Too much lip service in govt

Sir,

We are an obstinate nation that refuses to take sound advice; and as such we refuse to be ‘bullied’ by anyone.

 The irony of it is that we refuse to be ‘bullied’ by even those who are bankrolling our social programmes in terms of aid and trade. As a nation, we seem to have earned ourselves a reputation of refusing to take sound advice; and that is a huge setback for us; the reason we are languishing in acute poverty for a greater majority of our population. 

This attitude on the part of our leadership, government in particular; included in which is our Legislature, is destroying this nation. The pace of doing things in this country is also painfully slow. We pass up opportunities due to our lackadaisical approach to matters; emphasising our old-age adage, ‘there is no hurry in Eswatini’. 

opportunities

The trouble is, there is so much hurry in the global communities today; where opportunities wait for no one. The world has become a global village and protection based on sovereignty is fast diminishing. 

My observation is that there is so much lip service in government to the point of making government’s word count for nothing. Our nation continues to lose credibility this way. And all this boils down to refusing to take advice. An example of how this country refuses to take advice can also be seen in our attempt to coin our own definition of First World status. 

The question I ask is, who are we fooling? And why reinvent the wheel? I mean, whether we are considered to have reached First World status will be determined by those around us; the global community and not ourselves. 

To me, it was an exercise in frivolity to fool ourselves we would reach First World status by building roads and achieving economic prosperity for a few when a huge segment of the population is languishing in acute poverty. 

Poverty, industrialisation, democratisation and other social reforms need to be factored in. 

Included in the infrastructure that would take us to First World status, it is believed, would be the implementation of a thermal power station that has been in the air since the ninth Parliament at least; and to date all we hear is that feasibility studies are still being compiled. 

This to me was just another empty promise to us citizens to get us excited over nothing. In all this you ask; is this the price to be paid for ego? Certainly not; as this is too high a price in terms of the wastage of State funds.    

Babe Dlamini 

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