Whose problem is it anyway?

These days we are inundated with news of skyrocketing crime, politicians in denial, ESKOM depriving us of power and everyone else knowing what to do. It becomes apparent to me that many people have lost touch with reality and suffer from a huge amount of naivety and a desire to live in cloud cuckoo land. I agree that we all need to realize that we have a problem, or better that the society we live in has a problem. The base of the problem is not a lack of cops on the beat, not even the so often ineffective justice system. The root is social decay and a lack of values in many sections of our society. No amount of cops is going to take care of that. All of us, individually, need to take charge and start with our own social environment to make the difference we so often want others to make. How can we expect cops to be effective when most of us are not even willing to go to court to testify against the guys who broke into the car across the road. It was not my car, so why get involved? How can we cry foul when we support crime by buying stolen goods at the streetcorner, how can we complain about corruption when we “slip” the badly paid traffic cop a R50 note to forget about our speeding fine? We blame our hesitance to get involved on the slow process of the justice system yet we do nothing to change this situation. It is impossible to have a police man or woman behind every would be thief, robber or murderer, but we all can aid in reporting crime and be there to take the stand. “The problem is too big, we cannot do anything!” I hear people say. This reminds me of the story of the beached starfish colony and the old man who keeps throwing them back into the sea. He made a difference to the individual who made it back and with time he will make a difference to the masses. If all get involved and make themselves heard where they can make a difference, namely in the own environment it will make a difference to the entire situation. After all we are the sum of all of us. It is time that to take stock of our situation and instead of continuously blaming authorities and the state president to meaningfully engage with our local, regional and provincial structures. Let us start to practice democracy and make ourselves heard through these structures. Whilst I am sitting in the Cape the national situation is important to me but the ongoings in the Cape a lot closer to my heart. So, I do not try to engage with Jaqui Selebi but with our provincial Commissioner Mzwandile Petros, there I can get answers and give input. Associations play a meaningful role in fostering this kind of dialogue but there seems to a huge reluctance for people to get involved. Is it too much work? Or is it sometimes easier to blame someone else instead of getting involved? Everyone quotes stats and uses these to driver their point home. A point of departure would be to base comments on the same stats and to understand how they were arrived at. Information sharing and effective communication is a real issue in my mind. The government has let us down on many occasions on that front as it has not managed to publish consistently reliable information about, for example, crime figures. Instead it has allowed tempers and emotions to run high and everyone quoting all sorts of so called facts! The same information deficit can be seen during the continuing ESKOM crisis. We do not want to hear that air conditioners are to blame for shortages resulting in what we now refer to as rolling black outs, we neither want the continuous barrage of people criticising ESKOM for the sake of it. ESKOM made very big mistakes and neglected, very obviously, the kind of forward planning that one would expect from such an energy giant. We have all realized this by now and taken note of it. But it is now time now to push for forward planning. Instead of continuously knocking ESKOM we want answers, not reactions to criticism. What we want is a concise plan of action that will tell us conclusively that the issue is being dealt with. We want to know when which power plants come on line and resulting from this, we want to know as of when we can count on a reliable supply of power and what will happen until that point is reached. Once all these details have been communicated we can stop calling ourselves a third world country and get on with our daily lives in the comfort that the electricity problems will be taken care of. Blaming ourselves for being a third world country and general negativity etc, seems to be a national sport. The “we are not worth it” brigade is again getting very loud. Those who are calling for the FIFA world cup to be withdrawn so that crime will be addressed belong into this section. This kind of talk could only have detrimental consequences for our economy and the related job creation as it indicates a lack of confidence of SA’s people in their own country. This behavior certainly would not instill confidence in possible investors, and investment and progress is what we need to address the many social ills we face. I would not like to see us being thrown back by some 15 years should these negative people be heard. SA is a country with enormous potential and it is in our hands to realize this potential. It is our responsibility to constantly evaluate the performance of the various governmental structures and related services to ensure their effectiveness and progress. We need to make ourselves heard. But it is also our responsibility to work with these structures and aid wherever we can. Most of us have too much invested here, emotionally as well as financially, to let it go to waste because of missed opportunities.