‘Democracy in our fractured land ensures the right of jackals to elect jackasses to parliament’
Al-Qalam 
The latest shocking revelations at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry, and the latest report by the head of the Special Investigating Unit {SIU}on {PPE} corruption, graphically unearths all the overt and covert role players who completely demolished the political landscape and economy of our nation.
Most of our institutions cannot evade blame for enabling state capture and in the stealthy process earned themselves billions of rands worth of ill-gotten blood money.
Like financial vampires, they operated in a shady and shadowy world, unaware that one day they will be unmasked as ruthless predators.
The new elitists and their shadowy partners have transformed the nature of politics and administration. Amoral politics, self-aggrandisement, disregard of the conditional norms in the pursuit of power, political survival at any cost are their rules of the game. Few social practices have such a turbulent history as corruption. Democracy in our fractured land ensures the right of jackals to elect jackasses to parliament.
We have been comprehensively betrayed by almost all those who have mis-led us since 1994.
Democracy 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.
Any government that disarms its citizens is an oppressive oligarchy. 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, our beloved country, will become a totally failed state from which it will never recover. The money that was looted, could have paid for 50 million doses of covid 19 vaccines, paid the jobless for 3 years, allowed for additional Sassa grants for 2 years, built houses for millions of homeless, provided free medical care for all our sick ,and would have paid for education for our children for at least 4 years.
FAROUK ARAIE
GAUTENG
