Like all the masses of our tormented republic, I feel that the Project 1994 dream has metamorphosed into a nightmare.

Individual interests have driven some greedy knuckleheads to rob state coffers for private gain. Pompous idiots, whose only reason to have a head is to keep their ears apart, have made corruption a norm.

These arrogant nincompoops are so drunk from a sense of entitlement that they openly have a savage disdain for the poor and marginalised.
The common good of South Africa has been trampled on by a herd of merciless buffaloes. Each day passing day we witness a kettle of vultures circling around the dreams and hopes that were promised in 1994.

There is a wake of vultures who survive on a culture of brazen lies and cronyism which regrettably have come to shape our public landscape.
Like all citizens who a have a deeper love for this country, I do not wish to see the dream of a prosperous country dismembered.

To dismember a people’s hopes and dreams in this age of vast inequality and poverty, is to consign them to a broken country that may soon become too weak and insignificant in the landscape of nations.

Granted, South Africa is a challenging country to govern because of the myriad problems created by the colonial and apartheid past, but we, the people, call not for feeble and ravenous leaders but individuals who are fearless yet principled.

South Africa is not only in the deadly grasp of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is also inflicted with untreated diseases of racially engineered structural inequality, poverty and unemployment. South Africa’s ever-growing levels of destitution and an economy that is in Intensive Care Unit, might soon turn into a pandemic of monumental proportions.

Our state coffers have become the trough from which wily and dim-witted plunderers inside the halls of power continue to feed voraciously, while showing the hungry and jobless the middle finger.

All hope we had, that by some stroke of luck, we will find a smattering of leaders who have the wherewithal and some miniscule capacity to get back to the important matter of good governance, are long lost in a jungle full of predators.

Surely it is not too much to ask for leaders with balls of steel, not the posse comitatus of thieving scoundrels who are economically, socially and morally hard of hearing.

More heartbreaking is the fact that the ravenous beasts who pass for leaders couldn’t give a ringing of a cash register damn to the crisis of distrust that has thrown a blanket of darkness over the country.

Frankly speaking our country is in a very unhealthy state. It is marked by seemingly unreal beauty, perfection, luck, or happiness of a rainbow at whose end is anger, poverty and uncertainty.

A cursory glance at the pot of this fictitious rainbow lies dead hopes and dreams. The imaginary tale of political guardian angels is one that nobody wants to hear anymore. The New Dawn has petered out under the heavy weight of darkness whose claws of promises have teared at the soul of the nation.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, to give credence to his New Dawn quoted from Thuma Mina
I wanna be there when the people start to turn it around/ When they triumph over poverty/ I wanna be there when the people win the battle against Aids/ I wanna lend a hand/ I wanna be there for the alcoholic/ I wanna be there for the drug addict/ I wanna be there for the victims of violence and abuse/ I wanna lend a hand/ Send me.

“This is the year in which we will turn the tide of corruption in our public institutions. We are determined to build a society defined by decency and integrity, that does not tolerate the plunder of public resources, nor the theft by corporate criminals of the hard-earned savings of ordinary people,” he said at the time.

Time marched on, revealing so much along the way. Time and citizens listened to the president on Human Rights Day, March 2021 when he said, “We are now in the phase of reconstruction and recovery. We are working to build a new economy that promises equal opportunity for all. In doing so, let us remember that this is a struggle for all of us far greater than ourselves. It is not a fight for our own piece of bread, for our own job to be saved, or for our own health and safety. It is a fight to preserve our common humanity.”

Unfortunately, we have heard that before. Those who came before him had said the same thing, using different words.

A man whose words are overflowing, with promises and admission of failure by the governing party, when President Ramaphosa ascended to the highest office in the land, said; “Despite our most earnest efforts, many South Africans still go to bed hungry, many succumb to diseases that can be treated, many live lives of intolerable deprivation. Too many of our people do not work especially the youth.”

Without a doubt, our president has revealed himself as a leader who lacks the ability to effect successful outcomes. He has a deficit of what those in the know call the Midas touch. When the presidency befell him in February 2018, the constructs of journalists, so long moulded in the anti-Zuma storyline, were quick off the mark to write about how Ramaphosa would burry all the social, political and economic ills that have become a stapple for over 50% of black people. The fourth estate, dazed by the allure of selective amnesia, did not exhaust truckloads of ink about how Ramaphosa’s deeds as deputy president of this republic, were devoid of any principle.

These days, some in the same fourth estate are baffled when they are smacked in the face by the reality of the fact that, like any politician, the man has dismally missed the imaginary mark to salvage South Africa’s 1994 dream. So, I demand that not a single soul in the halls of power gets surprised when I respond with the late Brenda Fassie’s Promises – I’m tired of promises, promises
‘Cause they turn, turn to lies, turn to lies/I’m tired of promises, promises/Yes, they turn, turn to lies, turn to lies/I’m tired of promises, I’m tired of promises/Turn to lies, turn to lies
Yes, I’m tired of promises, promises/Yes, they turn, turn to lies, turn to lies…

I quote Brenda Fassie because the depressing truth is the that promise of a new dawn made by the man from Chiawelo; the promise of a better life for all: keeps fading. The field of dead and broken promises is so huge that it has become devastatingly plain that the president is not a man I can Thuma anymore.

Well, not unless he can tame the predators in his fractured party and deliver as expected of him by millions of South Africans.
Unsophisticated as it may sound, the downtrodden, by and large see the ANC administration at every level as being dominated by a powerful and unpatriotic clique of bad people…and a few good individuals.

I wouldn’t be far off base to guess that the president is undoubtedly one who would like to be seen in the segment of the good. This though means there is a higher chance that no matter what the circumstances may be, he will save some of the bad guys from deserved punishment; because to give them a crippling kick on their backsides for the welfare of the citizens could result in the total disintegration of an already ailing ANC.

That said, let me state that I am a patriot. The little that I know about patriotism is that it means rejecting the blind acceptance of the harmful state of affairs. My patriotism is buoyed in the steadfast awareness and the ability to ask, if as a county we are moving in right the direction.
My love for South Africa compels me to fearlessly question the activities of those in power. If their behaviour is not taking us in direction that would make our country a better place, I will not keep quiet.

I will continuously dip my ireful pen in the ink of criticism when those who took the oath of higher office are faltering.
My allegiance is not reserved for an individual leader and/or party, instead it is a spirit of comradeship with those I share South Africa with, regardless of their background or status in life.