What can one say about a difficult year like 2021?
January found us writhing in the jaws of a third wave of Covid-19, and now December threatens to dump us into the hell of a fourth wave.
Many of us have yet to recover from the pain of losing relatives and friends who succumbed to the virus. Children are still trying to learn to live without parents who left them behind so suddenly.
Those who have lost jobs have not only had to grapple with socioeconomic hardships; they have lost the meaning of life itself. What is life without the certainty of an income? Even retirees know how disorienting it is to wake up and have nothing to do and nowhere to go.
You watch the sun rise and set, and wonder if the very act of watching constitutes life itself. The agony of a father who cannot provide for his children does explain a great deal of the rise in our country’s suicide rate.
There are people who now enjoy working from home, but the experience has given rise to its own complications. Many couples now know how difficult it is to be in the same space 24 hours every day. Human beings do need a break even from the best things in life.
No one has been spared. There is an element of modernistic charm in the idea of studying online. But young people missed a lot by not sitting in the classroom. There is something profoundly enriching about being in the physical presence of a teacher. Socialising with fellow students contributes a great deal to the development of young personalities.
Yet 2021 has also given us a glimmer of hope. Remember the doom and gloom of 2020, when we all thought there was no medical solution to Covid-19? Today, vaccines are freely available. Those who trust science are now vaccinated and have in some measure reclaimed normality .
The problem is that most South Africans are superstitious . There are all manner of conspiracy theories and beliefs that discourage people from being vaccinated. Even an idiot who left school in standard one (grade three) claims to know something about the “dangers” of vaccines. Unfortunately, the idiots are our friends and relatives. We cannot give up on them.
On the political front, 2021 will go down as a truly historic year. For the first time since 1994, the ANC scored less than 50% nationally in local government elections.
The ANC’s spin doctors always exhort us not to read much into the results of municipal elections, claiming that there is no correlation between municipal and national elections. What the spin doctors cannot hide is the fact that the ANC is on a precipitous decline.
The premier of Gauteng, David Makhura, knows exactly what the recent municipal elections results mean. You can imagine how he feels when he thinks of the meetings he will have to convene with the new mayors who run municipalities from which his comrades have been booted out.
In fact, Makhura knows that he is the last ANC premier of Gauteng. Even his counterpart in KwaZulu-Natal, Sihle Zikalala, knows that the game is over.
Some of us are already preparing to live under a new coalition government in 2024. We know, by the way, that the RET faction is busy finalising its plan to recall President Cyril Ramaphosa next year. Indeed, the ANC will do nothing to save itself. If the RET rogues succeed, South Africans will teach them a lesson they will never forget in 2024.
If they fail, the situation in the ANC will still be too murky to give hope to South Africans that their children will have a bright future under a divided party.
Even if the RET faction does nothing, no sane South African still believes that the ANC can create jobs, or that the party can fix Eskom. Most people now know that the ANC is thoroughly corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent.
This being my last column this year, and knowing the difficulties we have all experienced, to say merry Christmas sounds a tad insensitive. But what can we do? Please try and find a moment to enjoy the holidays.
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