Africa-Press – Eswatini. Bayethe Wena Waphakathi! Silo S’khulu, I would like to take advantage of the ongoing Sibaya submissions and make my own.
Unfortunately, not all of us can get the opportunity to be spotted by uMngani Mashampu Khumalo to make our submissions and given the multitudes of Emaswati who have religiously showed since day one to attend Sibaya, it is impossible that all of us will get our three minutes to share our views.
I thought, therefore, to use this privilege of writing weekly to add my voice as well. I am grateful to Their Majesties that we have finally been called to Sibaya and iNgwenyama has invited every Liswati to make use of this opportunity.
Ingwenyama has gone on to invite those who are here, from foreign shores, to also contribute to the conversation. Bayethe!
Wena Waphakathi! Sibaya is an important part of our way of life. We consider it to be the highest policy-making platform, and therefore we take note of the issues that have been raised this whole week. On this, I wish to digress a little and thank all those who have braved this heat to attend Sibaya and make submissions. They have enriched this process and all of us.
I thank all the panellists who have been lucky to make their submissions in front of Emakhosi and wish for them to recognise that this is the beginning of the privileges that they enjoy – to be asked to share their views so that the rest of the nation can get a better appreciation of the issues and the world around us.
Important
I dare say that this is partly why this year’s Sibaya has been so important – because the country ran out of brave people when it needed them.
The country ran out of patriots when we needed them the most. Those who enjoy this privilege of espousing their opinions were suddenly few and far between.
Bayethe, Wena Waphakathi! Before one offers his own thoughts and contributions to the issues that have challenged this beautiful nation, I would like to reflect on two things that have troubled me this week at Sibaya.
The first one is the deliberate snub of the former minister of health – and the deputy prime minister. I thought that if no one stands up to speak against this, then I should.
It is what the King needs, to hear honest, frank and robust conversations so that he is able to guide this nation. To not invite the minister of health as a panellist when one of the topics being discussed is the health crisis feels like a proper deliberate indictment against the senator. This is both unfair and wrong.
For me, it also denies this country of the needed answers, regarding what we all say is a health crisis.
The point I wish to make, Silo S’khulu is that we should be able to confront issues head-on and Sibaya would have been the right platform to hear from your former minister why we do not have drugs in hospitals.
It would only be fair – just as we were able to hear from the former ministers of economic planning, commerce, public service and labour. Might I forget the finance minister.
I find that this is unfortunate and scandalous, and perhaps forms part of a deliberate attempt to shield the truth from the public.
I share the same views on the former deputy prime minister. I wish that he would have been allowed to have a say, especially when we are asking others what they would have done differently, at a very critical time. Surely, the former DPM would have a benefit of hindsight too.
I have already taken more than three minutes, and yet everyone is being timed. Perhaps, this is the benefit of having to make my submission through the paper.
However, had I been asked to submit to Sibaya, I would have ventured three ideas that I believe the country needs to move forward. Bayethe ! Wena Waphakathi. Nkhosi. Ndlovukazi
Set new vision, for the youth
This country has many challenges, the biggest being unemployment for young people. I have heard many speakers lament this issue, but none have offered a solution.
My submission is that this country needs to set a new vision – but one that is youth-focused. It is clear that the country has a large number of unemployed youth, many of who have graduated from tertiaries only to be idle because the job market is saturated.
His Majesty gave us a vision that for a good decade offered us the path to where we are. Vision 2022 may have been mocked here and there and there may be people critical of what we achieved as a result.
However, the truth is this vision gave the country something to work towards. It opened our eyes to things we may not have been able to see. For the largest part, Vision 2022 was the platform from which we could build – and government was able to build towards this. I could say we succeeded in working towards this vision.
The country also had a vision to end Aids. This was a very successful vision for which the country gets plaudits all over the world.
It, therefore, is clear to me that if this country is to progress, it needs to give young people something to dream; something to work towards and definitely a goal we should strive to achieve. In this respect, I believe we need to be deliberate about the future of this country. We all know that the future is the youth. So what are we doing about the youth – and for the youth?
