An upsurge in protests are a result of South Africans
Ram your lying NDP up your …
South Africa is burning. We are told these are criminal elements. But the reality is that South Africans have been sold a pipe dream. In that dream we were promised houses, land, jobs and opportunity. But 23 years later South Africans are poorer than they were prior to 1994.
Do not tell me of the few who received golden handshakes during the so-called transition and thus have amassed wealth for themselves and their families. Do not tell me of those who are politically connected and have received lucrative tenders. Don’t tell me of corrupt politicians who have used the state coffers to enrich themselves.
South Africans have had enough. The reality is that many of us are struggling to make it. The reality is that it does not matter whether you are educated or not, South Africa is a difficult country to live in. Yes, I said educated – master’s degree and all, yet one remains unemployed.
Recruiters in South Africa add to the misery. You apply and they do not acknowledge your application. If they call you, you have to jump through the hoops and then are left hanging. You go to interviews and receive no feedback. No one tells you anything.
We are told to be entrepreneurs. Would you like to see the proposals I have sent to government departments as well as funding institutions? What did I receive in return? Nothing.
I chose to come back to South Africa because I am educated and have experience and talent. I believed in who we are as a people and a nation. I felt that I could offer a positive contribution to enable the country to reach greater heights.
Education means nothing in South Africa. Experience means nothing. Intelligence means nothing. How much more so for those with less of an education or without one? Where are the real South Africans who are grounded in reality? These riots, the outrage, the looting are simply a drop in the ocean.
Continue to pacify and justify through political channels why South Africans must not lose hope. Continue to pacify and justify why you – the perpetrators of this inequality through your inept policies and unsound decisions – should remain in power. Continue to pacify and justify by saying that things are going to get better. Do you think we are fools? Do you think we do not see through you?
South Africans are gatvol. No amount of words, free T-shirts or occasional free meals are going to quell us. Take your National Development Plan and shove it where the sun don’t shine! – Nokwazi Hlubi
Edition falls short of M&G’s standards
I have long held the view that your newspaper is, on the whole, the only hard-copy newspaper worth reading in South Africa today. I am afraid, however, that your April 28 edition was nowhere near up to scratch. It demonstrated, to my mind, the general decline in standards of quality journalism and put your publication on a par with The Star and the Sunday Times, neither of which has, for many years, had anything much to say.
The full-page item, a piece by Carl Collison on Professor Linton Kwezi Johnson was, as the writer himself confessed, a rush job; it was dull, lazy and pedestrian, and told us almost nothing of substance, much less gave us any taste of Johnson’s actual poetry, which would have been really interesting. Why not use the rather paltry information gleaned at the interview in a proper article on Johnson, exploring his work, history and criticism? As it was, we came away with nothing of real interest.
Two of your Comment & Analysis pieces also left much to be desired, to the point of sheer boredom and not a little irritation. I look forward every week to this part of the paper, which is usually stimulating and thought-provoking.
The first was The cruelty of deliberate forgetting by Ismail Lagardien. It was manifestly uninspiring and poorly structured; the language is rather scattered and, I could not help thinking, quite random. Some of the facts were interesting and indeed disturbing, but they did not really form a cohesive or memorable whole. Perhaps it worked better as a talk where the personality of the speaker could shine through; on paper it reads poorly and should not have been published without proper care and editing.
Second, the contribution by Eusebius McKaiser, Don’t blame poverty on the poor, must be one of the most banal ever published, apparently about the arbitrary nature of luck, which we are told, “just happens to you”. What McKaiser was saying can really be reduced to one sentence; everything else was uninspiring. And why do we have to read a personal history of the writer (about one-third of the article) in which he essentially explains why he claims, in his own modest words, to have “an above-average IQ”? Come on, Eusebius! – Brian Slon, Johannesburg
African leaders rush to foreign hospitals
The curse of being an African president seems to be looming again. This time possible victims appear to be Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who was rushed to a British hospital, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who went to Singapore for medical treatment.
Prior to this it was Ethiopia’s former prime minister Meles Zenawi and Ghana’s John Atta Mills.
Others who died in office were Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of Nigeria and Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia.
Why do African presidents and leaders go to hospitals abroad for treatment? They don’t leave themselves at the mercy of their own health systems, upon which their own people have to rely. – Ernest Nartey Hogah, King William’s Town