Matric results: Less talk and more action

About a week from now the country will be dragged back to reality with the release of last year’s matric results and education experts will be dusted off their academic shelves to tell South Africa of all the options that all the matriculants have in front of them.

The country will celebrate its top achievers – as it should– but equally forget that there are over 5 million kids who should be in school but are not.

It is those over 5 million kids that will yield not only the majority of the unemployed, but will depend on the 800 000 kids who made it past matric to ensure the tax base is large enough to sustain everyone.

Predictable

The country will also know how many people lost their lives on the roads over the festive season. Like the figures in the education field, these are highly predictable numbers, which every sitting minister of transport is fully aware of, but seemingly cannot change at all.

The number of fatalities can also be easily broken down to well-known causes such as drunken driving, driver fatigue and speeding, but reducing these seems impossible.

Traffic reports from broken-down traffic lights will also be a stark reminder that a new year does not mean new solutions have been found for last year’s problems.

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Back from holiday, back to our problems

Citizens returning from their various holiday destinations will be reminded that the potholes they left in their favourite city of Johannesburg have probably increased in number, given the heavy rains over the festive period, coupled with the city’s continuing failure to deal decisively with the day-to-day mundane problems facing its residents.

Politicians will return from vacation and start mumbling about the glass being half-full, bemoaning how citizens only see the worst in how they do their jobs and not being grateful that some things still work.

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They will say that, despite all the crime and decay citizens are seeing all around them, all is good. And some will even venture to say only a national dialogue will solve South Africa’s problems.

There is nothing wrong with calling for a new round of talks on the country’s future. After all, this is what gave birth to the current South Africa. Talking produced the country’s world-admired constitution. But there comes a time in the life of any nation where there needs to be more doing than talking.

Vision 2030

The National Development Plan, which had 2030 as its envisioned sell-by date, is the product of some of the country’s best brains.

Vision 2030 set out what the ideal South Africa should look like: “South Africans should have access to education and training of the highest quality… Education should be compulsory up to Grade 12 or equivalent levels…”

When up to 5.2 million kids are still not in the education system, is it a National Dialogue that is required or the setting up of mechanisms to ensure that every kid who starts school next week stays the course?

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Vision 2030 talks about the establishment of “an integrated and seamless information and technology database for the national justice system…”

Current crime levels in South Africa can only come down when the success of the criminal justice system is not dependent on a physical docket whose safety remains the prerogative of a sole police constable, who has no personal computer on his or her desk and only gets a turn at the station’s computer once in a while.

Project South Africa needs more action than talking. The blueprint is there and only needs political will to be implemented.

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