Rozario Brown, Town Centre
Allow me to commence by commending premier Alan Winde, the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town, on recruiting and employing thousands of young people into the City’s Law Enforcement unit.
These young recruits should appreciate the job, respect the badge and uniform and serve our people with honour and distinction.
The City and provincial government should ensure that these young recruits are well trained, fully equipped and ready to face these brutal criminals on every street corner in our city.
These young people are our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.
We have a collective responsibility to ensure that they do not become sitting ducks ready to be attacked by these cold blooded killers on the streets.
However, even if we employed 100 000 law enforcement and police officers, our social-economic conditions remain.
We need to flood our communities with armies of social workers in an effort to get to the root cause of most of our problems.
We can no longer blame the government alone for all the ills facing our country.
We, the people, have failed our communities, our families and our country, by remaining silent and inactive when it became crystal clear that the country was taking a turn for the worse.
We, the people, remain complicit by remaining loyal to those who we put into power and remaining silent when we should be speaking out and taking to the streets and demanding the removal of a corrupt or incompetent government.
We are equally corrupt for trying to defend those who participate in corrupt activities and put the lives of the most vulnerable people in this country at risk.
The worst amongst us are those who are eligible to vote, but refuse to even register to vote and there are millions falling within this category.
Those who ignore all the signs, those who still refuse to become active citizens and contribute towards the rebuilding of the country, those who continue to shield the corrupt politicians and known criminal elements within our community, beware.
The mood in the country is changing rapidly.
Our people are tired of the empty promises.
Let’s join hands and unite.
Let’s start a mass movement and let us only do what is right
Join civil society groups and put pressure on the government to do the right thing.
Let us all register to vote and change the direction of the country.
South Africa still has a lot to offer and we certainly do not need the international community to remind us of how deeply rooted our problems are.
Rebuilding and re-branding South Africa remains our collective responsibility.
Let’s do what is
right.
Do it for our country.