South Africa is believed to be heading towards becoming a failed state that has lost its effective ability to govern its people, says former General Maomela Motau.
Retired South African National Defence Force (SANDF) General Maomela “Mojo” Motau has warned that the country is fast becoming a failed state.
He said this is due to poor leadership.
Motau made these remarks during the launch of his newly-formed political party, Africa Africans Reclaim (AAR), last week.
This week, the party received approval from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to contest the general elections next year.
“We are fast becoming a failed state, and to address this dangerous situation our people and country face, strategic, politically conscious, and decisive leadership is required. Such a leadership must accordingly be armed with an appropriate political programme for change,” said Motau.
He attributed his remarks to the following challenges:
- “Our economy is struggling to grow fundamentally because we are sabotaging it through schemes, actions and inactions such as load shedding, petroleum pricing, unregulated import of luxury goods, obscene top managers salaries, interest and exchange rates.”
- Political violence and assassinations, violent corruption, the degradation of the rail infrastructure, theft of electrical transmission copper cables and even rail tracks, truck hijackings, attacks and murder of policemen and women, violent illegal mining by zama zamas, prison gangs, drug trafficking, human trafficking, murderous gangsterism and murderous organised crime
- “Our education remains subtly segregated and continues to produce graduates who are unemployable.”
- “Our national manufacturing capacity continues to be degraded. It is now almost to the ground. It is unthinkable that we can be able to grow our economy on imports.”
- Critical national assets are being sold to private capital without due regard to the role of state corporations in growing the economy.
- The income and wealth gap between the poor and the rich continues to grow. South Africa leads in the world in this regard. “We are clearly clueless on how to deal with this cancer.”
- The country is reeling under controlled immigration. This has contributed to “our high unemployment rate as business opts to employ foreign cheap labour. We equally allowed foreigners to own small and micro businesses in the country. These foreigners are responsible in cases of producing unhealthy food products that are dangerous for human consumption.
- Racism continues unabated. This is a historical challenge that we face, and “we have failed to deal with this scourge decisively”.
Motau, who was also chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) intelligence in exile, has been critical of the ANC under President Cyril Ramaphosa, saying the party has lost touch with the people because the leadership was not capable and committed.
However, Motau said the AAR would reclaim the ANC of “our forebears”, and the party would no longer win the vote of African people. He said this is because the leading party has failed to meet their expectations.
“We visited different areas in the country to canvass views on saving the ANC. Shockingly, people expressed unreservedly their willingness to vote for the ANC. They were not going to vote in the coming elections,” said Motau.
He added: “It was in the process of meeting people in different communities that we realised the depth of frustrations of our people with the goings in the ANC. They were clear that nothing had changed for them since 1994,” Motau said.
Political analyst Professor Sipho Seepe said, “We must worry when military men and women choose to form a party”. He said this is the greatest expression of no confidence in the current leadership.
Seepe also warned that the country was on the verge of being plunged into civil strife.
“The levels of crime have made the country ungovernable. The hopes of young people are dashed yearly, with throngs of thousands of graduates joining an ever-increasing army of the unemployed. And there is no plan to turn things around.
‘’The country is on the verge of being plunged into civil strife. It is just a matter of time. In the face of this impending calamity, we have a president obsessed with public relations. As some have commented, he has no gumption in lying to South Africans with a straight face,” said Seepe.
manyane.manyane@inl.co.za