Can Ramaphosa and company save SA?

OUR country is like a bather struggling in a rough sea and about to sink for the third time.

Now is the time to see if it is possible that the bather can be saved.

The hope is that he still can, despite the present situation.

And our hope must lie in Cyril Ramaphosa, Pravin Gordhan, some others in the ANC and/or the present opposition parties.

However, a word of criticism first.

Where were these members, sitting in parliament and drawing their large salaries, when the obvious rot was setting in?

When the arms deal was pending, sinisterly suspicious both in intent and in the players taking part, when the Guptas illegally flew in for their disgusting wedding celebrations, why were these members of parliament not prostrate in the aisles of the house, and kicking and screaming at what they surely must have seen was happening?

I do not mean literally screaming, although on second thoughts, why not?

Because anything, but anything, should have been attempted to stop the evil that was germinating in our beloved country.

But “the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on”.

What is past is past and now what lies ahead must be the focus for those who must mastermind the turnaround, if there is to be one.

Therefore, let us forgive those who fluttered when they should have blown like a tornado, and put our hopes and trust in them to restore the land into becoming the number one it well could be.

And to those who reaped the benefits of the despised apartheid system and then stampeded out of South Africa, some of whom hoping that the country would fail and thus justify their exit, may they elbow one another out of the way so that they can be the first to return.

If Alan Paton’s “beloved country” was crying during apartheid, it is again pitifully crying, but for very different reasons.

The lifesavers will have to swim swiftly and efficiently to ensure the safety of the drowning bather

Criticism and hope, Summerstrand, Port Elizabeth