#Letters: Selling SA’s soul for popularity
In a war of semantics and doing only what brings in the vote, SA has become as cringeworthy as a teenager taking a selfie while handing a pauper a meal.
Seatides resident Thrivin Naidoo writes:
South Africa, how much soul are you willing to sell to rub two coins together?
When you stood on the world stage and clamoured for the treatment of civilians in Gaza, whose ego did you feed?
When the elderly woman, slowly being eroded by the gravity of her disease, waited at 2am in line at your government hospital for an X-ray, only to be turned away 12 hours later because the machines weren’t working; when she limped back through the filthy streets to meet her inevitable Maker, was she proud of you?
How much hysteria must be generated in the media before you again recognise what your purpose as a civil servant is?
Recently headlines were splashed across the pages of every tabloid: “South Africa claims victory at ICJ”.
Really? Was it truly South Africa who was victorious? Or was it that group of exclusive politicians and legal minds underscoring the headline, wearing the frayed threads of a Palestinian keffiyeh – ready to throw it aside and don the garb of the next major issue that places them once again in the popular vote?
Ramaphosa stated that since Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on October 7 last year, more than 25 000 people had died in the Gaza conflict in Gaza, of whom 16 000 were women and children.
This was the grounds our government stood on to accuse one nation of being solely responsible for the unnatural, preventable deaths of innocent civilians.
Yet, in 2018, when UNICEF published that 43 000 children under the age of five had died in SA from preventable, treatable infections owing to a lack of healthcare, suddenly the tone of your government’s voice moved from accountability to focusing on some immaterial achievements in national sports.
With the focus-shifting paradigm the government employs to avoid the question of who will fund the NHI, which will need a budget of nearly R900-billion, we can rest assured that you and I will pick up the bill.
What I ask isn’t whether you as a reader are for or against any particular group or agenda regarding the current conflict in Gaza; it’s whether you believe your elected leaders were placed in positions of influence to serve you and I first, second and third besides serving things that stroke their pride, especially before election time.
Have we become a nation of people who want everyone to know about all the good work we’re doing?
In a war of semantics and doing only what brings in the vote, SA has become as cringeworthy as a teenager taking a selfie while handing a pauper a meal.
On January 4, Ramaphosa broke bread with Muhammad Dagalo, a warlord whose source of wealth came from seizing gold mines from tribal leaders in the Sudanese conflict and who was responsible for the massacre and rape of protestors – an act Ramaphosa calls ‘brokering’ peace.
He was very vocal in touting that Israel must abide by its ‘self-proclaimed democratic notions’. Funny how SA picks and chooses its morality.
Have we forgotten how we denied entry to the Dalai Lama for the Nobel summit for fear of angering the Chinese government who are still threatening Tibet, or Hong Kong that is still fighting for self-determination?
Or when we refused to arrest Putin on war crime charges from the ICJ lest it upset the him ahead of the Brics summit?
It’s comical how the slow moral suicide of our country dims in comparison to the rush we get when we jump in front of a camera to flash our ‘apartheid’ badge and determine who’s right and wrong in conflict, as if we’re envoys of morality since 1994.
All we do is sell ourselves to the highest bidder, and it drips right from the top of the presidency down to the fabric of you and I.
When was the last time that money, image or status didn’t dictate our last move? What we witnessed recently wasn’t a failure of government, but humanity. Not because we stood up for what was right – we did – but because we started doing it for the wrong reasons.
Regardless of your race, creed, religion or background – this wasn’t what any of our forefathers died for.
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