EUSEBIUS MCKAISER | Ramaphosa told you why you shouldn't vote ANC

Having read the ANC's birthday celebrations statement delivered by President Cyril Ramaphosa this past weekend, I am unable to decide which of two equally worrying responses to foreground.

First, the statement is a compelling argument for why the ANC shouldn't be voted back into government.

Second, the media as well as the public's responses to the ANC's January 8 statement — and to its adopted party resolutions after the elective conference — are so quiet and mostly uncritical that it bodes poorly for entrenching democratic accountability.

Let's start off with the dramatic irony that the ANC president, unintentionally no doubt, made a case for not voting ANC. This statement, it must be borne in mind too, is approved by and indeed constructed jointly with the highest decision-making structure of the ANC, it's national executive committee. So the whole bunch of them, collectively, have now told us why they shouldn't be in charge of the state.

It is instructive, to that end, to quote at length from the diagnostic early part of the NEC statement, read out on it's behalf by Ramaphosa.

They state very early on that, "The ANC acknowledges that we are at a moment of fundamental consequence in the life of our nation. Across the country, the people are going through tough times:

"They are increasingly losing hope of ever finding employment or setting up viable business and those trying to eke out a living in the informal sector [are] facing harassment and red tape.

"The energy crisis undermines economic growth and investment prospects and persistent load-shedding destroys businesses and compromises the production of food and the provision of social services such as water, sanitation, community safety, education and health.

"Increasing lawlessness, criminality and violence creates a situation in which women and children live in fear not only in the streets of their towns and villages but also in their homes.

"Households are increasingly finding it difficult to meet their most basic needs such as food, transport and energy due to the rising cost of living.

"More young people are finding themselves in desperate conditions and they end up resorting to alcohol and drug abuse.

"Many municipalities are failing to perform their basic functions such as delivery of clean potable water, regular waste collection and road maintenance leading to the rapid deterioration of the quality of life of residents.

"Many communities are severely impacted by climate change which results in extreme weather conditions such as floods, drought, and fire, leading to social displacement and food insecurity.

"Racism is rearing its ugly head in our national life and threatening the foundations of our constitutional democracy, fuelling anger and frustration that can result in retaliatory violence.

"These multiple crises threaten to erode and reverse the hard-earned gains of our democracy."

A stunning, elementary, rhetorical question raises itself in reponse to the ANC's own devastatingly honest description of the near ruinous state of our society, "Should the government of the day - whoever it may be - be returned to power given these multiple crises created or sustained under its watch?" You would have to be deeply in love with your captor, and in need of an intervention, if you think the ANC's own description of what society has become under its ruinous leadership, is not enough reason to stop giving it more political power.

It is astonishing just how addicted to hubris the ANC is. It doesn't mind telling you, more searingly than opposition parties might, just how badly it is governing the country, because it is confident that you, dear voter, will not rob them of more opportunity to continue letting you down.

Let's summarise what they concede in their own analysis: they cannot grow the economy; they cannot get young people working; they cannot reduce rampant criminality; they cannot provide energy security; they cannot eliminate hunger; they cannot ensure access to clean water or refuse removal; they cannot attract investment; they cannot respond to the effects of climate change with agility; and so on. The list is endless, and crucially, it is endless by their own admission.

So why do they dare to make these concessions if they amount to reasons to not vote ANC, you may wonder? Well, as I have alluded, they are confident they can hoodwink you. My favourite LOL-moments throughout the January 8 statement are sentences that start with the words "The ANC calls on government ..." The ANC pretends there is a serious separation of power and state in our country, and that the ANC, as a political party, bears no responsibility for government. This is laughable on multiple levels.

We do not have a fully professionalised public administration. The party briefly admits this later in their statement when they mention such professionalising as one of their wishes for a better run government. But if the current bureaucracy is not, at its core, apolitical and beholden only to the country's constitution rather than governing party headquarters, then it raises the question of what the character of the current civil service, on the whole, is.

We all know the answer: the state is a massive job reservations site, especially at senior management and executive level, for ANC deployees to be rewarded for roles in internal ANC factional battles.

Many are incompetent. Some of the incompetent ones are also unethical and criminal, a deadly combination that amounts to undermining the foundations of our constitutional democracy.

The pithy point is that the ANC cannot go to Mangaung and talk about the national government as if it is an opposition party or a watchdog organisation. The ANC is the government and the fundamental sins and shortcomings of our government are thus co-extensive with the sins and shortcomings of the ANC. If you bemoan the government's sins, you must bemoan the governing party which gifted you those useless cadres deployed to the state. In that sense, Ramaphosa’s description of the multiple crises in South Africa amounts to a compelling argument to give up an ANC-led state. If Ramaphosa believes the words he uttered in Mangaung last weekend then he cannot be an ANC voter.

In tandem with the pervasive ANC self-delusion that it has been lacking in sufficient political and legal powers to deal with society's crises until now, all the resolutions about how it will yet do better, are an insult to South Africans. This is also where the relative lack of critical responses to the ANC's elective conference and its birthday bash, is most unfortunate.

I have read many reports that casually refer to Ramaphosa’s various remarks over the last week as "sending a strong message", and I cringe. Politicians and political parties shouldn't be judged on what they promise they will do, but rather on the facts about what they actually do, and what they have done or failed to do.

For example, the party has yet again resolved to improve the quality of ANC cadres who get deployed to the state. They also resolved to improve the political education of members of the party, and vaguely allude to some additional technical, possibly academic even, threshold requirements to be met before someone might be given certain posts.

But exactly ten years ago at the Mangaung conference - which I attended as a broadcaster and analyst - they resolved to do the same. This resolution is not new. It was not faithfully implemented over the past ten years, so on what basis is it reasonable to imagine the next ten years will be different, when the new NEC contains some prominent names synonymous with a lack of regard for ethics and the rule of law?

It is irresponsible to act as ANC stenographers and to report their fantasies straight without letting history bear on our analysis and media coverage. They need to be reminded of past promises and failure to deliver on those.

The trust deficit that the ANC's moral collapse, and embarrassing service delivery record, opened up is so massive that the latest elective conference, as a singular and badly run event, cannot overcome just because Ramaphosa smiles at us inoffensively, and recycles past promises.

In the end, the ANC relies on a psycho-political chokehold over many voters, combined with opposition missteps, to prop it up. I have no idea who you should vote for - sorry dear reader - but I am very clear for myself as a voter that it is not rational to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. If you take democratic accountability seriously, then you cannot reward a government that is a central figure in the story of the makings of a gangster state.

Maybe the answer requires looking beyond formal politics and disrupting political processes that do not serve us? As a first step, we need to give ourselves psychic permission to colour outside the conventional political frame. We certainly cannot live on ANC promissory notes.

We need and deserve material change in South Africa. Change is, quite literally, criminally overdue.

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