Neil de Beer
SOMETIMES the brutal reality of waking up in my country of South Africa is the fact that, finally, we have to say that if the story of the King is Naked were true, it would summarise the position President Cyril Ramaphosa is in.
In the story, the village citizens praised their king for his image, ignoring the fact that he was naked, and it took a child to say loudly, in a day of observing him, that he was naked. No doubt we have come to that point where loudly we must scream, SOMETHING IS WRONG.
The fact is that I have just been blessed to visit more than nine cities in 12 days and meet the normal citizen. The fact that we, as South Africans, are seeking change and seeking it from all races and faiths is so apparent. The truth, though, is the total disintegration of our infrastructure and not in a small way, but total collapse.
The sights of buildings, inner cities, and roads just falling apart made me sad, disappointed, and shocked. The lack of basic maintenance of our municipal structures is so apparent and what also has now become a reality is that communities have started putting funding services in communities together to fund their own service delivery.
This means that the state, from the top to the bottom, have now failed to stick with delivery, even after being paid the rates and taxes.
The King though, this weekend, travelled the country and wanted to go and ask the people of this nation to continue believing that he is dressed, and indeed, not naked. The fact though, after the President entered these towns, the people had enough and started screaming: “ You are not welcome here, you are naked,“ this was the final line for the people on the ground.
What is sadder is that businessmen and investors are now as well waking up and screaming the same. The total loss of hope and confidence in an ANC government is apparent when a national poll has now stated that most people feel that corruption has increased since the start of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency.
This cannot be disputed, and the worst part is that there is no turnaround strategy. We truly pinned our hope of justice and setting matters straight on a Zondo Commission and the expense to us again as taxpayers of more than one billion rand.
Until people, who are in leadership and identified at the Zondo Commission, do not go to jail for stealing, the hope of a turnaround and light coming into the dark will not change the slump in our hope of a turn from an utter dark state of investment confidence and no doubt the world's, the attitude of our nation's future.
One huge failure to implement is the so called NDP 2030. It is a joke to even look at the great scheme that was projected as a national plan of rejuvenation of our country’s strategy, to modernisation and a brighter future.
The NDP was sold as a road map to our country’s planned and very much structured future. We all will be very interested in doing an audit as to this NDP plan’s current success and indeed the failures to also implement.
At the end of the day, in this period of huge political promises before the LGE on 1 November 2021, we must agree that this counties business future can be changed for the positive, but only if we are truly honest and call a spade a spade, not an agricultural implement. In other words, get up and say: “ The King is Naked and then find a way to clothe him.
Neil De Beer is the current President of the IFA (invest fund Africa) and is a recognized African Economic commentator. For more info he is on neil@ifa.africa.
*The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL or of title sites.
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