Covid-19 hunger games ‘could herald defeat of the ANC’

With biting hunger stalking millions of people as the Covid-19 crisis tightens its grip on SA, analysts have warned that food parcels and related social relief aid are increasingly becoming tools of patronage, power and greed.

Independent political and socioeconomic analyst Solly Masilela said the ruling party could not afford the widespread reports of its councillors and officials stealing food parcels meant for the destitute.

He said the ANC, weighed down by the legacy of corruption and service delivery failures, could find itself on the ropes if it did not respond and act swiftly on reports of corruption in the distribution of food parcels.

“The reports confirmed my assessment that the ANC is politicising everything, including hunger. Not only will this strengthen the party’s use of patronage politics, but exposes the party’s founding principles, stealing from the public it is supposed to protect and improve,” said Masilela.

The politics of patronage, rent seeking, cronyism and corruption had taken hold of the party and that those involved would stop at nothing, even stealing from the dying.

“You can see from the number of people who queue for food parcels that people are desperately hungry. Instead of ensuring that everyone had food, those in positions of power redirected food parcels to their cronies, comrades, friends and relatives. Some even sell these food parcels,” Masilela said.

He said this tendency was not only for personal gain, but also an instrument of clinging to power, using desperation to ensure loyalty.

But he added this was the undoing of a “once-glorious liberation movement in Africa”.

A senior ANC official in Mpumalanga said government had been spending millions of rands on food parcels for the needy for decades, way before the Covid-19 pandemic, but these hardly reached those they were intended for.

“They end up in spaza shops or in the homes of officials or senior party members who already have means to survive. So this is not new, it is just that it exposes the extent of the rot because there is too much desperation,” the official said.

ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe said the party had noted allegations of “isolated incidents” involving its members in corrupt practices around the distribution of food parcels.

He said the party would not hesitate to act against those in its ranks found to be in the wrong, undermining the trust that people have placed in the party.

“Members of the community must also use available legitimate channels to expose wrongdoing wherever it manifests itself, without any political bias,” Mabe said in a statement.

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) said that the Covid-19 crisis, deepened by the extended lockdown and “draconian” regulations that have shut down most of an economy that was already failing, would likely trigger a major political realignment in South Africa, heralding the defeat of the ANC.

In a statement on the political implications of the coronavirus pandemic and South Africa’s response to it, Dr Frans Cronje, executive head of IRR, said conditions had reached a point “where I’m beginning to think the ANC has, in fact, already lost”, with the severity of the economic fallout suggesting “the point of no return is already behind them”.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

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