30 March 2025

 

I live in a beautiful part of the world, on the South bank of the Lovu river. Yesterday I had to get up early to help an elderly lady get her social benefit pension grant. On the way I encountered a water leak. A river flowing across the street down a stormwater drain. Clean water that had been treated and pumped for over 100km to get to a stormwater drain and flow into a river and then to the sea. Water our community really needs. 20m further I drove over another stream, raw sewerage flowing into a stormwater drain, into the river I love to paddle. An ecological disaster. I collected the lady after navigating the streams and potholes filled with raw sewerage in the township where animals that drink the water get ill and die, where disease that kills is rife and causes bacterial infection amongst the young and old and took her to our local community center where up on the walls they had the seven principles of Batho Pele.

 

As the poster explained, Batho Pele is Sesotho for People First. The name of government’s programme for transforming public service delivery “from an inefficient bureaucracy with a focus on the rules to a culture of customer care in which the needs of the citizens are truly served irrespective of their race, gender or creed”. Promulgated in government gazette 18340 dated 01 October 1997.

 

I left her there at ten to seven so she could be attended to and get in front of line as the manager had promised and went to collect my friend, an elderly man who suffers cronic eye failure and cataracts and who is also quite deaf to take him for a booked consultation with the opthalmologist at a government hospital. His appointment was booked for 09:30. Because of his age he is classified as a priority patient requiring immediate assistance under the same Batho Pele principles displayed on the hospital walls. I left him there to go back and collect the elderly lady.

 

Back at the community centre, we waited until 12pm and then I had to leave while she carried on waiting for her application to be processed and went back to the hospital, 35km to the north. Because our railway line bridge has been lying in disrepair since the last flood, the only public transport is with taxis that for folks like these are generally not affordable and also puts them at risk.

 

I was angry because I had raised the issue of the disintegration of our water reticulation system and considerable fraud with the office of the Premier over a year ago when my community had given me a mandate to sort the problem and I had failed because nothing had been done and we have suffered the consequences of corporate greed and government ineptitude again.

 

At the hospital I encountered my friend who was being assessed by a frustrated nurse because she did not understand that he was not only blind but deaf and her instructions were not being adhered to. He was frustrated, having sat in queues for four hours in a very busy hospital bordering on mild chaos. I was able to assist by a simple explanation and helping with the reading of the eye chart.

I was notified by the elderly lady back at the community centre that her application had been completed but I could not afford to dash back and then come back to the hospital so I told her she would have to wait.

 

Fortunately with explaining to the pharmacy staff multiple times that my friend was a priority patient, we left the hospital at 14:35. After dropping my friend I collected the elderly lady who had been standing outside the community center for the last hour or so and got home after having to detour due to road closures caused by the leak after 4pm.

 

We have as a nation just had our budget passed. Controversial. RTn2,59. A headline yesterday read the average government salary increased from R43,150 in 1995 to R566,241 in 2024. In 1995, total government spend on public servant compensation was RBn55 and in 2024, Rbn 724. That means there were 1,27 million public servants being paid in 1994 and 1,28 million in 2024. Digging a little deeper, which is hard these days because our national statistics service has pretty much disintegrated and honest stats are hard to come by, The Government Technical Advisory Centre released a report that stated government spend on public servant compensation rose in 2019 to 41% of consolidated revenue (which from our stats service amounted to R1,62Tn) i.e. RBn656 and averaged R410K per employee which puts the number of employees at 1,6 million. Yet in the same report they advise total spend was Rbn 567 and number of employees was 1,28million.

 

In comparison, one of our largest employers and highly regarded companies, Bidvest reported last year earnings of RBn122, tax paid of Rbn 2,2 and operating expenses of RBn22,9. With 132870 employees. If 80% of operating expenses were wages and salaries, the average remuneration per employee for last year was just over R130K.

 

Back to my friend and the elderly lady who are looking forward to their government grants of under R30K per year to survive and have to travel to hospitals and community centres far away, stand in queues for hours and live in shacks or with relatives.

 

If we believe the reports that the number of public servants remunerated stays consistent over 30 years at 1,28 million these are individuals who have earned exceptional salaries at the expense of those doing good work and have brought service delivery almost to a standstill. The new budget awards them a substantial increase: 32% of total budget at R840Bn or R656K for the year.

 

Directors of companies pretty much go under the radar unless you want to go through the mandatory compensation reports of listed companies. Folks who challenge the status quo and report corruption face exclusion from the job market altogether and are denied our basic human rights. A system no doubt managed by government’s close collaboration with the secret societies who control the courts, the police and most of corporate South Africa. Who have blood on their hands and are continually engaged in cover-ups undermining trust in the government and it’s institutions.

 

The only remedy before we face complete destruction as a society is repentance. It takes a man to admit fault and to sincerely apologise for that, to seek forgiveness from those wronged and turn. Our time as a nation has come. Individually we can either choose to acknowledge we have done wrong and to turn away. It starts with our relationship with God whose only remedy and complete work was done in the life, death and resurrection of His Son. Who also brings judgement in the absence of repentance. Who is ever gracious and merciful and desires all of us to come to Him. We must have the courage to be honest, to turn to Him and pray. To do what is right and to forsake wrong. This is the requirement of true leadership. To admit wrong and to do what is right.

 

“Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death.” Proverbs 10:2.