It may already be halfway through the first month of the new year, but since this is our first official meeting since the year that was, 2020, it is quite befitting that we open it with congratulating and welcoming each other to the other side.
If you can read this, it means you have made it. Compliments of the New Year! Congratulations and welcome to our first issue of the new year. Welcome to 2021!
Even at the very beginning, 2021 is already a busy year, it has hit the ground running hence we should pace up if we are to in the least, catch up.
The issue comes to you in the second day of what has been set to be a 14-day marathon of staying at home in order to ensure that everyone is safe in the face of the latter day’s ugliest global scare, which comes in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like wine, the pandemic gets better (or shall we say worse?) with time. Whereas in 2020 the world was busied by what we now know as the first wave of the pandemic, in 2021 we are told that it has advanced or morphed into a deadlier and uglier second wave.
We will hate to love this phase of this virus because it has helped us see the real value of them in whom we have democratically put our hope and trust.
There was a time in the past whence there seemed to be a certain crop of charismatic, gentlemen and ladies who seemed to ooze and command that aura of respect. It was that crop of people we looked upon for leadership at any and every social, political and otherwise, setup because of how they held themselves and how they were always in sync with things, hence we would unanimously accede to having them become our ministers.
Fast-forward to 2021, becoming a parliamentarian and or minister is no longer seen as ascending thereto but digressing to same since it is basically any and every Jack, Jill, Dick and Harry who can and who does become minister.
For instance, in the just-passed festive season, scores of our migrant relatives, numbering tens of thousands, some even say over a hundred thousand, came to share in the festivities with their loved ones. In the midst of the scare of covid-19, no one bothered to take precautionary measures when they were being welcomed home. In fact, even border requisites were eased so that they could enter in as easy a way as could be possible in spite of the fact that they were coming from a country which was already struggling with containing the pandemic.
When all the merry was done and it was the new year and time to go back, there arose a border transit quagmire as South Africa sought to put her house in order and tested all entering therein…
Suffice to say that the guy who was supposed to bring answers to the stranded by virtue of responsibility accorded him as Health minister, found it befitting to bring them juice and Indian curry whereas they needed to be aided to cross the border. ffffffffff
