body politic
SHIRLEY DE VILLIERS: A better life for some
It’s all good and well to celebrate the successes in South Africa — but you can’t blithely gloss over the abject failures
In his state of the nation address (Sona) last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced us to “Tintswalo”. One of South Africa’s “born-frees”, she grew up in a constitutional democracy that, among other things, guarantees the right to dignity. She lived in a house with basic water and electricity, provided by the state. She attended a fee-free school and received a child support grant to meet her basic needs. As a result of the state’s assistance she graduated from high school, going on to achieve a TVET qualification funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. Today, courtesy of employment equity and BEE, she has a job.
Ramaphosa’s Sona was a paean to Tintswalo — the epitome of the young South African. It was also — like Sonas before — an exercise in cherry-picking: a gloss over the challenges, a dash of blame, while flagging select interventions and points of success...
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