Heroes of freedom or hyenas of stealing – place your cross wisely
DM168
Thirty years ago, on 27 April, almost 20 million of us woke up at the crack of dawn to wait patiently in spiralling queues to vote in our first democratic election.
People from all walks of life, every political persuasion, converged on voting stations to decide who they would entrust with the governance of the future.
I was 29 years old and took leave to volunteer at the voting station in Bezuidenhout Valley in Johannesburg. I wanted to play a part in this momentous end to the horrible years of violence that preceded the election. My heart was filled with the palpable touch, smell and feel of relief and hope. This was the day apart-hate ended, when we became South African.
On that day, the majority of South Africans, 12 million or 65.9%, voted for Nelson Mandela and the ANC; 20% voted for FW de Klerk’s National Party; 10% voted for the IFP, 2% for the Freedom Front and 1.73% for the Democratic Party.
I cannot imagine what a burden of responsibility it must have been to carry the dreams and discord of so many South Africans on your shoulders. Yes, mistakes were made, but we have to acknowledge that Mandela, his first Cabinet and the progressive cohort of civil servants fresh from jobs in NGOS, universities, the private sector, from exile, were faced with a labyrinthine task.
Working with those civil servants who remained from the apartheid administration, they had to change and fix a system that favoured a white minority into a government that served us all.
Under the Mandela and Thabo Mbeki administrations, the economy grew and with it a black middle class of skilled professionals, which now, according to a 2023 report by the UCT Liberty Institute, constitutes 3.4 million people, superseding the white middle class by one million.
But this black middle class makes up only 7% of SA’S black African population.
These inequalities inherited from apartheid were too overwhelming for the first three administrations to solve. Cosatu, the Communist Party and Youth League wings pushed out Mbeki and ushered in Jacob Zuma, the man who epitomised the ANC’S descent from globally heralded heroes of freedom to hyenas of stealing.
From 69,7% under Mbeki in 2004, the percentage of votes for the ANC fell to 65.9% under Zuma (2009) and 62.2% (2014), and dropped to 57.5% under Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019.
Whatever the motivation was for the ANC to swop freedom for a feeding frenzy, Zuma made it okay. No longer was the ANC the party of moral integrity and human rights; it was the party of patronage, tenders and crass consumption.
The Zondo Commission revealed how the ANC sold its soul for pieces of silver. Now in desperation it has dragged in an 81-yearold Mbeki to convince voters to stick with the party that failed them.
And the coalition of the wounded and greedy have placed the face of an 82-yearold Zuma on the election posters for the ANC breakaway umkhonto Wesizwe party. Led by 71-year-old Ramaphosa, the ANC is losing touch with the aspirations of the young.
The EFF, another ANC offshoot, has managed to speak to young, black aspirations, capturing 10.8% of voters in 2019. The DA garnered 20.77%.
On 29 May, more than 27 million citizens will vote. In our cross on the ballot paper is a choice of a future torn apart by the harbingers of fear, greed and intolerance who will accelerate SA’S decline into a failed state.
Friday’s Ipsos political party survey shows the ANC getting 40.2% of the vote, the DA 21.9%, the EFF 11.5% and Zuma’s MK 8.4%. The MK party that wants to remove the Constitution that protects your and my rights is polled at number four. Thirty years after that momentous day in 1994, those in the ANC who value this Constitution and believe in continuous work to end inequality and not fill the pockets of the party powerful are at a serious crossroads: get into bed with the conservative, backward MK populists and/or the nationalise-everything EFF populists, or the centrist DA.
I think we know who the ANC’S natural bedfellows are. Those who left them.
Our next 30 years, dear readers, is going to be in the hands of whoever we choose to vote for. Choose wisely.
Tell me what your voting choice will be and why, by writing to heather@dailymaverick.co.za