If the ANC can be so negligent (and that’s a charitable view) in its bid to stop the Mkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) which threatens its very precarious hold on the country’s leadership, why are we surprised its negligence is almost omnipresent?
The decision of the electoral court that the MK Party was legally and properly registered despite the ANC’s complaints to the contrary is telling in many ways. It’s not a simple case of the law being unclear, and a presiding officer being required to adjudicate. The ANC was informed of the registration of the MK Party last year, and it objected but failed to pay attention to detail with respect to how the Electoral Commission was handling the matter. It dropped the ball. It was only after its former leader Jacob Zuma announced on December 16 that he would campaign and vote for MKP that the ANC woke up from its slumber, as Dali Mpofu SC told the court.
But therein lies the meaning of things. The ANC could not pay attention to what threatened its very fragile position in the country. Ordinarily, you’d think it would not want to self-sabotage. Yet it did. Now it has egg on its face, having lost to Zuma in court. The ANC is so nonchalant about things that matter, things that could change people’s lives for the better, it is scary. The casualness with which it does things permeates every sphere of life.
ANC’s nonchalance
Think of how load-shedding, which has become the bane of our lives, was first raised decades ago without much alacrity. Today, acquiring alternative energy is a cost centre for many middle class and working people while the poor sit out the long periods without power. Companies burn millions, if not billions of rand, on diesel, solar and whatever else is required to survive outages that are an outcome of ANC’s nonchalance.
Think too about the water mafioso that have become en vogue because people in Johannesburg and Tshwane now know what it’s like to live like the people of Seshego, Polokwane, who have made peace with lives of JoJo tanks and boreholes because the municipality just won’t supply water — except at 2am. The point though is that the ANC was warned over a decade ago that the country will face a major water crisis in the future, meaning from now on, and it did zilch. Nada. Nothing.
Its attitude was no different to how it dealt with an existential threat that is MK Party. To be clear, I neither believe the MK Party will receive more votes than the ANC on May 29 nor become the second biggest party in the country. Far from it. Its leader, Zuma, will find it harder to be as relevant in other provinces as he is in KwaZulu-Natal.
If the ANC loses its majority in KwaZulu-Natal, as it appears likely, what with its childish KZN chairperson Siboniso Duma grabbing microphones from political adversaries in an undignified fashion in the glare of the public, it will mark a decisive demise of Africa’s oldest liberation movement. It will mean the ANC is out of power in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KZN. Much of the country’s economic activities happen in these provinces and they, consequently, are the most populous.
Knowing the aforementioned, why would the ANC be so tardy as to threaten its existence? The self-sabotage wasn’t intentional. It’s the output of its being. It’s just how it is. When it sabotages the poor through non-delivery of services, it’s not because the ANC hates the poor. It doesn’t. It’s just slow and slumbering.
Mr Razzmatazz
The arrival of Fikile Mbalula in the secretary-general’s office was meant to infuse life into what had become a party of older, slower and even sleepy people. He was, we heard, Mr Razzmatazz himself. But the case, about which he made a lot of noise, shows it’s easier to campaign than to think strategically. He could not come up with a strategy to outperform Zuma, an old, tired and discredited captive of the arguably corrupt Gupta brothers.
Mbalula told us outside court: “We have taken a political decision to challenge the existence of MK because we believe that how it was registered through the IEC is a matter we believe needed to be challenged, and we have challenged that and argued that particular case in court.” If you managed to glean something substantive here, well, a genius you are.
Zuma, who was in the same court during oral hearings a week ago, said afterwards: “We listened to the debate here today. I don’t know why people can make themselves feel so bad. I can’t tell you what was the argument really, there’s been no argument presented here that this party belongs to the ANC. ANC is an organisation of its own, uMkhonto weSizwe is an organisation of its own. We are going to compete with the ANC. When we take government, we are going to bring the ANC to our side and eject the thugs from it.” This was Zuma, the political thug against whom Mbalula could not use his purported razzmatazz to argue.
Self-destruct
And Zuma is right that it’s unclear “why people can make themselves feel so bad” about the MK Party’s existence. If the ANC knew what was good for it, it would leave the MK Party to self-destruct. The ANC of previous secretary-generals like Kgalema Motlanthe would focus on the ANC’s strength and not waste much time and energy on court processes whose victories will mean nothing much if the ANC loses on May 29.
In other words, focus on the war and not the meaningless razzmatazzy skirmishes. So what if Zuma creates a party called Umkhonto? ANC voters know today that MK Party is run by people who make random threats. Many ANC voters will not be confused by Zuma’s defection to MKP. The best way to fight MK is not through the courts — but on the ground in its backyard in KZN.
But the ANC is now mired in this MK fiasco because it has long stopped being strategic. It slumbers only to wake up and slowly creak into unending crises of its making. Ahem!
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