The injunction by President Cyril Ramaphosa that South Africans must be more like the Chinese -- 'never badmouth your country' -- and his claim that public criticism of his government is severely 'lopsided' may be revealing as to his state of mind/understanding of the current political flows. It suggests that he has no concept of how difficult the lives of people are. Only someone who lives in the warm, expensive embrace of the VIP Protection Unit could make such an ignorant claim.

On Tuesday, BusinessLIVE reported that over the weekend, President Cyril Ramaphosa had compared the public criticism his government receives here to the situation in China.

He told a community meeting in Durban:

"In China, nearly everyone is a messenger -- every Chinese is a messenger for their country, they never badmouth their own country. Never badmouth your country."

He also said that:

"Here, some people have made it a sport to badmouth the country, to say all sorts of negative things, and we say we need to be patriotic and acknowledge that we have challenges and problems. But at the same time [we] say that our love for this country is much more important than the negativity, so therefore we must be positive about SA. That is the only way this country can move forward."

There is much to consider in this.

Politically, it may be a sign of the unhappiness he may feel with the criticism of his government. Literally every hour of the day people publicly express their frustration with his Cabinet's performance, and the ANC.

The failures of the ANC are regularly discussed on talk radio and social media. At the same time, the huge frustrations...