ANC manifesto – a jaded view on the event

After what seemed like half an hour of a pop star shaking her backside in Gwede Mantashe’s face, and a co-worker noticing that the live feed showed off the underwear of one of the politicians on stage, the ANC turned to prayers.

Prayers included one thanking God for putting the ANC in power, and asking him to keep the evil eye off of the party.

• Municipal offices must be accessible to workers: Nzimande

And as I listened to all of this something struck me deep inside, we have a party in government that thanks God for its authority – not the people.

• ANC has done much to improve quality of life for South Africans: Zuma

This is a common atheist complaint, we help people and they thank God. I mean it is very flattering and all of that, but I’m not always intelligent, nevermind omniscient.

Also the whole concept of the evil eye, it is an old cliché but isn’t it funny that it is never the evil hand, or foot or anything like that, but the eye, the organ by which people see what must be guarded against.

And the same goes for almost everyone else. Last I checked, God wasn’t a registered South African voter.

The whole thing was supposed to begin at 11am, it started an hour late and with more of a sense of a sporting event, complete with cheerleaders, an attempt to build energy and cheering just one day after the locals had the ANCWL leader in tears.

“Only the ANC can take the country forward” one of the speakers from SANCO said – and yet under the current ANC president transformation has if anything gone backwards.

Further pushing land redistribution – only the ANC? That was the issue that caused the EFF to split with them. Much as I disagree with them, the EFF’s central manifesto is a far more radical push in that direction.

Maybe more was said in the segments that weren’t in English, but I am not terribly confident in those languages. Don’t blame me, blame Omo, it makes whites whiter.

A call for insourcing from Cosatu was worth listening to, though I’m pretty sure I missed a lot of the meaning of it.

That said, we’ve been convening meetings and having report backs for 20 years, what I would really want to hear from the ANC isn’t reporting back but the various elected officials actually doing their jobs.

We had meetings and investigations telling us that Zuma had to pay back the money, did we get the money? No, we got more meetings and investigations.

Until of course it went before the Constitutional Court – which studiously avoided specifically saying Zuma violated his oath of office, while pretty much finding that Zuma violated his oath of office.

And then another dance sequence. Zuma’s speech starts with a song and praise singer to try and buoy the crowd, and all I can think is that with how much the main event has been delayed by rah-rah bullshit, eish this is going to be dull.

Either that or they’re afraid Zuma will get booed again.

The main event

Zuma’s speech finally starts, for real this time, with a history lesson. He talks about rolling out electricity and solar power, and trumpeted the ANC’s success in providing piped water.

However the major thing here is he is talking up until 2013 and 2014, what happened in 2015?

Sanitation successes were also trumpeted.

Refuse removal was also pushed as a success story – while Pikitup is on strike. The ANC will be getting more strict on illegal dumping.

He spoke about the problem of the youth not having jobs – and blamed slow economic growth globally. He said that the ANC has a plan to deal with this, and that the party’s municipalities would place the issue at the centre of their administrations.

He made specific mention of the ANC’s investment into the ocean economy – specifically in Port Elizabeth.

He went on to talk about the ANC’s poverty alleviation policies – making particular mention of orphans and vulnerable children.

He spoke of 5 million “work opportunities”, which quite frankly is a meaningless term. People don’t want “work opportunities”, they want jobs.

I liked the fact that he pushed science as part of the party’s plan for municipalities.

He said that the municipalities must buy local products as much as possible, and said that they would do more to put an end to illegal trading. So for a lot of voters it is a mixed bag.

The expansion of broadband internet, including the expansion of free wi-fi areas is a good idea, but an old one.

Outsourcing will be restricted, and insourcing encouraged.

A culture of dialogue, local partnerships, working with trade unions – this is all stuff the ANC was supposed to do 20 years ago.

He celebrated his success on expanding South African life spans – which is a legitimate success of his.

Student loans are being converted into bursaries for qualifying students. Students who qualify for financial aid – are exempt from fees.

He is waiting for the final report of the commission of inquiry into student fees to see if they’ll actually fall though.

More schools are getting libraries.

234 government officials were arrested, fined and convicted of corruption related offenses since 20014. I’m not sure this is a good thing – it might mean we’re doing better at catching people, or there are more to get caught.

He spoke against nepotism, which is a step forward. Interestingly, he says the ANC will hold corrupt municipal officials personally liable for the losses incurred by their corruption.

Of course companies involved in this will also be in trouble, but it is nice to hear somebody will have to pay back the money.

He is pushing for more on the drug war, but internationally this is becoming more and more questionable. Seriously, recently how much good is being done by the war on drugs has been questioned by individual states in America.

He says the ANC will do more to solve violence against women and children.

Climate change made an appearance in his speech – which illustrates how no matter how bad our government is, at least they’re not Republicans.

The back-to-basics programme is going to help the ANC improve their performance apparently – but it has been going on for a while.

Overall there was a bit of scattered applause during his speech, but by the end when he broke into song even he sounded kind of relieved it was over.