Dear Mr President
As you polish and practise delivering your State of the Nation Address to us on Thursday evening, allow me to make a few suggestions. I know this is highly presumptuous of me, but at this point in time, I am no longer sure that you are as in touch with ordinary South Africans as you need to be.
Although I choose ethical leadership over party political affiliation, I have openly sung your praises before, and that’s because I believe you to be a decent human being with good intentions, but who inherited a rudderless ship punctured full of holes that many are loathe for you to plug.
But I do believe that you have allowed yourself to become so distracted by those battles that you no longer have the goal posts in your sights. I suspect that the snake-pit of recurring crises have been keeping you busy; so much so that doing the right thing may have taken a bit of a back seat in favour of the survival of your legacy, in both the ruling party and the country.
I’m afraid to say that unless something drastic is done soon, the annihilation of both your legacy and the ANC’s continued rule is a virtual certainty.
Mr President, we have reached the point of despair, where your people are fondly reminiscing about the dark days of apartheid. I overheard an old man say the other day that these are the “very darkest of times in living memory, and the lowest my ANC saviours had ever sunk”.
He continued to say that he couldn’t in good conscience “throw away another vote to the ANC”, when all that it’s brought him is greater misery and uncertainty than he experienced under apartheid.
I understand completely this old man’s sense of hopelessness that has him longing for the cruellest of times that your ANC supposedly delivered us from. At least back then, the battle lines were clearly drawn and we knew where we stood and who the enemy was. But now the enemy is disguised with good intent, while facilitating a feeding frenzy of greed and self-enrichment.
As I’m sure you know Mr President, most of your older electorate vote for you with their hearts, not their heads; driven by the nostalgia of the promise of freedom; seduced by the joint trauma of our past and unable to let go. It’s this romanticised history that your party continues to exploit. But we have all seen the numbers after every election
The ANC’s actions and inactions are slowly peeling the rose-tinted cataracts off the eyes of the masses. The only logical outcome is an eventual regime change by vote, which could result in the kind of political violence that nobody wants or deserves.
It is therefore incumbent on you to make the brave decisions that will propel us forward as a nation, and if that also happens to keep the ANC in power, then so be it. As I’ve said before, most people don’t really care who’s in charge, as long as their lives can carry on peacefully and relatively even keeled.
Mr President, I beg you to stop the appointment of inexperienced and unskilled ANC cadres. You wouldn’t employ these people in your companies, why put them in charge of whole departments of the country.
We have enough skill in the country to fix Eskom and load shedding in a heartbeat. What is needed is the political will to drive through the changes. It’s time you look into a hybrid model that sees a majority of Eskom privatised for a set period, in which private enterprise will be allowed to recoup their investment, before handing it back. This is not rocket science, but it does require a strong spine.
The same determination needs to go into solving our crime issues and our education system. We have the resources and there’s still enough time, but just barely.
Because that old man harking back to days long gone is but one example of what I suspect is a prevailing sentiment, and once that sentiment takes hold properly, then you may end up being the very last ANC president of the country.