JUSTICE MALALA | It’s time the electorate stopped feeding the ANC monster

We have paid too much attention, and given too much support for far too long, to the ANC.

We believed the party when it told us it was the “leader of society”. We encouraged it, by our silence and sometimes more explicitly, when it told us there could be no united, peaceful and prosperous SA without it. As recently as Saturday, the party claimed it is central to the stability of our country.

“A strong and united ANC is fundamental to the success of our country. When the governing party and leading force for organising society is divided, it affects society and government negatively,” said its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, in Polokwane.

Worst of all, we encouraged the party’s arrogance by voting for it repeatedly when it made the most outrageous decisions. When it put forward a man who was charged with corruption and fraud as its candidate for the presidency of SA in 2009, we thanked the ANC with 65.9% of votes cast in that year’s national election.

The results are there for all to see. The economy has been in decline for more than a decade. SA’s infrastructure is collapsing. The education system is getting no better. Healthcare is atrocious unless you have private medical insurance. We don’t even talk about crime any more in a country where the government now tells us not to drive at night instead of assuring us it will arrest and jail the perpetrators of car hijackings and other crimes. Corruption is rampant.

The past week underlines just what a sorry mess the 110-year-old party is. It is at war with itself. Ramaphosa faced security threats at almost every venue he visited, even though he was in a province that endorses him to continue as the organisation’s leader. The country’s institutions were under siege from strange attacks. ANC factions hurled insults and allegations at each other, behaving as though they were members of two warring parties.

The ANC should have been voted out comprehensively in 2009 or 2014, let alone last November. So the South African electorate is not blameless in this debacle. We fed the monster. We should stop doing so.

The reason the ANC can continue with its shenanigans is that it has known for the past three decades it is guaranteed South Africans’ votes. Even after scandals about the “fire pool”, pit latrines and so many others, former president Jacob Zuma could say with confidence, as he did in June 2016, that “the ANC is the leader of society”.

Yet in a democracy such as ours, it should not have had this guarantee. A party that has failed as spectacularly as the ANC has in the past 13 years should be quaking in its boots at the prospect of facing the electorate. It should have been voted out comprehensively in 2009 or 2014, let alone last November. So the South African electorate is not blameless in this debacle. We fed the monster. We should stop doing so.

Ramaphosa’s spiel that the party is renewing itself and South Africans should support it comes from the wrong place. He should be making that plea from the opposition benches after the SA electorate had kicked the ANC out of power.

Ramaphosa is also taking the electorate for granted. It has been clear since he ascended to power that there is only so much he can do to accommodate the lunatic fringe within his party. He has steadfastly refused to face them down and force a split. Instead he has prevaricated on policy and stalled key reforms just so he can keep these corrupt leaders within the party. He cannot have it both ways.

Last week Ramaphosa received and accepted the first part of the Commission into State Capture report from acting chief justice Raymond Zondo. A few days later Lindiwe Sisulu, a member of the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) and a cabinet member of more than 20 years’ standing, wrote this about the judiciary: “Today, in the high echelons of our judicial system are these mentally colonised Africans, who have settled with the worldview and mindset of those who have dispossessed their ancestors. They are only too happy to lick the spittle of those who falsely claim superiority. The lack of confidence that permeates their rulings against their own speaks very loudly, while others, secure in their agenda, clap behind closed doors.”

Is this ANC policy? Is this the ANC stance on Zondo and other black judges who uphold the rule of law? If Ramaphosa and his NEC were serious about reform he would be asking Sisulu to apologise, retract or leave the ANC. Instead, he accommodates her.

My point is that the job of fixing the ANC belongs to the ANC and it should be left to that warring party. None of this “leader of society” nonsense. If South Africans love their country, their role comes at election time: they should vote the ANC out to give it time to fix itself while others run the country.