I am getting so tired of all the looting.
I believe there are many people like me who try their damndest to be good citizens, stay positive and support our leadership.
But the ongoing stories of corruption makes it very hard.
I understand that President Cyril Ramaphosa has his hands full with the pandemic and I believe that he really wants to see the country advance.
So I am pretty sure that he feels as defeated as the rest of us when he hears of yet another of his charges caught with their long fingers in the cookie jar.
When I read that one of the executives we trust with overseeing the National Lotteries Commission bought a sprawling mansion using money allegedly misappropriated from the lottery, my boiling blood started to steam with anger.
As with other cases, an intricate web of deceit was allegedly woven to make it seem like the money was going to an NGO, which would be using it to build an old age home in Mpumalanga.
This is one of many scandals involving lottery monies being awarded to hijacked NGOs promising to build old age homes that never materialise.
How are we ever going to rid ourselves of these greedy, thieving civil servants, who are seemingly spending their days looking for ways to steal our money?
And they are doing so by the millions at a time, because the repercussions are laughable.
Never mind going to prison, they don’t even lose their party positions, or their standing in the business community.
And, of course, they always plead innocence.
But even if they are, surely they are smart enough to realise how it looks from the outside.
Accessing any government funding for anything – no matter how worthy – isn’t easy.
I know. I’ve tried.
So obviously it’s suspicious when a relative of a senior government employee gets a lucrative tender, or is granted millions in funding.
I would imagine that as intelligent custodians of our democratic institutions, they would guard against anything that even appears slightly suspicious; and that they would warn their relatives against exploiting their positions, or making it look like they are.
Crime is like any other business venture.
Perpetrators must weigh the possible consequences against the potential reward.
And in our case, the consequences are obviously not a severe enough deterrent, which is why they go ahead anyway.
Many know that if caught, they will remain in positions of power, with grassroots support within their political parties, but most importantly, among voters.
I’ve always wondered how it is that leaders whose morals are clearly questionable, can still have so much support.
But now I’ve come to understand that it is a combination of corruption-fatigue and the never-ending nature of it desensitising us to the point of leaving us hopeless and powerless.
What we need is a very broad political will to wipe the slate clean and start over.
Because the current top leadership won’t ensure severe enough punitive measures against thieving subordinates, just in case they are the ones fingered in the future.
As a result, the fed up electorate doesn’t even object anymore, because we know that no to little action will be taken.
Nothing and nowhere is safe, it seems.
And round and round we go, lowering the moral bar and blurring the ethics line with every new incident. We don’t even know where the line is anymore.
Made to believe that we can’t do anything about it, we have become the pawns, the funders and the spectators in an ongoing, national game of loot.