Dear President Ramaphosa: The state has created a ticking time bomb

Dear Mr President,

People are becoming angry, despondent and depressed, and the cloud of negativism hanging over the country increases daily.

Surely, we have a right to know where your government is taking us. We are told that “all is well” – but we all know it isn’t. Soon, all that will be left is a country where a corrupt and super-wealthy ruling elite oversee an economically destroyed and bankrupted populace.

Yet we still give millions to so-called friends while our own people grow destitute. This isn’t what we expected when we celebrated your inauguration as our president. You were appointed by the previous president to oversee the redirection and improvement of Eskom.

The Eskom boss recently warned that we may find ourselves subjected to stage 10 load shedding. Eskom has already driven our economy to the brink of collapse. This will have disastrous socioeconomic consequences.

Coupled with a selective economic policy, the end result was inevitably going to be chaos, rocketing costs, service collapse and a shrinking tax base. And despite lip service, there is no improvement, and only more problems. Members of your government use their political platforms to spread popular dissent, and increase national division, xenophobia and disunity.

Unwilling to unite our diverse society, some instead use their platforms to defend their own incompetence by claiming they are assessing or addressing the multitude of problems they have created, while feasting at the ever-diminishing trough. Our once respected military is in state of severe decline under your government’s watch.

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Our police are infested with corrupt and criminal officials. Our intelligence services have lost their edge. Our arms industry is both discredited and bankrupt. Yet there are no actions to rectify this disaster. The collapse of our mining and transport infrastructure is evident.

The impact this is having on our economy is devastating. I won’t even venture down the road of our bankrupted state-owned enterprises, as cadre deployment’s mismanagement and economic hollowing out is well known.

Our discredited and tattered foreign policy appears to be aimed at choosing to support pariah states, while ignoring those states that can meaningfully contribute to our national growth and prosperity. South Africa is already viewed as a hub of international terrorism and financing.

Is the ruling party’s desire to turn us in to a terror-supporting pariah state? Domestic and international perceptions of the government are negative and poor. People have lost faith in your Cabinet and those who surround you for own benefit. Why is this happening?

Although you are commended for implementing commissions to investigate corruption, nothing seems to be happening. We, the few remaining taxpayers, will gladly contribute to the orange overalls for the well-connected to go to jail.

Despite commissions uncovering what the South African Police Service ought to have done, the lack of decisive action against those who thrive on criminality is saddening. Is protecting criminals not a criminal offence? If it is a criminal offence, where does it put those in high office who are trying to protect the corrupt and the criminal? Even the Zondo commission implied that the ruling party is a criminal syndicate.

Do we deserve to be led by criminals who are claiming they are trying to stop criminal acts? As untold human suffering unfolds in Ukraine, why are we forever silent on these matters? Is it because we are an insignificant member of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)?

Why are we still a member of Brics and why are we consistently being forced to be on the wrong side of history? And now we want to mediate in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, yet your government is unable to mediate between its own factions. Really?

As our government is always keen to claim that it is “from the people, for the people”, why are we, the people, always kept in the dark? Our people pay hard-earned money for nonexistent services.

Not one element on the bottom rung of Maslow’s triangle has been met by your government. Government has created a ticking time bomb and a small spark will ignite it. Mr President, surely if there was a national plan, we should be told what it is and how we can support it.

Right now, no one seems to know much of anything. Our ministers love poking their noses in the business of others.

They should instead be poking their noses into their own ministries and fixing the disasters they have overseen. Mr President, please talk to us and tell us where we are going. We need reassurance.

• Mashaba is a political advisor