According to our beloved President Cyril Ramaphosa, a swallow makes a summer.
Of course there are people who benefited from the sprouts of service delivery over the past 30 years. Those who had no lights and water and today have access to these services may not complain much. Those who had no shelter and are today gifted with a free RDP house are unlikely to complain. No one can argue the pre-1994 era was better and things are at least different for millions of people.
While we have more rights than ever before (political power), is the pre-1994 era even a bronze standard against which we should compare ourselves? Have we made much of a dent in the economic freedom stakes?
These pockets of excellence: a good road here and there by the South African National Roads Agency, a new building that functions by public works, a public works programme for a small group of people, and social grants from about 2-million for a staggering 26-million parallel to a growing middle class of the black elite. You have to be blind not to acknowledge these things.
But does what has been so scantily delivered represent the state of our nation? If it was an exam and Ramaphosa the student, would we give him a pass mark? The clear answer has to be no.
A student does not pass because they sat for an exam or they got some answers right and the rest horribly wrong. Ramaphosa and the ANC are terrible students who have so hopelessly failed that they should not even bother repeating. They are like those students who never reached matric.
I want to focus on four crucial areas of systematic failure the state of the nation address (Sona) failed to acknowledge. They are education, economy, incompetence and corruption.
Education
The education system is a total farce, with about 500,000 students dropping out of school before matric. Yet the propaganda of the state is to ululate and say 82% of those who made it have passed — without one acknowledging that so many didn't even make it to matric. This failure is catastrophic as it has a domino effect on poverty levels and unemployment that is one of the highest in the world.
Another dramatic failure of this administration is that youth unemployment is so high that Ramaphosa had to create a fictional character, Tintswalo, whose experiences are diametrically opposed to those of most South Africans and adds insult to injury.
Economic meltdown
SA is going through an economic meltdown. This is a cardinal failure the Sona failed to take stock of. Whether you paint a picture through some of the highest interest rates ever to hit us, terrible inflation or rising poverty, all possible economic indicators are pointing in the wrong direction.
Overall economic growth has stagnated over the past decade that includes the “new dawn” of Ramaphosa. Anything in the economy that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong.
You can have an explanation for it, but it is insulting to try to fictionalise the reality through a "good story" fable rather than acknowledge the crisis we are in.
As if this is not enough, as soon as he promised — for the 100th time — that load-shedding would be a thing of the past, we are back to stage 6.
Celebrating mediocrity and shielding corruption
These two twin evils are all over the Sona. We have collapsing ports and harbours, railways and roads, as well as a dysfunctional health system, and somehow all these things were painted in “Tintswalo bliss”.
We are told potholes are a thing of the past in the Eastern Cape and people in public hospitals are so happy they don’t want private hospitals — by someone whose deputy president rushed to Russia for medical treatment not so long ago, followed by the North West premier, while leaving hospitals where babies are born in cardboard boxes in his province.
Corruption is the death of this administration and has ceased to be a joke
We must clap for this self-imagined Disney World?
This is in the same week citizens in the North West are using donkeys to commute and, yes, another scholar transport scheme has collapsed in the Eastern Cape, where school feeding schemes are regularly looted. Yet we see a silver lining and celebrate and call this the state of our nation?
The parlous state of state-owned enterprises was not given a passing mention. If anything, more parastatals are proposed so they can be similarly looted. At least three new agencies are proposed, including the climate change response fund and the National Health Insurance — all for the comrades to line their pockets in the name of service delivery.
We waited with bated breath for the president to do one thing that will show he is intolerant of corruption — but no, he has so far done the opposite by promoting and protecting his comrades who are implicated in the state capture report. It sounds very hollow to say those implicated will be prosecuted when so many in your organisation are implicated, with no consequences months after they have been fingered.
Corruption is the death of this administration and has ceased to be a joke. Billions have been wasted routinely and this was not mentioned in the Sona, even in the face of an umpteenth report by the auditor-general decrying the state of our finances.
I guess Tintswalo is feeling safe in Ramaphosa’s wonderland. She is not one of the 40,000 women raped last year, nor are her relatives one of the 50,000 people murdered last year. That's why to fight gender-based violence I am asked to sign a pledge. This is the best plan to defend our women folk.
And so, like a lower-grade student who failed basic mathematics, Ramaphosa miscalculated by applying a formula that turns one swallow, the sprinkling of indisputable success, into a summer he wishes to portray as the real state of our nation, a nation in utter despair.
Please give this guy a magic carpet to ride into the sunset.
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