LETTER: Patronage politics has wreaked havoc in SA

Jonny Steinberg’s column refers (“An emergency in the US is just daily life in SA”, April 25). It’s not just policing that is broken. By any measure, all state institutions are broken. Public health, public education, foreign affairs, trade & industry, justice, all of the state-owned enterprises ... you name it and it doesn’t work.

We do not have skilled or even educated bureaucrats to perform even the most basic functions effectively. The murder rate, five years to get a civil claims court hearing, only 50% of the kids who start school finish matric, potholes everywhere, water-shedding, power-shedding ... These are just some of the results of the destruction that patronage politics has created over the past 30 years.

Most of this could have been avoided if we had grown-ups in charge, but instead of using white/minority skills, capital and knowledge as a resource for nation-building, racial retribution and exclusion and a good dose of the Dunning-Kruger effect and black nationalism, have led to the dire situation the country is in.

The latest Institute of Race Relations poll shows there is only now a recognition by the voting majority that the ANC is never going to give them a “better life for all”. We can but hope that the majority of voters catch a wake-up and vote for parties that reject patronage and corruption, and support appointment on merit for state employees.

There is no need for a binary choice of black or white in SA — it can be both.

Ian Ferguson
Via BusinessLIVE

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