EFF reflects the state of our nation

THURSDAY night gave South Africa – and indeed, the world – a true picture of the actual state of our nation.

Proceedings were successfully disrupted for more than 90 minutes by the now tedious, petulant and opportunistic distractions offered by the opposition EFF until Speaker Thandi Modise eventually took the unprecedented step of suspending the House.

When the House reconvened, the EFF – denied their headlines of being forcibly ejected – returned to walk themselves out of Sona 2020.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s eventual address, one of the most significant of his tenure thus far, struck all the right notes acknowledging the myriad crises that beset us and the looming catastrophes that could overwhelm us – but that has always been our perpetually shocked president’s strong point.

Implementing those plans is another matter.

The most urgent: freeing up Eskom’s monopoly on the grid and making it easier to start businesses and create jobs are measurable, while the imminent release of the Commission of Inquiry report into the PIC could be another jolt to our sovereign inertia.

As for the rest, far too many of those fingered in myriad corruption reports and commissions – many of them in the upper echelons of the ruling ANC – remain at large; free, ironically, to lecture us on the societal ills of corruption.

The EFF, an 11% party whose leaders stand accused of stealing an entire province into administration and brazenly looting a bank founded on the deposits of grandmothers, can hold an entire parliament to ransom.

That is the true state of our nation: a society desperate for a better life for all, only to be held hostage by false radicals whose only principle is the politics of the stomach – self-preservation and self-enrichment.

Until the other 89% can find the resolve to grab this problem by the throat, the prognosis for this country is not good.