Reject destructive ANC policies

Of all the ANC presidents, Jacob Zuma has the biggest Cabinet. With the Zumafication of the ruling party, ministerial posts have been created for cronies. Their sole intention was to accommodate loyalists, preferably from the same ethnic group.

Zuma has expanded his Cabinet from 62 under Mbeki to 76 (including deputies) under his rule.

Redundant ministries abound: some can be ditched and others merged not only to save money, but also to stop him from bolstering the party with his supporters: planning, monitoring and development, tourism and transport (can be merged), economic development, communications and telecommunications and postal services (can be merged), and many more.

Zuma now proposes two deputy presidents after his retirement to eliminate factions, code for wanting his ex-wife to be president and his cronies in the highest seats of power. Instead of uniting the party, he seeks solutions for deliberately dividing the party.

He obviously has many irons in the fire as well as the criminal charges to contend with. Shoring up his support in all the agencies that will protect him is part of the plot causing divisions.

This is the curse of the notorious ANC’s proportional representation electoral system. It can be manoeuvred to serve the personal and private interests of the party aparatchiks.

Words such as radical economic transformation are a ruse for radical economic enrichment and point to why all the policy recommendations have been controversial despite a series of degradations to junk status. Plainly geared to economic suicide, Zuma has a mean streak and refuses to leave a thriving economy aside for his successor.

Arguing that both factions be headed up by a political leader against the views of the rank and file shows Zuma’s desperation to secure some sort of safeguard for a future free from the law. It’s such an African thing – “if I cannot be in charge, then I’ll take you all down with me”. Revenge and plain nastiness are par for the course, demonstrated so aptly by the ANC’s latest policy conference.

It is an exercise of monumental proportions of narcissism of which the citizens are of secondary importance. Land expropriation without compensation, the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank, spying on the media, and political assassinations of political competitors are all policies that will end in political suicide, no doubt driven by pure revenge, for which Zuma’s proxies, Black First Land First, act as lightning rods for the party.

EFF defector, Andile Mngxitama, with all his self-righteous rhetoric at first, has decided to become an out and out black minority capitalist in cahoots with the scumbag Guptas, who are ever ready to reel him into their camp, as a counter to Julius Malema, his deadliest rival.

Given Bell Pottinger’s subterranean treacherous moves, Andile’s co-optation is as transparent as Zuma’s Machiavellian strategies.

As a nation we must either mount a groundswell of rejection of policies that will hobble us as a nation and drain our small pool of taxpayers, or we go into the abyss with the ANC, eyes wide shut.

FILE PICTURE: Rhoda Kadalie, anti-apartheid activist.