New Dawn

 A new dawn. 

AK47 fire announces the start of a new day. In Durban, not Ukraine. Drug wars, they say. But two innocent bystanders are among the five people killed in the last month or so.

Mr Cele did not fly in. I don't know if the killings made the mainstream news or not. Probably not. None of the victims were celebrities, just people living ordinary lives in the south of Durban. 

Perhaps these killings didn't meet the criteria for pious displays of righteous indignation at media conferences.

In other news, a nurse attacks an  ' ambulance with a panga during a health workers' strike. Strikers attempt to pull a child on life support out of the ambulance. A striker is quoted:

"We don't care if patients die."

Let us be clear that none of these people belong within a mile of healthcare. Nor in society. In a normal society, they would reap the just consequences for savagery. Here, they will surely go on and God help those who fall into their tender mercies in hospitals and clinics.

Upon the heads of union leaders and our government is the blood and the suffering. Callous, criminal behaviour did not start yesterday. When there are no consequences for thuggery, the thugs need no further encouragement. That is where it began. 

You may member the New York Police Department's approach: fix the broken windows, deal with petty misdemeanours. so that the environment does not encourage crime. A simple philosophy: keep the house clean; discourage the cockroaches. My, how we have encouraged the vermin these many years. Not least by example from the very top. There have hardly ever been consequences for criminal behaviour during strikes and protests. 'Ag, shame. It's a democratic right to piss on other people's rights." Remember that this is the twenty-first century with Big Brother video and Small Brother android everywhere.

And so, again, some animals are more equal before the law than others. Test this by smashing a shop window or burning something on your next stroll through town. Through the consenting silence down the years, the unacceptable became standard. Now, the atrocious is commonplace. As you sow....

What says our president?

 

"As I said in the State of the Nation Address, the Presidency and National Treasury will work together to rationalise government departments, entities and programmes over the next three years.

This work – which will review the role of all departments, including the Department of Public Enterprises – will inform the configuration of government going into the next administration"

Vague enough to mean anything and nothing,

I  would have liked to hear this speech: 

"We are in deep shit in every sphere -except tax revenue collection  Every one of my ministers will be moving their behinds  as if the place were on fire - which it is. We will have achieved the following by these dates...Any behinds not moving at pace and with purpose will he kicked into touch."

But I am sure that you will operationalise the strategies emanating from various think tanks, coalescing blue sky thinking with pragmatic approaches and best practice methodologies employed globally in the simmering and poaching of amphibians. Or something.

God bless South Africa 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

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O Tichmann 

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