"Cry the Beloved Country"... and we are still crying!

"Cry the Beloved Country"

South Africa Quo Vadis

                                                                                                 Stes de Necker

How is it possible that thousands of foreign visitors, who visited South Africa a decade ago, are avoiding this country totally today?

How is it possible that so many foreign investors, who a decade ago, was still so excited to invest in South Africa, took their investments elsewhere.

How is it possible that peaceful marches and protest demonstrations can nowadays, within the space of minutes, degenerate into violence and mayhem.

Where did it all go so wrong.

The best example of one such ill is surely the government's controversial tender system. It provides the opportunity for every friend and family member of the ruling elite to obtain extremely lucrative contracts, the vast majority of which are never carried out, or otherwise being performed so poorly that the work or service needs to be redone anyway.

For those who are not sufficiently blood related to the ruling elite, there is always the possibility of a lucrative position somewhere in the ANC's cadre deployment. Once you’re in that position, theft and corruption is also not that gig a problem.  

At the very worst you can be suspended, with full pay, which means that for the next ten years you can sit at home and do nothing. By the time the inept legal process eventually commence, so much time has already been lost that any trial or hearing instituted against you will inevitably be found to be unfair and unlawful, with the result that there is little or no chance that you will ever be found guilty of the charges against you!

Inequitable black economic empowerment, affirmative action and land reform were, and still is, the greatest evils in the ANC political culture.

South Africa is littered with failed agricultural projects while millions of economic development funds ended up in the pockets of corrupt ANC leaders and supporters.

Once highly productive agricultural land lie uncultivated and unproductive today. The ruins and rusty implements and equipment of once thriving farming units, serve little more than forgotten tombstones of once vibrant and economically active farming communities.

Self-enrichment and personal interest is the order of the day. The inability of the government to take effective action at the stage when they were suppose to do it, caused this ill to proliferate to the point that one gets the impression that there exist a belief  that, if you do not grab your share now, don’t cry the day when there is no longer anything left to grab!

Corruption, in all organs and levels of government, certainly has the best profit to risk ratio in South Africa, since less than 5% of all corruption cases are successfully prosecuted in our courts.

South Africa's problems are bigger and more deep-rooted than what most South Africans wants to believe. As long as this minority political elite remains in government, and in power, it is unlikely that any significant improvement in the prevailing conditions will occur in the near future.