Plumbing Africa April 2020 | Page 66

66 LAST WORD REVISITED! It’s been hell! By Rory Macnamara This sentiment best describes how business feels about the last couple of years and many owners have made this comment without the slightest hesitation. Do it, Mr President! I recently rustled up Alex Boriane’s book, published in 2014, titled What’s gone wrong? On the brink of a failed state? The book looks at facts and is not just one man’s interpretation of a situation. He goes back to the ANC in exile which was a 30-year period and identifies with one aspect which trails through the book and is as relevant today than it was. This is simply, the ANC’s almost Putinesque desire for power. The mantra during the exile years was ‘seizure of power’. After exile, it remained the same. Power was the name of the game – the desire to control everything as they felt this is what the struggle was all about. Everything that moves, government wants to control. At the risk of boredom, look at the SOEs, which we know how hopeless government and the ANC is at controlling. The Sunday Times (Feb 2, 2020) reported that ANC veteran and former top civil servant, Mavuso Msimang as saying, “Unless the current civil service structure is completely re-engineered to make it more professional and independent, the new dawn will be elusive.” Cadre deployment must stop; as well as this urge to control and hold power at all costs. The belief that power and control is a solution is wrong as it slowly erodes democracy and the very reason the ‘struggle’ existed. Our President needs to act now. As Mr Msimang so aptly states in the article, “I think everybody believes the President would come off better if he took the kind of action we are talking about. People voted for him in the last election in the belief that he would act against corruption and there would be a new dawn. It was with that ticket that the ANC won that election. The President shouldn’t forget that,” he concluded. Do it, Mr President! Appoint Ministers who are capable, clean up the civil service, give the Public Service Commission its teeth back and above all tell Luthuli House and the trade unions to be part of the development of this country, not the oppressors as they currently are. Look at unemployment. Look at the state of the nation generally. It is hell on earth – Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Bring back democracy. PA www.plumbingafrica.co.za @plumbingonline @plumbingonline @PlumbingAfricaOnline April 2020 Volume 26 I Number 02