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I'm tired...

I’m tired.

I’m tired of feeling helpless.

I’m tired of feeling enraged.

I’m tired of feeling hopeless, as I’m forced to watch what still has the potential to be a great country, a shining light in an increasingly dark and gloomy world, skirt the edge of the abyss of failed statehood.

What the hell happened? How did it come to this? How could we have allowed it to get this far?

I mean, seriously, I feel like I’m in a nightmare and can’t wake up.

Its way past time we, as a nation, black and white, woke up and took in the ghastly reality of the situation South Africa currently finds herself in.

For heaven’s sake, we have a president with not even a full primary school education and an astounding “Big Man” complex, brokering R1-trillion nuclear deals with a very Soviet-esque (and increasingly repressive and expansionist) Russia, behind the backs of everyone this project is supposed to be benefitting, and for whose grandchildren will still be footing the bill, for years to come. Have we all gone nuts?

And let’s not forget to mention Number 1’s penchant for periodically (some may say continuously - he’s just good at hiding a lot of his shenanigans well) manage to enlarge his harem, his brood of greedy Zum-lings and his already densely-feathered nest (read: compound). All at tax-payers expense, I might add (that’s me, and you, and anyone else who has ever bought as much as a chocolate bar at the local garage). Do bear in mind that our venerable leader is able to accomplish all these feats of lecherous gluttony, simultaneously. Quite an achievement, wouldn’t you say? Who says education is important? About as important as morals and integrity, I guess. I’m suitably impressed.

If Zuma had to take part in a figurative version of one of those gag-inducing American hotdog-eating contests (you know the ones, usually won by awesomely talented - and ironically, very skinny - Asian guys), he’d win by a country-mile. No one has individually been able to spend our money quicker or more wastefully than he. Although, his bloated, pig-sty of a cabinet is making a good go of it. They won’t beat the master, but it sure looks like they’re going to try. R30 billion rand in wasteful and irregular expenditure?  R30-BILLION?

Oh, sorry.

That figure should read R30 246 000.

Wouldn’t want Jake to think his contribution to the Comrades’ Retirement Fund (read: withdrawal from the piggybank of social and economic welfare) is unappreciated.

Don’t worry “Mr President”; your generosity has not gone unnoticed. We would want to thank you personally, but you refuse to speak to us personally. Instead, you choose to cower in your compound (yeah, I said it again), and unleash your ass-kissing sycophants to defend you, including your oily larynx Mac Maharaj.

Seriously Mac, how do you manage to regurgitate so much crap with a straight face? 

It’s an astonishing thing to watch someone sell their soul piece by televised piece, as they try to defend the obviously indefensible. Mac just needs to hold out for a bit longer, though. Once the Secrecy Bill gets passed, he'll be as free to openly flip us the bird as his boss is.

This stinks. All the way up to the rafters. But hey, what do I know? I’m just one of those evil, previously advantaged racists who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. What do I know about what JZ went through during apartheid? He deserves everything he’s got, right? No, He doesn’t. We, however, deserve better. Much better.

In hindsight, the ship had already started sinking during the Mandela years, when the afterglow of ’94 began to wear off. Most of us seem to have managed to reach the lifeboats in time. And as we bob around on the rough swells, the sight of our glowing potential disappearing below the waves is not a pretty one.

Never mind, that’s ok. At least Jake (and his extended menagerie) had a good time of it, prancing around, giggling, and all the while using his machine gun to spray bullet holes with reckless abandon at the flimsy sides of our inflatable life boat. The water is just about lapping our chins by now and Jake will pause just long enough to change clips.

But, I digress. Back to the Kangaman’s entourage of toadies. Parliament. Oh, where to even begin.

Suffice it to say, the latest goings-on in the hallowed halls of Parliament have lowered my hopes for the future of the human species by a few notches.

Honestly, out of the roughly 70million people (I stand to be corrected on figures) in South Africa, are these the best we could come up with? These bird-flipping, insult-hurling, wastes of public funds. Surely mature heads would be better suited to guiding our fragile economy, and even more delicate democracy, through the stormy seas of an increasingly demanding and hostile world.

With scenes akin to a macabre amalgamation of circus sideshow, fascist propaganda film (riot-geared stormtroopers included), pre-school sandpit disagreement (tantrums also, pathetically, included), and all-round farce, I hang my head in shame and come to the conclusion that we are royally screwed. All of us.

No surprise though. This country is being run into the ground. None of the parastatals are functioning as they should. The driving force of our economy, Eskom, is on the verge of collapse, whilst it’s absurdly well paid executives naively assure us (in their ever thickening fog of denial) that they are in control and everything will magically be ok. Sorry, boys and girls. Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.

Of course, the list goes on:

-        Apparently our water and sewage systems are also way past the point of major concern, and in the not too distant future Jake’s fire-pool may be the only source of potable water in the country, unsullied by everyone else’s bowel contents (although, he could very well be the biggest floater of all!!)

-        We have a national airline that has had to be bailed out by government (again, read: us) to the tune of millions of rands, on numerous occasions, and what do we have to show for it – a revolving board room door where empty promises accompany those who enter, golden handshakes precede those who depart, and the same nauseating miasma of incompetence and self-enrichment lingers.

-        Our education system has reached a point where we are almost regressing as a society. To set the bar so low, to accept or (disturbingly) encourage mediocrity, to fake qualifications. What are we teaching or children? It’s ok to be right 30% of the time, no need to strive to better ourselves, no need to work hard for something and enjoy the pure feeling of satisfaction when that goal is achieved? Just lie and con your way to the top, kids, and lie some more when you’re caught out. Because that’s what role models are made of.

-        As a practicing doctor in a state hospital, I can say with first hand certainty, that this government does not give a flying shit about the common man, and the level of all-round incompetence is evenly matched by the level of plain-old apathy. I’ll leave this particular peeve right here, before this rant gathers too much tangential momentum.

-        We also seem to have some of the shadiest characters imaginable directing the course of our country. Are we really so insane as to trust the likes of Jacob Zuma, Bheki Cele, Jessie Duarte, Tony Yengeni, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Tina Joemat-Pietersen, Lindiwe Sisulu and all the other incompetent half-wits with our future?  These are all people (and I use that term very loosely) who have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that they care for none but themselves, and that they clearly have no idea what they are doing. (And before all the whine-mongers start wailing at the intolerable blackness of it all, I don’t regard Helen Zille or Pieter Mulder that highly either. Politicians stink equally, be they chocolate or vanilla)

Ladies and gentlemen, I beg of you – WAKE UP!!

It’s time we threw off the blinkers of the past (apartheid-card users, I’m talking to you) and accepted this bullshit for the steaming pile of bovine excrement it is. We’re in the twilight of our democracy’s youth, and we should start acting like the adults we are supposed to be. This is not a black-and-white thing. This is not rich-or-poor thing. This is a South African thing. We are all sinking together.

We can’t allow our future to be dictated  to us by people (again, used loosely) who are obviously not capable of running a government or maintaining an economy, and who, even more disturbingly, seem to feel that it is their given right to gorge themselves on other peoples’ money without having to answer for it.

We need to find the will and courage to take back our destiny.

Or, we can just sit back like frogs in a pot, enjoying the bubbling jacuzzi, while South Africa burns around us.

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