Will the government ever keep their promises?

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It seems as if toying with people’s emotions is what the government does best. As we had general election s this year, different political parties campaigned in different day in order to win the hearts of the citizens. Rallies and everything was done to convince people to vote for them however, it was all in the hands of the voters to decide which party they want to rule.

For the first time ever, it was uncertain which political party was going to reign supreme in the 2019 elections as all if not most parties completely sold themselves to the voters. It was a battle as every leader fought tooth and nail for power but it was unfortunate for some as majority of voters decided to go with ANC and not the rest of the parties.

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ANC has been in power since 1994, there has been change but the question still remains; does the change benefit citizens? Are the completely satisfied with how things are done? It does not seem like that as they complain about the negligence of the government just after elections are over. Themba Nkadimeng, an elderly man from Soshanguve says that they have been struggling with service delivery for the past 5 years, the street lights in his area are not working and this has made the area to become a high crime zone, “during the elections campaign the president made an assurance that by the end of May the issue would have been fixed but today its July and we are still faced with this situation, this clearly indicates that they only care about votes ,once they get them they don’t pay attention to our grievances”.

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It is not only in Soshanguve where residents are complaining about service delivery, other neighboring places like Wintervelt, GA Rankuwa are also facing such issues. In GA Rankuwa zone 4, there a sewage burst which has been there for years as well, it affects the businesses of people who sell things on the streets in order to make a living. And promises have been made to deal with but there is no progress it is just like water off the duck’s back.

During the election campaigns, it was highlighted that we should grow South Africa together, but how do we grow it when they only care about themselves? when they make promises but never deliver? Where is the change that we have been voting for? Where is the change that we have been promised? Or it is yet to be made?

Citizens have realized that the government is full of empty promises and have written placards to express themselves. For years now people have been voting for change but there is still nothing. Poor areas are affected the most yet they are the ones who vote a lot with anticipation that they will see the change, but they never see any change. One citizen highlighted that parties buy votes with their t-shirts; “are we supposed to get service delivery from these t-shirts, are these t-shirts going to give us work? No they won’t but they use them to gain votes and still fail to deliver”