TOO HIGH A PRICE

Sir,

We are an obstinate nation that refuses to take sound advice; and as such we refuse to be ‘bullied’ by anyone as emphasised by some employees of the Crown not so long ago.

The irony of it is that we refuse to be ‘bullied’ by even those who are bankrolling our social programmes in terms of aid and trade. As a nation, we seem to have earned ourselves a reputation of refusing to take sound advice; and that is a huge setback for us; the reason we are languishing in acute poverty for a greater majority of our population exacerbated by a high rate of unemployment.

This attitude is destroying this nation. The pace of doing things in this country is also painfully slow. We pass up opportunities due to our lackadaisical approach to matters; emphasising our old-age adage; ‘there is no hurry in Eswatini’.

Trouble

The trouble is, there is so much hurry in the global communities today; where opportunities wait for no one. The world has become a global village and protection based on sovereignty is fast diminishing.

Government has folded its arms before; and what would be new if it continued to do that? My observation is that there is so much lip-service in government to the point of making its word count for nothing. The USA warned us repeatedly about this but we chose to ignore their advice on the suspicion that they are bullying us and interfering in our sovereignty.

Advice

Examples of how this country refuses to take advice can also be seen in our attempt to coin our own definition of First World status. The question I ask is; who are we fooling? And why re-invest the wheel? I mean, whether we are considered to have reached First World status will be determined by those around us; the global community and not ourselves.

To me, it is an exercise in frivolity to fool ourselves we would reach First World status by building roads and by achieving economic prosperity for a few when a huge segment of the population is languishing in acute poverty. Poverty; industrialisation, democratisation and other social reforms need to be factored in.

Included in the infrastructure that would take us to First World status, government believes would be the implementation of the Thermal Power Station that has been in the air since the Ninth Parliament at least; and to date all we hear is that feasibility studies are still being compiled.

This to me is just another empty promise to get us excited over nothing. And this time around, here is a viable project that would also bring jobs by the thousands that government is delaying. Is this the price to be paid for ego? Certainly not; as this is too high a price in terms lost jobs and wastage of State funds.   

B Dlamini

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