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It is with great disgust that we have learnt about the actual financial cost of corruption over the last 20 years.
R700 Billion has been unremorsefully squandered by those in power at whim, with absolute impunity.
Corruption isn’t a new thing to South Africa, this has been going on even before the ANC came into power. The thing that makes this so despicable is the very people who could have been uplifted by this money, are the ones still suffering in the streets.
Now before we all start the blame game and point fingers at the majority who vote in the same corrupt lunatics repeatedly, perhaps we should look inwards for a bit.
The country looks on in disgust every time we see violent protests that end in the destruction of property and injury to those in the crossfires. By no means am I saying that those are the methods that anyone should employ to make themselves heard. What I am saying is, by large the black community at least takes some action against perceived injustices, legitimate or not.
I am the typical definition of an arm chair activist, where I’m all too happy to post comments and express my dismay on all the ills of our country. Besides joining the campaign to bankrupt SANRAL and boycotting SABC, I have never actually stood up and acted in protest against the corruption and steady decline of our otherwise beautiful country. I keep telling myself that things will change, that the Thuli Madonselas of this country will get it right. God knows they try. They fight an uphill battle on a daily basis.
I’ve come to realize though (be it a couple years too late), that people like Thuli Madonsela can’t stand alone. When I say alone, I mean we all seem to be on the RA-RA committee by backing them just on social media and various other platforms, but we need to literally stand up for them and for ourselves. We have to be the ones marching to the Union Buildings demanding what is right for the greater good of South Africa.
It is not meant to be easy. It takes mass participation and the shedding of our general apathy, changing our mind sets from someone else will do it to wanting to be the ones doing something. We have to be at the front line of making our politicians sit up and take notice. As it was so eloquently put in the movie V for Vandetta, “the people should not fear their own government, the government should fear it’s people”.
Perhaps we all need to shoulder some of the blame for allowing things to get as bad as they have. We've allowed Eskom to lie to us for too long. We've allowed the flagrant disregard of law openly displayed by our President and his ilk. We've allowed our parastatals to be run into the ground, which have become a never ending vacuum of our tax money.
Even if things miraculously changed for the better tomorrow, it would still be years before half the damage done, is repaired.
We can’t wait for someone to do something, if we aren’t willing to do something ourselves.
How and where we will start is open to suggestion...
