Happy Freedom Week. We should be proud of the triumph that April 27 represents. We should, however, also be honest enough to hang our heads in shame at the many failures of our state since 1994. Our politicians fail the people every day.
We know now, after 27 years of democracy, that if you want anything to be done properly in this country you have to bring in the private sector. That’s tragic.
When the University of Cape Town’s upper campus was on fire last week it was not to government that the country looked. It was from the charity organisation Gift of the Givers that we found help. Thousands of students were helped with food, shelter and other necessities lost to the fire.
The vaccine rollout programme is increasingly looking like a lorry without wheels. It exists on paper and not in reality. Yet we know it will succeed because private medical aid groups are getting involved where the government should be leading.
Earlier this year Gift of the Givers was roped in to help the community of Makhanda, in the Eastern Cape, to get water after the government failed for four years to provide this basic resource.
In the North West, after years of going without water, a residents’ association won the right to do the job itself — and provided water within four days.
Instead of doing the basics, the government is bringing in water engineers from Cuba, a country that cannot provide water for its own citizens.
In many countries children see the police as heroes who protect citizens from the bad guys. In SA we make jokes when a police officer flags us down. We wonder aloud how much "cold drink" they want. The people we respect are the private security guards who patrol the suburbs and who guard bakery trucks when they deliver in townships such as Langa.
We will get vaccinated only because the private sector is getting involved where the government should be leading
It now emerges that two weeks ago, when a major fire hit Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital — the second-largest tertiary hospital in the southern hemisphere — only one fire engine could be deployed. Why? The hospital’s fire hydrants were either not working or lacked the necessary connections, reported the Daily Maverick. Private firefighting companies had to be brought in.
We hear that Robben Island, one of SA’s most precious heritage sites, is in a state of disrepair amid accusations and counteraccusations from those entrusted with its welfare.
We can’t keep one of the country’s most important centres for memory clean, let alone open and working.
You can see the trend. If you need a job done in SA, don’t call in the civil servants. The state is broken. The government is broken.
This is tragic for who we are as a people. Our children are growing up listening to their parents talk about how deeply corrupt, terribly incompetent and incurably greedy our leaders are. Children listen. They are ingesting it. What the grown-ups say becomes the kids’ world view.
They hear about the looting. They hear about the unqualified people put into power in the civil service. They hear that the government cannot put up a fence along the border, and that it buys a nonexistent piece of land in New York for hundreds of millions. They hear their parents laughing about dodgy tenders and saying how useless the government is.
These children will grow up with this. On public platforms our politicians say we must raise proud Africans. On the radio the kids hear that China will train SA’s public servants on that country’s "unique governance models". Of course, no-one will talk about the million Uyghurs who are held by these same Chinese civil servants in "re-education" camps.
Our children will be proud of what we do as a country, not what we tell them they should be while the evidence points the other way.
When the kids see how Singapore, without gold or oil or any mineral resource, is a successful country while we are in the doldrums despite our wealth, they will be ashamed.
Is this what we want for our children? A country where we import doctors, engineers and everyone else from Cuba? A country where we achieve nothing?
Happy Freedom Week.
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