BUSINESS NEWS - Raise a hand if you don’t mind being retrenched or paying extra tax. Raise both hands if you believe the recent news of recession will not affect your life, or if you’re not worried about the state of national political discourse and where it’s leading the economy.
No hands? I thought not. Given the opportunity, most of us would tell our leaders what to fix and how to do it.
The political realities of South Africa Inc playing out before our eyes are painful to watch. Yet we dare not look away or ignore that 23 years of ruling power has reduced the once-loved and promising ANC to impotence.
That’s because the former powerful vehicle of change has become riddled with corruption, patronage, factionalism, infighting and greed. The organisation is dying at the hands of liberators who have been so consumed by self-enrichment that they no longer care about SA’s economic realities.
Making things worse, many within the ruling elite have clung to their archaic ideological identity and are unable to respond to the fast changing globalised world. Their economic policies are adding to Joe Soap’s struggles and are fuelling palpable social unrest.
It seems to everyone else that the elite have become increasingly irritated with the poor’s cry for food, shelter and jobs. This is the tragic and heartbreaking paradox of ANC politics: a few newly rich men and women, at the expense of failing public health and education and a new generation of black Africans that are less skilled than their parents.
