Often I hear people complaining about how much worse the situation is now, as compared to before our democracy which dawned over 20 years ago.
The comparison is often made that crime levels were low, unemployment was not as high as it is now and the education system was much better than it is now and so on.
Recently, Dianne Kohler-Barnard had to apologise for a Facebook post she shared which sparked an angry reaction on social media. In her defense, she said she did not read the whole message before posting. To me, that is puzzling and I have a lot of questions like, why would you share something without first reading it, or did she just read the first few lines, reminiscing about one of Apartheid’s leaders and forgot for a minute that she was not only sharing the post among her friends but with millions of other people?
The post also claimed that during Botha’s time, education, health and the police services were better than they are in modern South Africa.
Now my question to this would be; better for who? Because as far as history is concerned, education, health care, police services were better for a select few and certainly not for the majority of this country as far as I’m concerned. Maybe Kohler-Barnard should educate herself about the history of this country before posting such things to her timeline because Botha could easily be referred to as a murderer seeing that many people died during Apartheid, which he and his buddies championed.
As much as I cannot say things are perfect now, I cannot for the life of me imagine there was anything good that happened before 1994. Of course I was still a child then and I cannot claim to know much about what happened during Apartheid, but from the books I have read and stories I’ve heard I am always shocked that anyone could compared the previous government to this one and actually see anything good they did because to me the previous government was just as self-serving as this one; unless you were one of the people who were benefiting, which I assume a lot of people did even if they are not going to admit to it.
If there is one thing I have come to understand and accept, is that there are certain people who will never see anything good this government is doing because they simply aren’t looking for the good stuff because it is not going to serve the purpose. I know some will probably think ‘there goes another government cheerleader’. I am far from it, those who know me and follow me on social networks will know exactly where I stand. I simply choose to recognise and applaud when I see a good story to tell and I refuse to be one of those people who always see the bad and negative about our country. The issue with me is that it doesn’t matter which government is in power, if they are not doing as expected, all South Africans should be free to voice their opinions without fear of being labelled.
I feel those who see things as worse now than they were before our democracy feel so because they are not enjoying the same benefits as they did then. Things might have been better for you, but those were the worst times for the majority of the people in this country and no matter how you put it, that can never be compared to now. Yes there is corruption and as a citizen I do feel that not enough is being done to ensure and promote clean governance in this country, but comparing this government with the Apartheid government is absurd.
