Less talk and more action

About a week from now the country will be dragged back to reality with the release of last year's matric results and education experts will be dusted off their academic shelves to tell South Africa of all the options that all the matriculants have in front of them.

- Sydney Majoko

The country will celebrate its top achievers - as it should - but equally forget that there are over five million kids who should be in school but are not. It is those over five million kids that will yield not only the majority of the unemployed, but will depend on the 800,000 kids who made it past matric to ensure the tax base is large enough to sustain everyone.

The country will also know how many people lost their lives on the roads over the festive season. Like the figures in the education field, these are highly predictable numbers, which every sitting minister of transport is fully aware of, but seemingly cannot change at all.

The number of fatalities can also be easily broken down to well-known causes such as drunken driving, driver fatigue and speeding, but reducing these seems impossible.