EDITORIAL: ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa lack will to take SA forward

Cape Town - The Ramaphosa administration’s new dawn has been nothing but a neverending nightmare for poor South Africans who are desperate to keep their heads above water.

It has been all about benefiting a few cadres and business people who sing the praises of the incumbent.

Even for those with the means to get by, load shedding and the high price of food and fuel have left a bitter taste in their mouths.

It therefore comes as no surprise that our ministers and their deputies’ water and electricity bills are being footed by the already squeezed taxpayer.

The same members of the executive don’t know a thing about the Eskom blackouts that Ramaphosa has no idea how to fix.

Instead, he handsomely awarded them a 3% wage increase in June, effectively ballooning their remuneration to R2473682 a year, while deputies’ salaries are R2037129.

All the while our news pages are filled with stories of people battling just to feed their families.

In some instances, mothers resort to boiling water for hours to keep children hopeful that there is a meal coming, until they go to sleep on an empty stomach. Put this reality to the president, and his answer is almost guaranteed to be “I am shocked”.

The fact that hospitals are having to spend millions of rand on fuel to keep life-saving machines running, instead of being exempted from load shedding, should tell you how much this government truly cares for its citizens.

The one thing that this administration has achieved is being out of touch with the realities confronting the poor, especially the black majority of this country, the same people who put their hopes in the ANC.

Instead of being preoccupied with ending the blackouts and the unacceptably high levels of unemployment and inequality, this government is obsessed with taking out loans worth billions of rand from the World Bank and other financial institutions, only to be looted under Ramaphosa’s watch.

That some of his cronies are at the centre of such allegations says everything about the failed new dawn.

Ramaphosa and the ANC do not have the will to take our country forward. The sooner we, as citizens, come to terms with the fact that there was never a new dawn in the first place, the sooner we have a chance of rescuing this sinking ship.

Cape Times