No patronage, no support

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s use of the Chinese proverb “When you open a window, fresh air and mosquitoes enter” is apposite.

The grave error the ANC made was to equate a person carrying an ANC card with a patriot.

Card-carrying “mosquitoes” (who have the audacity and churlishness to deride the veterans’ contribution to the struggle) in government, municipalities and state-owned enterprises have emptied the public purse as genuine patriots who refused to swim in the cesspool of corruption watched helplessly.

Those who dared to speak out were called counter-revolutionaries, racists and imperialists.

Once the ANC sinks, the opportunists who swelled its ranks for posts, tenders and other favours will desert it and the remnants will never resuscitate it.

It will be like the United National Independence Party of Zambia, and to some extent like the ANC in the Western Cape, whose ability to offer patronage has largely been eviscerated by the DA.

The same fate awaits the ANC in the metros of Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg. — Erick Mhlanga, Thohoyandou