OPINION: We cannot fix, at the output stage, mistakes made during input and processing stages

South Africa is seemingly under siege from every angle.The struggling economy, depraved politics, crime, massive corruption, collapsed government services; all of these things are depressing.
Citizens are groaning under the strain.
But we simultaneously suffer from a general ignorance and a profound inability to connect the dots. Tragically, an ability to connect the dots is necessary for generating useful understanding about our plight, formulating plans to navigate a route out and allowing us to work towards our desired national outcomes.
In short, we have a general failure to appreciate the nature of systems. All systems comprise inputs, processing and outputs. Because of this simple reality, systems need time to do their thing.
In other words, what we see now may see as random or out of our control, is in fact the output of inputs and processes we have employed, knowingly or not.
There is also the fact that when systems produce something other than what you hoped for, you cannot correct the problem at the output end. You must correct it during processing or at the input stage, or at both these parts of the system.
But never at the output.
So we must surely agree then, that the system we put in place in 1994, and accelerated when Msholozi took over, has certainly produced something other than what we hoped for.
We need to acknowledge this. But what we also need to be clear about is that we cannot hope to change the system by working at the output end, or by hoping for an instant fix. Things do not work like that.
When a system is as broken as ours is, it needs a proper overhaul. We have to change the inputs and processes.
Only then can we hope for a different output or result.
This is why it’s so disturbing to hear political leaders today making hollow promises in the same way the ANC has been making empty promises since 1994 – as if there was an instant cure for our troubles.
For instance, the EFF presents land expropriation without compensation as some sort of quick fix for the economy. It also presents nationalisation as a quick way out of poverty, specifically targeting a particular section of the populace.
Meanwhile the ANC presents the National Health Insurance as a quick fix for a broken health system, despite public health having died in their very own hands, along with countless victims who continue to die in our public hospitals. Fairly or not, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s New Dawn increasingly feels like an empty promise.
Then the DA would have us believe that dealing with corruption will be an instant fix for the nation’s woes.
The point is there is a significant failure by most parties to explain that, no matter what course we take as a nation – not as some political party – correction will require time and consistent deposits of commitment, vision and hard work. And there needs to be reason for people to believe.
Seemingly, it has not yet dawned on politicians that feeding people empty promises – blither about what they’ll do for the “poor”– is a recipe for disaster.
Not only are the outputs hoped for not going to materialise, but when they fail to materialise, our people, thoroughly fatigued by empty promises, will eventually reach a level of agitation that we do not want to see manifest.
The output of an agitated populace is perhaps one of the least desirable outcomes any leader can hope for. Yet South African politicians seem to think they can dish out a few more empty promises in the old age tradition of the ANC’s “political geniuses”.
Despite our failure to appreciate systems, another blind spot is our mistaken view that the state is a vehicle for beneficiation. The idea is flawed – beneficiation by its nature cannot reach all people, or even most people.
We need to acknowledge that the primary role of the state must be to create an atmosphere of interaction, growth and value for citizens. Any “leader” who doesn't get that is beyond an overhaul...

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