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A loss of power for the ANC will set back the country’s prosperity

David Ka-Ndyalvan is an ANC member at Akaso Branch

Before celebrating the opposition parties’ wishful thinking of reducing the ANC majority to below 50% during the 8 May 2019 elections, one should also know the high probability that this would not only open up a space for selfish wheeling and dealing by political elites and chaotic, hamstrung administration, but would also dampen much-needed investor confidence needed for the country’s economic growth.

From the darkest days of the colonial-apartheid regime, about which its beneficiaries are still arrogantly nostalgic, South Africa became a multi-party democratic state, where multiple political parties exist and have equal chance to govern the country. For the first time, blacks had equal rights with whites to vote into government the political parties of their choice, in April 1994.

Since, the advent of democracy, the political power shifts from the ANC at both provincial and local sphere of government, should have and should remind party members of the prophetic words of the President and Isithwalandwe/Seaparankwe, Oliver Reginald “OR” Tambo, which have been proved to be true by the current political epoch.

The political doyen and leader, renowned for his wisdom and leadership par excellence, intimately warned uMkhonto weSizwe soldiers in Angola in 1977. His counsel in part read as follows:

Comrades, you might think it is very difficult to wage a liberation struggle. Wait until you are in power. I might be dead by then. At that stage, you will realise that it is actually more difficult to keep the power than to wage a liberation war.”

Indeed, the ANC, with its impeccable struggle credentials, tangible transformative contribution and agenda-setting, lost power in some parts of the country at the last elections in August 2016. The proportion of the internal organisational ruptures, which have placed individual leaders above the interests of the organisation, are the main reasons which eventually opened up society to the agents of anti-transformation and political demagogues such as the DA and the EFF.

The DA took over the mayoral chain from the ANC-led coalition in the City of Cape Town municipal council in 2006 and the premiership of the Western Cape in 2009, while comrades abandoned their revolutionary duties and became consumed by self-serving factional battles.

Since then, the Western Cape became the DA’s fiefdom to experiment with the implementation of its racist administration and white supremacism. This, for sure, has been confessed by many former DA members including a political heavyweight and former mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille, who accused the party of being a bully and the epitome of racism.

And for those who are still duped into believing that the DA represents equal opportunity and a South Africa for all, they need to ask these few rhetorical questions: Why did the DA appoint an all-white male cabinet in 2011? Why would Hellen Zille purge highly qualified black professionals in the Western Cape administration? Why would the lackey, self-professed incompetent and former mayor of Tshwane, Solly Msimanga, appoint unqualified white people to executive positions in his office?

The prioritisation of the needs of the whites and the marginalisation of blacks to second-class citizens is a day-to-day occurrence in the DA-run metros.

The municipal-owned open areas and children’s parks in the City of Tshwane have been neglected and are squalid with long grass that can become safe havens for snakes. Generally, the DA government shows a lacklustre response to the needs of black people, thus the residents of areas such as Hammanskraal drank unsafe water for a very long time, despite the problem being reported to the metro.

The ANC’s loss of power did not only open a window of opportunity for the DA to exercise its covert anti-transformation agenda with assistance from political pawns like Mmusi Maimane and Solly Msimanga, but also led to the formation of coalition governments in various local municipal councils.

These coalition governments not only proved unstable, especially DA-EFF coalitions, but also brought together political parties with extreme ideological differences on socio-economic policies.

More often than not, these diametrically opposed political ideologies bred political instability and fluid policy direction, which if expressed at national government level could deal a serious blow to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s grand plans for the country’s economic recovery.

Thus, before celebrating the opposition parties’ wishful thinking of reducing the ANC majority to below 50%, during the 8 May 2019 elections, one should also know the high probability that this would not only open up a space for selfish wheeling and dealing by political elites and chaotic, hamstrung administration, but would also dampen much-needed investor confidence needed for the country’s economic growth.

The current economic woes would just deepen. And this can only be a disservice to South Africans.

ANC leaders and members need to abandon their factional trenches completely and rally behind the principle and cause of the organisation before it is too late.

Anti-transformation agents and political demagogues are at the gate with their unstable decoys for political blackmail and chaotic coalition governments, especially in Gauteng, if the latest poll from the South African Institute of Race Relations is anything to go by. Phakama ANC. DM

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