The Dutch tell a wonderful story about a lad called Hans whose bravery turned him into The Hero of Haarlem.
Much of the land in the lowland countries has been reclaimed with massive dikes, wide as roads, keeping out the sea. Legend has it Hans saw water trickling from a hole in the dike. Though knowing he’d be punished for arriving late for school, Hans saw the danger, plugged the hole with his forefinger and waited hours for the repair men to fix it.
Because of that famous story, everyone in Holland knows little holes in dikes soon expand into disastrous floods. That reality is about to become abundantly clear for beneficiaries of largesse dispensed by SA’s President Jacob Zuma and his business associates the Guptas.
The hole which Vytjie Mentor and Mcebisi Jonas poked into a previously impregnable conspiracy of silence has expanded from trickle to flood. The Gupta moonlight flight from Lanseria to Dubai – two weeks after Zuma paid a “working visit” to the emirate – shows they realise that dike cannot be repaired. No amount of racist propaganda about “white capital” will paper over the rapidly emerging truth. Their nefarious plundering of the public purse is over. Soon, a nation hopes, so will Zuma’s.
From Biznews community member Gill Embling
A thought for today:
No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. … Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. … The peril of this nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope! – Charles Evans Hughes, jurist and statesman (11 Apr 1862-1948)
