‘Don’t get hopes up about new president’
FORMER ANC MP Makhosi Khoza has cautioned South Africans against having high hopes for any of the ANC presidential candidates‚ saying none of them will emerge victorious in next month’s elective conference “without signing a pact with the devil”.
“The seven hopeful presidential candidates‚ in today’s language‚ belong to the same WhatsApp group,” she said.
“And – because many people think Cyril Ramaphosa is going to come with some miracle – believe you me‚ there is no person who will emerge from that conference without signing a pact with the devil. “That is how deep the rot is in the ANC.” The outspoken Khoza‚ who quit as an ANC MP and a member of the party after she was targeted for calling on President Jacob Zuma to step down‚ was speaking on the sidelines of a “The Gathering” discussion held by the Daily Maverick publication in Sandton yesterday.
She said of the ANC’s one million members, there were only about 4 000 delegates who would be voting.
The culture in the ANC was that the candidate who had a big purse or “more brown envelopes” was the one who would emerge victorious.
Khoza said her former comrades still in the party were as frustrated by the rot as she was, but they were not courageous enough to stand up.
The rot was so deep that changing the ANC from within was impossible.
Speaking at the same event, Save SA convener and long-time ANC member Sipho Pityana said the leadership election was akin to putting icing sugar on a rotten cake.
The ANC had failed to accept that it was corrupt‚ bankrupt and rotten to the core.
“If we are going to be led by the same calibre of people who produced a Jacob Zuma and the kind of corruption that we have seen‚ it is highly unlikely that the trajectory is going to be different,” he said.