ANC officials aspiring to top positions all declare that they are “willing to serve” if this is “the decision of the branches”. No one admits to their ambition, no matter their rank.
Nobody believes this farce but it continues, year after year. Recently, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Lindiwe Sisulu and even Jacob Zuma himself declared their “willingness to serve”. But it is former health minister Zweli Mkhize whose “willingness to serve” has done the most to unite the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.
The ANC is spinning the line that Mkhize is a “unity” candidate who can unite the neoliberal and kleptocratic factions of the ANC.
This may or may not be true within the ANC, a party where someone like Nomvula Mokonyane is seen as a credible candidate for leadership. But what the ANC seems to be failing to understand is that the party no longer has a blank cheque from the electorate. If what works within the party does not work for society, the ANC runs a real risk of losing power.
Read in Daily Maverick: “The parties that liberated Mozambique, Angola and South Africa are no longer powerful forces among the global left”
Already opinion polls and the mood on the ground indicate a clear possibility that the ANC will fail to win an outright victory in the next national election. Grassroots activists no longer affectionately refer to the ANC as Khongolose (Congress). These days, activists seem uniformly and contemptuously to refer to the ANC as amasela (thieves). And the middle classes are now as enraged as the poor at the collapse of the electricity system, and the water system too in some parts of the country.
Everyone outside the ANC who I speak to in Durban, rich and poor, politically active or not, and across races, is disgusted that the party sees Mkhize as a “unity candidate”.
It is true, of course, that Mkhize has not been found guilty in a court of law and that trial by media can be a kangaroo court, as the media’s own scandals, such as the Sars “brothel” scandal, have shown. However, in this case there is a clear prima facie case in the public domain of Mkhize’s complicity in the Digital Vibes corruption scandal.
Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations
Every act of corruption is unacceptable, but there was something particularly odious about the Digital Vibes case, since the tender in question was the first allocated to the proposed national health scheme.
It is a clear fact that Mkhize’s family benefited from a tender allocated to starting a national health scheme, and thereby smashed confidence in the state’s capacity to manage such a scheme.
United in disgust
The ANC and the state have failed in many ways. There are many, many issues that need to be addressed, including replacing party hacks with qualified professionals in key management positions, a complete lack of credible economic policy and much, much more. But the one issue that unites South Africans across race, class and levels of education is utter disgust at corruption.
In his classic work on the postcolonial crisis, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote that the people need to move beyond uncritical support for former national liberation movements and be taught to cry “Stop thief!” In South Africa in 2022, nobody needs to teach the people to shout that out – we are, across our divisions, already in full cry.
People may not understand the finer points of monetary policy, or the engineering challenges faced by Eskom, but everyone knows a thief when they see one.
Read in Daily Maverick: “Private enrichment is real fruit of liberation for ANC”
It is this anger that will, in time, seal the fate of the ANC. The only questions are when the ANC has to move into an unstable coalition and when it loses an election outright.
If the “unity candidate” to lead the ANC is someone who has been tainted by corruption, who never spoke out during the dark years of State Capture and has never spoken out against the assassinations of grassroots activists, then the ANC has run out of road.
It may not realise it now, but it will certainly understand the new reality when the next election rolls around in 2024. The chances of the party getting above 50% were slim but they are now rapidly receding. DM168
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.
Become an Insider
is he not one of the kleptomaniacs or at least associated with them? perhaps when Natal was still Natal and in the bad old days wanted to form a republic we should have let them. then we need not have to read this KZN drivel.
Mkhize – what high expectations your people in Pietermaritzburg had for you, You sold us out, brother for a proverbial few coins. You Judas, you scoundrel, you dashed the hopes of your people. Shame on you Zweli – you are a sham to your own people. May you get all the justice that you deserve! Be gone and don’t come back with this talk of unity. You are just a dog in a dogfight that is the ANC!
A thief is a thief is a thief is a ……..
I think that it is time to debunk the ANC journalists drivel that Cyril Ramaphosa is a very clean person committed to dealing with corruption and has clean people around him when it is actually a gallery of rogues. Cyril was head of government business during the Zuma era and headed the ANC deployment committee that deployed the people who ransacked the SOEs and yet the author is blaming Zweli Mkhize who was not in government at the time! Cyril Ramaphosa was head of government business when Nomvula was found to have ransacked the Department of Water Affairs of R13 billion with Ben 10s and he did nothing about it. He saw and heard nothing about state capture when he was at its centre as Molefe testified at the Zondo Commission. He has filed affidavits that Zondo Commission is not binding on him after spending R1 billion of taxpayers money. Zondo recommended him to fire Kodwa for corruption and he has not done so. He has a lot of Ministers and Deputies in his Executive that have been fingered by Zondo including the outgoing Chairperson of the ANC, called Gwede Mantashe who is getting a Hamba Gwede in December. He has a David Mahlobo for stealing intelligence money. He has issues of school tenders in the Free State, Phala Phala and Glencore let alone Marikana. He has a Deputy with serious allegations around him. He has even said he will not reveal those who funded ANC campaigns with looted public resources in December last year.
Take your drivel somewhere else.
Cunningham, with the stuck record attacks you post every single day on Cyril Ramaphosa, one would start to get suspicious of your true motives or identity. There has not been a single suggestion for change from you, or a proposition of a better solution, just this constant humdrum of names and places and rhetoric and accusations.
May I respectfully suggest you let go of the Rama-sized chip on your shoulder and offer something other than criticism, most often completely irrelevant to the article you’re commenting on?
I have done better than you all of my life including supporting him to take out the country out of the morass. Clowns like you explained his incompetence as playing the long game which is nonsense because the support he was given was to deal with corruption, rebuilding of hollowed state institutions including the criminal justice system and to deal with the structural impediments to investments or what is called the investment strike. When he came into power or office, he had the goodwill of all South Africans including business and opposition parties that he has fritted away. He has failed with distinctions in all that was expected of him through prevarication. We supported him to save the country not the ANC. He has placed the interests of the ANC above the country unless you live in a hole. This country cannot afford an uprising that will burn it in front of his eyes and frankly speaking given his track record, and experience with the July unrest last year, this country can burn with him watching. The challenge of the electricity emergency and the high unemployment may result in a Chile and we will never come back from it. He has no grasp of the magnitude of the challenges facing this country and the threat of massive uprisings. You will never know because you live a cushioned life just like him. Indeed if Mkhize is corrupt let him be charged not through the media because I believe in the rule of law not the rule by law and trial by media. I hope I have responded to you.