Remember the ANC enabled us to defeat apartheid

THE writer of “Literally Yours” has touched a raw nerve with a recent column titled “Time to drop the myth that only the ANC can lead us”.

Newspapers should be more careful when inviting anyone to write columns. Ever since this column started, I knew it wouldn’t be long before this person’s true colours showed.

Our country is approaching its sixth general election since democracy, and its most crucial.

In my hometown Cradock in the Eastern Cape, my Std 6 (Grade 8) principal made us 13-yearolds believe the death penalty was the correct way to deal with criminals when two extremely sensational murders shook our town and the country.

A man first shot dead his girlfriend and her mother, and then turned the shotgun on himself. He was strapped to a chair to be hanged in Pretoria the next year. My small mind there and then struggled to understand how that can be right.

In Cape Town, two of my principals in Athlone in the 1960s helped the apartheid system work. One served on a management committee, the other was a presenter on a Sunday morning Afrikaans radio programme for so-called coloureds.

While the ANC and later the PAC were taking on the mighty apartheid military machinery with the loss of thousands of lives, these were the folks who worked tirelessly to make us believe that it was the correct way to rather be quislings, as we would never be able to defeat the evil regime.

To now spread the myth that the ANC is not worthy of leading us is not only disingenuous, but dangerous. And to write such twaddle at the very time when the Timol case is the first to finally make it to our courts is even more hurtful.

Altogether 136 political prisoners were hanged, among them Solomon Mahlangu and Andrew Zondo… This country will go nowhere without the ANC. This writer must be careful when treading on sensitive soil.