Although somewhat overshadowed by recent global economic events, the ANC saga continues apace.
Having staged a palace coup and removed the sitting President of South Africa without much apparent recourse to normal, accepted democratic norms and values, the ANC is now acting all upset and indignant at some of the criticism coming its way.
The vehement attacks by the ANC against those former ministers, Provincial Premier(s) and other previously fair-weather ANC fellow-travellers only serve to underscore the paucity of ANC thought and democratic fair-mindedness whilst, concurrently, further highlighting the unmitigated arrogance of the new order within the organisation.
The faceless and shadowy NEC of the ANC, together with its lapdogs in the form of COSATU and the ANCYL, is following its old Soviet-style totalitarian inheritance by trying to strong-arm and bully into submission those who would dare to challenge its self-appointed right to govern by decree. On the premise that those who are not for or with the ANC are, de rigueur, enemies of the ANC, the NEC seeks to discredit and disarm its critics – particularly those within the ANC – through the most sustained of attacks and vilifications.
What the ANC fails to grasp, of course, is that the dissatisfaction of a number of ANC members and the possible ‘divorce’ of some of those members from the party is due solely to the ANC itself and the behaviour of its leadership in recent months.
Had Jacob Zuma and his lackeys been less overt and more sophisticated in seeking to gain personal power on the back of the ANC, fewer people would have been offended, repelled and scared of these individuals and their naked lust for power and preferment.
Had the ANC and the NEC been more transparent in their handling of Thabo Mbeki more people would have felt confident that the ANC was, in fact, being true to its claim of being a democratic organisation. Even though Mbeki himself failed to put country before party by not forcing the ANC, Zuma, et al, to deal with the challenge to his position and authority in Parliament, the ANC then monumentally failed the country by itself not voluntarily placing the entire issue before the Assembly. The ANC shot itself in the foot; nothing would have been lost had there been a debate and subsequent vote in Parliament (which is but an ANC rubber-stamp) and the ANC would have gained some credibility for its claims to be democratic. But, as with all other totalitarian regimes in history, the ANC is extremely fearful of the general populace getting to know about the real nature and character of itself as an organisation and of its leaders. They fear people realising just how venal and incompetent they are, fabricating a web of deceit and illusion about their motives and abilities which is, at best, tissue thin.
Had the ANC been less secretive and clandestine there never would have been the opportunity for the ANC dissenters to criticise it and its methods. After all, had not those dissidents themselves been willing passengers upon the gravy train of ANC government for many years? Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the criticisms of the dissenters, the ANC has ceded the moral high ground to them and looks increasingly insecure with its objections to open public debate on a matter of national concern (viz: the leadership and governance of the entire country).
This is but another example of ideology blindly triumphing over rational thought, common sense and duty and service to the needs of the whole country and all of its people.
Even worse is the application of the ideology of never admitting error and never apologising in case it were to reveal weakness – such are the politics of fear and such are the politics of South Africa.
Spearpoint.
13th October 2008
Spearpoint's Points 