The SA dream has lost its lustre and meaning

AS WE head for the most crucial local government election in our history, it becomes a moral obligation on all of us to cast our vote, which will decide the fate of our beleaguered nation.

The stench of corruption is so pungent that it has poisoned the political atmosphere. Accountability requires that those who have been unmasked must be permanently banned from entering the political arena.

The acrid smoke of brazen corruption has enveloped our entire land in a deadly haze, under a fog of deception, that has emasculated our hard-worn democracy. After riding high on the waves of democracy that began with freedom in 1994, recent disturbing and painful events in governance unsettle those whose dreams of a country free of rampant and audacious corruption are shattered by leaders who are in utter denial. We are grimly witnessing the strangulation of our democracy.

We continue to be saddled by a failed generation of leaders driven by the will for power.

The South African dream, as espoused by Nelson Mandela and the founding fathers of our democracy, has lost its lustre and meaning. As we take leave of 2021, polarisation seems to be threatening our democracy and our politics, turning compromise and comity into quaint relics of the past.

Will the ANC’s vaunted power still hang over our collective heads like a Sword Of Damocles? We claim to be a democracy: this line has become a much-ridiculed and much-criticised cliché. The ideals of democracy that conquered racism, ushered in freedom, wealth and prosperity to the poor, got trounced by the current leadership.

Our idealism has lost its flame. The grotesque day-to-day revelations of corruption gnaws at it until it vanishes. The void left is filled with defeatism. The whole edifice of our democracy, its glory and grandeur, stand crippled beyond repair or redemption.