READER LETTER | Close to treason

Close to treason

I watched President Cyril Ramaphosa sitting in his comfortable reclining chair at the Zondo commission on state capture answering questions with a smile on his face ("Ramaphosa Continues with Testimony at Zondo Commission", DD Apr 29).

I found the experience absolutely unbelievable. Eventually he conceded that "mistakes" had been made, that occasionally the "ball had been dropped" by the ANC as he presented his excuses for allowing the destruction — by the ANC — of our economy, our jobs, our education, our environment and the massive debt burden that SA now has, which it will take generations to repay.

When he was deputy president he ignored state capture for at least five years, allowing and even assisting it with cadre deployment. This comes close to treason.

He chaired the infamous cadre deployment committee, which must surely take responsibility for this economic destruction.

Almost every day new revelations of the looting, mismanagement and incompetence of those cadres is exposed. R178bn at Eskom alone as the deployed cadres insisted on kickbacks for contracts and allowed the power utility to collapse due to poor or non-existent maintenance.

This type of "management" is now endemic throughout our country and we experience it throughout the Eastern Cape via the collapse of ANC-governed municipalities, as admitted by the province's premier and ANC chair, Oscar Mabuyane.

There is only one basic reason for this collapse and that is cadre deployment.

We have seen the DA rescue Kouga municipality and the massive difference the DA coalition has already made in Nelson Mandela Bay, where they have governed for only a few months.

Service delivery starts at municipal level.

Without competent officials, unhindered by political affiliation, we are doomed to live with poor service delivery.

We all face a very uncertain future with an ANC government that appears not to care about the havoc it has caused and for which it is solely responsible.

President Ramaphosa should have apologised profusely to those who have lost their jobs, to those who are unable to access jobs because they are not politically connected, to taxpayers forced to watch their hard-earned money being squandered, the list goes on and on. 

The time has come for voters in SA to mature.

We can no longer destroy infrastructure when we are unhappy with service delivery.

We have the most potent weapon in our hands: we can change the way we are governed by using our vote to remove these over-confident, self-serving looting cadres.

R Pickering, via e-mail