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Dear Mr President
I write this letter because I feel angry. And confused. Angry, confused and betrayed.
I am writing to you, Mr President, in desperation as a young South African citizen, deeply concerned about the direction our country is heading under your leadership.
In trying times of confusion and desperation, we are to look to you, Mr President, as the father of our great nation, but what do we do when you are the very root and reason for our confusion? Our anger?
We are a nation lost. Lost in the uncertainty, and we are in dire need of true, honest and selfless leadership.
Who are we to look to?
I write to you with a heavy heart for many men and women – young and old – who are affected by your self-serving decisions.
Mr President, just because many of our parents and grandparents are ANC loyalists, we are all expected to turn a blind eye to the injustices and not be concerned about the rand and the effects your self-serving decisions have on it.
We are expected to not question your tactics that have numerous times proven that you do not have the average South African’s best interests at heart.
We are a nation lost. Lost in the uncertainty, and we are in dire need of true, honest and selfless leadership, and I don’t think that’s you.
I implore you, Mr President, to imagine being an ordinary South African.
Your most recent Cabinet reshuffle has sent shock waves throughout the board and left the economy in shambles. Mr President, hear my call.
As much as we understand the presidential prerogative to fire and appoint ministers and the Cabinet, we can’t help but ask ourselves who this “prerogative” is influenced by.
I am sure that the founding fathers of the ANC did not fight to the bitter end so that you can do as you please.
Abusing the powers of the office for your own personal gain – I refuse to believe that.
That is undoubtedly not what the founding fathers and mothers of our democracy stood for.
Tata Zuma, you have employed poor leadership to key positions and continue to do so. The consequences are felt across the board.
Stop patting mediocrity, uselessness and corruption on the back and sending them off with golden handshakes!
Precious resources and time are spent to keep disgraced officials, including yourself, in positions, purely just postponing the inevitable.
How do you expect the public to continue respecting yourself and these institutions?
Mr President, as custodian of our land, it is your constitutional duty to first and foremost uphold the Constitution of the republic and that means to act in the best interests of the people of the republic, which you Mr President have unashamedly failed to do.
We are a nation lost. Lost in uncertainty, and we are in dire need of true, honest and selfless leadership. And that Mr President can’t be you.
Mr President, I call on you to do some serious introspection and to stop being a self-serving, contradicting hypocrite.
Your actions have brought our beautiful land into disrepute.
In recent times, South Africa has been overcome with race related conflict.
Not only as president, but also a father, a brother, a friend, but most significantly, an elderly person, we look to you for direction and leadership, but what do you do?
You unashamedly go ahead and add fuel to the “race fire”.
I am utterly disappointed that you have called me and countless other South Africans racists just because we are not Zulu or Xhosa for deciding that keeping quiet is no longer an option and joining protests calling for your removal from office.
President Zuma, because you’ve broken your oath of office, I feel that you don’t deserve the honour that has been bestowed upon you to be our head of state and government.
Please do the honourable thing and leave office while you still have some dignity left.
I am calling on your sense of humanity. That of ubuntu.
Mr President, please remember that you are part of a whole, and once you start acting against the whole, we will remove you.
Mr Zuma, we have come in peace and thus we call on you to step down peacefully.
Honourable President, hear my call!
Sincerely,
Jason White
• White (19) is an active citizen who hails from Knysna in the Western Cape. He plans to pursue studies in politics next year.
