LETTER: ANC can’t steer SA through the hurricane

On February 24 the world changed irrevocably. Russia’s “special military operation” into Ukraine ended the seductive illusion of a single world market dispensing  peace and stability.

Global supply chains, damaged by Covid-19, are unravelling.  Inflation, already on the rise, has shot through the roof. Food security has gone. Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt and Somalia will feel famine first, but it is coming to us all. Climate change is a reality.

Humanity no longer has the luxury of endless gender debates and the redressing of  historical injustices. Our very survival is now at stake. Soon enough it will  be every nation for itself and the devil take the hindmost. A Hobbesian state of nature is returning, in which human life is likely to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

SA faces this future with a governing party that our chief justice has all but labelled a criminal enterprise (“Almost ‘a miracle that Treasury was saved from Guptas’ tentacles’, says Zondo”, April 29). Essential infrastructure has been destroyed and unemployment approaches an effective 50% of the working-age population.

All of this has been achieved with an unbelievable concoction of incompetence and corruption. There is no chance that an ANC government can steer SA through the approaching hurricane. It is irredeemable.

If the ANC had any residual sense of honour and duty it would commit political seppuku and resign, clearing the way for a government of national unity with an executive chosen purely on the basis of ability and for putting the common good before its collective personal  interests.  

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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