TUTU, SA'S CONSCIENCE, SAYS THE NATION HAS LOST ITS PRIDE. SOON IT WILL BE VOICES OF BIGOTS LIKE MALEMA THE MASSES WILL HEAR!

Corruption and mismanagement is driving SA’s masses into violence and the racial tensions are rising. “South Africa has lost its pride,” says Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the many generally regarded as SA’s moral conscience.

After Nelson Mandela South Africa has had the misfortune a succession of arrogant, incompetent and corrupt leaders – the scourge of Africa. The only thing setting SA apart from the rest of Africa and, in the end, might be her saving grace; is that SA has someone like Desmond Tutu – “South Africa's moral conscience” as you so rightly put it. If any of the other African countries ever had such a person then he or she was co-opted into the corrupt ruling elite long before their voice box of their moral conscience had developed.

What has made having a conscience so important is that there other democratic institutions like the Police, Free Press, the Judiciary, etc who should hold the executive accountable are totally ineffective. The individuals manning them are themselves corrupt are any integral part of the corrupt ruling elite or the institutions are undermine to render them totally ineffective. People like Archbishop Tutu are therefore the voice of the voiles multitudes within SA itself and the continent at large.

It is deeply regrettable that SA’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair by Archbishop Tutu himself only looked at the human rights violations during the Apartheid era. Even then, it left out the “big fish”; as the Archbishop himself admitted. The Commission should have also addressed the economic injustice of the time; some people, especially the whites definitely benefited greatly from apartheid whilst others, almost exclusively the blacks, were greatly disadvantaged. When the Children of Israel walked out of Egypt to mark the end of their years in bondage the Egyptians paid them silver and gold as compensation. A similar thing would certainly have helped.

Even though there was no formal law forcing the rich whites in SA to share some of the wealth with the impoverished blacks; that should not have stopped the white doing it out of a sense of restorative justice. The very fact that the whites have remained unbelievably rich is the face of grinding poverty amongst blacks has itself ho helped ease the racial tension carried over from the past.

Still in time, South Africans will have sooner or later settled down and lived in harmony side by side, what makes that increasing unlikely is two things:
1) the failure by successive ANC regimes to harness SA’s vast resources and use the wealth to improve the lives of all its people. SA after President Nelson Mandela has had its share of incompetent and corrupt leaders.
2) having failed to deliver the economic prosperity they promised South Africa’s black leaders will use the whites as the scapegoats just as other failed African leaders have done, notably Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.
For SA the clock is ticking, the country must take immediate action to strengthen its democratic institutions without which she has no chance of stamping out the growing arrogance and corruption of the ruling elite. Failure to do will mean increased poverty and the impoverished masses, out of despair, will hear the racist rhetoric of bigot like Julius Malema and not the voice of the conscientious Archbishop Tutu!