As I work with leaders in civil society, especially those from the black community, I have witnessed a deep loyalty to the ANC accompanied by a deep sadness. Loyalty, because the ANC is the liberation movement to which many black civil society leaders owe their freedom.

A loyalty that goes deeper than a passive sense of having been liberated by the ANC, they are themselves “ANC people”. They grew up in the movement. They were the foot soldiers of the liberation Struggle and the ANC was their home. Of late their loyalty is accompanied by a deep sadness.

I’ve seen a similar sadness among people who grew up in a home with a parent or partner who suffers from substance abuse such as alcoholism. They love the person but resent the abuse and neglect at the hand of their beloved. Their deep loyalty causes them to suppress their resentment and settle into a paralysis of sadness about what could have been, had this person not been an abuser.

This is the state of the ANC now – the party has become an abuser. The abuse of public resources and of public trust has translated into an abuse of the public itself. Every time an ANC councillor or MP steals from the public purse, they rob and pillage the people who put their trust in the ANC.

Can the ANC be redeemed?

For a time, those loyal to the ANC lamented that the party must be saved and can be reformed. They never asked the deeper question: can the ANC be saved from itself? Like the victim of substance abuse, the ANC cannot be saved from an addiction that it does not want to be liberated from.

The ANC has proven time and again that it has become addicted to its abuse of power over the past two decades. The current energy crisis has, for instance, resulted directly from the combination of ANC ineptitude, factional vacillation on policy options and the direct looting of the state-owned entity. Look around and you’ll see ANC abuse everywhere.

How to overthrow the ANC

The danger is that the leaders in civil society have grown too tired and dejected. I see in their eyes the conundrum of their love for the ANC versus their realisation that their beloved party has become a binge-drinking abuser, and the difficult question of where this leaves them.

When the ANC struts its opulent clothes at the State of the Nation Address (Sona) this week, we will watch them arrogantly claim again that they will fix the country, grow the economy and create jobs, stop the crime, stop the criminality and stabilise our democracy.

They will not.

They will continue to loot, factionalise and paralyse the state as they parasitise it through a power game to which they have become addicted.

So, how can the ANC be overthrown, and should it be?

In a democracy one is permitted to talk about revolution and the subversion of a political party, unlike in a monarchy or dictatorship, where subversion or revolution against the ruling elite is often punishable by detention and death – as was the case in apartheid.

In a constitutional democracy, the overthrow of one political movement in favour of another is precisely the goal of people’s power. The core tenets of individual freedom, and a collective right to political self-determination, mean that democrats must, when a political movement has soured into an extractive kleptocracy, overthrow it.

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I often get asked at this point in the argument: “But who will replace the ANC?” The easy answer is: citizens, other than the ones the ANC has deployed. Hopefully and ideally, citizens with more integrity, more competence and a deeper commitment to public service and the common good. I am convinced that from among the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, humanist and many other conscientious communities of citizens in this diverse country, there must be people who know that it is wrong to steal. Let’s elect them to govern instead of the thieving ANC elites.

If it is the case that the ANC has betrayed its promises of serving the greater good in order to serve the narrow and private interests of the power brokers in the party, which is evidently the case, it means the party has committed a moral and ethical injustice against the people of this country. It also means the people of this country have a moral obligation to overthrow, remove, reject, abandon and thereby discipline the ANC.

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If that sounds arrogant, it might be because I’m writing as an individual. Individuals do not determine a nation’s political fortunes – that is not democracy. But collectives of citizens who exercise their right to protest, vote and seize the power to govern their own public institutions, is a deeply moral and humble act of service. Holding governing elites accountable is the path to public morality.

Think of the children across South Africa who will leave school with poor education and no prospect of gainful employment. They have been brutalised and their futures stolen by the incompetent ANC.

Think of the workers who sit at the side of the road, watching commuters pass as they plead for a “piece job” so that they can feed their children at home and not put them to bed hungry. They are being undermined and disrespected by the self-serving ANC elite.

Think of the business people who are seeing their dreams and hard-earned homes and savings slip through their fingers as the economy stagnates and public infrastructure crumbles. The ANC has betrayed their hopes for freedom and prosperity.

When the poor turn against the rich or against businesses and loot and burn, they are expressing their justified anger, but sadly they are misdirecting it. For the culprit who has led us into this valley of despair is the ANC. It is the ANC of madam tourism Lindiwe Sisulu, energy tsar Gwede Mantashe and kingpin of insecurity Bheki Cele, along with dairy disaster Ace Magashule, and their ANC friends.

There may have been a window of opportunity for the “good guys” in the ANC to clean house, and I’m told they tried. But when we see the revolving door of redeployment simply cycle the sewers of corruption back into our Parliament and government departments, we know that the ANC is playing games with us and at our expense.

The time has come to remove the ANC from office on moral grounds as a national imperative. Failure to do so would not be a political misstep, but will make the good people of this country complicit in just another failed African state, of which there have been too many after liberation.

If you love South Africa, it’s time to put love of country ahead of a love for the ANC. The party of Oliver Tambo has died. Long live South Africa. DM