ANC eating itself up – Malala
Big question is who will fill political void, Malala tells PE audience
WIDELY respected political analyst, columnist and author Justice Malala yesterday predicted the ANC would be a spent political force within the next 20 years.
He was the guest speaker at a Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber breakfast in Port Elizabeth.
The author of We Have Now Begun Our Descent, The Herald columnist and presenter of eNCA’s Justice Factor focused his presentation largely on the ANC.
After predicting its demise within the next two decades, Malala asked: “Who will step into the void? This is the elephant in government.”
He said infighting in the ANC was a major concern as the party “is eating itself up”.
The infighting was to the detriment of critical policy decisions the country needed and to the detriment of a unified ANC capable of a strong showing in the 2019 general elections.
On short-term concerns, Malala pointed to the uncertainty the political turmoil had produced, unemployment, inequality and the severe poverty faced by many.
“Politics impacts on everyone . . . I think we will continue to have [political] turbulence and I think we will have another event soon, maybe even two or three.”
He indicated one event he predicted would likely be around Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
Overall, Malala believed the ANC was at its most divided.
“There are factions using state institutions to go after one another and I think that the turbulence will continue through to December 2017 when the party holds its conference,” he said.
Pointing to the millions of unemployed, Malala said the lack of jobs was the country’s key battle.
“If there was any critical failure by government over the last 22 years, this is it.”
Linking unemployment to the thousands of protest actions, including service delivery protests, that have been staged around the country over the past few years, the international writer remarked that the jobless no longer made the news simply because there were so many of them.
Later, adopting a more upbeat tone, Malala said that, despite the prevailing pessimism, he was very positive and viewed the ANC and the country’s woes as being temporary. That was because the bigger picture – upheld by the strength of the country’s institutions – promised long-term positivity for the country.
He said the Constitutional Court – which among other institutions, needed to be reliable for “our own children in 30 years’ time” – in particular had demonstrated that it was a robust institution and that it had not favoured any individuals.
Expressing similar confidence in other public entities, such as the Independent Electoral Commission, Malala noted that no one in Nelson Mandela Bay had questioned the DA win in August’s local government elections.
“People are realising that this is part of the democratic process . . . we are becoming a normal democracy,” Malala said.