Same old, same old ...
The reality of the Covid-19 pandemic has become the world’s worst nightmare.
Each one of us has tried to isolate ourselves as best we can, fearful of a horror beyond our ken.
The world for a heartbeat, one felt, forgot about politics, racial animosity, Brexit and whatever else as it shared a common threat to its very existence and humanity.
For a brief spell, media headlines were all about Covid-19.
Forgotten were the horrors of unbridled hatred, inhumanity, the awful scourge of racism, global warming, starvation — a world at war with itself !
Our Sodom and Gomorrah existence became irrelevant when humankind faced a common threat to its very existence.
And now?
As restrictions are eased, the awful aftermath of the lockdown fiasco manifests itself, leaving our economy in tatters and mass starvation staring us in the face.
But despite being told the worst is still to come, our people are at each other’s throats again.
Never in the history of our world was a revolutionary force so ill-equipped to assume the offices of governance as the ANC were in 1994.
The abhorrent apartheid years deprived generations of black South Africans of an education.
The country has reaped the sins of its fathers as the abject lack of leadership and expertise in the ANC has now been confirmed in just about every facet of our country.
The only thing worse than abysmal leadership is no leadership. As evidenced more and more lately, President Cyril Ramaphosa is governed by a collective made up of an uneducated, unenlightened and irresponsible electorate.
Ramaphosa is desperately trying to stay in power and rid himself of the nest of vipers surrounding him, spreading their poison to destroy him.
It must be remembered, as the second in command of this country under Jacob Zuma for about nine years, it goes beyond comprehension that he was not complicit in destroying our country in the first place.
One must, therefore, question his morality and leadership capability to seek the solutions we so desperately need now.
In the beginning stages of the coronavirus lockdown, one felt at last that Ramaphosa was showing some spirited leadership.
Regrettably and so predictably, this was not to be.
Rudderless, our government is floundering in all directions.
The education fiasco is indicative of just about every government department.
One would have said Ramaphosa would have brooked no dissent from any of his minions — and least of all Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
He had the opportunity to unite opposition leaders and dissenters to his governance into a singular unity to combat the life-and-death threat of the pandemic.
But no ... as DA’s John Steenhuisen so aptly said in parliament, “he had the opportunity but blew it!”
The present scenario is the ideal spawning ground for egotistical radicals to seek personal gain.
Julius Malema in his sumptuous home and dressed in designer clothes/overalls is the exact antithesis of the poor, starving, desolate people he professes to speak for.
Malema lashes out in populist racial rhetoric.
He advocates remaining on level 5 even if it means collapsing the “white economy”.
He and his party have no logical alternatives for SA, and to be relevant he keeps on beating the hoary old racial scapegoat.
And nearer to home, our shambolic Nelson Mandela Bay municipality — which seems to have lost all control over its accounting procedures, owing billions in unpaid creditors and in its insensitive understanding of the present crisis — now proposes obscene increases in rates, water and so on.
It is flogging, as it were, a very dead horse!
The pathetic life-and-death debacle of our flagship Livingstone Hospital is too horrendous to even contemplate.
It is the same old, same old. Reflecting on the last few months of lockdown, I find no highlights.
The days meld into one and often I have wondered what day of the week it is.
A salutary lesson I learnt was to live in the moment instead of living in a state of perpetual anticipation, somehow bracketed in time frames — doctor’s appointment, orchestra practice, visitors, holiday, Saturday sport, Sunday church ... every day broken into some “event” or other.
Involuntarily living in anticipation of some happening or other, life passed me by.
Perhaps there is a personal lesson for all of us to accept that which we cannot change in the foreseeable future; to distance ourselves from the shambles surrounding us; to take time off and live in the moment.
As quoted from the Sanskrit: “Today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.”