LETTER: SA is failing and falling

Even the ANC must know that our country is failing — and falling. The hitherto efficient Airports Company of SA cannot maintain air traffic guidance systems; passenger rail is a distant memory; Transnet freight is mired in corruption and related controversy with China; Eskom is lights out; and few municipalities function well, if at all.

The navy hardly sails. The air force is depleted. The police are sometimes heroic in tackling the most horrific crimes, but then sink back into ineptitude and corruption. Most damning, our education is the worst in the world, sabotaging the life chances of generations of children. If we must employ President Cyril Ramaphosa’s term, “original sin”, our dire education is the original sin of our party of liberation.

This is the bad news. The good news is that it should be straightforward to remedy our decline — over time. We can reverse course, and undo the damage. We can, yes, build a better life for all. How? Bitterly difficult as it would be, by abandoning — reversing — our culture of entitlement. By realising that the feeding frenzy is poisoning our society.

We cannot — dare not — continue to “transfer” “wealth” from minorities to the majority. The only viable wealth transfer is via the tax system. All else — the whole catastrophe of employment equity and empowerment — is merely  an opiate. It is addictive. And deadly.

Outside expenditure via the national budget, nothing of value can simply be “transferred”.  Everything of value must be painstakingly built up, from birth, by every individual. Sorry, ANC, your dreams are dashed. There is no short cut.

Willem Cronje
Cape Town

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