Dear President Zuma,
The future of South Africa is currently in your hands. If I read the signs correctly, this may be the home stretch for you as far as your tenure as President goes. I think it is time that you considered what your Legacy to the children of this potentially utopian country is, and will be once you are passed off into history.
I am writing to you from an environmental and wildlife platform because this issue is of even greater concern to me than the wellbeing of the people of this country, this because your party, the ANC, assures me that this is under control and plans etc are in place to uplift and improve the lot of the masses.
Mr President, we as Africans are very passionate about our environment and our wildlife. I know you will acknowledge that attracting tourists to spend money in South Africa is high enough on our agenda to be worth investing a lot more time, effort and resources, to ensure it's well being. When we are successful in sorting out the education crisis and challenges in South Africa, do you not realise that you and the ANC will have a lot better educated kids to answer to. They will ask the question why you allowed our pristine and sensitive eco-systems to be destroyed, by essentially what is man's greed for more money, instead of better utilising existing resources. They will be educated enough to know that the wealth of a nation is not measured by how many millionaires there are per capita, but rather how healthy society, our environment and our assets including wildlife are.
Mr President, why do you not realise that your country is currently under seige, from within and without our borders? Why do you not realise that us having arguably the best Constitution in the world, and a commendable Bill of Human Rights, both intended to protect the innocent citizens of this country, is exactly what encourages the drug dealers, the poachers, fraudsters, money launderers, corruptors, murderers and rapists to ply their trade on our soil?
As an example to you, I am told that seven more de-horned rhino carcasses were discovered in the North West Province in the last couple of days. If you analyse the arrests of all those involved in the rhino poaching pandemic, and regrettably this figure is too low in relation to rhino deaths and proves that you have lost control of crime, you will see that 70% are from foreign countries. They are stealing from your back yard while you do business with their leaders. Are you inadvertantly giving your tacit approval to these goings on by your relative silence and inaction on the subject? The people do not want to hear these things from your Ministers or their lackeys, they want you to stand up and warn and caution criminals directly.
I do not wish to detract from the needs of the people of the country Mr President, but I urge you to take swift and decisive action against those that are reducing South Africa to a criminal paradise.
Let this be the legacy that you leave behind. Don't let the children of this country grow up in a world that is run by criminals. Don't let your great grandchild ask you one day what a rhino is, or why a classmate died from smoking tik, or why there is a huge hotel in a tiny little animal park called the Kruger National Park, or why so many children are being stolen and smuggled East to work as sex slaves?
Answer these questions now Mr President and ensure that our grandchildren have a bright African future, in a healthy environment that has clean air, has structure, teems with natures wildlife, and is safe.
I remain optomistic for South Africa's future but it is not easy.
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