The current ANC list of candidates for the 2019 general election is the worst since the dawn of democracy in South Africa – it is a pipe dream to think of renewal with such a candidate list.

Although some of the candidates have been there since 1994, such as Jeff Radebe, President Cyril Ramaphosa, Lindiwe Sisulu, Baleka Mbete and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, they have watched the ANC being destroyed in front of their eyes. Their profiles in 1994 were great, but they deteriorated and they are now also being destroyed in front of our eyes.

If a cabinet minister or MP simply watched while South Africa was being destroyed in front of their eyes, that politician can no longer be relied upon. If you watch your political party being destroyed and you do nothing, you are not a reliable custodian and you cannot be trusted. The current candidate list will lead the ANC to a fracture point. It can only get worse.

An overwhelming vote for the ANC would deliver the worst slate in Parliament, entrenching what is already the worst slate in Parliament, entrenching deployees of the Guptas, those in the payroll of Bosasa, those who looted VBS bank in Limpopo, and those who facilitated the paralysing and destruction of the SA Revenue Service, SARS.

It does not get worse than this.

This list is worst for President Ramaphosa because he appears to be helping to transport his political foes into his castle for them to slaughter him with his knowledge and collaboration. Is Ramaphosa committing political suicide? Why should we as voters facilitate his political death?

Assuming we give him 65% of the votes, the first 200 in the ANC candidate list consist mainly of those implicated in the State Capture inquiry, under the guidance of the Guptas and those in the payroll of Bosasa. Is it realistic to trust that Ramaphosa will survive this vice-like grip around his neck? Or are we just victims of wishful thinking?

It confirms the statement by Zuma deployee Ace Magashule – parachuted by Zuma supporters into the key position of secretary-general at the ANC national elective conference at Nasrec in Soweto in December 2017 – when he addressed the Youth League in KwaZulu-Natal, Jacob Zuma’s home turf, in January 2018: “Stay focused… the ANC we know is going to come back. It’s just a matter of five years.”

This was the meeting where he joined in songs accusing those who did not back Zuma’s deployee at Nasrec, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, of being “sell-outs”.

This is the ANC secretary-general, the same post as Stalin in the Soviet Union, whose son Tshepiso was employed as a consultant by the Guptas from November 2010, when Daddy was premier of Free State province.

He is the gentleman whose Provincial Executive Committee was found by the Constitutional Court in December 2012 – ahead of the Mangaung elective conference – to have violated the rights of ANC members in Free State by fraudulently placing his own delegates, breaching the ANC’s constitution.

It is clear that Zuma’s slate is back, even before five years. An estimated 80% of the current lists are former President Zuma’s staunch supporters, such as Bathabile Dlamini, Nomvula Mokonyane, Malusi Gigaba, Mosebenzi Zwane, and so on.

This is the outcome of the secret meeting between Magashule, Zuma, and Zuma’s cronies Supra Mahumapelo (former North West premier), Women’s League secretary-general Meokgo Matuba and KZN Youth League secretary Thanduxolo Sabelo at the Maharani Hotel in Durban in September 2018, when a plot to unseat President Ramaphosa was allegedly prepared.

This is a political coup. Ramaphosa is outmanoeuvred and will be surrounded by the Guptas’ machinery. After winning the elections, he will be led to his political death by Luthuli House under Magashule and deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte. He appears helpless and vulnerable. Only the people of South Africa, through mass action of civic organisations, the churches and the NGOs, can save the country.

Mass campaigns against wrongdoing should be the order of the day.

The ANC is still captured, rotten to the core and it cannot renew itself.

The candidate list is a demonstration of what Luthuli House means by “renewal”. Nearly all the candidates on the list are associated with scandals across the state and government institutions.

Incapable of renewing itself, the ANC can only be saved by a reform of parliamentary electoral laws, so that voters have power to directly elect their own individual members of parliament, instead of Magashule – the maharajah – packing the National Assembly with his own list of MPs.

This is not a representative democracy. This is not liberation. Our Parliament is no better than a Bantustan assembly.

Without reforming the parliamentary electoral laws, South Africa – like the ANC – cannot be renewed. The ANC, and the country, can only go down deeper and deeper into the pit.

The warning is there for those who care to see. DM