African National Congress (ANC) Chief Whip Jackson Mthembu answers questions during an interview on October 07, 2016 in Cape Town, South Africa. In response to Julius Malema’s controversial “helping hand” offer to the ANC, Mthembu said his party will never form a coalition or partnership with the EFF. (Photo by Gallo Images / Rapport / […]
Parliamentarians: Look your grandchildren in the eye
Dear Mr Jackson Mthembu. Suffice to say that I was an ANC activist at university, subsequently in the ANC “junior leadership” programme and in 1994 stepped back but remained a loyal ANC voter.
African National Congress (ANC) Chief Whip Jackson Mthembu answers questions during an interview on October 07, 2016 in Cape Town, South Africa. In response to Julius Malema’s controversial “helping hand” offer to the ANC, Mthembu said his party will never form a coalition or partnership with the EFF. (Photo by Gallo Images / Rapport / […]
Please note: This is an opinion piece and does not reflect the views of TheSouthAfrican.com
When saints like Archbishop Desmond Tutu begin to pray for the ANC to lose the next election, and when brave people with unquestionable morality, foresight and the necessary technical knowledge of the markets like Makhosi Khoza state “… see April 7, 2017, marches….across the country were not different from women’s marches against pass laws…” it has to touch your very soul.
I was there when as junior ANC leaders we were taught to always toe the party line against that prime evil called Apartheid. Your grandchildren will tell you that Apartheid is gone and you cannot live in the past and that you need to move forward for your grandchildren and their grandchildren.
At the upcoming ANC conference of some 4500 (approximately) delegates, more than 50% of them are beneficiaries of patronage and corruption and so the status quo will prevail. The consequences of that shall be that whilst this corruption and patronage will benefit those delegates and their families, the majority of South Africans will get poorer and poorer with a catastrophic rise in malnutrition, disease, deaths, crime, hyperinflation, etc. Because Zimbabweans could flee south to South Africa, their problems in comparison are going to look like a Sunday school picnic.
You, unlike Mr Jacob Zuma have the moral fibre, understand the technicalities of hyperinflation and its consequences on poverty, disease, death, etc. and should one day be able to look your grandchildren in the eye and say the following: “By voting the way I did in the no-confidence vote in Mr Jacob Zuma in April/May 2017, I was one of the 30% of ANC members in parliament who took a lesson from history to prevent the catastrophic tragedy in South Africa as seen in Rwanda, Zimbabwe and other such like places.
It is important to emphasise the arithmetic/maths, in that 70 ANC MPs voting with their conscience and dedication to our beloved country is relatively easier to achieve when compared to the task of getting more than half of the approximate 4500 delegates at the upcoming ANC conference to vote in this way.
Mzansi Africa
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