Cheering of budget speech misplaced

Your headline read “Taxed to death” and as we now cope with increases adding to our woes, I noticed the ANC parliamentary members cheering Malusi Gigaba, pictured, as though he had released a genie out of a bottle, instead of reflecting on their dismal performance of allowing the manic Jacob Zuma years to take the country to the verge of failure.

What a poor lot they are. Our recovery will be a prolonged affair and could require the help of the IMF to rescue us from total collapse.

Raising taxes is a simple solution, but the elastic can only stretch so far and the proven mismanagement by the ANC is likely to continue, unless President Cyril Ramaphosa takes a chainsaw to his Cabinet, ridding it of dead wood.

The overloaded civil service needs pruning, our SOEs need restructuring. So much was allowed to go unchecked because the ANC bench in parliament didn’t take their responsibility seriously.

Also, they lacked the moral fibre to question Zuma’s failure to stem the corruption that he allowed to go unabated, and now we suffer the consequences – yet they applaud the austerity measures being introduced to avert a financial crisis.

The only road to recovery will be to rid the country of ANC control and elect fresh minds to save South Africa. Ted O'Connor, Albertskroon

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