Ready to take up the baton to cleanse the ANC
As we close 2019 and head towards 2020, the ANC needs leaders who are dedicated to emulating the generation before them, leaders of Mavuso Msimang’s calibre.
We must all collectively work towards rebuilding the ANC and ensure that no-one in this land goes to bed without a meal and no-one is accumulating wealth through corruption. If corruption exists, we have to name and shame those tokoloshes and tortoises who are destabilising and killing the ANC vision of bettering our people’s lives. We can show them the door and send them to jail.
The ANC in 2020 must be totally different and new. It must cleanse itself of all dirt and destroy the wolves. I am part of the generation that is ready to take up this baton, to expose corruption and looting in the interests of our country and its people. Viwe Sidali, East London
Our silent emergency
Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, when delivering the 17th Nelson Mandela lecture, referred to those living in comfort zones as traitors. His scathing statement was made in a nonpartisan manner, castigating those in power for the ever-widening gap between the economic classes, which has created a major crisis in our unbalanced society.
Corruption in Mzansi is so pervasive that it can be labelled “the Aids of democracy”. It is destroying the future of this and the next generation.
The corruption epidemic in our country reflects the more general, and now legendary, climate of unethical leadership and bad governance found throughout the entire political spectrum.
After almost 26 years of democracy, our rich country remains a land of peasants and increasingly of landless urbanised populations living on the margins in squalid squatter camps bursting at the seams.
This is political dynamite waiting to explode in a seismic eruption. Our silent emergency comes in the form of pernicious killers: poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and massive unemployment. Current statistics do not capture the full and often intangible extent of massive human suffering and lost opportunities — they are shocking.
When democracy dawned in 1994, many hoped for liberty, prosperity and a new beginning. They have been cruelly disappointed. This situation is unacceptable.
It is also untenable. Mzansi is a powder keg that will envelope the landmass in a sea of flames. Vision, foresight and courage are urgently required to forestall cataclysmic events.
Farouk Araie, Johannesburg
We want those who want to work
Strikes can be a remedy where there is evidence of unfair labour practice, but when they are used to demand higher pay, justified or not, they can become very destructive.
This was the case a few years ago when postal workers went on strike: the Post Office never recovered, and it would be extraordinary if SAA survived the recent strike unscathed.
In a country where more than 30% of adults are unemployed, those who choose to strike instead of work should be replaced without delay by those who do want to work.
SA can be as great as the president dreams we can be — we have the labour force, we have the expertise and we have the natural resources. What we lack is someone with the will to lead, impervious to the politics around them.
We should all ask what we can do rather than how much we can take, and we must make better use of our resources.
Fred Haupt, Cape Town
Retrenchment hypocrisy?
Cyril Ramaphosa retrenched 22 workers on one of his farms because of a foot-andmouth outbreak and a poor economic climate. Yet he forces SAA, Eskom, the SABC and others to not reduce their bloated staff complements. Double standards, no?
Theo Roelofsz, Marble Hall
Check those guns
There is a national gun violence emergency. The 2019 national crime statistics show that guns are the leading cause of murder in SA (47% of murders in 2018/2019 were from gunshots and 31% were knife-related). In Gauteng, gunshots have overtaken motor vehicle accidents to become the leading cause of death in the province.
If the firearms amnesty that begins today is undertaken as part of a comprehensive strategy aimed at recovering and destroying the existing pool of firearms and limiting the flow of new firearms into communities, it holds the potential to begin reversing SA’s gun violence crisis.
One of the biggest concerns is whether the police have systems in place to ensure that guns and ammunition handed in during the amnesty are permanently removed from communities.
To verify the effectiveness of these systems it is absolutely critical that an official, independent observer with monitors in all provinces is appointed to ensure oversight and transparency and to identify problems as soon as possible so that these can quickly be dealt with.
Monitors must undertake unannounced oversight visits to police stations to check each station’s compliance with the amnesty process, verify that firearms and ammunition recorded as handed in are held in police stores, and ensure that guns and ammunition handed in are safely transported and destroyed.
Adèle Kirsten, Gun Free SA