It’s time to overthrow the useless leaders**t

Babies are cute, but we don’t want to see them being made. Some good things must not be seen by the public if the participants have to maintain their dignity.

We’ve seen how politicians work and it is unsavoury at the best of times.

Just like in sex, a leader needs ability, knowledge and confidence to perform well. If any of those is missing, it will be a disaster.

On a good day, South African Parliament is like a comedy show and it would be really fun if it was not for the nearly 20 million people who are unemployed.

In normal circumstances the cream rises to the top but, when you’ve seen sewage running down the streets like rivers, you also know that crap bubbles to the top too.

Our parliamentarians are now scraping the bottom of the stinky tubes as they unashamedly talk about limbs of a private kind on podiums of power.

“Leaders**t”, is how one young man, Bafana, greets politicians with a deliberate slur and, because they don’t listen to what is said, they reply with pomp.

The buffoonery that we see in leadership positions today, including the corporate world, is a result of poor education, shoddy work ethic and self-loathing. The leaders**t lacks the depth to deal with complexity and so they distract themselves with demeaning trivialities.

The past few years have been blighted by self-indulgent ignorance masked as “leadership by the people”, which was a deliberate ploy to plunder.

“The basis of self-government and freedom,” John F Kennedy warned us, “requires the development of character, self-restraint, perseverance and the long view. And these qualities require many years of training and education.”

It’s time to cut the crap and overthrow the rule of indolence and ignorance, launch the Excellence Revolution and create a country where capable people will starve if they are lazy.

The first step is to weaken the safety nets. Grants should be a way of assisting the destitute and not a way to make a living. So they must be attached to stringent conditions, with a clear and unmistakable exit plan. If we make grants permanent for those who live today, we will bequeath a bankrupt country to the next generations, which is both immoral and corrupt.

There should be no more bailouts for corporations that have become victims of new technologies and economic systems. Banks and giant retailers, such as Edcon, which have become addicted to government bailouts, must be allowed to die so their carcasses can fuel new ecosystems of the economy.

Investment should be made into teaching maths and science in the mother tongue, as it was done for Afrikaners. You don’t have to speak English to learn science or understand a computer language. And why should African children be burdened with an extra language and closed off from opportunity? They also have a right to a choice of language.

Starting a business should be made easy. Scrap black economic empowerment. It is a hurdle to black success and only helps to assuage white guilt. It no longer works. The idea of confining the majority of the population to a quarter of the economy is a shoe-biting limitation to growth.

What we consider to be a wealth gap is, in fact, an opportunity gap, a handicap-them-as-they-grow system with deadly palisades. It is time to redress past imbalances in earnest, not by trying to fix a bygone past, but by preparing our youth to flourish in an unavoidable tomorrow.

The Excellence Revolution will succeed because the fools who stand at the podiums of power are weighed down by their own pot bellies.

Fidel Castro has told us that we don’t need crowds, but 10 to 15 people with absolute faith, or people with big limbs of a private kind that need to be held together by the bra.

Muzi Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency

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