It is refreshing to hear from the deputy secretary-general of the ANC Jessie Duarte that the organisation will deploy comrades who understand financial management and also comrades who have a very deep-rooted understanding of the ANC.
Yes, the organisation has many educated comrades who could be deployed to any top position in government but the deployees will be coerced to violate the Public Financial Management Act and other prescripts by the same people who deployed them to those positions.
For example, Jacob Zuma has been a member of the ANC for more than five decades but he sold the country to the Guptas. There are also many educated ANC comrades who were deployed to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but they were coerced to commit fraud. The ANC does not have a shortage of ethical comrades but corruption is in the DNA of the organisation.
What Duarte is saying is just a wish list because it is not going to happen due to factionalism, which started after Zuma was dismissed by Thabo Mbeki in 2005 and its zenith in 2007 in Polokwane. Yes, there are honest people in the party but they are forced to do stupid things because of the unity of the party.
Wicked people in the ANC are protected, while honest people are not protected, with some even getting killed, like in the case of Sindiso Magaqa. I don’t understand why ANC leaders, members and supporters cry foul about factionalism in the movement while it was started by them, nurtured and allowed to flourish for many years.
When it reached its climax in 2007, senior ANC leaders and alliance partners were over the moon as they saw nothing wrong in parachuting a skewed-minded person to the Union Buildings. Today some of them blame Cyril Ramaphosa for factionalism. Yes, Ramaphosa is also partly to blame because he also supported the compromised comrade because of a common enemy, Thabo Mbeki.
Why did the party parachute compromised comrades to top positions in government departments and SOEs? It happens because of factionalism and greed. I doubt factionalism could be resolved in the ANC as it has failed to deal with it for a long time. Factionalism in the ANC is not about policy differences but implementation.
Another issue is that many ANC members and supporters from both factions don’t even believe in the existence of the Motlanthe report regarding hooliganism and thuggish behaviour of party members. The ANC has failed to deal with thuggery when it started in 2006, as the Zuma supporters within the party and government revolted against Mbeki.
People were told that Zuma ould unify the ANC as he was a good listener and a people’s person. I beg to differ. Zuma only listened to what he wanted to hear. If Zuma was a good listener, he would not have sold the country to the Guptas. Yes, he is a charmer and he even charmed Helen Zille at one time.
If Zuma was a good listener, he would not have been incarcerated for 15 months for contempt of the Constitutional Court. Investigations that were made by former president Kgalema Motlanthe are a waste of scarce resources as nothing is going to happen to the masterminds. Perhaps the hired thugs will be dealt with, whether they are ANC supporters or not.
They agreed to be bought with food and beer because of the dire situation created by apartheid and exacerbated by ANC politicians and their friends.
Crowd renting and buying of food and beer for desperate youth by some ANC leaders will continue as long as there are two factions: RET hyenas and WMC.
- Rikhotso is a Sowetan reader
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