Ordinary people in South Africa seem to have no idea of how deeply we are in trouble. Our finance minister seems to be the only member of the government executive who has any realisation for just how much trouble we are in, and has resorted to “twitter” in an attempt to warn us. People we are in serious trouble!

The 2 biggest challenges we currently face are;

1)     Corruption. We have become punch drunk with all the scandals we hear about on a daily basis and people are so used to hearing about corruption, that it has become “normal”. Corruption is our single biggest problem and it permeates every aspect of our society. The effect of rampant corruption that we currently regard as “normal” is that most of our tax money is ending up in the pockets of the corrupt. This means that we have no money to repair infrastructure which would help to create jobs. It also aggravates our second biggest problem!
2)     The second biggest problem is our national DEBT! Our government has expanded the national debt to such an extent that we could in all fairness say that they have spent the future of our youth. Excluding SOE’s our national debt is now approaching R3.5 TRILLION. This amount is so huge that most of us cannot even get our minds around such an amount. Written out in full it is 35 followed by 11 zeros’. The interest alone amounts to about R1 Billion per day.  Quite obviously we can ill afford to increase such national debt, but that is exactly what is happening each year. If one includes the debt of the SOE’s, the situation is much worse. Between just Eskom and SAA, the outstanding debt is almost R500 Billion. Government will be forced to raise taxes, which will further depress the economy. Servicing debt will soon become a major expense in the annual budget, which means less and less will be available for other expenses, such as social grants and government salaries.

Obviously something needs to be done URGENTLY, but unless we as citizens get together and force government to take action, nothing will be done. Our current political structures are not capable of helping us to overcome these problems. Even if a different political party comes into power with a workable majority they will be powerless to solve these 2 problems. I would go so far as to say we are faced with a NATIONAL EMERGENCY.  Just in case anyone doubts the seriousness of the situation, just ask Tito Mboweni, he would not be warning us on “twitter” if he were not desperate, he is after all a loyal ANC “comrade”.

What can be done to rescue us, from what is a very desperate situation? I think that South Africans from across all sectors should come together and map the way forward. We should establish an organisation which cuts across political, racial and class lines, and which is based on personal integrity. Persons who wish only to gain in their personal capacities should be excluded. An invitation should be extended to all persons of integrity to join this movement and perhaps we can make the dishonest politician obsolete.

The message that the politicians cannot help us should be spread especially to the youth, for it is their future that has been squandered. The high unemployment rate is only going to get higher, especially amongst the youth. Crime is going to escalate, service delivery from government is going to get worse not better. The citizens of this country will have to take action, the sooner we do, the sooner things will improve. Sitting back and criticizing is no longer an option. We cannot wish our problems away; we need to take action.

During the Zuma years there was an organisation that called themselves “Save South Africa”, I am not sure who was involved but we need such a group now even more than during the Zuma years. I think we need a conference to be called, including people like Thuli Madonsela, Msebenzi Jonas, Mmusi Maimane, Sipho Pityana, Anton Rupert and any other leaders who have a genuine interest in rescuing this country from the current dire straits. Politicians have dropped the ball and will only make things worse, we the people, need to take action!