Are we being boiled like Frogs?

Former member of parliament and authority on the constitution the late Mario Oriani-Ambrosini wrote in his memoires: “In his brutal honesty, Ramaphosa (now state president of South Africa) told me of the ANC’s 25-year strategy to deal with the whites: it would be like boiling a frog alive, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly. Being cold-blooded, the frog does not notice the slow temperature increase, but if the temperature is raised suddenly, the frog will jump out of the water. He meant that the black majority would pass laws (after the change over) transferring wealth , land, and economic power from whites to blacks slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight.” I look around me everyday and see more and more how the water is reaching boiling point. Our Tuesday trash removal is removed on Sunday evenings. The municipal water in front of my business leaked for six months before I fixed it out of desperation and then I am fined by the metropolitan (municipality) because I worked on their infrastructure.

A pothole in Zastron Street is so deep that the metro doesn’t fix it, but simply places a yellow road sign in front of the pothole and this had already caused a road accident this week.

How long will we have to wait?

If I don’t pay my property tax, my water is cut. I am not a legal expert, but I can swear a contract is agreed to between the metro and me when I buy a house. A pay a certain tariff and in turn for that I get certain services on certain times. What happens now is that one part of the contract is enforced, but the service side is simply ignored. I probably have to get a story ready to get my money back or at least a part of it back, if the metro does not deliver services or deliver it on time.

Is it time to jump or is it too late?

Translated on 11 August 2018 by Omar Daniel Fourie. Original letter written in Afrikaans to the Volksblad newspaper by Pierre Geldenhuys, Bloemfontein, 8 August 2018.