Jacob Zuma is no longer the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), and it is only a matter of time before he is ousted from his position as President of South Africa. No longer will our president be a corrupt manipulator on the puppet strings of organised crime and Indian businessmen. Everything will be perfect and South Africa will be able to finally achieve the Rainbow Nation dream.
Except, not really.
Zuma is a symptom, not the disease, and the disease is still thriving in South Africa. The ANC continues to be rotten with corruption and incompetence. Its policies still threaten the semblance of prosperity that we are trying to cling onto. Land expropriation is still on the table, receiving support from our resident Stalinists in the Economic Freedom Fighters and the still strong left-wing faction in the ANC.
But Cyril is our saviour!
Far from it. He is a politician. And like all politicians, he rules over us because he is too incompetent to do anything productive. Moreover, he has already stated his support for a policy of land expropriation without compensation. He is cut from the same cloth as the other ignorant African socialists that plague this country and continent.
But for some reason, people are optimistic about him. I can see why he’d be seen as the lesser evil compared to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, but the party’s election is over now. It is time to regrow our senses and condemn the ruler once again.
What is Cyril presenting to SA that is actually helpful? And no, not being Zuma isn’t good enough. The vast majority of South African leaders have not been Zuma and they didn’t do that great of a job either. Just because Zuma is hateable doesn’t mean the first person to possibly replace him is a saint.
South Africans are an irritating blend of blind optimism and impractical cynicism. When it comes to things that we should be optimistic and excited about, like entrepreneurship and helping build up our local economy, we tend to look on pessimistically. But when it comes to our politicians, whom we should always look upon with distrust, we plunge ourselves into a blind euphoria.
This isn’t only the case with Ramaphosa. South Africans put too much trust into government as a whole. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they think the government is still the solution to our country’s problems.
Why? What could give us the idea that this government, which has struggled to function properly and ethically since 1910, could ever change for the better?
This brings me back to my earlier point – that Zuma is a symptom, not the disease. South Africa is diseased, and has been since its inception. It is diseased by autocracy and a legacy of ideologies that justify control and servitude rather than freedom and enterprise.
But apparently we never get the hint. When we should be worrying about the economy, we worry about pseudo-racism. When we should be worrying about eliminating crime so that our children can live safely, we are wasting precious resources on a free education scheme that only serves to stroke the narcissism of protest leaders and socialists.
We don’t know how to focus on what matters.
The Cape is suffering from a drought that threaten to plunge Cape Town into being the first city in modern history to run out of water. Instead of looking for genuine solutions, the government plays petty politics. De Lille focuses on trying to scare fake water wasters rather than looking to stabilise the supply through finding more water. The national government refuses to help due to our province simply being run by a party with a different colour scheme to it.
South Africa is sick.
Our criminals murder before they steal, just because they can. Looting is seen as a right. Entrepreneurs are chased out of their communities because they have decided to be good people and work for a living. Being a law-abiding citizen is seen as something to applaud, rather than the norm.
Our violent crime rate is high enough to compete with some war-torn countries. Yet we concern ourselves with redistributing uneconomic land, lying about history, stealing from the rich, and giving free stuff to entitled little shits…
South Africa’s problem isn’t one man. South Africa’s problem is itself. Until such time as we can change fundamentally as a country, nothing will change.
Cyril will be another Zuma. The homelands will remain, keeping our people in poverty. Criminals will continue to rape, murder and pillage. We will continue to ignore all that, and concern ourselves with the arbitrary text on a child’s jacket.
Interested in some libertarian science fiction? Check out my sci-fi series, Warpmancer, available on Amazon.
In this article
