OPINION - The past weekend can best be described as the darkest weekend so far under President Cyril Ramaphosa’s watch.
In just over 72 hours, a boxing champ was shot dead, a UCT student was raped and killed, a child kidnapped from school, stores in Malvern and Jeppe were looted and burned, and 607 patients at Chris Hani Baragwanath have to wait up to nine months for an MRI scan.
That is as far as I can recall.
Mr President, I hope your minders are briefing you on what is happening. As I’ve not heard from you or your spokesperson, I wonder if you are not becoming another Nero.
I’ve borrowed these lines from a colleague who wrote online, but I know you’re busy playing statesman and are not Donald Trump, who loves Twitter and Facebook.
The ANC lost badly in the by-elections in the Free State, Mr President. To test whether you or Ace Magashule is in charge, why not come out on national TV and tell us what your government’s plans are to stabilise South Africa?
I see Tito Mboweni has something on the table. Mr President, as chief executive of South Africa, what’s your plan?
I’m losing hope in you, Mr President. I’ve asked ordinary working-class citizen South Africans about murderers, rapists, looters, and rampant perpetrators of violence towards women and men, young and old. I’m vindicated in learning that they too don’t have any degree of empathy towards you or your government.
Alan Paton’s Reverend Khumalo warned of the situation that has come to pass, for the loving has turned to hating.
Now Mr President, how should we who love our country react?
Saber Ahmed Jazbhay Durban