If the world was one big family, we could sum the different continents up as follows:
North America would be the rich uncle who is always busy telling everybody what to do, and everybody is always nice to him because he might give you free stuff. Europe would be the nice aunt that always makes you nice cup of tea, would listen to all your stories and then gives you a homemade pie to take home with you, but you never know exactly what she is up to, and you always hear from the rest of the family what is really going on in her house. Australia and the Islands are the family that lives to far away that no one ever sees or hears from, you only hear from them when something monumentally goes wrong. South America is the drug dealing nephew who always ends up with debt and is always running around selling his assets to avoid getting his legs broken by some dealer called Jamal. Africa is the cousin who never has any money, he is the cousin that is always borrowing money but never pays it back. And when you know he has money, you will never see any of it, because he would go and buy something that shines and sparkles before he gets to you. You therefore try to avoid him at all costs, because when you see him, he will tell you his sad tale of how everybody else managed to get him into that position, but always keep in mind that he is never to blame for his situation, it is always someone else.
The rest of the family is always talking about Africa when they get together for a tea party at Europe (the nice lady that squishes your cheeks and gives you one of those “old lady kisses” goodbye) , and everybody always complains about Africa, but as with all good families they sit up with it, they borrow and try to help where they can, because they know that Africa is not going anywhere and that things there will never change, but if you don’t help him, he will go without food and that will be on your conscience. But the problem is difficult to solve because the more you hand out to Africa, the more dependant Africa becomes on your help.
What we are dealing with here is commonly referred to as the African problem, and not many people understand the African problem. The African problem is simple, it simply states that money can not help Africa, only Africa can help Africa. You can give Africa all the money in the world and Africa will still end up consuming it all without having anything to show for it. The same thing applies to our beloved country, our government has incubated a welfare state, a nation that has become so dependant on help and handouts that it has stagnated and finds it difficult to function without help in some form or another. If the help comes in the form of government grants or even BEE practices, it does not solve the problem, it only aggravates it, we are the only country in the world where the majority of the population is protected against the minority, and the majority still can not keep it together. And the mere fact that our population is currently sitting on 49 Million, and SARS is only expecting 5 Million tax returns this year just proves the point.
The point I am making here, is that we have passed the point of no return, our government has bred a nation who is not capable of looking after itself, and our government is doing nothing to change this mindset or culture. We are now stuck with an unemployable youth, and a middle class that is slowly but surely falling away (this coincidently is the first signs of a failing democracy). Maybe the ANC is dumbing down the nation on purpose to keep them selfs in power, or maybe they just have no idea what they are doing, but I am afraid that the damage that has been done will take generations to fix, we are now stuck with just another African story, a story of how freedom was achieved, but then destroyed again by corruption and greed, yes we are, and always will be the cousin who never has any money….
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