We now have a new word in the ANC’s Lexicon of Excuses and Deflections… “De-campaigning”.
That’s what party secretary-general Fikile Mbalula used to describe the reasons struggle stalwart Mavuso Msimang gave for resigning from the organisation this week.
Mbalula had no option but to attempt to go on the offensive against Msimang, implying he was disloyal and hurting the organisation’s chances in next year’s election.
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That, of course, ignores the reality that the ANC, through its venal and incompetent nature, has “de-campaigned” itself.
Msimang’s resignation letter – one of the strongest and most accurate summations of an organisation which betrayed the revolution – indicates his sadness and frustration at seeing the country’s people become victims of the ruling party… and the fact that his calls, and those of other struggle veterans, had been ignored by the party.
He noted that, in 1994, the ANC occupied the “moral high ground” but that, now, “the corruption we once decried has become part of our government’s DNA”.
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He went on to note that ANC leaders “proclaim ownership of obscenely wealthy homesteads and other possessions and send their children to the best schools in the land”… all while many still live in shacks and huts and whose children risk drowning in pit latrines at their government schools.
Msimang is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” providing warning (although it’s far from the first) that there is a potential explosion looming.
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The reaction to his words, though, is an indication that the ANC is hell-bent on continuing its plundering ways and that members who question that path will be demonised and isolated, accused of disloyalty.
Next up: they will be labelled as counter-revolutionaries. And if South Africans continue to ignore dire warnings like this and vote in their oppressors again next year, they can’t say they weren’t warned.
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