HOW ANC TOP BRASS BETRAY ITS FOUNDERS

THAT the ANC, on its 112 anniversary, is more preoccupied with party internal squabbles than how it plans to fix the mounting challenges – some of them historical – confronting the country should be enough reason for South Africans to look elsewhere insofar as who governs the country after this year’s elections.

The divisions playing out in public suggest that the party which once carried the hopes and aspirations of the majority of this country, as demonstrated in the first democratic elections in 1994, no longer has a good story to tell. Nor does it have a clue about how to fix the challenges that South Africans long to have resolved.

Perhaps it’s asking too much or being naive to think that the same people who have created the problems bedevilling our country could be the ones fixing them.

The war of words between the ANC and its former president, Jacob Zuma, is not going to end load shedding. It’s not going to put food on the tables of the millions of young unemployed South Africans.

It certainly will not make our communities free of criminals who are holding them hostage, nor will it bring down the rising cost of living that is choking households. But it does do one thing and one thing only – confirm that the ANC will go to any lengths, including undermining Parliament’s work, to shield one of its own from being held accountable.

It happened with Zuma’s Nkandla “firepool” and most recently, with the incumbent, Cyril Ramaphosa, when ANC MPs toed the party line in shooting down a parliamentary inquiry report which found Ramaphosa may have violated his oath of office in relation to the Phala Phala farm scandal.

The possibility of it happening with the next leader, whoever they may be, certainly cannot be ruled out.

The events of this week leading to the main birthday celebrations in Mpumalanga at the weekend contradict the ANC’s stated claims of being a leader of society.

If anything, it’s a bunch of powerhungry politicians who are concerned more about their interests than the country.

The founders of the oldest liberation movement on the continent must be turning in their graves. How the current leaders have destroyed the ANC is arguably the worst kind of betrayal.