During the past week, while I was reflecting on our country’s corruption pandemic and flipping through the news channels, I was bombarded with the same message. This evokes not only a deep sense of concern about the future of our country, but also a sense of urgency and hope that we will overcome this pandemic.     

The politically created, socially engineered and institutional system of corruption, designed for selfish gain and at times, brushed off and casually called “tenderpreneuring” is what is crushing our economy. It is robbing millions of South Africans of the opportunity to rise above their dire circumstances.     

Corruption – beyond a shadow of doubt – erodes all we know to be true about our deep-rooted and humane values as proud South Africans.   

Our state institutions are captured, from within the lowest ranks to the highest possible management positions. Then, to add insult to injury, the guilty individuals are politically protected from being held accountable. This not only wreaks havoc among us looking from the outside in, but the effects send a clear message that it is “okay” to lie, steal, cheat and squander the state’s funds.     

There are many examples with which we are all too familiar. Lately, our almost-daily shared reality is that our state-owned entity tasked with powering our economy, businesses and households, fails to keep the lights on. This, coupled with the wholesale looting of all our state resources and minerals, and our inability to deliver dignified services to our people, further eats away at who we are as South Africans.     

Corruption does more than fill the pockets of the rotten few who benefit from their illegal and heinous acts of stealing. It weakens our values and limits our choices as we then discard our belief in honesty and trust as principles. These values are kicked to the kerb, and further break down our family values, our ability to exercise restraint and to stop and check ourselves before we commit crimes against our women and children. Society becomes one that steals, rapes and murders.     

Our story can no longer be that our children, daughters and differently-abled children leave their broken homes in their school uniforms in fear, as they are forced to walk kilometres and cross dangerous rivers to seek a better life through education. When they finally arrive at school, hungry and exhausted, they are met with the worst conditions. They are forced to make use of pit toilets and attempt to learn in classrooms that are falling apart, have no basic equipment and are often without a teacher.     

This is the reality our children face because some have pocketed the resources meant to improve the conditions and livelihoods of our people. We can no longer tolerate being stolen from blindly and stripped bare of everything we know to be our strength as a nation once divided, then united and standing tall as a beacon of hope for other countries on the African continent.     

I refuse to believe and to see our country take this road towards the precipice as we continue to suffer. We must say to those who steal from us, this far and no further. I am reminded of who we are when we are united, when we stand up against injustice and when we call out behaviour that goes against our values and existence as proud South Africans.     

The hope lies within our collective efforts in supporting anti-corruption protests, marches and events held by ordinary South Africans, and organised by civil society and political parties that yearn for a better future and country in which to raise our children.      

What we must call out is the facts which are written, documented and are before the courts right now.     

Corruption is at the heart of all our issues.     

South Africans need to reject the organisation that encompasses all that is wrong with our country right now. We all need to stand together to ensure that we prevent them from squandering our hard-earned money. We need to reject their hollow promises of a better life for all – when in reality, only a select few benefit.   

What we need right now is for all South Africans to join hands in our collective fight against corruption. All South Africans who believe in goodwill, and who are cognisant of the effects that corruption has on our society, must rise up.   

We further need all South Africans and our public servants to return to their values of serving a higher purpose, and to restore a sense of duty and service to the state. This is the only revolution we require, a revolutionary change of attitude towards how we conduct ourselves.   

We must insist that our requirements to move forward will be to restore the hope and trust lost in our service men and women. We must reject instances where anyone found guilty of any type of crime is merely suspended or can walk away unchecked when their deeds rob us of our hard-won freedoms and rights.   

This is an appeal to the subconscious. When we are alone, when public servants are not monitored and when politicians even think of fraudulently benefiting themselves through stealing from the state – that they stop and think of the future of our country, the future of generations to come and the sustainability of our values as South Africans. DM  

Inkosi Mzamo Buthelezi is a Member of Parliament and Deputy President of the Inkatha Freedom Party.