True to form, the ANC has shown South Africans the proverbial middle finger this week when it appointed former eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede to the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.
Gumede faces charges of fraud and corruption which relate to the R430m Durban Solid Waste tender during her tenure as mayor.
A report by the provincial government also found that basic service delivery in eThekwini had declined under her leadership, sparking a wave of community protests in the city.
It found there were high irregularities in the issuing of tenders and a rise of business forums which, together with political interference in the administration, had severely affected service delivery.
Interestingly, it was on the basis of these findings, not the allegations of corruption, that the ANC removed Gumede as mayor last year. This week she bounced back as a member of the provincial legislature (MPL).
It would be disingenuous of us to claim that the move by the party is surprising. Gumede is only the latest in a string of ANC leaders who failed in one aspect of deployment only to be rewarded with positions in legislatures throughout the country.
This alone speaks volumes about how the party sees legislatures – national and provincial – not as a crucially important arm of government oversight but as dumping grounds to appease the worst in its ranks with patronage at the people's expense.
There is simply no moral case for Gumede's deployment to any state institution. The ANC itself knows this.
This is why it has fumbled from one embarrassing excuse to the next when trying to justify its decision.
To EWN, ANC provincial spokesperson Nhlakanipho Ntombela said the deployment was part of the party’s plan on empowerment of women.
To this newspaper, ANC provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli said Gumede had to be moved out of council because she still exercised massive political influence which made things uneasy for the incumbent leadership.
Simply put, the ANC has yet again opted to force the taxpayer to sustain a person it believes is incompetent, if not potentially corrupt, to shield itself from her politically destructive influence.
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