RISE Mzansi Gauteng convenor Tebogo Moalusi believes South Africa’s politics has a crisis of leadership, saying the political landscape is filled with people who have made bad choices for the last 30 years and that is why South Africa is in poly crisis.

Speaking at 'The Road to 2024: Entrepreneurship and Elections' event, a series of debates with political parties held in Johannesburg, Moalusi said citizens must admit that one of the things that must be resolved in South Africa was the leadership question, adding that there were millions of people in the country who had immense talent.

He pointed out that many of them live and work in the private sector and in civil society and continue to push boundaries in those sectors.

“Definitely we must fix leadership, for governance, and we must make sure that we implement that which [is] best,” he said.

However, he noted that violence was also holding back the country, stating that no business owner could operate in a violent environment.

“We talk about building winning culture and a winning nation. Bafana Bafana showed us, the Springboks showed us that we are capable of winning, however, in many instances we 'win' in some of the worst things, such as being the most unequal country in the world and being the most violent,” he said.

Entrepreneurs cannot begin to be innovative and creative when they have to look over their shoulders, he stated.

He said building a safe country was important and the rule of law was one of the key instruments in ensuring that law and order were maintained at all levels.

Moalusi also noted that there should be an enabling environment for business to flourish, to grow the economy.

He said South Africa’s economy had not been able to grow owing to issues such as a lack of infrastructure development and maintainance of current basic infrastructure.

DA OUTLINES PRIORITIES ONCE IN POWER

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) noted that if it came into power in Gauteng, it would look to kickstart a new economy and new ways of creating new business opportunities for people.

DA public representative Patrick Daniels noted that there was too much red tape, saying politicians should provide entrepreneurs with an enabling environment.

He stated that entrepreneurs want a stable supply of electricity.

“I know how devastating loadshedding has been to small businesses, forcing them to close down. A lot of people running small business have had a lack of electricity during the day,” he pointed out.

Daniels said from the point of view of a potential future governing party in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, electricity was one of the many issues the DA would resolve.

He noted that the Western Cape had already made progress with the electricity issue.

He said the DA would prioritise electricity in Gauteng, however, he noted that the province was large in terms of population and varied in terms of density, and this would be a problem that would take time to resolve.

Daniels highlighted that in the last six to eight months, the DA had been running the Ready to Govern Programme, where it considered all the issues that it would inherit if it came into power.

Meanwhile, he said the country is faced with a R500-billion backlog in infrastructure, explaining that this will not be resolved within the five year period of the government term.

However, he said if the Multi-Party Charter is able to govern for more than five years infrastructure challenges will be solved.