Procrastination, it is said by 18th century English writer, Edward Young, is the thief of time, and that those who waste time, and fail to strike when the iron is hot, miss great opportunities of glory, heroism, and praiseworthiness.
Decisiveness is by far a better option in politics than to twiddle – to waste valuable time on trivialities, especially when the country is smothered by uncertainties, doubts and fears caused by Eskom.
What does a young graduate say after finishing their studies, not knowing where to go because there is no prospect of job opportunity for them? Do they take kindly to the knowledge that education may not have value, and that if it did, why would they remain unemployed?
Why would skills in our country not develop wings, and those with knowledge and experience to turn the wheels of the economy leave the country, and seek opportunities elsewhere?
What would cause good men and women to turn to revolution, and plot to turn their own country into a wasteland?
Why did the world experience the French Revolution at the tail end of the 18th century? Why did young South Africans leave their country in 1976, and decades before, to plot the demise of the apartheid regime?
“Let them eat cake,” so said the great queen of France, Marie Antoinette, when the masses, peasants, and the working class complained of hunger and poverty.
Our country, and its citizens, are at a crossroads. Life’s goodness sours on many fronts, including the high rate of unemployment, great poverty suffered by the many, high rates of violence and death, and uncertainty about what
tomorrow might bring.
But today the greatest human tragedy facing the South Africans is the absence of light, literal and figurative. The fact and harshness of it all, though, is that this curse will be with us for a very long time.
More troubling, though, is that power blackouts impact every area of life negatively. The quick turning of economic wheels is greatly hampered, a factor that increases poverty and joblessness and lack of investments necessary for the well-being of society.
Additionally, we are at every turn exposed to the dangers of violence and death, and the vagaries of all that is not good, including falling victim to criminal elements lurking at every corner.
Given all these factors, we must ask, why is the president not communicating with us, updating us on regular basis, as he did during the scary Covid-19 days?
At the Nasrec conference in December, President Cyril Ramaphosa dislodged his political rivals convincingly. For this achievement, he was congratulated by many. He now has a stronger mandate to act more boldly.
The bigger question, and a greater concern at this stage, is that as the country moves deeper into the power shortage mire at Eskom, the president chooses to go into his shell, unavailable to his people to inform them what might be in a pipeline to sort out the power outages we face more regularly than ever before.
Eskom is in big trouble. Mr President, we want to hear you talking to us more frequently about progress or lack of it at the power utility.
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