"No skyfall after Mangaung"

Thank you for your sensible editorial comment, “Mangling Mangaung” ( FM  16/11/12-21/11/12), especially when you point out that we need to relax about Mangaung itself. I am getting tired of people talking  about by Mangaung in apocalyptic terms. In reality we will just have more of the same corruption and incompetence afterwards. The world will not come to an end, nor will South Africa’s future be irreparably damaged if Zuma is re-elected. It is the system that’s not working, not the thoroughly interchangeable politicians. It is ever the tendency of widely publicised  “thought leaders” (whatever that means) to grant themselves the arrogance to cry “après moi la deluge”. That is just self importance taken to extremes.  We should not allow politicians in all their pomposity to assure us that the sky is falling. South Africans fought apartheid for forty years. Seventeen years of ANC rule is a mere bagatelle by comparison. Yes we will inflict lots of damage on ourselves, most of it unnecessary. Yes Zuma will be as bad as he was before Mangaung. But that is no call to throw up our hands in despair. We will fight on , and justice will prevail. Nobody said it would be easy.

Dr Gavin Lewis

DA MPL Gauteng Legislature