LETTER FROM DM168 EDITOR
Our anger should be targeted at corruption and cadre-appointment in government, not at foreign nationals
South Africans waiting for the Godot of our Government to magically create jobs are going to wait forever.
Dear readers,
I am not sure how many of you have been following the stories about the protests against foreign nationals using South African clinics and hospitals. There are millions of undocumented Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Malawians, Swazi and Basotho people who have fled their countries as economic refugees seeking to trade and earn a living in South Africa.
The frustration of healthcare workers was expressed by Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba who was exposed in a viral video berating a Zimbabwean woman for seeking medical treatment in South Africa. The MEC does have a point about our limited resources but the anger, hatred and violence shown towards our brothers and sisters from neighbouring countries, many of whom are hard at work trying to put food on their tables and care for their children just like we do, makes me ashamed to be a South African.
Our colleagues at EWN reported that the unnamed patient Ramathuba berated underwent surgery at Bela Bela Hospital after being injured in a car accident across the border in Zimbabwe.
The MEC who berated the woman in front of a laughing audience of medical staff, saying that she should seek medical attention from Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government instead, defended her stance, saying those criticising her are middle-class who are not part of the 90% who use public hospitals and don’t realise that people from neighbouring countries are abusing the system and collapsing medical healthcare in the province.
Ramathuba was crude and rude and misdirected her frustration at the overburdened Limpopo health system on Zimbabweans and Mozambicans when instead she should be berating her colleague, Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi instead.
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The violent Operation Dudula brigade, the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie and ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba all erroneously target economic and political refugees from neighbouring countries. The blame lies at the feet of the ANC government for poor border control, atrocious management of Home Affairs refugee centres, atrocious and incompetent management of Home Affairs offices — many of which remain closed — broken Home Affairs IT systems and crooked officials who take bribes to allow people without documents across the border, give out ID documents to undocumented non-South Africans, or look the other way at roadblocks.
Anyone who thinks that a Zimbabwean carpenter making patio furniture or a Mozambican welder who makes security gates is stealing a job from a South African when they are making excellently crafted furniture and selling them to willing customers, needs their heads read.
South Africans waiting for the Godot of our Government to magically create jobs are going to wait forever — we could learn a lot from the excellent traders and artisans from our neighbouring countries who are plying their skills and selling their products to those in a South African market who appreciate and can afford their goods and services.
Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi, Police Minister Bheki Cele and the corrupt politicians and cadres appointed as civil servants in Home Affairs and the police are the people we should be very angry with.
We should also be angry with the five Sasfin banking officials who helped Zimbabwean businessman Simon Rudman create a transnational plunder network for sneaking billions of rands in illicit cigarette money out of South Africa. Funny that Operation Dudula and all the xenophobes in all the political parties who give this hatred oxygen prefer to target the poor eking out a modest living and never touch a hair of the elites and wheeler dealers like Rudland, who siphon billions from our state coffers. The good news is that our intrepid investigative journalist Pauli van Wyk has been scouring every corner to expose the scam. In several stories she wrote for Daily Maverick online this week and in this weekend’s front page lead of DM168, she explains how Sars cottoned on to Rudland and co’s illicit cigarette transnational plunder scheme.
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Let me know your thoughts by writing to [email protected]
Yours in defence of truth and the kindness of strangers,
Heather
Heather Robertson is DM168 editor.
Great comment on the state of this nation. Misdirected anger shows the level of frustration all South Africans are feeling but it is not a good enough excuse….the way to do this is to use ones vote to show your displeasure. . Sadly, votes are easily bought by those that continue to rule the masses with inferior education and lack of birth control so nothing will change anytime soon.
I absolutely agree with you on who to blame and oppose all violence. I think the sticking point is the rose-tinted view of foreigners that the middle class has. As much as I applaud the ingenuity and hard work of many, I wouldn’t like to live in a house occupied by 20 or more men working like mad to pay an inflated rent- and this does happen. We need a rational and decent solution to this simmering crisis, but this binary position of good foreigners vs bad SAfricans doesn’t help.
