Chief Justice Zondo laments state of country
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has expressed his disappointment at the state of the country.
He delivered the OR Tambo Public Lecture at the University of Fort Hare on Friday.
Zondo, who chaired the commission of inquiry into state capture, said Oliver Tambo would be appalled by the situation the country finds itself in 29 years into democracy.
"When one looks act the journey that we have travelled as a country from 1994 and we look at where we are. There are many things that we see every day which are the opposite of what these leaders scarified for."
He said the government has failed to improve public school infrastructure, especially in rural areas.
"Oliver Tambo would have been very unhappy that there are hundreds of thousands of Black learners in this country who attend schools which have got no libraries, who attend schools made of mud and who attend schools in rural areas that still have pit toilets.
"He would find it unforgiving that 30 years into our democracy there are primary school learners who die because the fall into pit toilets at schools."
He believes we have betrayed the values Tambo and his generation stood for.
"The majority party in Parliament, which included members of the national executive, who are members of the National Assembly, prevented the institution of parliamentary inquiries which would have revealed at a very early stage serious evidence of state capture before a lot of taxpayers' money could be stolen by the Guptas."
