The Letters Editor
The Witness
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South Africa 3201

Telephone       : 033 355 1160
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Email            : letters@witness.co.za 

Attention       : Christopher Merrett


Sir

Regarding the current and ongoing electrical power supply fiasco, when a party fails to act due to incompetence or incapacity this might be viewed as negligence, but when an authority such as cabinet failed to act in the face of repeated conclusions and recommendations of experts with the result of this being of the severity and magnitude of 5 to 8 years of national power outages, then this becomes criminal negligence.

The damage to the national economy both directly and indirectly to its natural and corporate citizens cannot go unpunished.

Mbeki and his cronies were too distracted trying to do damage control in respect of the Arms Deal, Oil Deals, 3rd Cellular Network Deal, Presidential Jet Deal, Travelgate Deal, IDC Deal, Landbank Deal, etc. that they never properly did the work for which they were being paid by taxpayers.

This country needs a new structure of governance whereby politicians out for jollies of their own are not able to destroy in a few years that which has taken decades and even centuries to construct. Such a structure should be manned of experienced, professional career bureaucrats at all levels and across all sectors of service delivery with political careerists restricted to top-level, policy-making positions of limited duration.


Richard Young

Postal Address  :  P.O. Box 171, Rondebosch, 7701, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Work Switchboard         :  (+27) (0)21 683 5490
Facsimile                :  (+27) (0)21 683 5435
Email                     :  Richard Young <rmyoung@ccii.co.za>

With acknowledgement to Richard Young and The Witness.