Our government is nothing but a Ponzi scheme of rent seekers, a patronage network of crooks, criminals, communists and cadres bent on destroying, bankrupting and hollowing out every institution.

Once the loot runs out, the Ponzi scheme leaks pus at its orifices with a frenzy of councillor murders, looting and burning.

Beware of their grubby hands getting hold of our private sector which they say is untransformed, our pensions and the Reserve Bank. It will be the end.

There will be no silver lining, as we witnessed when thousands of citizens and taxi drivers filled the power vacuum left by an invisible government

It's time to elect Dr Imtiaaz Sooliman as president of the republic. President Cyril Ramaphosa as leader was found wanting. The difference between him and the ever-present doctor is like chalk and cheese. He only woke up days later, fast asleep in his mountain lair.

The government might as well not exist. The police are nowhere to be seen. Only appearing to chase away old ladies on beaches. Or telling citizens who are guarding their suburbs to dismantle their roadblocks. Or even to partake in the looting. The government is more involved in tender fraud than governing. More a hindrance than an asset.

Ramaphosa spoke about the basic income grant but where will the money come from? It can only come from an economy growing by at least 6% per annum. That means full-on capitalism and a meritocracy without the impediments of cadre deployment and their threat of looting the property of whites, introducing socialism in the health sector (NHI) and having the political will to arrest government officials immediately for looting and not decades later by being dragged to court for not doing their jobs

It's time to dismantle this Ponzi scheme and build a new future with jobs aplenty and rising real wages through competitive markets.

Naushad Omar, Zeekoevlei, Cape Town