The electioneering onslaught which has been mounted by the opposition on the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has left the continent’s oldest political formation at sixes and sevens.
The party now appears to be failing to distinguish between head and tail and good or bad, and doesn’t seem to know whether it is coming or going. All this can be seen in its appointment of Angela Thokozile Didiza as mayoral candidate for Tshwane.
Because of the powerful showing by Julius Malema’s EFF and Mmusi Maimane’s DA, the ANC is running around like a headless chicken and nominating people who do not even live in the area to run for municipal elections.
The party elected Durban resident, Didiza, because of her prominent political profile as former cabinet minister of various portfolios, in the hope she could possibly resuscitate their ailing votes in Tshwane, largely considered to be on its deathbed.
Little did they know the backlash that would follow her imposition as the mayoral candidate. The ANC was founded on the strong democratic values, pillars and principles of the Freedom Charter, which seems to have now been flung out of the window by a party desperate for survival as the opposition closes in to whisk away the gravy the ruling party has seemingly enjoyed over two decades.
One wonders what has happened to the principle of the ‘people shall govern’, which is the philosophy and guiding light enshrined in the Freedom Charter. The people were asked to choose their candidates, which they duly did, but the party sought to engineer its own and then discarded the candidates put forward by the people.
This was partly to impose a political heavyweight to try and counter the oppositions’ onslaught while at the same time hoping to gain sympathetic votes from the female section of the community who might fall for the trap of one of their own in a powerful position.
What they forget is that local municipal elections are a different kettle of fish altogether. People will want to be led by those who they know, live with, dine with and socialise with. You can’t just take a prominent name from KwaZulu-Natal out of a hat simply because the person is a so-called political heavyweight and expect it to find favour with the residents of Vhembe.
People of Vhembe have their own tried-and-tested heavyweights who know the concerns like the palms of their hands, and can recite them like a poem. For starters, the person imposed on them is not a local, does not speak their language, knows nothing about the daily hardships they endure or what their concerns are.
And then, when Didiza is rejected, what does the ANC do? They cry foul and accuse the people of being tribalistic. No, Gwede Mantashe, it’s not about tribalism, it’s about the imposition of a candidate from Durban on the people of Vhembe.
That poor Durbanite cannot even locate Vhembe on the provincial map of Limpopo, let alone South Africa. Each time there are issues, she has to have a map of Limpopo before her to understand where Vhembe is, and then she goes to speak to Vhembe gogos and mkhulus in the Queen’s language, with scant regard for their culture and customs.
