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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
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April 2020 Volume 26 I Number 02