Daily Dispatch The mighty have fallen
YESTERDAY morning millions of principled people who may once have had faith in the ANC were forced to undergo an excruciating experience – watching the secretary-general of Africa’s oldest liberation movement do a double back-flip and contort himself into an inglorious position in a vain attempt to defend the indefensible.
It’s a painful thing to see, a 61-year-old man in a shirt and trousers behaving like a performing seal.
Worse, one who has patently been so whipped into line that he is ready to publicly sacrifice his self-worth and grovel like a chastened child.
But that’s what the old solider, Gwede Mantashe, did when he backtracked in his opposition to President Jacob Zuma’s decision to sack a performing minister and leave the reprobates sitting pretty.
Self-shaming is never pretty to watch, but then Mantashe was not alone in it.
Two other members of the ANC’s top leadership have also clearly been forced to bow the knee before a crafty manipulator who knows just how to weight the elements of the ANC in his favour. How have things come to this? How can it be that men and women who were once so brave and strident in their pursuit of a just cause have either become silent or acquiescent to one man?
How can a day have arrived where the towering intellect of the ANC, the publicity shy Joel Netshitenzhe, comes out boldly to suggest that ANC MPs support the opposition in a parliamentary vote of confidence against the president, while on the other hand the polluted likes of Water Affairs Minister Nomvula Mokonyane dares to face both her tried and tested struggle elders and a nation in uproar and threaten to “fight fire with fire”?
Meanwhile somewhere in the wings, are members of the ANC Youth League who are beginning, alarmingly, to resemble fascist stormtroopers with threats to attack with sjamboks DA members and possibly anyone else wishing to exercise their constitutional right to march against the continued presidency of Jacob Zuma?
There are two possible reasons for South Africa having arrived at this crossroads. First is the presence of small inyana skeletons in many of the closets of those in leadership, as has already been suggested by the inexplicably long surviving Minister of Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini.
Such skeletons would be useful in ensuring compliance with Zuma’s agenda.
Second is the existence of serious structural flaws within an organisation that was once a liberation formation but has failed to regenerate into a modern and fully democratic political party.
Indeed, an overhaul of the structure of the ANC has long been overdue, but now this seems highly unlikely. Instead of moving forwards the organisation of Albert Luthuli, OR Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and so many other heroes is rapidly reversing.
It is sacrilege that the same organisation that once sought to liberate the people of this country is now in fact, being turned against them. On such a day there is no option but to look upon the ANC and proclaim, how the mighty have fallen!