We the people are in deep trouble and our billionaire President and his Electricity Minister can't fix it

Dear DM168 readers, 

Dinner table discussions with Gen Z and Gen Alpha youth, of which my sons are members, are very illuminating affairs.

Last night, I listened as they spoke animatedly about why, despite the fact that there is a high probability of super intelligent sentient life forms on many rocks somewhere in the vast expanse of our universe, they choose not to visit us.

“We still have racism, we have wars, our politicians don’t care about people, they are greedy and only care about themselves, our planet is being polluted and nature is being destroyed by greedy businesses. Why would any intelligent being want to come here?”

The children are right. We watch them glued to phones and online games, but they are graphically exposed to our increasingly backward evolution as a species.

What they see in the Tik-Tok, YouTube world is how we humans have traded the ethical and moral foundations of religion, animist or humanist philosophy for artifice and show.

We have eschewed the deeply humbling and peace building ideas of “love your neighbour as yourself”, karma, doing good deeds or ubuntu for the narcissistic display of what and who we possess on endless selfies, Insta Stories and posts. To be is to have. Own. Buy. Tell. Share. Click. And sell.

This crazy culture of consumerism and amassing of wealth at all cost is what the political elite and their rich business friends have bought into lock, stock and barrel. It’s what underpins our downfall from a country that had so much going for it in 1994 to the wreck we have become.

It’s evident in the cocky driver weaving recklessly at breakneck speed through a traffic jam, flipping the bird at all and sundry, not giving a damn about pedestrians or children crossing his path.

It’s in the rude Karen screaming at a waitress because she didn’t get exactly what she wanted.

It’s in the oncologist charging hundreds of thousands for experimental cancer treatment that eventually poisons a patient.

It’s in the obstetrician forcing pregnant women to have caesarian sections because natural births take time and you can earn more from many caesarian sections in a day.

It’s in the Nehawu workers who, in their demand for more wages, trashed hospitals, whipped nurses who wanted to work and did not bother one bit if patients they were meant to care for were starving and dying in hospital corridors.

It’s in the absolute tone deafness of our President and the political elite in our governing party, and the musical chairs coalition smashing and bashing opposition.

The ego, individual desires and ambitions of this lot come before us, the people they are meant to serve first and foremost.

And we the people are in deep, deep trouble. We are probably even more racially polarised than we were during the dying days of apartheid. The tension between haves and have-nots is reaching boiling point.

There is violence at our hospitals, on university campuses, it spews onto the streets and into neighbourhoods. So many are deprived of basic needs like food. So many unemployed. Students left out of opportunities are taking their frustrations out on the administrations, not the government.

Is this what Nietzsche was alluding to when he said “God is dead”. And what British singer Sting followed up with when he sang “An actor plays his part”. Is this what we have before us? The triumph of self-realisation, ego and aggrandisement over compassion, care, community and the greater good? The kind of selfish individualism that leads to social implosion?

On Monday night, our President, who is safely protected from the shouts and screams of the people, announced at last, after months of deliberation and consultation as is his manner, that he is reshuffling his Cabinet. By all accounts, he looked as bored by this non-event as the rest of us.

His solution to his overly bloated, inept Cabinet was to surround himself with worshippers who no doubt praise this Emperor President for his beautiful billionaire’s clothes, Ankole cattle, buffalo, friends in high places, vision and wisdom while the rest of us can see that he is definitely, totally kaalgat, bereft of any ideas or most importantly, bereft of action to fix what’s broken.

His solution to our most pressing problem of powerlessness was the appointment of his close aide, the former mayor of Tshwane, Sputla Kgosientsho Ramokgopa as minister of electricity.

My colleague Ray Mahlaka tried to speak to the President’s chosen Mr Fixit, who is tasked with fixing our energy crisis, but he was let down by a no-show and a phone that was switched off.

The same Mr Fixit, when he was mayor of Tshwane, was not very kind to journalist colleagues when they started writing critically about what turned out to be a very dodgy prepaid electricity meter deal with a company called PEU under his watch.

Acting Pretoria News editor Kennedy Mudzuli, who was a metro reporter when the PEU story broke, wrote in 2017 how Ramokgopa lashed out at reporters and editors who questioned him even when the North Gauteng High Court found the deal to be unconstitutional.

Mudzuli wrote: “Bear in mind that prior to PEU – ranked among the greatest financial disasters to hit a post-apartheid South African local government – Ramokgopa was already on the ropes, and tended to lash at anyone he believed was overly critical of his administration. Our editor  (the late Val Bojes) had experienced it, and so had I as the metro reporter at the time.”

There you go. A sign of a highly qualified ego in overdrive, someone who does not take kindly to criticism. Fortunately, good journalists have many ways of digging for the information they need so Ray has a front-page story that will probably tell you more about the electricity minister than an interview with him would do.

Ray and our Tshwane reporter, Peter Mothiba, did their analyses through research and interviews with a range of people in business, the Presidency, City of Tshwane councillors and community members.

Go get a copy of this week’s DM168 to read Ray’s and Peter’s stories so you can decide for yourself whether you think our President’s Mr Fixit can deliver on our country’s most pressing need since he relinquished the Tshwane mayoral chains.

Send your thoughts on this and other morbid symptoms of our social condition to [email protected]

 

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, SPAR and Exclusive Books. For your nearest stockist, please click here.