NGO

Mumblings, Rumblings and Observations

Listening and watching the delivery and comments on the National Budget makes one think about our society. Indeed one shudders at the amounts allocated to Education, Health, the Police, the Courts, Social Development and other departments that one deals with and knows are totally dysfunctional! And what about all the tenderpreneurship and corruption taking place? How can any sane Government allocate more funds to these departments without demanding that the Ministers and DGs do something about the state of their departments before additional allocations are made!

One also wonders how the vast majority of South Africans who are the poor actually continue to vote for the ANC which is a nationalist and middle class organisation which has pursued very Thatcherism/Reagonomics financial policies, which are actually anti-poor and worker and have actually shed millions of jobs. But then again the poor are now on the payroll through the social grants system. And I know that at election time, besides playing the race card, voters are told that if the `Whiteman’ read DA comes back into power, not only will Apartheid be reintroduced but their social grants will stop!

Indeed anybody who works in the townships will note that the middle class has left and there is hardly any leadership left. What little leadership exists is at a very low level. Gone are the days when you could arrive in a township and ask, take me to your leader and you will be taken to Dr Motlana, or the Principal of Orlando High, Wilkie Khumbule or Father Mkhatshwa! Indeed the townships have expanded to become vast poverty stricken ghettos with ever expanding horizons of squatter camps amid RDP houses.

And one has to ask what about Cosatu? Their leadership is so embroiled in politics that it seems to have missed the demise of the `noble worker’. Instead we witness thugary, violence and even murder whenever strike action takes place! And where is the working class? SADTU and NUMSA are bodies representing professionals and yet their members behave like thugs of the first order! We have to ask what is happening in this country, where have the noble ideals of `the revolution’ gone? In fact the so called working class has become part of the privileged classes of South Africa. The poor, unskilled majority has no voice and have not benefited from `the New South Africa’! Indeed they have become poorer and even more marginalized and their numbers are growing swelled by a developing xenophobia from a non-existent immigration policy.

And then there is the added arrogance of government departments, parastatals and Section 9 companies. As a citizen you are made to feel that you are being done a great favour and should be very grateful for the service you are receiving. One can’t believe these civil servants are dealing with public funds in the service of citizens and not the other way around!

One has come to realize why so many so called `liberation and socialist’ states failed. It’s because they followed the Stalinist Doctrine of `cadre deployment”! But it looks like the ANC hasn’t realized it. What have they done in China that the economy actually works? And maybe Blade is right `Darkies can’t do it’ or should it be `Stalinist will never get it right!

Colin Smuts
Executive Director
CBDP Management Education
www.cbdp.org.za