EXPERTS who are well versed on the essential requirements for an all-round happy and healthy family environment will tell you that good parenting is a crucial ingredient to achieve bliss in a home.
Deeper analysis will also bring to the fore the critical role a father plays in ensuring the home is ticking happily.
Typically, a father, apart from being a key provider of the family’s needs and wants, dads are also handy to ensure issues like discipline and moral matters are in-check, and they are usually the main men when it comes to the maintenance and overall upkeep of the abode.
Unfortunately, in South Africa the absent-father factor in households is at a worrying level.
According to the “Disconnected Dads” report released by Flux Trends in April last year, it indicated that only a third of South African homes have children living with both parents.
Interestingly enough, President Cyril Ramaphosa lamented that statistic, and his comment was included in the Flux Trends report.
With the absent father phenomenon in mind, is the president not guilty of being just that when one considers the state of decay that Johannesburg finds itself in?
Pot-holed roads, crumbling infrastructure, dodgy water and electricity supply, and the list goes on.
When Ramaphosa decided to step-out of his chauffeur-driven set of wheels and onto what’s left of the tarmac on some Joburg streets during his on-site visit last week, it prompted the president to spew words like “filthy” and ”unclean” in describing the city that’s hosting the G20 Summit later this year, a first for Africa.
Why was the president not up to speed with Joburg’s deplorable state, yet the ANC has offices in the city, the country's main airport is based there and it is the undisputed economic hub of the country?
In an age where political decisions are seldom taken without drawing from the wells of wisdom of consultants, agencies, spin doctors and gravy-train riders who have the ears of our decision makers, why didn't one of these trusted lieutenants inform our president that Joburg was falling?
What about our spooks, the shadowy characters who are supposed to pick up on all the grubby and slight of hand details that are overlooked by the rank and file of society and our plethora of public servants, why did they keep silent?
Besides, the State Security Agency has been housed in the Office of the President since August 2021.
Worst of all, Ramaphosa also has property and other interests in the city, which means the president’s close allies and kin did not have the heart or temerity to tell him that the city of gold has lost all its glitter.
Excuses aside, is that not a case of Ramaphosa, the father of the nation, not knowing what's happening in his own backyard?
Now that a big conference is scheduled for the city, and daddy Ramaphosa has expressed his displeasure, all and sundry, including Joburg’s mayor, Dada Morero, are keen to shake a leg, at the eleventh-hour, and get the house in order.
In a typical nosy-neighbour fashion, Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town’s mayor, has made a “patriotic offer”, as he stated in a TV interview, to save the country’s blushes and take over as G20 hosts.
Come on Mr Ramaphosa, stop being the absent father!
Mervyn Naidoo is the Content Manager at Daily News.
His views don't necessarily reflect those of the Daily News, Independent Media or IOL.