JUSTICE MALALA: It's time to shut up and get some stuff done
'Before Barack Obama became US president in 2008 we were talking about universal healthcare. Ten years later we are still talking about it'
EXTRACT
There was beauty in listening to Obama last week. There was pride in having had such a great leader at the head of the US. There was a lament, too. Here at home we have little time, precious little. Our people are desperate for progress.
We can only talk for so long. We have to act. Ramaphosa’s New Dawn needs to become tangible – more jobs on the ground, better economic growth, better education outcomes, stronger institutions, effective state-owned enterprises. The ANC’s 1994 election message was deceptively simple: jobs, jobs, jobs. Twenty-four years later, I say please let’s stop talking and deliver: jobs, job, jobs.
We are a nation of talkers, not doers; of politicians, not entrepreneurs. We analyse problems brilliantly; we solve them poorly. We are a nation of great policies, but of little implementation. On these shores you get elected for having a big mouth and a deft Twitter finger; you will get precious few votes for having achieved anything. We like political singers – we applaud them loudly and return them to office even as they rob us blind while lulling us into stupidity and acquiescence with their ditties; we save our harshest words for those who create products, factories and jobs. Before Barack Obama became US president in 2008 we were talking about universal healthcare (the NHI). He left office in 2016 after two terms and had put in place Obamacare. Here at home, hospitals have no medicines, no specialists, no cancer treatment machines, no electricity and sometimes no water. We are still talking about the NHI. In 10 years we will still be talking about NHI. We talk, we don’t do.So ...
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