Confidence is valuable. Immensely valuable. It means the difference between prosperity and poverty.

The biggest assault on confidence in this country is the power cuts. What makes it even worse is that it’s all because of misrule and corruption.

Close to 30 years of misrule.

How can there be confidence in a country with its unjust system of employment? A deliberate, racially motivated, system to deny minorities employment.

One by one the state enterprises have been looted, gone into bankruptcy or closed.

Now the Post Office is in provisional liquidation because it owes R4.4 billion.

Confidence in the post office dived years ago when employees stuck their grubby, criminal hands into parcels and stole everything.

Thank goodness the post office is no longer necessary in most people’s lives. There are alternatives.

What confidence do ordinary people have in their lives today?

Prices of staple household food and goods have skyrocketed. Electricity costs far too much now. Petrol is a disgrace – one can smell the stench of corruption in the fuel price.

Civil society is a term that is much bandied about. Let’s rather call a spade a shovel and say ordinary, good people are digging deep into their pockets to save the lives of people on the streets. No one else will.

Up the road from me some women have started a food kitchen which they open about 6:30 in the evening. It breaks one’s heart to see the long line of mainly men, young and old, waiting for the food kitchen to arrive.

In these times employees should show more gratitude and confidence in their employers. I know this doesn’t go down with many but I’ll give you my take on it anyway.

Let me make an outrageous statement. Instead of complaining about everything and not working hard, employee should go on their hands and knees and thank their employees for the jobs they have. And let me tell you, even in the informal spaza sector employers have had to let go of employees.

Some think it’s their right to have a job. With most people unemployed in this country, it’s a privilege.

But they won’t be grateful. They have a sense of entitlement. Brainwashed over many years by their political saviours.

There we are. Confidence is paramount. In a time of low confidence, it’s important to install whatever confidence you can but not to be naive. Which reminds me of the laughability of a presiden now trying to raise R2-trillion over the next five years in this country. What a joke when he and his compatriots have done their level best to reduce confidence to an all time low.

Wise investors and business people already left this country 20 years ago, shutting down their factories.

It’s a time where many have no faith left in leaders. Those days are over.

You have to have your own faith nowadays. The reason is that if you want a helping hand, the only place you’ll find it is at the end of your arm. Self-confidence, ultimately, is the most precious of all in rotten times like these.