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WE DESERVE TO BE HAPPY!

06/01/2017 10:08:00 By Martin Dlamini

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A happy New Year to you all. Here is to hoping the New Year has a lot better to offer than the ‘murderous and bloody’ 2016 that seems to have kicked love, tolerance and compassion out the window. An angry lot we’ve become, yet we deserve to be happy.

Sadly, women and the girl child have borne the brunt of the current spate of violent affairs yet for almost two decades the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Bill that seeks to protect them can’t find its way to becoming a law, for no valid reason.
The frail economy that played host to Miss El-Nino’s drought that ravaged the entire southern Africa region, worsened our misery.
This time last year we were on the verge of a two-day water rationing in the capital city, civil servants were up in arms threatening a mother of all strikes if not awarded a salary review while the Ministry of Education had just released the worst Junior Certificate (JC) results in 10 years, among other challenges.

Well the drought is gone, civil servants are enjoying the fruits of their threats and, alas, we have slightly improved JC results which are the fourth worst in 10 years! However, one school, Ngcoseni Central High, just had to put a dampener to all this with its incredible 167 failures from 228 candidates.
In fact, the school beat its own record of 94 failures the previous year (2015). Taking nothing away from the excellent results produced by some schools, the troubles in our Education system seem far from over and, to a large extent, represent a bigger problem nationally and politically.

The Ministry of Education has just announced it will not be hiring any more teachers while putting out a list of 29 schools it plans to shut down. These are schools situated along the periphery that have been deserted by pupils whose parents have preferred to take them to schools in neighbouring South Africa.
Education Minister Dr Phineas Magagula has finally been man enough to admit that his ministry can do nothing about the local schools that offer the South African Matric syllabus following the ultimatum given to Swaziland by the South African Government to stop teaching it.
Magagula has advised parents who want their children to learn Matric for easy access to SA universities to take them straight to SA, thus placing the future of Matric schools in Swaziland almost non-existent.
This is not the only group of parents and pupils with an uncertain future. Parents with pupils in local public schools had reason to worry when the ministry took to implementing three major decisions with very little tack on how to make them work for those they were intended to benefit.

Introducing free primary education, banning corporal punishment and outlawing top-up fees is a cocktail with a killer punch, especially when our public schools are seriously underfunded.
Diversifying the mobile telecommunications industry is probably the best piece of news to look forward to in 2017, seemingly, but we won’t pop the Champagne bottles just yet. Seeing is believing.
The ‘new’ mobile industry has been structured in such a way that the three mobile companies will be compelled to purchase network access from a wholesale infrastructure company.
This arrangement removes the power of the mobile companies to slash data and voice charges down to the much anticipated friendly levels. Cheap calls, therefore, may not be so cheap and the regulator needs to change this.
We deserve to be happy again and one of the best ways of doing so is by making it easier for people to call one another more frequently. As they say, stressed out people can reduce their worries if they share their problems with people who feel the same way in a similar situation.

Cheaper communication can also spur business development, which is healthy for the growth of any economy. So let’s all talk more in 2017. Let’s resolve our differences and use the harmony as a new foundation upon which we can share the best ideas to work together and help get this economy back on its feet. Silence is costly!
Good luck to all in 2017!