The Big Read: ANC can't see the precipice

Did you hear that loud "kraak!" over South Africa on Thursday? It was the sound of yet another key state-owned enterprise finally breaking.

This time it was Eskom. The chairman of the board of Eskom, Zola Tsotsi, was announcing that the electricity supplier's four top executives were being put on ice for three months while an investigation was being instituted into why the massive entity was just not working.

It was a strange announcement. Tsotsi, who has been Eskom chairman for four years, was suspending the CEO, Tshediso Matona.

Matona has only been in his job for five months. He might have been the wrong man for the job given his lack of private-sector experience, as many have said, but one thing Matona cannot be accused of is being responsible for the problems at Eskom. The poor man just wasn't there.

Tsotsi, however, has overseen the mess for the past four years. Yet he is allowed to point fingers and draw a fat board fee while he destroys a key national asset.

The shenanigans at Eskom illustrate just how deeply in trouble South Africa is.

The state is slumbering through a major crisis. Its institutions of democracy and accountability are falling apart, or being captured by a narrow and deeply corrupt elite built around President Jacob Zuma.

Its infrastructure is collapsing. Its currency is floundering and its economy cannot provide succour to the 8million people - many of them young -- who don't have jobs.

Protests about services are on the rise. Accountability is on the wane. Our future looks increasingly bleak.

On the day that Matona & Co were suspended, Business Day reported that the electricity grid had lost 30% of its generating capacity; we are now waiting for a two-week power black-out.

That occurrence would have a devastating effect on our economy and our national psyche.

What can we do? We are not helpless. At the most depressing points of South Africa's history we have always managed to find our way through. We can do it again. How, then, do we do it?

First, the ANC needs to find itself. How can a noble organisation such as this be at the whim of such mediocrity? The party of Albert Luthuli now finds Eskom being ripped apart just so that the Gupta family can get a tender to keep its newspaper, The New Age, afloat so it can continue to sing hollow praises to President Zuma.

What ignominy. What shame.

It makes you want to weep when you think that the struggles of John Dube, Pixley Seme and Sol T Plaatje were for the ANC to be brought to ruin because of a greedy elite that is intent on looting at the expense of the public good.

The ANC needs to find itself because of a terrible contradiction. It will without doubt win the next national election - but only just. It will win but its victory will be hollow.

ANC leaders will continue to send their children to overseas schools and universities, and use hospitals elsewhere in the world, just as Zimbabwe's corrupt elite does, and just as Nigeria's corrupt elite does.

This narrative is not new. It is as old as the hills. It leads to ruin.

If the ANC doesn't find itself, it will lose the national election after 2019.

It will try to rig the 2024 election through the suppression of civil society, and through Draconian laws like the Protection of State Information Act, but it will fail.

It will fail because we have a constitution that starts with the beautiful words: "We, the people ."

The constitution has been derided by some as too highbrow, that it is a low-slung Porsche in a country with too many potholes. But here is the beautiful thing: important battles have been fought and won using that constitution.

Poor people are fighting and winning key battles. Newspapers are taking on the Presidency and forcing it to release the Khampepe Report into how the Zimbabwe elections were rigged.

Attempts to hobble our democracy through secrecy will be exposed by a constitution that demands openness and fairness.

Attempts to hand excessive power to the executive wing - such as Police Minister Nathi Nhleko's attempt to give himself power to fire the head of the Hawks - will not pass because the constitution will not allow it.

The constitution does not begin with the words: "We, the elite ... ".

The people will use the right to vote to send some powerful lessons to an elite that has become uncaring and unresponsive to their worsening situation.

A change is coming and it is going to come as a shock to the many self-satisfied members of the elite who sit in Tshwane today and give out tenders to their relatives in Eastern Cape, where they think they are not being watched.

The people are everywhere and they see everything. The power is in their hands now, and they will rise up.