My suggestion is that we need a Vision 2030: Acceleration towards the future. This will be our way of creating a path for young people to be ushered into important roles and jobs in government.
Firstly, we need to now start working on a policy to make sure that young people are made a priority and therefore whatever opportunities are out there, we need to consider those who are young and jobless
Use financial services sector for scholarships
What is happening to our children at the tertiaries breaks our hearts.
We are turning our children into beggars and feeding them to the wolves, while we expect that this country will be led by the same people in the future.
This is a recipe for disaster.
The country has got to look after its young people, and provide them with opportunities to make them good people who will be good leaders in the future.
Yet, we are destroying the future of this country with the miserable scholarship packages we offer. By the way, this same package and the failure by government to remit funds to the universities for the same students is what is collapsing the institutions.
While I am not opposed to the view that we should look to send our young people abroad for studies, I am equally concerned if we will do so on the pittance that is our scholarship allowance right now.
This needs to change. We should be ashamed of what we give our children as scholarship when on the other hand, there are institutions throwing money down the drain through vanity investments, which is money from the toil of their parents.
What is happening in the financial services sector is a ticking time bomb, but there will be time to go into this in the future.
Invest
For now, what I find tragic is that financial services institutions funds have enough money to invest in our children, yet they are giving money towards projects that hardly give returns. Why not invest in our children’s education? Why not set up schemes to roll out scholarship funds, through their own offices that are filled with highly paid staff that does nothing really?
For me, the FSRA has got to redeem its declining reputation by forcing financial services to invest in the future of this country, setting up a scholarship programme that will allow our young people to go wherever their education takes them – so long as they will bring this money back.
This would turn this economy around, for the same children will be able to reinvest this money back by spending it in the informal economy and be able to look after their own when they are on a proper scholarship.
Instead, with what they get, which comes in drips by the way, they can’t do anything except to starve and be forced to sell their bodies.
This country has succeeded in making education and scholarships the exclusive preserve of those who have, thus making the rest of the young people struggle to make ends meet.
The Public Services Pensions Fund, for instance, is said to have E30 billion lying about. What it does with it is to buy idle buildings in the hope that it will be turned into a viable project. Yet, our children are struggling and going to classes on empty stomachs.
Of course, the banks are the other alternative, but for now I am certain that if Likhwane has enough millions to donate to some fund in South Africa that will never be recovered, then what the hell!
Our children are good enough to get into any university and we are shackling them with allowances that are not even good enough to be the crumbs left on the tables of these financial services. This is borderline inhumane.
Set up Parliament standards commission
A lot has happened in the past years that has brought the integrity of the House not just into disrepute, but complete chaos. Parliament lost its standing and its decorum. It was thrown into the dungeouns when MPs said whatever they wanted, and misled this nation.
MPs even started to behave like they were answerable to a certain constituency, refusing to be held accountable. All this time, the Parliamentary Service Board was conspicuous by its silence, which generally contributed to the malaise.
We need to protect the sanctity of parliament to prevent the scenes of the chaos we have watched in disbelief over the past couple of years.I am not a huge fan of these commissions, and I think that this country has many of them.
However, Parliament is an essential part of our democracy. It is the heartbeat of this country and it is where the wheels fell off that led to the unrest.
My take is that we need to improve the performance of parliament and certainly that of the politicians.
The vote-buying saga, for instance, has exposed the lack of a code of conduct in parliament and therefore that leads to a mafia-style conduct that isn’t helpful for our democracy. Setting up this commission therefore would have easily been seized with the controversial sale of seats in the senate.
This talk about the anti-corruption to me is an exercise in futility, but what we can do for the future is to be serious about the standards we expect of our parliamentarians, so that we get value of their time in office.
It was evident in the previous term that there were MPs who were untouchable and thought that their word was final.
There has been many who behave like they are there to do the public a favour, simply because they have enough resources to throw their weight around. Of course, the reality is that the parliamentary service board is sleeping on the job, but this commission would assist to get it functional.
It is time we take ourselves seriously, by demanding that MPs give value in their submissions in parliament and that this is fact-checked. Such a commission would deal with such matters – because we are tired of half-truths!
Source: observer
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