How we keep giving ANC a mandate every five years boggles the mind

This government, we are told, planned to solve the “overcrowding” in prisons as early as April this year.

It was a “rigorous” process which took four sleepless months to complete – and the government on Friday successfully implemented it.

Bearing in mind that overcrowding was never an issue before April, nor was it a problem prior to the incarceration of Jacob Zuma.

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We should also note that Zuma was released on medical parole, not as recommended by the medical parole board, but by then commissioner of correctional services, Arthur Fraser, who coincidentally happens to be Zuma’s close confidant.

As Zuma walked into the Estcourt prison to comply with the Constitutional Court order to complete his sentence as it found that his medical parole was unlawful, to his “surprise and shock”, he found that his name “coincidentally” appeared on the list of prisoners who were to be released as a result of the April remission project.

So, Zuma coincidentally benefitted from a programme that had nothing to do with the remission project.

He just happened to be at the right place at a wrong time, coincidentally. He won the lottery, so to speak.

Elections and the unending lust for political office, and its consequent power, are directly related to “coincidence”.

The ANC is, once more, almost assured of thousands of votes from those prisoners who received a bonus they least expected.

Unashamedly, these coincidences had to involve Zuma under the ANC government.

I think I am going to propose that elections be held every year if, and only if, the electorate believes the ANC must be in power in perpetuity.

You see, the five-year election intervals effectively gives the ANC a paid holiday for four full years.

They only start working in the fifth year and are guaranteed another four years’ paid leave.

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During the four years that the ANC is on fully paid leave, it is actually the electorate that is hard at work, and in the process, accumulates untold levels of stress and misery.

If it is not potholes then it is load shedding; if not, it is the non-removal of refuse; if not, it is a lack of water; if not, it is sewage running into our streams; and – to crown it all – municipalities’ books of accounts don’t balance.

Then you ask yourself, why, if those who are employed to balance the books are nowhere closer to them as they are on holiday?

If they are not in office doing what they are paid to do, how come the books don’t balance and the monies disappear?

I just can’t figure this out. Maybe I’m illiterate.

But in the fifth year, the year which ushers in the new election season, ANC governments across the spectrum perform relatively well.

It is somehow during this season that our stress levels and misery seem to dissipate. We seem invigorated and fresh again.

Municipalities are busy delivering services and election campaigns disguised as presidential imbizos are on steroids.

Just how does the ANC get it right?

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Either we are a collectively naïve lot or the ANC has a secret potion which they administer to us to make us quickly forget our pain and suffering, and give them the mandate to subject us to the very pain and misery we suddenly forgot about.

It is called gullibility, ignorance, hopelessness, fear of the unknown, lack of self-worth and self-esteem and idiocy.

Sadly, these all come in one package, so neatly and beautifully wrapped that you believe, unwrapping the package might spoil the contents.

Unfortunately, it is not unwrapping the package that causes our pain and misery for the next four years.

Monama is an independent commentator and a former Azapo leader