When it is difficult to take the word of your president

Over more than two years, the National Assembly, the Executive and the Judiciary have been pre-occupied by the evasiveness of a State President, many a time with diametrically opposed pronouncements on a simple matter involving his private residence. This behaviour by a sitting president has divided the nation in the middle, and has caused scars that will never be healed and forgotten.

In December 2015, the president told the nation that he was removing the then Minister of Finance, Mr Nhlanhla Nene, in order for him to play a new and important role with the BRICS New Development Bank.

At the time, Zuma wrote, “We are fully backing his candidature, knowing full well that he will excel and make the nation proud in his next assignments”. What next assignment?!

Four months later, this “urgent” need to remove Mr Nene has not materialised. Instead Mr Nene has been appointed a nonexecutive director by Allan Gray, a private investment firm.

Mr Nene is reported to be in the darkness of all time with regard to the so-called candidature, let alone being approached by the New Development Bank.

The urgency of removing a serving Minister of Finance, the so-called candidature and the appointment to the BRICS Bank remains a mystery, not only to Mr Nene but to the entire nation.

We now have a president whose word cannot be taken seriously by citizens. Only a faction within his ANC friends are able to understand, believe and defend what he says.

It is a saddening moment in the history of our democratic South Africa, when the word of its leader cannot be taken as is. It means we have not only lost the compass but the captain as well.

It is for this reason indeed that South Africans should reclaim their freedom and dictate their destiny. Electoral reform is a point of departure towards placing power in the hands of the people.

Let voice of the people be heard. DM