“I have never seen a place like this in my life. They enjoyed super luxury while we suffered,” handkerchief seller BM Chandrawathi told Reuters as she tried out a plush sofa in the first-floor bedroom of Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaska.
Chandrawathi was part of thousands who stormed and overran the presidential palace on Sunday to protest that country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
Massive government debt, rising oil prices and a shortage of foreign currency stalling the import of essential items have forced the collapse of the Rajapaska’s administration. The culmination was the surreal storming of his palace.
The people suddenly realised they have collective power to eject out-of-touch leaders who no longer serve them.
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Meanwhile, back at home we are also facing crises on several fronts. The lives of youngsters, some as young as 13, are being prematurely ended at taverns — places they should not be frequenting in the first place.
We have been without constant supply of electricity for the third week running because of an illegal strike and past mismanagement of the power utility.
The price of petrol has skyrocketed, triggering a domino effect of rising food and other prices.
Our cities, towns and townships are collapsing under administrative neglect by municipalities that have no clue what they are doing. Villages hardly get looked at except in speeches when politicians lie about focusing on “rural development”.
Criminals are running rampant; schools and hospitals are in a state of shock; the skilled are leaving, while the rest can barely hang on.
Where’s the leadership, you might ask?
We are being taken for fools by a government that is fast losing its last shred of credibility. President Cyril Ramaphosa has put together a cabinet whose key members compete every other week for the title of village idiot.
We are being taken for fools by a government that is fast losing its last shred of credibility. President Cyril Ramaphosa has put together a cabinet whose key members compete every other week for the title of village idiot.
His police minister, Bheki Cele, is an embarrassing buffoon who should be kept far away from normal people. He conducts these cheap, cringe-a-minute public relations stunts at almost every major crime scene — having arrived after the fact — verbal diarrhoea spilling out of his pie hole. When he’s not yelling “Shaarrup” at activists questioning his empty rhetoric, he is telling communities ravaged by senseless killings that the police won’t hire tattooed people because they “have a tendency of being a gangster”. The incredulity of it all!
While Cele emits hot hair from his soapbox, the police are failing to do basic investigative work and bungling cases. Criminals who mow down tavern revellers are literally getting away with murder.
The two ministers responsible for the management of energy and public enterprises, whose job it is to manage Eskom and energy security, squabble like teenage girls at a sleepover. Gwede Mantashe, the minister of energy, says he cannot be blamed for Eskom’s poor performance because it is run by his public enterprises counterpart, Pravin Gordhan.
It’s an open secret that these two can’t stand each other. When a journalist tells Mantashe that in the performance agreement he signed with the president, he pledged to be held responsible for energy security, he questions how members of the media get hold of these agreements. They are actually public documents.
Gordhan has been having bizarre meltdowns of late. First, he issued a statement using the public enterprises department letterhead to accuse media of being fed lies about discussions that took place on Eskom at an ANC NEC meeting. Two days later he gets verbally attacked by students while trying to deliver a talk at the Wits School of Governance. Again, on a departmental letterhead, he accuses the unruly students of working for his political enemies. “The clique was clearly briefed by political forces intent on creating disruption and instability in SA. Their aim was not to engage but intimidate us.”
I know it’s ANC election year, but Gordhan’s paranoia is on a different level altogether. Students heckle political leaders all the time; grow a thicker skin, sir!
Don’t even get me started on Fikile Mbalula, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, Lindiwe Sisulu, Nathi Mthethwa, Blade Nzimande, Thulas Nxesi, David Mahlobo, Zizi Kodwa and other useless ornaments in Ramaphosa’s cabinet.
Then there’s the president himself, forever missing in action. He has promised us a big announcement this week on the energy crisis. I’m not holding my breath.
In the French Revolution, the people stormed the Bastille, invaded the royal palace and publicly guillotined King Louis XVI and his outrageous wife Marie Antoinette.
I read somewhere that the angry mob that stormed the presidential palace in Colombo, Sri Lanka, drank the deposed president’s whisky, slept on his bed, took a dip in his swimming pool and jogged on his treadmill.
People eventually run out of patience. I wonder what our fed-up masses will find when they storm Mahlamba Ndlopfu and those posh ministerial homes at Bryntirion Estate in Tshwane.
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