CAIPHUS KGOSANA | A noble ANC led us to the Promised Land, but now it’s left us high and dry

I’ve been thinking about the ANC a lot of late.

The leader of the society; the green black and gold, the mass movement, the broad church that gave us Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo, Kathrada, Duma Nokwe. I first heard of the ANC as a child growing up in a Pretoria township towards apartheid’s dying years. It was immortalised in song by “comrades” who wore cargo pants and clenched their fists at a passing Hippo (police Casspir).

It was the stuff of folklore, of brave men and women waging a seemingly hopeless struggle against a ruthless enemy. We were told in secret that the movement was in exile; its leaders were in jail for fighting for our freedom. I remember picturing exile as some exotic country somewhere in an African bushveld, where these mythical warriors were being trained to eventually storm SA and liberate us from the ruthless government of PW Botha.

In primary school, a friend whose father secretly kept banned political material invited us to his home to show us a picture of Nelson Mandela. It must have been one of those rare images taken shortly before Madiba’s incarceration on Robben Island. We were enthralled, as if we were seeing God’s image in human form. We were sworn to secrecy in case someone alerted an impimpi (police informant) that my friend’s father kept “terrorist” contraband.

Sure, the ANC didn’t exactly storm the country guns-in-tow to rescue us from the evil boer monsters. Apartheid’s demise was the result of sustained internal and external struggle, eventually culminating in a negotiated settlement.

Still, when FW De Klerk gave that speech in February 1990, proclaiming the unbanning of liberation movements and release of political prisoners, we celebrated wildly on the streets. Our heroes were coming back from jail and exile to lead us to the Promised Land.

I was a few months short of 18 when the first democratic elections took place in 1994. Even though I didn’t participate, I accompanied older siblings to nearby voting stations to witness this miracle of freedom with my own eyes.

So here we are 27 years later stuck with this behemoth that is the ANC.

The ANC could have built on this progress but it chose not to. Instead of creating more opportunities to advance other lives in the same way mine was, the party veered off course and is now navigating towards dystopia.

Where we once beatified this deity, today we pity and cuss a movement in complete disarray, actively undoing not just its magical history but the great work its earlier leaders did after taking over and steering us towards the path of the elusive Promised Land.

Don’t get me wrong, I have the ANC largely to thank for how my life panned out. My lot improved tremendously after 1994. The opening up of educational institutions to all races meant I could be taught in lecture halls my parents were legally prohibited from. I could live where they couldn’t. Promulgation of redress laws meant I could work where they were systemically excluded or had their career progression curtailed. I’m literally a child of liberation.   

The ANC could have built on this progress but it chose not to. Instead of creating more opportunities to advance other lives in the same way mine was, the party veered off course and is now navigating towards dystopia. Almost half of our countrymen and women are unemployed, uneducated, unskilled and in a state of utter hopelessness.

Consider how in 1999 an ANC government chose to push ahead with the purchase of heavily sophisticated military weapons at great cost. Park aside the gross corruption and shameless rent seeking that accompanied this process; imagine where we would be if that money had gone towards the construction of additional technical colleges and skills training centres all over this country. Now imagine if those centres had produced 500,000 skilled graduates annually for 20 years.

The fighter jets, frigates and submarines are idling at hangars in Pretoria and at sea in Simon’s Town. Who were we declaring war on with that unnecessary show of force? Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe?

Less than a decade after that disastrous purchase, the same party gave us Jacob Zuma’s kleptocracy — mind you, he’s still facing corruption charges related to this vile arms deal.

Today all our development indexes are pointing downwards. The central government is bloated and constrained by bureaucratic incompetence and indifference. State-owned companies have been cleaned out. Provinces are nothing but patronage dispensing centres, the hotbed of corruption. The auditor-general releases one horror report after another about the paralytic state of municipalities. What was supposed to be the jewel in our crown, the City of Joburg, cannot guarantee constant water and electricity supply to residents. We are doomed. We were daft to think a party that cannot pay its own employees could successfully run a large, complex country.

When we were young we romanticised the ANC. Frankly, we didn’t know better. We didn’t know that serving alongside the saints in jail, in exile and the underground were some of the most corrupt, most depraved human beings. The ANC was once the party of my dreams. It has become the stuff of nightmares.