Madiba’s eldest granddaughter turns her back on the ANC
Ndileka Mandela has gone on record saying that the current trajectory of the ANC has made her lose faith in the ruling party.
Speaking to news24, Mandela mentioned the Life Esidimeni tragedy and state of affairs at Sassa as two of the key catalysts in her decision to abandon the ANC.
“This is how I feel. I am highly upset. And this is not a decision that has been made out of anger. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and it’s been a build-up,” Mandela told the newspaper.
“But the tipping point has been Life Esidimeni and the Sassa scenario.”
52-year-old Mandela, the oldest of Madiba’s grandchildren, said she had hoped that the ruling party’s sound policies would help it self-correct, but that the final straw was the issue around Sassa and the payment of social grants.
“When you try and source funding to do worthwhile projects in rural areas, you get frustrated and you don’t win. Yet money is being wasted, billions of rand, if you look at the CPS scenario.”
“For me, it’s a problem of accountability: When you get certain departments not being accountable to the people.”
Read Mandela’s full interview with News24 here.
The ANC’s credibility has, in the last few months, come under increasing scrutiny and the judiciary has had to intervene in order to make sure the party took responsibility. In many cases senior party members flouted the Constitution, including president Jacob Zuma and those closest to him.
Most notably the president’s Nkandla scandal; the alleged influence of the Guptas over senior government officials, attacks on the Treasury by Zuma deployed-politicians and the failure of several SOEs brought about by mismanagement from the cabinet ministers in charge, all contributed to the erosion of the ANC’s credibility in the eyes of ordinary South Africans.
The party’s decline came to a climax last year in the local government elections, when the ANC suffered its worst election outcome since taking power in 1994.
