Our democracy is crippled beyond repair

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 toxified 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 land in a deadly haze of deception that has emasculated our hard-won democracy.

We are grimly witnessing the strangulation of our democracy.

We are saddled with a failed generation of leaders driven by the will to have 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, turning compromise and comity into quaint relics of the past.

Will the ANC’s vaunted power hang over our collective heads like a Sword Of Damocles? We claim to be a democracy, but this line has become a ridiculed and criticised cliché.

The ideals of democracy that conquered racism and 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 gnaw at it till it vanishes. The void left is filled with defeatism.

The edifice of our democracy, its glory and grandeur stand crippled beyond repair or redemption.

FAROUK ARAIE |