Letters | Heed Sasria’s warning

The report by Sasria, a state-owned company specialising in insurance for special risks such as riots, must be taken seriously by all those in the corridors of power, regardless of political affiliation. The report warns of rising risks of social unrest. At the end of 2019, in a series of press articles, I warned of the dangers of social upheaval.

In July 2022, the country witnessed unrest that cost the economy R50 billion and claimed 354 lives, and caused monumental destruction. Few social practices have such a turbulent history as corruption. We have been comprehensively betrayed by almost all those who have misled us since 1994.

Democracy in rainbow South Africa has become a hollow shell. It has turned into a public-relations stamp of approval for corrupt governance that runs roughshod over individual liberty while centralising 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.

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We are grimly witnessing a dysfunctional system 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, we should study our corrupt society. It hinders economic development, exacerbates inequality, desecrates the rule of law and undermines the stability of our democratic order. Unless we change course drastically, South Africa will become a failed state from which it may never recover.

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