I am utterly disgusted at how we have let things be in this country. After such a long struggle with one system of oppression, we seem to be at the edge of building another one. We as South African's, at the hands of the "leaders" we have elected into power, have seemingly let ourselves become a state that is on a free-sliding slippery slope. We are sliding into a state of utter dysfunction as one speaker has so poignantly stated.
On one hand we are building a nation whose resources seem are shared among the few elite groups and none to the people whose hands have worked tirelessly to build them. On the other hand, we seem to be quite OK with the way our "lady justice" has been raped...
The first point relates to the fact that on a daily basis the gap between the rich and the poor seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. The poor are getting poorer and richer getting richer. I am no proponent of Karl Max but I wonder if he had an important point to make when refuting the capitalist system of the day and predicting its demise.
CEO's of companies are getting fat bonuses for a job well done, and this job well done entails retrenching staff in thousands to cut cost... So this is where we are at, Let's pay this fat bastard a R10 million bonus because he managed to fire people to cut costs for us...That is our picture South African.
Our parastatals change CEO's faster than I change my underwear, and here is another appalling picture, we give them a golden handshake for inefficiency and squandering tax payers resources. Meanwhile people are going to bed on empty stomach's and more retrenched due to this corporates malpractices.
We build bridges to make way for the rich to travel without hindrance, but fail to put a roof over the poor's toilet, let alone building them proper shelters. We built useless toll gates instead of creating infrastructure in townships so that people don't have travel far for jobs.
Our priorities seem to be at best stupid and at their worst fucked up. Come on...
On the other hand, we are dingling our short digs and raping "lady justice" in full view. We have no shame that our justice system is at the helm of collapse and dysfunction.
Shabir Sheik...let me not even waste my time on this one...
But I would like to paint a picture at our own injustice... If I go and rob a bank for a couple of thousands so that I can take my kids to government schools ( with their 15th grade education system) and feed my family with whats left, I will be seen as a menace to society and thus needing the guillotine. But let some government official steal billions of our hard earned tax ( that needs to be distributed to the poor) they get a pat on the hand and are sent marching back into society to steal some more...
Problem: We are slowly building a society that is biased towards the rich and famous at the expense of the poor and the working class. We are creating a divided society prevalent in Karl Max's philosophical writings. A society of a few rich elites and multitudes of starving paupers.
This is a very fragile society we are building for God knows that there is nothing more dangerous than a starving man, whose dignity has been stripped by poverty. The society we are building is one that Max concluded that it will bring with it revolutions where the working class will say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!
I concur with Moeletsi Mbeki when he predicts that by 2020 South African will have it's Tunisia Day and I say, Moeletsi maybe you stretched the due date a little more than you should have...I give a lot less time than that. This will be the period when all of us watching with disgust and no action would say: WE COULD HAVE AVOIDED THIS. This would be the time when us with no private jets would not be able to flee the country and we'll be left to clean their mess.
I say South Africa, let's avoid this more dramatic revolution and start a subtle one by now demanding what we voted for. A just and equal society...where all men are equal before the law and no one is beyond reproach...
THE STRUGGLE MUST END!!! LETS BUILD OUR FUTURE BACK...
more would be done, of course, if people stopped voting ANC.
ReplyDeletei have an issue about the brouhaha regarding the open toilets "scandal" in cape town. the reality is, if you look hard enough, you can find "open toilets" in every single major municipality. the problem is, cape town is the only one not run by the ANC, and thus it's news.
where cape town dropped the ball, of course, was to actually say the following: this is our toilet budget for this informal settlement. we can build x number of toilets where we can cover them for you, or we can build x+y where we install the toilets and you cover them yourselves. [in other places, the first choice is not an option.] the people who actually bothered to pitch up to said meetings took the second option; and funnily enough most of the toilets did get covered.
all that aside, it is in the ANC's self-interest to a) not educate the populace very well and b) keep people who can remember apartheid alive just long enough to brainwash as many future generations as possible to keep any real opposition from forming. remember, half the people in the country are younger than 30 years old. this means that the people in their 40s and 50s need to be kept fed long enough to remind the young that there's no other real alternative than the party which as delivered "freedom".
during so many of the public protests that go on throughout the country, protesters say that they will not vote for the ANC unless their concerns are address. in their minds, if they're not going to vote for the ANC, then they are not going to vote at all -- which plays directly into the ANC's hands, as such people do not realise that the ANC will win anyway. in order to really get their point across, they must vote for someone ELSE if they don't vote for the ANC. but voter education movements in this country are willfully silent on this point.
this is sad because unless and until people are actually mentally willing and able to vote for someone who is not the ANC, the ANC will rule pretty much indefinitely, on a national level.
well agreed with most of the wonderfull point you make here Rob. I do agree with you that voter education is very crucial but the point I want to make more than anything else is that we must hold them "hostage" and make our demands heard somehow.
ReplyDeleteI am getting increasingly annoyed with people complaining about what the government is doing to us(myself included)but never really take the responsiblity to say that I am giving them the ammunition.
We have have been playing the Russian Roulette where the ANC is concerned. And we have reached a point where the last bullet is ejected. Need action right now.
But without sounding too crazy, we have as much been playing the Russian Roulette with private sector in South Africa. We have privatised and liberised our economy to a point where the working class is going to be pissed in the back. Yes I understand the importance of a liberal economy but given South Africa's unique dynamics this liberalisation is gonna come at a huge price.
Like I said, the CEO gets paid for firing people...In simple terms (and I am overestimating the simplicity here) we will give you that money that we were gonna pay people with as long as you manage to fire them...
Capitalism in it's purest form is failing us terribly. And we have greedy capitalist masquerading as socialists and deepening the wound in the process.
My point is quite simple: It's about time that we form MAJOR INTEREST GROUPS TO CHALLENGE GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE in a significant way. We need peope to boycott companies that are seemingly taking us for granted...
I am interested in hearing what other people have to say on this one...because I am neither Adam Smith nor am I am Karl Marx... I believe there is a finer grey line we are mising there...
capitalism would be doing more for the people of south africa if it weren't for the dreadful education sector.
ReplyDeletepublic education is such a joke here that it completely skews the world of business. 25% "paper" unemployment is going to be the case for the foreseeable future as a result.