LETTER: Fiddling while SA burns

I suggested in a recent letter to the editor that the factions and fractures within the ANC, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s impotence in dealing with them for the futile sake of so-called ANC renewal, unity and reform, were destroying the potential for our country to consolidate its constitutional democracy and generate economic growth (“President backs a loser”, January 16).

The president’s acknowledgment at the recent ANC lekgotla that the “decay and degeneration” within the ANC is doing exactly that is cold comfort, particularly when he and his leadership team are either unwilling or incapable of changing our country’s political, social and economic trajectory.

Their self-effacing rhetoric and his broken record plea for a social compact, which he does nothing to bring about, is meaningless. The ANC-led government remains the proverbial fiddler while the country burns.

Reinforced by the Zondo commission’s calls for a greater and more influential, direct involvement in government, and amid a plethora of pleas from business, religious, non-governmental organisations, ANC stalwarts and many other influential individuals in our country, it is time for civil society to flex its muscles, unite and take control of the country’s destiny.

Civil society needs to be way more publicly involved, aggressive, active, influential and vociferously demanding of government, and civil society leaders should convene their own lekgotla to find a way to do this.

Alternatively, the president should use the upcoming state of the nation address to actually say and do something dramatically new that makes a real and lasting difference to the wellbeing of the country, rather than his party. He cannot put urgent national remedial action on hold while he focuses on preserving his party and his leadership position.

David Gant
Kenilworth

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