ANC shoots the messenger – again

Surprise, surprise. The ANC has attacked Eskom board member Busisiwe Mavuso for telling it like it is before parliament’s select committee on public accounts (Scopa) last week.

She said the ANC was responsible for the mess that is our national power utility. She made her comments when it became obvious to her that the committee was trying to throw chief executive André de Ruyter and the Eskom board under the bus, as being responsible for the current load shedding.

Mavuso is a strong business leader from the private sector – she is head of Business Leadership SA – and is no ANC apparatchik.

Nor is she, apparently, a praise singer for any opposition party. She is merely, to us anyway, an honest South African trying to stop the ANC from diverting blame from itself for destroying a country.

Mavuso was attacked by Scopa members for allegedly bringing party politics into a parliamentary investigation of a national crisis.

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She was accused of unruly behaviour and threatened with further action by the committee. At that she stormed out, leaving them with the admonition to do their worst.

Now, the ANC’s study group on Scopa has accused Mavuso of “undermining the authority of the state”, which has to be the most bizarre of political comments of recent times.

Comrades of the ANC, at the risk of being labelled “unruly”, we would like to suggest that it has been your cadres’ incessant plundering and incompetence over the past 28 years, which leaves many people regarding our government as a bad joke.

It is the ANC’s “cadre deployments” which have led to the systematic destruction of government departments, state-owned enterprises and municipalities across the country. It is high time the organisation acknowledged that reality. If it doesn’t, its protestations about cleaning up corruption will just be more of the same hot air.