If ANC doesn’t listen to voices of reason, it will go down

You can feel the anguish in the words we run today of long-time ANC member Isaac Mashaba, as he ponders whether it is time for a once-great movement to die so that it can be born again as “an honest political party”.

In a damning piece of advice – which is also an indictment of the party’s leaders – Mashaba notes: “If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you.”

He says ANC members have “allowed our movement to be taken over and tarnished by the inept and the corrupted”.

He goes on to point out that in the recent failed insurrection, “were it not for the citizens of our country standing united against the anarchy and criminality, we could have been ousted as the ruling party and the democracy we claimed we stood for destroyed”.

Why, he asks, “do we want to disarm law-abiding citizens when we cannot ensure their safety and security”? Then he wonders: “Has the time not come to stop blaming the past for our present ills?”

No doubt Mashaba will be accused of being a “sellout” for his outspoken thoughts. But if the ANC doesn’t listen to voices like his, it will go down. And, it will drag all of us with it.