"If you pin your hopes on those in the ANC, you are pinning your hopes on the beneficiaries of patronage to release your country from descending into the abyss," former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor said yesterday.Speaking at a media briefing hosted by the SA First Forum, in Cape Town, she said South Africans should rely on themselves and not on the ANC to steer the country clear of "impending political and economic ruin".This, she said, was because the party's leaders were being beholden to an internal network of patronage."We all know that it is not the ANC and its leadership that is going to put this country right." It is the people of South Africa, irrespective of who they vote for, who are going to put this country right," said Mentor, who has claimed that members of the Gupta family offered her a ministerial post in the presence of President Jacob Zuma."There is enough collective wisdom, collective capability in any nation that is determined to topple patronage, even if it appears to be very coercive and very strong."If I and Rod [Solomon and others, when we were youthful participated in the project that toppled the very sophisticated securocrat regime of apartheid, what makes it difficult for South Africans today to do the same?"Most people, not all of them, that occupy [influential positions in the ANC] - a case in point being the current [ANC] Youth League in its entirety and the [party's] women's league in its entirety, and the national leadership to a large extent - have been elected on the basis of patronage."They will forever be serving the agenda of their master, hence people outside the ANC must rise to topple that."..