LETTER: Mr Ramaphosa, are you really the president of South Africa?

IN THE aftermath of your State of the Nation address, my crystal ball reveals nothing much will change.

In fact, our dire situation will get much worse as an inept leadership steers us aground at every turn.

The startling revelations by Police Minister Bheki Cele, at the SAHRC hearings, that our intelligence agency withheld reports that could have helped the SAPS tackle the July 2021 unrest is nothing short of stupefying. Is this why we pay taxes?

As president, are you not briefed regularly by the security apparatus, including crime intelligence, so that, as commander-in-chief, you can make informed decisions to protect the citizens of this country?

Politics and the zest for power, with concomitant corrupt skulduggery, has imperilled an entire nation. Unless there is radical, fearless, drastic action from the head honcho of SA, we can brace ourselves for further decline and destruction.

The ANC has repeatedly hoodwinked the electorate into believing it has the interests of all people at heart. That is a fallacy.

Sadly, most of the electorate, yield to the bait of falsities election after election and return to office the very ineptitude they detest.

The tragic irony of July 2021 is that opportunists and thugs have made that event into a racial aspect.

It was never a racial thing. Look at your bureaucratic corridors, and yourself, to find out what it was all about. The Indian community was being demonised as the villains, yet who exactly were the real villains?

If this is the level of treasonous conduct within the ranks of those entrusted to protect us, then citizens are nothing more than cannon fodder for those in power, impotent to act when it is really needed.

I had written to then presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma about tackling crime in a radical manner.

But like you, they too were fettered by political heartstrings that prevented any real form of leadership that could have protected our country.

The despicable and almost seditious conduct of our crime intelligence agency almost allowed a near-insurrection to occur.

Why aren’t our inactive army not being strategically deployed in suburbia and other hot spots, merely as a deterrent against a burgeoning, rampant crime industry? I’d wager that most law-abiding citizens would have no qualms about such action.

Sir, a president, worthy of his salt would make uncomfortable decisions, sometimes unconventional decisions, so that we, the people, are best served and protected at all times

NARENDH GANESH | Durban North

Daily News