Glad tidings as ANC splits apart before election

A mid the season’s glad tidings of great joy, the best news is that the ANC is irrevocably splitting. Hooray. Evidence abounds.

The most obvious examples include: first, former president Jacob Zuma’s declaration that he will vote for a different party; second, Roger Jardine’s denunciation of the current ANC; and third, stalwart Mavuso Msimang’s flip-flop resignation.

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There is a cacophony of competing voices, all claiming to speak for the “real” ANC.

Similarly, veterans of uMkhonto weSizwe, the ANC’s former military wing, are distancing themselves from Zuma, who said he would be voting for the newly registered uMkhonto weSizwe party in next year’s general election.

Earlier, political lightweight Jardine was peddling the story that the current ANC has lost its way and “cannot be restored to its former glory”.

Exactly when and how the ANC was ever glorious is worth a separate discussion. The point here is that an early beneficiary of the ANC’s policies of cadre deployment and BEE (black economic empowerment) now professes to have turned his back on the movement.

ALSO READ: ‘The ANC owns uMkhonto weSizwe’ − Mavuso Msimang

Armed with degrees from universities you’ve never heard of, he was parachuted into a series of top positions in government and business.

Unstitched by James Myburgh in Politicsweb, ANC-lite Jardine should have no chance of being presidential candidate for either the Democratic Alliance (DA) or the Multi-Party Charter that hopes to form a government after the 2024 elections.

As Myburgh points out, “the DA would end up looking faintly ridiculous if, after warning of the dangers of ANC cadre deployment for decades, it chose as its presidential candidate in 2024 a prototypical ANC cadre of the Mandela/Mbeki eras”.

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Nevertheless, Jardine adds momentum to the message: the ANC is misgoverning terribly. Msimang’s short-lived resignation from the party that he has supported for 63 years gave the further insight into disillusionment within the ANC.

Msimang’s credibility has been dented by his return to the veterans’ ranks. However, he has not “retracted the four-page letter that explains my deep concerns about the state of the ANC and its manifest failure to deal with corruption within our own ranks”.

He is naïve to accept the ANC’s reassurances that it will deal firmly with corruption. Without corruption, the ANC will die. Its entire structure, from top to bottom, depends on networks of patronage, preferential procurement, jobs-and-tenders-for-pals, plus non-payment of invoices, etc.

The ANC is an unravelling entropic mess. Zuma, who like Msimang has been with the ANC for more than 60 years, has added to the current disorder with vengeful, personal attacks on the elected leadership.

Oblivious to the irony, the man who sold South Africa to the Gupta brothers and to Russian President Vladimir Putin, says the ANC government is run by “sell-outs”.

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Not for the first time. Former president Thabo Mbeki has also been publicly critical of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This is rich coming from the grandfather of load shedding, and the architect of “quiet diplomacy” towards Zanu-PF. Not forgetting his record on HIV/Aids. All the internal ANC acrimony is out of step with festive “goodwill towards all”.

Yet watching these thieves fall out does have a positive side. It brings hope for real change next year. Keep it up, comrades.