The invitation sent out by the Business Forum
South Africa – The country is plagued by problems. On one side you have the mayoral position in Johannesburg, which is like a revolving door. On the other side, you have Durban with its crumbling infrastructure. When you add it all together, you get a country being led dismally by a fractured party. In an effort to save the country, the Business Forum has decided to have three meetings to try and save the sinking ship.
Every South African is worried about the direction the country is going in and where it will end up. There are endless discussions on various social media sites about how the country can be saved. But talk is cheap, and one needs to act now, said Suleiman A Patel, Activist for Social Justice and Keynote speaker.
“We have to be doing something about it. As activists we’ve been given more ability and the strength to say that we have to do something about it … We said that 2024 is around the corner. We understand democracy. There’s only two ways to bring about change. One is through the ballot box and the other is what we see in other African countries, civil war.”
Changing the country for good
In order to change the country around, it needs an active turnaround plan. Patel believes this can be achieved if all sectors come together. He has called for South Africans to stop running to the commission of inquiry for help.
“It needs an active turnaround plan. The business community and the professional community are critical to this. The idea is to bring together the various brain trusts that we have and with regard to that, to identify and define what is the best solution to be able to bring about a change in the power play.”
It is either this or we risk becoming like other African countries who have been plunged into civil war. Patel is of the opinion the governing body has gone soft and lost its way with no one coming out to speak about it. The original ideas of 1994 and the Freedom Charter have been misaligned for the interest of a few people and this must change.
“Everybody wants to see a change that’s positive. Change that basically transfer’s power back into the hands of the majority of the country, in the interests of the people of the majority of the country and not for the selfish interest of a few … We really need to define ourselves and be able to say how can we ensure social justice for all by being able to come up with a different democratic dispensation to be able to bring about what was supposed to have happened in 1994.”
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A new party could be on the horizon
Patel believes the only way to make change is to create a party that will have the ideals to create political change and these meetings are to ensure such a party is created. It is about getting people who are like-minded in one room to debate and come up with solutions to the problems.
“The idea is to get professionals from every sector and have them identify the problems. Then sitting down and seeing what the solutions to these problems are. One of them could be a political party, one of them could be working with political parties, one of them could be a coalition of political parties.”
It isn’t clear whether the Business Forum meetings will lead to a new political party being formed or whether the meetings are to find solutions to be heard and passed on to parties. There will be three meetings which will take place in Johannesburg (17 May), Pietermaritzburg (18 May) and Durban (19 May).
Suleiman A Patel discussed with Jullie Ali the need to come together to save the country. Listen to the discussion here:
