Parliament has more clowns than a circus

It is generally assumed that a failed state is one where the government has lost control along with its ability to govern,
and where anarchy, chaos and criminality are the order of the day.

Within such a state, certain elements within the security services join the pandemonium and act in concert with insurgent and criminal elements.

This creates a credibility and a legitimacy problem for the government and its citizens. But it also points to a much larger security and societal problem.

There are those in our parliament who think we do not yet classify as a failed state. They believe there is a “long game” at play. Others call for a new “revolution”. How long is this game they are playing with our livelihoods and how many revolutions must our people endure?

They must be blind not to see what is happening – or do they simply choose not to see?

Their apparent political blindness and disconnect with current realities is ironic, especially as there are several African states that already view us through the prism of total failure.

We are now the African joke – not to mention what those beyond our shores think of us. To corrupt an age-old joke, the difference between a circus and our parliament is that we have more clowns. Sadly, our clowns don’t give us much a smile about.

Instead, they give us a lot to cry about – and more tears are sure to be coming.

If we are to stop going further down the rabbit hole, there is a lot of work to be done by competent leaders who occupy their positions by virtue of meritocracy. However, we cannot do what needs doing as long as we tolerate incompetence and nepotism.

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Factional deployment has demoralised and incensed our people.

Our young leaders, from all races, have long questioned the efficacy of those who spend our taxes – on themselves. Despite the recent Cabinet reshuffle, the president still presides over an incompetent, bloated, corrupted and leaderless government.

He needs to clear house as the president of South Africa and not keep our home in disorder as the president of the ruling party.

Recycling ministers from one failed portfolio to another serves no purpose apart from forcing us into further failure. Among the “new” ministers are some with heavy swords of corruption following them.

Some of our parliamentarians would have been fired a long time ago – or would already be in prison – had they been working in the private sector. Firing corrupt and incompetent ministers in public will help to restore some lost faith in our political machine.

But to thank them for “loyal service” after they have been implicated in corruption takes the cake.

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The racial and ethnic divisiveness that has been encouraged from the benches of our parliament needs to end now – unless parliament is calling for national genocide. If this is not stopped, we will be faced with a civil war, the consequences of which will be devastating.

Hate speech must immediately be punishable with a lengthy prison sentence, regardless of who propagates it. But this cannot be done as it has been encouraged by our politicians.

Instead of working for national unity, populism and fake history have been used to drive a deep wedge between races.

Our broken economy needs an immediate rethink. The country’s anti-investment policies need to be scrapped. We can no longer persist with failed economic-racial marginalisation and policies that only advantage a few. It is not working.

We cannot tax ourselves out of the deep hole government has thrown us into. Nor can we afford to import expensive skills from Cuba while our own skilled workers remain unemployed – by parliamentary design. But this shines a very bright light on our inability to offer education and skills training to our own people.

Our security forces need to be urgently reassessed and restructured by knowledgeable and competent people. We have such people, yet lack of foresight and pettiness has forced them to seek employment outside of South Africa where their skills are highly sought after.

Placing the State Security Agency (SSA) in the presidency is a doubled-edged sword: Consolidating power or to keep him informed?

Regardless, it politicises the SSA and makes a mockery of an apolitical intelligence service. And so it continues…

Resultant from poor leadership, cronyism, factionalism, haphazard ministerial appointments and disruptive policies, we have become a nonfunctioning, failed state. Unless constructive intervention is practised by the president and his government, we will go even deeper down the rabbit hole.

-Mashaba is an entrepreneur and a political advisor.