Dear governing party
A majority of the South African electorate has entrusted you with the responsibility of managing the country. Through this electoral mandate, the people have given you not just the right to occupy the seat of government, but to manage national assets on their behalf. This is not a blank cheque, but allows you to deploy your cadres to various echelons of state, to manage on behalf of us the people. However, in the 27 years that you have been entrusted with this huge responsibility, so much has gone wrong.
When friends of minister of health Zweli Mkhize set up a questionable entity, get awarded an irregular communications contract and charge the department R3.6m for a single television appearance that could have been arranged at no cost, I ask: where are the honest cadres?
When the minister of health’s signature appears on “submissions” related to the same contract, and it’s reported that this entity belonging to his friends allegedly paid for maintenance work at an upmarket property owned by the minister’s family trust, and advanced money to a company owned by his son, all of this in the middle of a pandemic, I ask: where are the non-corrupt cadres?
When the Gauteng department of education pays R431m to decontaminate schools via a procurement process described by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) as haphazard, unfair and littered with irregularities, and when the service providers so irregularly appointed celebrate their ill-gotten gains by splurging on Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers, I ask: where are the non-greedy cadres?”
When the residents of QwaQwa in the eastern Free State experience water shortages for more than a decade while the R220m government advanced to the province for the crisis to be addressed ends up in the back pockets of politically connected rent-seekers, I ask: where are the cadres with a conscience?
Even your own president declared your party as being on trial at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
When an unscrupulous service provider submits fraudulent invoices totalling R4,8m, claiming to have conducted door-to-door awareness campaigns for the prevention of Covid-19 in the Port St Johns and King Sabata Dalindyebo municipalities in the Eastern Cape, and with evidence pointing to collusion with municipal leaders deployed by you, I ask: where are the cadres who don’t steal?
When Johannesburg experiences 1,407 power cuts in a space of six months, 110 water cuts in a single month and more than 55,000 pipe bursts in a single financial year because of unmaintained infrastructure, I ask: where are the competent cadres?
When state arms manufacturer Denel gets so badly depleted financially that it ends up owing its employees R500m in unpaid salaries and benefits, and is on the brink of collapse, I ask: where are the cadres who are accountable?
When a current deputy minister who was a party spokesman is unmasked as having received financial gifts totalling R2m, including stays at a R50,000 a night pad in Cape Town, from a service provider scoring government contracts, I ask: where are the cadres that live within their means?
When the lights cannot stay on; the hospitals have no water; the trains are not running because the lines and cables have been stolen; when criminals run rampant in the streets; the police are on the take; the youth have no work or purpose; the country has to borrow to pay interest on what it already owes, I ask: where’s your shame?
Even your own president, Cyril Ramaphosa, declared your party as being on trial at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture: “Today, the ANC and its leaders stand accused of corruption. The ANC may not stand alone in the dock, but it does stand as Accused No. 1. This is the stark reality that we must now confront,” he wrote to you cadres in a letter.
As you go out to campaign in the streets, asking the electorate to once again entrust municipalities to you, the very municipalities that get red-carded each year by the auditor-general, I advise that you first introspect. As you meet in your branches, regions and provinces, take a hard look at one another and tell us if there are still honest cadres among yourselves.
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