Our leaders need to turn or South Africa will burn

Farouk Ariae writes that, ‘our leaders need to turn or South Africa will burn’ Photographer: Leon Lestrade / Independent Newspapers.

Farouk Ariae writes that, ‘our leaders need to turn or South Africa will burn’ Photographer: Leon Lestrade / Independent Newspapers.

Published Mar 31, 2024

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The ruling party is in political shambles as the edifice of a oncemagnificent movement shatters in pieces.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has administered his party’s last rites as it hurtles towards a painful death and spirals into political oblivion.

Our embattled nation is being rocked by gargantuan revelations about the state of the nation and its shattered institutions. Parliament’s Speaker, the most powerful woman in South Africa, is the latest casualty.

Money is the root of all politics. Our politics was about passion, imagination and foresight. In today’s bizarre political environment, it’s all about greed, lust for power and malignant accountancy. In our nations political discourse, it is impossible to avoid the smell of cash. Many in our fractured land have become disoriented with the business of politics. The duplicity, insincerity and condescension is sickening and insulting.

It has become necessary for all of us to redefine our democracy because the politics of deceit has demoralised us by substituting false and fake politicians as our saviours, eroding our political systems.

Our future looks bleak as winter approaches. Unless serious action is taken, we will face a devastating national cataclysm that could dismember the economy and usher-in unprecedented turmoil.

We are rudderless, visionless, spineless, careless and leaderless as we lurch into a cauldron of despair. Our economy is wrecked, energy distribution is dimming by the hour, vandalism continues unabated, crime has overwhelmed the nation and thievery has become a full-time occupation, while the entire fabric of the nation is torn asunder.

When the sleeping giant of poverty awakens, every vestige of civilisation will cease to exist. The peril that lies ahead is mindboggling. Our comfort zones will turn into islands of desolation.

Today’s crop of political leaders appear to adhere to the tactics of deceit, denial and diversion to manifest an illusion of who they are and what they represent.

Unless sanity and civility prevail, we are in the process in administering the last rites to our dying nation. The situation is so grim that when the ANC dies of old age in 2024, there will be no pallbearers to carry the ANC’s coffin.

* Farouk Araie, Gauteng.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Cape Argus

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