Africa-Press – Gambia. With South Africa mired by a string of challenges, leader of Build One South Africa and businessman Mmusi Maimane has hope that things can change if people have the willingness to work together.
Maimane was a guest at the 5 Breakfast on 5FM, where he charted his reflections that impact South Africa, and also shared ideas to further develop it to be better.The former DA leader, who recently launched his political party, Bosa, spoke about grave ills that the country confronts and how they plan influence change.
Maimane cited service delivery failure in Naledi, pointing out the high unemployment rate, water crisis as well as load shedding, among many others.
On his launch last week, he revealed that the decision to start a party had also been precipitated by the crises that the country battles with.
“When I left Parliament in 2019, I wanted to hang out in communities. I wanted to meet people. And I wanted to understand more on what is going on in our country. And on Heritage Day it struck me that we as South Africa have an amazing heritage in some ways. We’ve got superstars. We’ve got great people that we’ve produced.
“And the same time as that we launched in Naledi, we looked around and realised the fact that while Naledi is a place of stars, at the same time some of it, the infrastructure, is broken. Our country is in load shedding. We’ve got a water crisis. Unemployment lines are just increasing.” said Maimane
“And I just said, we can’t sit back and forget citizens, so we launched Build One South Africa because I felt that we go back to the business because that is what we need. And I think we’ve got too much to lose in this country. So we started a political party with citizens who care about what we want together, black, white, Indian and coloured. They care that perhaps maybe the only thing we should be debating is how do we create jobs for young people.”Asked what kept him hopeful in these challenges, he said: “Hope is an incredible thing, both out of the fact that you need to remind yourself that you’ve been here before. You know, 1990 and 1994 is probably one of the most bloodiest periods in this country. There are more people who died in that time than in all apartheid as a context. Yet, 1994 delivered us a transition where we all sat back and said: ‘Actually we will get this thing right.’”
He explained that he drew hope from the fact that in 2004 and 2008 South Africa was probably growing at a rate of 5%, and the country produced the incredible staging of the World Cup.
Maimane believes that South Africans have it in their DNA to get it right when they can get it right.“I hold hope that we’ve done it before and we can do it again.”
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