ANC decay doesn’t mean defeat

The thing that really gets me with Nkandla is that despite how clearly it shows the degradation of the ANC, we still can’t imagine anybody else winning in this election.

What I mean by the degradation of the ANC is this – Nelson Mandela’s motto was “The Rainbow nation”, Thabo Mbeki’s motto was “African solutions for African problems”.

Jacob Zuma’s appears to be “Innocent until proven guilty.”

This is an election year – we have e-tolls, load shedding, massive service delivery protests, one of our major unions proclaiming that we have the third highest youth unemployment in the world, and a president talking about “a good story.”

Heck the ANC has even come up with a slogan which effectively gives Gauteng no real good reason to remain a part of South Africa – the so-called “User pays principle”.

The ANC’s pick for cleaning up our police force is Robert McBride for crying out loud.

Trevor Manuel, one of the most respected of the ANC’s cadres, left with a call to those that remained to stop attacking our public protector and start doing something about corruption.

Yet I personally cannot imagine the ANC losing.

That is something frightening to confront, the fact of the matter is that the ANC is still going to win this next election, and it will probably still win the one after that.

Despite evidence of massive corruption hitting almost every part of our government, despite scandal after scandal, despite all the anger and spittle, we only talk of the opposition making inroads.

We cannot imagine a country run by anybody other than the ANC.

And that I think is why the ANC is going to win – we do not really have any clear vision of what anybody else would do if we put them in charge.

Sure I can criticise the DA’s policies, or point out what a complete disaster the EFF’s would be but can I imagine either party ever getting to implement any of it? Not really.

And that is a problem, because the problems of the ANC are the problems of any party that has achieved political immortality.

Corruption is not a party policy, and nor is incompetence. These are things that hit every party, and have to be weeded out by them.

But without the fear of losing elections, there is little reason for the ANC to do that weeding. There are no real consequences for the ANC if it hires incompetents, or corrupt officials.

How many ANC officials actually live in the areas that are now down one police station, or one library? March on Pretoria – does a parliament in Cape Town really care?

The ballot is supposed to be where we hold our leaders to account – and that is the one thing I don’t see happening.

I see riots, I see anger, I read letters talking about how bad it all is – yet I do not see much change in the way people vote.

And that means nothing else much changes either.