ANC and government further embarrassment.

Right now the mining industry is having serious issues, but what Zwane is concerned with is the Guptas. The municipalities are starting with new councillors, but what Van Rooyen is worried about is the minister of finance.

These guys think we, the public, are stupid, or the “clever blacks” are stupid. We have seen through them.

I think the Guptas are putting pressure on them to do something. It is unfortunate that the national ANC does not see anything wrong with what is happening.

Comrades Gwede Mantashe, Zweli Mkhize and Cyril Ramaphosa, do something before it is too late. Gauteng voters voted for the ANC out of loyalty and already we are saying that we wasted our vote. Come 2019, we will only vote for the provincial ANC, not national, so Mr Zuma, the Zwanes, Van Rooyens and Muthambis, they must just forget about us keeping them in power for them to continue to embarrass us. — Concerned ANC member, Pretoria

Silence is significant

RE: “Zuma son weighs in on dad’s battle with Gordhan” (September 4).

I sometimes wonder who is running our country. Is it the president, his sons, the Guptas or one of the recent ministers, Mosebenzi Zwane and Des van Rooyen? I question the silence of the president on this matter as silence is consent. All these individuals seem to share a common interest. Shouldn’t there be a commission of inquiry on this matter, as it is becoming more apparent that the Treasury and political heads, including Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, are under siege? Surely this cannot be coincidental but a mission to loot the Treasury? Furthermore, why would the president’s family, including his son, conduct business with the parastatals? Isn’t this nepotism and conflict of interest? — Tshepo, Springs

Sun is going down on SA

“HAWKS squeeze Nene to help nail Gordhan” (September 4) refers.

I immigrated to South Africa from Germany in 1995, and bought an existing business. Since then I further invested, and created jobs.

The exchange rate goes one way, down and down. The rating agencies’ downgrade will come unless Zuma and his “partners” go. We now see the ANC central group around Zuma setting their hunters after Gordhan, who clearly does his job.

Good night, South Africa, we now embark on a one-way street, not in the right direction. Local municipal changes cannot change the “big policy”. — PJ Horn, Bryanston

Give teachers a break

“APP a warning to teachers: leave those kids alone” (September 4) refers. Would someone please design an app for teachers to report children. We have to endure all the abuse from children and their parents and have no leg to stand on. I’m going to look for another job, and I would not blame any teacher who did the same. I love my job, love my children (my own and yours), I work a 14-hour day and some little kid can report me without a hearing or finding out the truth. Children say and do a lot of things so they don’t get into trouble but the teacher is at fault. — Teacher, Witbank

Young voice of reason

IN response to Rebecca Mqamelo’s letter, “Is this what it takes to feel appreciated?” (September 4): I was so proud to read the mature letter from the head girl of Clarendon Girls’ High, my old school.

My mother made my matric dance dress, I did my own makeup, but I did have my hair done by a hairdresser for the first time in my life.

Reassuring to know the country will have young people like Rebecca to take over one day. — Jenny Vago, Johannesburg

Cops and robbers nostalgia

“SPIRALLING murder rate leaves cops flat-footed” (September 4) refers.

It seems that when one has a breakin or robbery, where one’s parents are so badly injured that a week in hospital is required, it only results in comments from the police such as “case number for insurance”,

Without turning a hair

“NOT just about hair — it’s values too” (September 4) refers. What happened at Pretoria High School for Girls is repugnant. It is inexplicable why it took more than 20 years for these racist activities to surface in the public domain. It would be naive to believe all this started this year. Why would black parents place their faith in a school that betrays the hard-fought values that came with liberation? Why have they been so reluctant to speak out for so many years? — R Lakhan, Pinetown

Stop splitting hairs

RULES concerning school uniforms and hair have been the scene of a low-level guerrilla war between school authorities and pupils (especially teenage girls) for at least the past 50 years.

I am the mother of three daughters, the eldest of whom sports a mass of blonde curls that “shame”, “lot of this going around” — and that’s the last that we heard from them, six months ago. Over the past 60 years we’ve gone from effective, free policing of unfenced homes with unlocked doors and children playing safely in the streets to expensive fencing, electric fencing, burglar bars, automated gates and garage doors, burglar alarm systems, high insurance premiums and expensive private security companies. — Robbie Lehman, by e-mail

Get the cleaners’ opinion

YOU recently featured Ihron Rensburg as the workers’ son who “pushed the University of Johannesburg into a new era” (“Ihron Rensburg is set to announce today that he will step down after 11 years on the job at the university”, July 17).

Any UJ cleaner could be forgiven for thinking about the warm klap she would be tempted to offer Rensburg if he were her own son. In November last year, Rensburg’s management promised to insource cleaners by July this year.

This winter, three cleaners died still waiting to be insourced. With the medical aid afforded to permanent workers of the university, they might BAD HAIR DAY: Sans Souci Girls’ High School pupils protest respond to no known discipline. She is nicknamed “the white lion” at university. Her matric photograph shows her with her hair tied in a ponytail but with masses of hair visible over both shoulders — unacceptable in some schools.

Restrictive rules of this nature are nonsense. It’s enough that hair should be “neat” and off the face, and I would urge all schools to consider a simple common sense approach applicable to all. — Tracey Babb, by e-mail still be alive. But now the notorious “bouncers” — one of whom brought an R5 rifle to school last year — are being insourced first, and the cleaners are to wait until next year.

Rensburg did push UJ into a new era — the era of farming students. By the end of his first term, UJ ranked among the worst three universities in the country on an index comparing the race and gender of graduates with the race and gender of first years. Bluntly, UJ’s graduates are collectively paler and maler than its intake.

Rensburg has dragged us into an era of securitisation of universities that is curiously reminiscent of the past. How disappointing that he learnt from his own spells in detention to mimic his apartheid captors. — Claire Ceruti, by e-mail