Picture by Nokuthula Mbatha
How South African Airways (SAA) got its wings back is on the back of a dwindling education system.
Infrastructure at township schools remains appalling.
Poorly paid teachers have been complaining.
They are unemployed. They just jumped from a frying pan into the fire facing reduced salaries over the next three years.
Employees in the department of health are in the same boat.
None of them can swim. Rest in peace Enoch Mpianzi. There is a drowning in the forecast.
The quality of education at township schools has been laying face-down in muddy waters.
Not too many pupils will make it to the sky.
Your tears will only fill up these waters in this swamp where this boat is floating.
Humans are synonymous to cockroaches, we are build to survive. So, dear mother, your kids will come out of it, don’t cry.
My mouth is not capable of tasting the words “previously disadvantaged”, while the disadvantages still persist.
I still insist on asking; how are disadvantaged children going to learn to become pilots?
It is us, the poor, who fill public schools to the brim.
With a mediocre education, we are not destined to win.
Are we therefore not learning in vain?
The probabilities for the transition from a shack to a cockpit are close to those of us being colonised again.
It could happen. But chances are, it wont.
Your child, born to an inferior education and you know why that is, could be a pilot. But chances are, they wont.
The white population in South Africa is about 9 percent.
The same percent is the number of Black pilots in the country.
Oh dear transformation, how we are waiting for you in anticipation.
I am not saying employees at the loss-making Airways should be unemployed.
I am rather saying education and health are the worst places for Tito Mboweni to siphon funds from.
How SAA got its wings back is when the Finance Minister got caught between a flame and a burning place.
You can not please all the people, all the time. Worse so if you displease them more of the time.
We have resorted to expropriating land without compensation - waiting for RDPs is a daunting task.
Like facing the first wave of Covid-19 in a flight from Italy in March without a mask.
Whatever happened to feeding schemes?
The internet made us forget that we are hungry when government installed Wi-Fi hotspots to catch up with business class worlds, whilst all we have to eat in economy class is each other.
Internet access will never be a basic need when shacks are still our natural habitat.
While we are still patrons of communal taps, mobile and pit toilets that swallow our young and all we have to eat is each other.
You cannot clean muddy waters with chlorine if that is where we drink from.
The government is expected to miss its tax target by R300 billion this year.
The self-inflicted wound was gouged when government cut off the water to its own taps by banning sales of alcohol and tobacco during lockdown.
Medical experts would beg to differ, and would probably frown.
But the excise duties and VAT charged on these products are a significant source of income for government.
Finance minister, whether you like the sound of it or not, the R10 billion business rescue for SAA is a bailout!
As above - If it has wings and scales, is airborne and breathes fire, it is a dragon.
So below - The same applies for ducks in the way they walk and how they quack when huddled together.
SAA will, but the dwindling education system will not take flight.
Neither will the horrid conditions of hospitals like Chris Hani Baragwanath, where my aunt died after sleeping on the floor for three days waiting for bed, a few years ago.
It had been more than enough days for her watching death play musical chairs with other patients in the admission ward at the hospital, waiting her turn.
The red bull injection of billions got SAA their wings back at the price of the livelihood of the people.
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