As a new year begins it is customary to make resolutions and wishes. While 2023 was a difficult year, as alluded to by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his New Year message, we all look forward to pressing the reset button, hoping for the best in 2024.
Topping that list for the Eastern Cape would be a wish for a concerted effort to fight hunger and malnutrition.
In August, we reported on a 38-year-old Butterworth mother who took her life after killing her three young children because of financial hardships and the daily struggle to put food on the table.
A report by the SA Human Rights Commission in November painted a bleak picture of the situation in the province.
It recommended that premier Oscar Mabuyane declare a state of disaster because of the high prevalence of child malnutrition, which led to the deaths of 116 children.
Mabuyane summoned the MEC for the department of rural development & agrarian reform and her team, to explain what they were doing about food security.
While any effort is better than none, we still found it curious that the social development department was not asked to also account after bungling the food parcel tender in 2021.
We are a province with serious problems of infrastructure backlogs.
Reports of people sharing drinking water with their domestic animals from heavily polluted sources are still prevalent. The much derided bucket system still exists in places.
Promises by some ANC leaders that come the end of year, load-shedding would be a thing of the past have been dashed
Pothole-riddled roads, raw sewage flowing into rivers and broken school infrastructure are all common.
Yet we have millions of rand in grant funding rolled back to the National Treasury due to underspending by some provincial departments and municipalities.
While we had an uninterrupted electricity supply for the better part of December, load-shedding was reintroduced, hardly 48 hours into the new year.
Promises by some ANC leaders that come the end of year, load-shedding would be a thing of the past have been dashed.
It is our wish that efforts made to address energy issues will finally bear the desired results.
Many citizens complain of the service they receive in public offices.
It is our hope that those charged with such duties would return with one big resolution — to serve people with a smile. After all, that is what Bato Pele demands of them.
While we all look forward to the government doing its part, you and I have to do our bit as well.
That exuberance and energy we witnessed on various social media platforms, as people enjoyed their festive activities, should be translated into making our province a better place to live in.
In a few months the country will have an election. Use your right to elect the leadership that will take this country forward.
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