I am afraid the blame lies squarely at the feet of the poorly educated masses that keep voting for the ANC.
It wuzern’t me, they all said, as they pocketed millions for:-
* Weapons that we didn’t need,
* Almost all of which are scrap by now, and
* Obviously bullshit “set-asides”
Let us not forget that this first descent into corruption and State Capture happened on Mandela’s watch 😳
I would imagine that the racism to people from other lands is artfully curated to obfuscate blame for crumbling service delivery. It’s easy to raise a rabble who will expend all their energy in misdirected emotion. I’d say we need strong leaders to counter the narrative on the ground level. Knowlege is power.
I think that you are missing the point. Cadre deployment is a global phenomenon and to seek to make an it an ANC process when the DA itself practises it is pure dishonesty. In the US and the UK any change of government, results in changes in key government positions to ensure policies of the governing party are implemented suitably qualified members or supporters of the party. What Zondo was condemning that the ANC and its President seem not to grasp was the tendency of the committee the ANC created to deploy not for policy implementation and service delivery but for looting purposes and state capture in short for criminal purposes. Good is fighting the DA in Cape Town for using public funds to defend a councillor charged for corruption yet they are loud mouthed when it comes to other people! Zondo condemned it as it has not been done with due regard to the Constitution and service delivery. The problem of Cyril is a foot in the mouth disease. Defending the principle is one thing but to insult the Zondo Commission is another. Ben Turok’s IFAA has written a very important letter to Cyril to properly read the Zondo Commission.
Criminality must indeed be fought in both the private and the public sector and there must not be selective prosecution as the NPA conduct is very concerning on various issues related to ANC senior politicians.
So in other words, what you are saying is that, as long as the ANC made sure that they cadres they put in place is properly qualified and motivated to do proper work, then it would have been alright? On the one hand the old National Party also did that; but the difference is that they only did it in a limited number of certain very senior so-called “political” positions where they deemed it crucial for the decisions to be in line with party policy. In all the rest, there was no talk of which party an applicant supports; the only factor was if he or she is competent to do the job. But with the ANC they try to appoint ALL government and municipal officials from the ranks of party members or supporters. If fact one ANC mayor specifically, in an election debate, claimed that “only ANC members and supporters will get work, no-one else”. That is where the problem comes in; because then, if a more senior official wants the ANC cadre to do proper work, they are often told “You can’t tell me what to do – I am here because I am an ANC member”. One senior municipal head of department for corporate services (which is in charge of employment) specifically told me that it happens. But with the NP, although it was also a nationalistic movement, the political appointments were only the most senior ones – so that problem never arose. That is why under the NP there was proper service delivery and under the ANC there is not.
There certainly needs to be distinction between artisanal carpenters and shell-shocked war refugees, and both groups require care and very different assistance.
The former are bringing entrepreneurial skills and small business success stories to the margins of our country, they should be encouraged and most critically, brought into the tax fold.
120 years ago, Irish, Polish and Italian ( and other) immigrants moved to the USA. Those hard working immigrants built the nation into what it is today – the most powerful nation in the world.
Imagine if we embraced the skilled, hard working and entrepreneurial immigrants from Africa? The prosperous future of this country lies with entrepreneurial immigrants, for it is often immigrants who see and catalyse the potential of their new country.
Textbook politics – identify the scapegoat, then whip up the mob.
If only history taught us a lesson.
There are so many easy buttons for the opposition if the opposition just want to press buttons and not propose logical alternatives. They should not leave the door open for some ANC factions to press those buttons on issues the ANC created. Will we have the ANC itself campaigning about complaints against bad health, bad education, absent electricity, illegal immigrants, dysfunctional driver licenses, dysfunctional home affairs, non-existent housing, corruption, no legal consequences, etc etc?