Letters | Medicare 24 tender

Twelve senior officers appeared in court related to the R200 million Medicare 24 tender. The biggest case of corruption in our land today is undoubtedly the political leadership in the country. Few social practices have such a turbulent history as corruption.

Democracy in our rainbow nation has become a hollow shell. It has become a public-relations stamp of approval for corrupt governance that runs roughshod over individual liberty while centralizing the power to enforce consent, silence critics and maintain the status quo. If the masses cannot replace a dysfunctional state and limit the power of the financial aristocracy at the ballot box, our nation is a democracy in name only.

We are grimly witnessing a dysfunctional machine of governance that changes the name of legislation and proposes policy tweaks, while leaving the rapacious corrupt untouched. If we want to see cruelty more pernicious than physical torture, study our corrupt society. It hinders economic development, exacerbates inequality, desecrates the rule of law, and undermines the stability of a democratic order. Unless we change course drastically, South Africa will become a totally failed state, from which it will never recover.