As we enter election day in a few days, we are a pale shadow of what we were under our founder, beloved Nelson Mandela.
We were the leaders of Africa because we had the moral high ground. We had values. We pledged allegiance to a nation with liberty and justice for all. Sadly, we have become divided into ideological tribes with leaders encouraging acrimony. South Africa has lost its moral compass.
We have abandoned the lofty philosophical goals that created our nation from the ashes of apartheid. Today we are leaderless and voiceless. We are in a time of despair. What in the world has happened to our rainbow nation? We are in a dysfunctional mess. As our society becomes one of rot, behaviours and principles of many these days become rotten as well.
Our nation’s rapid descent into financial ill-gotten greed is undoubtedly leading the country into a calamitous future. We are steering off course onto the broad road leading to destruction comparable to the one ancient Rome travelled upon that led to their demise.
After riding high on the waves of democracy that began with freedom in 1994, recent disturbing and painful events in governance unsettle those whose dream of a country free of rampant and audacious corruption are shattered by leaders who are in utter denial. We are grimly witnessing the strangulation of our democracy.
It is imperative for all candidates in the upcoming crucial elections to eschew acts capable of undermining our democracy. We continue to be saddled by a failed generation of leaders driven by the will to power. The South African dream as espoused by Mandela and our founding fathers of our democracy has lost its lustre and meaning.
As we prepare for D-Day, polarisation seems to be threatening our democracy and our politics, turning compromise and comity into quaint relics of the past. Will the ANC’s vaunted power still hang over our collective heads like a sword of Damocles?
We claim to be a democracy, but this line has become a much-ridiculed and much-criticised cliché. The ideals of democracy that conquered racism, ushered in freedom, wealth and prosperity to the poor got trounced by the current leadership.
Our idealism has lost its flame, the grotesque day-to-day revelations of corruption gnaw at it till it vanishes. The void left is filled with defeatism. The whole edifice of our democracy, its glory and grandeur, stands crippled beyond repair or redemption.
FAROUK ARAIE
Benoni
The Star