Winter of discontent …

I live in Cape Town where the last few days have been cold and windswept … bleak or bucolic could be other adjectives to describe the weather but also the psyche of the nation. We have lived through over 100 days of varying restrictions euphemistically termed “Alert levels” determined by a Command Council of politicians, we are again subject to power outages euphemistically terms “Load shedding” rather than power failures defined according to various “levels” of severity, today it is level 2 and finally here in the Western Cape while the rains pours down there are water restrictions at “level 3”. It seems to me we are a country of levels and none of them purports to be something good.
Hospitals in Gauteng, the economic engine of South Africa, are currently being swamped with patients suffering from COVID-19 infections, ill-prepared despite having over 100 days to prepare for the surge that was predicted in March of this year by the team of experts assembled in what is termed the Ministerial Advisory Committee. It would seem more effort was placed on the restriction of the citizenry with many often illogical edicts from Ministers who seemed to many more interested in enforcing their will over the citizens rather than focusing on what was essential to address the pandemic.

The country has over the last decade experienced levels of fraud and corruption that have drained the State coffers to an extent that South Africa has entered the realm of so-called “junk status” in the eyes of financial rating agencies To add insult to injury it was revealed that the Commission to investigate the State Capture that resulted in the fraud and corruption that cost the country billions of rands and damaged its reputation has cost the beleaguered tax payer over R700 million and counting. Despite the prolonged hearings with shocking revelations not a single culprit has been prosecuted to date. It is small wonder that the psyche of the country is bleak and bucolic.
The COVID-19 lockdown has cost the country dearly with, in addition to deaths related to the virus, the demise of businesses across the country worsening an already high unemployment rate affecting  particularly the youth. This bodes ill for young people entering the world of work hoping to find gainful employment. An already inordinate proportion of South Africans are dependent on State grants for survival funded by a shrinking tax base a contrast that has been made more stark by the economic chaos that has followed the lockdown of the country’s commercial activities. I am personally aware of several businesses that have closed resulting in many good people losing the means to earn an honest livelihood. People who have created wealth that funded public services through taxation of businesses that will be no more.
I could continue with the litany of ills that have befallen South Africa since the heady days of 1994, the first democratic elections and the optimism that gripped South Africans lead by Nelson Mandela. So many opportunities have been lost in the decades since then, but that is the reality that we have no option but to accept. I would argue that it is time for a change of attitude from Government to become truly of the people, by the people, for the people, to quote Abraham Lincoln. Are our leaders listening to the people that they govern? Really listening to the people … listening to the mother whose hungry child is crying but whom she cannot feed, listening to the honest business person who has to tell his staff that they no longer have a job, listening to the family who do not have roof over their head … I could go on … just listening! Over recent months it does not seem to have been so.
We cannot blame someone or something else for the country’s ills, which are largely of our own making. The COVID-19 pandemic with its tragic consequences could not have been predicted but the country should have been in a so much better position to weather the pandemic. Clearly it was not and with the advent of the pandemic this has been painfully evident. One cannot minimise the challenges but utilising the analogy of a patient presenting to a doctor with an illness I would argue that while we have a self-evident diagnosis of the failure of the State to meet the legitimate expectations of its citizenry, before the country can proceed to address the cure, denial must be overcome. A frank assessment is that over 25 years after the democratic transition this country should not be where it is today and while the impact of the legacy of the past should not be minimised, it alone is not the cause of the ills that we now face. Education, health services, basic infrastructure, housing and the provision of utilities should all have progressed far further than they have if all the resources available had been utilised to the maximum benefit of all rather than for a few.
Returning to the analogy of a patient, the cure for the ills faced by South Africa, the cause of the bleak and bucolic psyche of the nation, is honest, competent and participatory government based on the principles of honesty, merit and service to the people with an intense intolerance of incompetence, dishonesty and greed. South Africa has abundant resources both in its people and its natural resources. The time is now to harness these resources to take the country and all its people forward to a future that it deserves!