The Elusive New Dawn, A New Yawn

2022 marks four years since Cyril Ramaphosa took up the reigns from the controversial Jacob Zuma. With expectations and optimism at an all-time high, it was dubbed ‘Ramaphoria’. However, after four years at the helm, confidence in the president’s ability to steer the country in the right direction has waned. 

The unemployment rate has gone over 30%, and the fuel price has hit the R20 per litre mark—an all-time high in both instances. The cost of living in South Africa has soared to unprecedented heights and with South Africa becoming increasingly an uninhabitable country, everyone seems to be snapping out of the Ramaphoria with the horror that is President Ramaphosa’s term hitting home.

It begs the question, after four years, how much longer can the president continue to use the failures of the previous administration to mask the shortcomings and the lack of foresight of his own? It seems since Ramaphosa has been in the cockpit, the country has been on autopilot.

 The July unrest told the story best, as parts of KZN and Gauteng became violent. Law enforcement was practically non-existent. Many questioned why the president and his security cluster were so slow to react. Why did the South African intelligence agencies fail to anticipate the kind of unrest the arrest of popular former president would cause, even after Zuma’s zealots publicly threatened to cause havoc lest Zuma got jailed? Was it an imprudent thing to have Zuma arrested and sacrifice the country’s stability? Over 300 lives were lost as well as countless jobs.

One would think there were lessons learned by the security cluster from the unrest, but barely two days into the new year, the fires in the national parliament in Cape Town happened. A national key point, on fire. There’s barely anyone – apart from the 51-year-old Zandile Mafe an alleged schizophrenic homeless man as a suspect who was arrested – who can give answers as to how this happened? Again, how did such happen right under the noses of the people marked to protect our country?

New information has emerged from the fire assessment report by the City of Cape Town’s fire services. It is a damning report that shows that the fire detection systems were faulty and the sprinkler system was faulty having last been serviced in 2017.  New information will continue to emerge, whatever the truth about the homeless man and maintenance of the buildings maybe, what is certain is that the fires that burnt parliament are the same fires burning the whole of South Africa: The fires of corruption, incompetence and a general lack of the foresight required to govern.

It seems more than anything the new dawn is a false dawn, and the rampant corruption and incompetence of past administrations have been exacerbated. Unfortunately, it is not the political elites that have the burden of government’s incompetence fall upon them, it is ordinary South Africans. But for how long will the political elite escape accountability? It is a ticking time bomb and the ticks keep getting louder.