Please go and vote tomorrow, fellow South Africans. But that is not where our job ends. We need to double down on accountability and insist that our new president delivers on the basic things we need to get our country back on track and create decent living conditions for all, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant column.
Tomorrow, we go to the polls – 30 years after those snaking queues that signified such hope and promise for a new nation as South Africans voted in our first democratic elections.
This time will be different. Everywhere you go people are disillusioned with the cost of living, staggering joblessness and just pure resentment at the waste and levels of corruption of those in power.
Many have no idea who they’re going to vote for. They have to choose between those who never kept promises, bigots and fascists, truth be told.
So, the first thing the new president is going to have to do when they’re installed a few weeks from now is to get straight to work. That work isn’t to defer presidential responsibilities to Rassie Erasmus and the Bokke to lift the nation. The in-tray needs to have a few crucial priorities.
The first priority is cutting our bloated cabinet and executive to the bare minimum. I can’t keep pace with how many ministerial portfolios and departments there are. There might be a Minister for Fluffy Stuffed Animals, for all I know. And that Minister of Electricity knee-jerk appointment? To quote Janet Jackson: What have you done for me lately?
I feel aggrieved that you and I, and the rest of the taxpayers in this country, must stump up for ministers and their deputies and armies of aides to travel around at our expense locally and abroad when they earn over-odds salaries. I feel aggrieved that they get housing and other perks that the rest of us must sweat blood for. I feel aggrieved that they haven’t delivered to the people the basic services that we all deserve.
I mean, if they earn those massive salaries, why are they driving fat luxury vehicles at our expense?
I also feel aggrieved that skilled people with scarce talents need crazy qualifications like a master’s degree to get jobs, but we’ve had a president with a primary school qualification. Where are those key performance indicators the current president promised that will root out non-performing civil servants?
This social compact we keep hearing about is a pipe dream if working as an office bearer in the highest echelons of government is a career and not a calling in service of the people. There is a tiny elite feeding at the trough and the new president needs to know we are gatvol!
Next in the in-tray should be prosecuting the thieves who have stolen billions of rands from us. Stop having commissions (and then a commission to find out why a commission didn’t work) and arrest them. They have no remorse for stealing funds meant for COVID-19 relief, for example.
In the in-tray, if we ever reach this social compact, there must be a purpose-driven job creation plan that is sustainable and will give people their dignity back. We want social housing to bring people closer to their places of work. We want public transport that works and is affordable. None of these things is insurmountable and should in fact have been in place already.
I have to say here that we have managed to miraculously move from a country on the brink of civil war three decades ago to a peaceful transition to democracy. Thirty years isn’t that long a time for such a transition that has taken established democracies many more years to achieve.
But now we need to see a president with the fortitude to change the lives of ordinary South Africans. One of the scariest things is that most of our citizens live on the margins where they must make hard choices between a loaf of bread or a litre of milk. It is reported that most South Africans live on R35 a day. That simply isn’t sustainable.
We have heard the promises, some of us have even read your manifestos despite the many broken promises over three decades. But they’re just words. Now you must deliver.
Imagine we have a new president with the skills of Nelson Mandela to encourage political parties to put their differences aside like he did with a Government of National Unity. Every single elected official focuses on the good of the people of South Africa. A multi-party coalition with egos cast aside can achieve that. I live in hope but given how nice the gravy must taste I just can’t see that happening.
To the new president: Prove me wrong!
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