The week that could either make or break SA

This is the week. This is the week that will tell us, conclusively, what we are dealing with in SA.

Are we led by self-centred, unpatriotic, visionless, morons that voters should get rid of immediately or do we have some semblance of sensible leadership still left to cling on to? 

It is often said that “cometh the hour, cometh the man”.

Well, will the leaders the country desperately needs right now emerge?

If they do emerge, will their comrades at Theba Hosken House, the DA’s head office, or Luthuli House, the ANC’s home, allow them to do what’s right for country and people instead of what satisfies party bosses? 

SA currently faces what is possibly its most damaging moment economically and politically since 1994.

If the country does not manage to steer through the incredibly dangerous waters we find ourselves in then we are headed towards collapse. SA is on the brink. 

For 30 years, the country has enjoyed the goodwill of the world.

Wherever SA’s leaders went across the globe, the red carpet was rolled out.

Our government leaders were, after all, successors to the great Nelson Mandela.

The defeat of the heinous apartheid system and what we had cobbled together out of that was an example to the world: good could triumph over evil, peace could be hewed out of hate. 

Even when the ANC lost its way and chose the route of corruption and laziness by electing Jacob Zuma and his pals to lead the country, some goodwill lingered.

The party and the country were given a chance by investors who held out hope that the period of state capture and kleptocracy would pass. So, we survived that era. 

The arrival of Donald Trump as president of the US has changed all that.

The 31-year honeymoon is over. Since January 20, a slew of highly damaging executive orders have been directed at SA.

US government leaders such as secretary of state Marco Rubio have made it clear that they regard SA as an enemy state.

Influential players such as Elon Musk, the world’s richest and possibly most powerful man, have posted damaging messages about the country.

Now even the most discredited legislators in the US Congress, in a bid to catch President Trump’s eye, are tabling ridiculous motions to redefine US relations with SA.

The cherry on top was the swingeing new tariff regime that Trump imposed on SA’s exports, threatening to wipe out large chunks of the SA automotive and other industries. 

This country has numerous problems, but this is the one that SA’s leaders should be most concerned about right now.

Jobs will go. Sanctions will be imposed. Reputations will be destroyed.

Hunger will flourish and, down the line, social instability may claim the country. This. Is. Serious. 

Yet, amid this tsunami, SA’s parliamentarians were last week clapping and singing as they adopted a budget that imposed a 0.5 percentage point hike in VAT to most goods.

Worse still, their failure to negotiate a proper deal about the disputed budget and economic revival of the country over the next five years strained the government of national unity so much that the ANC went shopping for new partners.

By Friday evening, it was clear that the GNU had all but collapsed: accusations and counteraccusations flourished; rumours of farewell parties abounded; leaks of ANC meetings with the president and his deputy saying their coalition partners had written themselves out of the partnership came to light. 

Here is the thing. Right now, the only thing that stands between SA and being demolished by Trump’s actions is unity of the country’s leaders.

This is the time for a strong unity government to clinically, scientifically, come up with a plan to respond with calm and resoluteness to the concerted attacks against the country. 

If President Cyril Ramaphosa says he can respond to the US with a limping GNU made up of Gayton McKenzie and Herman Mashaba, then good luck to him.

He will lose. He will fail spectacularly as he is held ransom by his many minuscule partners.

If Helen Zille and John Steenhuisen want to kiss the possibility of one day winning elections in SA goodbye, then they must walk out of the GNU at this point.

It will taint them as possibly on the side of those who want to do the country harm at its most challenging and weakest moment. 

The GNU was not what any party wanted. It is what voters chose.

Right now, those voters want SA to unite, face up to the tsunami that’s roaring towards the country, and succeed.

Good, ethical, leaders in both the ANC and the DA must realise that there is no way to survive unless they work together at this pivotal time. Do they have the courage?