Paul De Sousa

You know, I was born in South Africa and have been proudly South African all my life, I refused to pack up and leave when things got rough, I wanted SA to remain my home, sure I travelled but came straight back to SA because I missed it, the people, my family and friends.

I put my faith in the new government and decided to give them time to adjust and iron things out.

12 years later however I not only have my doubts, I am beyond disgusted.
There is something seriously seriously wrong with South Africa and we are undoubtedly heading tobecome another banana republic.

The problem is that South African’s have become so complacent with problems that affect every single one of us.

I realized this last night at 8:30 when the electricity died (while I was in the middle of an online poker game) and my father shrugged and said “oh well, off to bed”

and THAT is the exact thing that pisses me off, we accept it because there is little we can do about it and we just accept it as being normal. Soon its going to get worse, Water is next.

Let’s just take a look at the entire picture.

• Starting with the load shedding, yes I blame the government. Stop supplying neighboring countries with power they can’t afford to pay in the 1st place and look after your own. Charity starts at home.
• Crime – Let me not even get started with this, maybe if you stop employing criminals to be policemen and comissioners we may be in with a chance.
• Wasted Money – Why on earth is the government so focussed on changing the names of roads, cities, provinces and towns when the MILLIONS of Rands that are spent on changing these things should be better spent on the infrstructure of South Africa, like, I dunno, maybe another power plant?
  Thank God they haven’t realized that the word for our currency, The Rand, is actually an Apartheid Era Afrikaans word, or we’d be spending BILLIONS of Rands so we can have MILLIONS of Pula.
• Unemployment – Maybe with tougher border control and harsher deportation laws, we’d have less illegals in the country, making it easier for our people to find jobs. in 1996 it was reported that we had nearly 5 million Illegal immagrants living in South Africa, that was 12 years ago, that number has easily tripled by now. Hell, we have more Nigerians living in Berea than there are living in Lagos.
• Presidential hopeful is a criminal – JZ is without a doubt, guilty of a lot of things, maybe he got away with Rape, but he is corrupt and rotten and is spoiling the rest of the barrel of apples.
• Ignorant Leaders – JZ, the anti Aids shower, need I say more? Manto Babalas Msimang – Beetroot and Onion anti aids diet? These people are ignorant beyond comprehension and yet we have them as leaders? Sure, they may have a bit more savvy than most Black South African’s but then again, in the land of the blind – the one eyed man is king.
  This is not a racist remark, it is a “Who is the best person for the job” remark.
  Why not put the best people for the job, in the job? I am not saying employ more white people in goverment positions, not at all. But put educated, savvy people of any colour into meaningful positions.
  Cyril Ramaposa or Tokyo Sexwale would run this country like a business – if a particlular part of a business is failing, you don’t get rid of the people at the bottom, you start at the top. Without smart _LEADERS_ any organization is in for a world of hurt and by leaders I don’t mean popular people who can pull the wool over the eyes of just enough people to be voted in, but I mean people who can lead by making an example.
• Telecommunications – another ignorant”leader” Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has no idea half the time waht she is talking about, we are without a doubt the most expensive country in the world when it comes to telecomms. She fails to act on behalf of the masses and I’ll out and say it, CORRUPTION! Maybe if Icasa and Telkom stopped slipping her a few bucks to shut up and say what they want her to say, we’d have someone on our side.
• Drunk Judges – but he claims he was “drinking tea”
• Reverse Racism – AA policies are nothing but reverse racism, fucks sakes give the best person for the job the job.
• Politics in Sports – hoo boy… why is it that there exists a policy to enforce more players of colour in our cricket and rugby teams but there exists no policy to enfore more non-black players on the SA soccer team? Smells like hypocrite bullshit to me.
• Important Jobs pay the least – this was carried over from the old regime, but if anyone had any insight, they would seek to change this. Let me put it into perspective, Police and Teachers are 2 great examples of important jobs that pay shit. In my most humble opinion, these should be the jobs that pay the most, thereby forcing a strict policy on who can become a teacher or a cop. There’d be less corrupt cops, less criminals becoming cops and less cops likely to be bribed. If its a sought after well paying job, people will queue to become a cop.
  Teachers – no disprespect to those people who want to be teachers, i think this is great, however the number of people who started out studying that wanted to become teachers is far less than the number of people who became teachers by accident because they did not get sufficient points at varsity to go onto other fields and they settle for teaching. So essentially what we have are people who maybe scraped through varsity, some with crap marks that are going to be teaching our kids. Now I ask you, would you want a less than qualified person to teach your children ?
  Or would you prefer that teachers get paid a fortune, thus making the qualifications to be a teacher rather stringent and again people will queue to go for these positions and thus meaning that our children are taught by the best minds in the country? Those that don’t make it as teachers can go and do some other arb job, like become a rocket scientist or something.
• Aids – we have a fucking problem people, excuse the pun.

I could go on and on.

What other countries are there in the world where power cuts are the norm? where there is a task force to look after the police force? where the heads of police are linked to criminal activities? where the minister of health embarasses themselves due to their ignorance? Where the police are corrupt and will let you drive on if you slip them a few bucks? Where Accused rapists and corrupt officals are heads of political parties?

This has stopped being a joke.