Signs looking ominous for ANC

All around us, every day, we see the results of the ANC’s 28 years in power: rolling blackouts, water shortages, collapsing infrastructure, inefficient government departments; spiralling crime… But the organisation itself – or at least its powerful office holders – seem to sit back, fat and happy, because they are close to the taxpayer trough and can “eat”.

It is comforting to be part of an operation which enables you to loot or pretend to do a civil service job without any hint of consequences. That is why there is such competition for political position that, in some places, people are killed for it.

All of this is enabled, however, by members of the ANC themselves who go, sheep-like, to the polling stations and repeatedly give the organisation the mandate to (mis)rule the country.

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The ANC hierarchy seems to believe the words of Jacob Zuma that the organisation “will rule South Africa until Jesus comes back”. However, the signs are looking ominous for the ruling party that it will not have things all its own way in the 2024 general election.

Even its most loyal supporters cannot miss that the common denominator in this country’s woes is the ANC. And, some of its own councillors in the Limpopo town of Lephalale voted a Democratic Alliance (DA) mayor, Nico Pienaar, into office.

Pienaar says the ANC councillors are, like many, angry at the lack of service delivery. The ANC’s provincial executive committee said their councillors’ actions were “an insult to the people who voted us into power to lead the municipality”.

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Leaving aside the irony that the ANC is itself plotting to overturn the will of voters by subverting municipal coalition governments elsewhere, the organisation’s reaction to the vote shows its continued arrogance in thinking that it can rule our country forever regardless of how we feel.