Our country being in chaos is not a good image for the rest of the world. Corruption, corruption ... the question is, when will all this stop?
The June chaos of looting and the floods in KwaZulu-Natal. The recent taxi strike in Cape Town. The recent fire in Johannesburg that killed 76 people. What is next?
Ministers who are supposed to be intelligent and learned people still blame apartheid for these atrocious behaviours.
Mr Ramaphosa says: “Let these things be a lesson.”
When will our leaders learn from these things? Only after something happens.
These are expensive lessons that could have been prevented.
History has taught us that the Group Areas Act forced our people to move to the townships. This was many years ago, not 30 years into our democracy. This is where we were moved into flats, on top of each other.
Now we find that every second house, especially in Hanover Park and other areas, is a wendy house or what is called a Nutec building. This means we are crammed into spaces, a breeding ground for crime and all social problems.
There is a belief that the whites of the apartheid regime are laughing at us today.
Why? Because they have achieved their goal of keeping us in a mess, keeping us squeezed into a cage of failure, and we do not know how to get out of it.
They have kept us stupid because this is all we know. We have been brainwashed to think nothing of ourselves.
Walking or living in the townships, you can see how people look helpless because they do not have the tools to get out of their situations.
Only a few have risen above their circumstances to better themselves, but the majority are trapped in township life.
Our so-called ministers must stop blaming apartheid and deal with the problem. Stop giving apartheid credit.
Thirty years into our new dispensation, we are still looking behind us, at the past.
Look to the future and embrace it with all its challenges, and see that there is light at the end of the dark apartheid tunnel.
God bless South Africa.
* PN Hendricks, Hanover Park.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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