The vote: life or death for ANC

Today, President Jacob Zuma faces his eighth vote of no confidence in eight years. He is on his ninth life and he knows it.

President Jacob Zuma on the campaign trail in the local government elections in July 2016, which left the ruling party with a bloody nose, said: “We hear people complaining when we say the ANC will rule until Jesus comes back but we have been blessed. Pastors have prayed for us.”

It’s very curious that he hasn’t repeated those words since that election result made his Jesus statement move from fact to fantasy. Today, President Jacob Zuma faces his eighth vote of no confidence in eight years. He is on his ninth life and he knows it.

No amount of biblical arrogance can take away the fact he took over a party that could have ruled “until Jesus comes back” and turned it into a personal fiefdom committed to looting state resources.

The biblical analogy between the ruling party and its path to this day, is not only limited to the return of the Messiah. Former Constitutional Court deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke said at the Abantu Book Festival last year: “All things die, including political parties. Some die when they’re 30-something years of age (read PAC) and others die when they’re a hundred and something years of age (read ANC).”

Today’s motion of no confidence in the president is one of many, but more than anything else it presents the ruling party parliamentarians with a choice between voting for the death of the once iconic movement or voting for removal of a kleptocrat from power and the life of their party.

As with the children of Israel in the desert when they were implored to choose between life and death, the ruling party must indeed vote for its continued existence or its extinction.

It is quite sad that those who have enabled the sale of the state to a private family are also the same people who now get given yet another chance to unravel the mess they have enabled for eight long years. With the amount of evidence that has been made public through the #GuptaLeaks, it is astounding that some within the ruling party are still deluding themselves that the vote of no confidence in Zuma leaves no room for ruling party MPs to “follow their conscience”.

The information in the public domain points to a president who has misled parliament, who has allowed and enabled an unprecedented level of stealing of public resources and a ruling party that has chosen self-preservation over ridding South Africans of their worst electoral nightmare since the dawn of democracy.

Forget the grandstanding, that will count for nothing when it comes to the crunch. The crunch being that the faction of the ruling party that has not been captured must come to the party.

The ANC has bequeathed this faction with the task of voting at a point in time where they can decide what happens to the party of Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela. These MPs can keep the ANC alive by voting Zuma out or they can choose death for their party by giving him two more years to plunder our resources at will.

The ruling party MPs, ironically, carry the key to whether their party can save itself and rule until the “second coming” as Zuma once believed. South Africa needs them to do what they swore to do in their oaths.

Vote corruption out.