Lorenzo A Davids writes that the ANC, despite the staggering defeat it received in May 2024, appears to be unable to wake up from its comatose state, and that the party is stuck in a post-power vacuum, with schizophrenia-filled rhetoric. File Picture: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers
The ANC, despite the staggering defeat it received in May 2024, appears to be unable to wake up from its comatose state. It is stuck in a post-power vacuum, believing it only has a mild flu and not a terminal disease.
Its rhetoric is filled with schizophrenia, where comrades, capitalists, nationalists and tired old communists all sit together to “renew the party.”
Its financial bankruptcy is only outdone by its absolute lack of vision of what the State must urgently do to fix itself.
During the 1999 election, I attended one of the many “what happens to South Africa post-Mandela” dialogues where the comment was made that the ANC faces the risk of using race, debt, messy elections, and inefficient civil service, so common within other post-colonial governments across Africa, to stay in power.
It will have to make itself excessively rich with government funds, appoint friends to positions of power, reward business associates with tenders, keep the rhetoric and the idea of a militia that is fighting an ongoing war to free people alive, and keep its electorate under-educated.
Sadly, the ANC has done all that and more.
The result of all this is that in a very short period, our national debt now stands at R5.21 trillion (73.9 per cent of GDP) in 2023/24. National Treasury warns that our debt will increase to R6. 29 trillion in 2026/27 (74.7 per cent of GDP).
Our official unemployment rate was 33,5% in the second quarter of 2024. Our unemployment figures increased by 158 000 in the second quarter to 8,4 million compared to the first quarter of 2024.
Trapped in debt, the ANC has shown itself unwilling to remove the opulence and waste within its administration. It still wants to manage a government with posts that it can no longer afford. We can combine many departments and reduce the cost burden.
In Ireland, they combined their Tourism, Culture, Arts and Sports into one Department. We can also do away with the pretentious post of deputy minister. We have 43 deputy ministers, to deputize for the Minister. Do the maths. Think of the costs involved. Then go look for the benefit of having all these posts.
Does the ANC have the ability to back itself out of this political and economic cul-de-sac? No, it doesn't. It has rewarded its friends and enemies with a taste of the good life. There is however no more money left to do this. Its friends may now well become its enemies. Whereas its political sympathies may live in the rooms of the Progressive Caucus, its survival lives in its alliance with parties in the Government of National Unity.
Why has it become so stark? History teaches us that if a government fails to formally educate its voters, its voters will remain stuck in a dispensation where its victory was greatest. For most African governments that moment was its liberation from oppressive colonial powers.
Being unable to point to a greater future, it remains stuck in a memorialisation of the past.
Marches, wooden guns, revolutionary t-shirts, military fatigues and other similar shows of power are fading in importance, yet it's all they have left. Where are the graduates from our university systems who are our new leadership class?
Who are the economists, historians and agriculturists that are taking the ANC into new phases of sense-making leadership?
It has taken a DA Minister of Home Affairs literally days to identify and begin tackling and fixing the mess that the Department became under its predecessors.
The ANC has not matured its offering to South Africa. It has remained stuck in stereotypical versions of similar self-enriching governments. It’s a dinosaur unable to evolve beyond the money, housing and cars it enjoys.
Its rhetoric is stale. Its message is a stuck record. It is bitterly brutal to see the ANC so weak. The GNU is an ICU for the ANC. There is little hope of its survival.
* Lorenzo is a leader and veteran in the social development space who has worked for decades to address SA’s stark inequities.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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