Taken a year ago when restaurants held a protest
Despair. There are families all over this country for whom this is a reality. We’ve been down this road before, last year. But this idiotic, corrupt government does not learn. Last year, they banned sales of alcoholic drinks and, just as in Prohibition USA, the illicit traders filled their pockets, while the country’s revenues suffered as they lost income from excise duties, VAT and other tax sources. Now, they have put their spear through the heart of so many producers, retailers, restaurateurs, hoteliers and all the people whom they employ.
Many of these people and businesses were at the brink, tottering on the edge of a cliff. They had mortgaged their houses, borrowed money to keep their doors open and their people employed. Now they are paying for the money stolen by Zuma, the Gupta brothers, Ace Magashule, Zweli Mkhize and a long list of others. We expect that many of them will not survive this final, cruel and wicked blow.
Why are we in this position? Not because of the victims of this draconic ban. It is because the ANC government is hopelessly incompetent and is stuck in the past with their stubborn adherence to failed philosophies that their mentors abandoned after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. They have failed to plan; politicians have stolen money that should have been used to build facilities and buy vaccines – indeed, in the early days of this crisis, they failed to get the orders in to secure the vaccines. We could have had a large number of active members of our work force vaccinated by now if they had allowed the private sector, which is good at management, to participate and use their facilities and expertise to do the jab. But state control is their abiding principle. The President asked us in his latest TV appearance to be careful about spreading bad, negative news but, sometimes, these things need to be said.
So the biggest hospital in Gauteng is out of commission after a fire, probably caused by poor maintenance, damaged a part of it, after which dithering and incompetent politicians failed to get it fixed. And then facilities erected in the first stages of the crisis were dismantled and not put back when news of a new variant of the virus broke a couple of months ago. And because Gauteng, the most populous province, is in such a mess, the rest of the country is being devastated by the consequent shock wave.
People will become ill and some will die because we are in this “third wave” of the virus; more will die because of starvation, suicide and other tragic after effects of this gross incompetence and criminality. More people than ever are voicing their anger at the corruption which has enriched a few politicians – and some immigrants from India – at the expense of the majority of our citizens. There is an election coming… Let’s hope that old, misplaced loyalties will be put aside. The challenge is to decide who will be best to fill the void.
But we do have good news. The architect of much of the evil which has blighted our lives for the last ten or so years, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, the man who sold our country down the river to the Guptas, has been made to answer for a small amount of the damage he has done. A small smack on the wrist, perhaps, with a 15 month jail sentence for contempt of court. Al Capone was toppled for tax evasion, a minor crime compared to all his others.
Zuma still has to answer for his contempt of our nation; there are numerous cases waiting for him in the courts. He has been dodging these serious accusations and court appearances for years. Maybe this is the key to the door which will see him and his cohorts being made to pay for all their other crimes. Whether we will ever recover from the damage he has done is another question which must still be answered. Maybe the political body in whose name the evil was done will suffer irreparable damage. It is dominated by two factions with a strong possibility that they will split. Sidelining Zuma's faction will be of enormous benefit to the country. We live in hope.
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