We have to dream big. This is the answer from our President to all our sorrows and the woeful state of our nation.
Just dream big, even though unemployment keeps spiking and corruption festers in every corner of our land.
This despite the auditor-general, Kimi Makwetu, releasing damning municipal audit results that show an overall decline for the 2017-18 financial year.
The auditor-general audited 257 municipalities and 21 municipal entities for the 2017-18 financial year. Of the audited municipalities, the audit outcomes of 63 regressed, while those of 22 improved.
Makwetu said these deteriorating audit outcomes show that various local government role players have been slow to implement, and in many instances even disregarded, the audit office’s recommendations.
We can all see the trickle-down effect of these failures in service delivery right here in Boksburg, and it has been glaringly evident for years.
Makwetu pointed out that the evidence of a lack of real implementation is seen in incomplete projects, unsupervised projects, lack of maintenance of significant service delivery infrastructure and haphazard road maintenance projects and infrastructure.
Case in point, Boksburg. In May this year, for example, the Advertiser reported on the supposed failed project to construct a new EPMD precinct in Boksburg.
Or how about the Boksburg Lake, which still has not undergone remediation after so many promises and expensive studies? Or how about the promises of a new state hospital, since Tambo Memorial Hospital is falling apart faster than the reputation of the ruling party?
With bated breath we wait to see the outcome of the ambitious Leeuwpoort mega-housing development.
Across Ekurhuleni, infrastructure keeps crumbling while the metro struggles to implement the rapid bus transit system.
Despite all these challenges, we are reminded that as long as we dream, all will be well. Tell this to those who are starving or without a roof over their heads this winter.
As part of this ambitious dreaming project, the President talked about a smart city full of skyscrapers and a bullet train linking megacities with remote rural areas.
Yet we cannot address corruption or a retracting economy or run an efficient Metrorail.
While we are dreaming, maybe we should dream of superheroes, rename the smart city Gotham and hope a masked hero by the name of Batman will save us. Or perhaps we should name it Metropolis, where no criminal stands a chance against Superman.
Let us just dream of unicorns and days when taxpayers’ money is well spent and that Superman and Batman will finally put the men in red berets in their place.
The Proteas dreamed of World Cup glory in England, but unrealistic dreaming can soon lead to severe disillusionment and a break from reality.
Talking about coming back to reality, how about all the claims made by Graeme Joffe, the former CNN International and 94.7 sportscaster who investigates corruption in South African sport? He fled his homeland after being warned that his life was in danger.
In his latest book, Sport: Greed and Betrayal: Wanted for Crimes against Journalism, Joffe describes the incredible corruption from top to bottom in all sports in the country.
Although you cannot believe everything you hear or see, the book will catch the attention of many because of our country’s corruption woes. What he writes shouldn’t surprise us – it has become the norm of business.
Meanwhile, Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu has defended Ramaphosa’s dream of a new city and a bullet train, reminding the House it was dreamers who gathered in Mangaung in 1912 to form the ANC.
All good and well, but what has happened to that dream? Quite frankly, it has turned into a nightmare, just as the dreams we are supposed to be dreaming will be filled not with fluffy flowers but with dark and foreboding monsters of continuing doom and gloom.
FOLLOW US:
For more #hyperlocal news at your fingertips, visit Benoni City Times, Springs Advertiser, Brakpan Herald, African Reporter and Kathorus Mail
