Leaders have lost their way
COMRADE president OR Tambo, this year marks 24 years since you left us after complications from a stroke.
I write when your beloved movement is fighting with itself, when your country of birth is going back where it was when you left us. That movement you spent your entire life in exile leading and happily handed over to the rest of the membership in 1991 is on the brink of insolvency. That youth league you led with aplomb is no more (the leadership of the ANCYL think being patriotic means to stand with an individual and is now led by elders), that tripartite alliance is in tatters (leadership of the SACP, Cosatu etc are only loud when they want something from the ANC, ministerial positions in particular), that women’s league you left crawling still can’t walk (the less said about it the better).
The leaders of today’s ANC are referees and players of the economy; they are sitting on boards of all strategic sectors as shareholders. They are forever promising us bread but we don’t even get crumbs.
During the 2004 election campaign the ANC promised citizens free education and now when the masses ask about that promise, they answer with rubber bullets and tear gas.
The masses that you spent your life fighting to free from the chains of poverty are now modern slaves, enslaved by ANC NEC members who were with you during difficult times, determined to fight with everything they had to liberate the black child. Today the same comrades are praising your name but acting contrary to what you stood for and sought to achieve.
The masses are crying about labour brokers, but the NEC members of the ANC own labour brokers; the masses are crying about bank charges and interest and NEC members are shareholders in those banks, and mineworkers are crying about being underpaid but the very same people who want them to vote for the ANC own the mines, and when mineworkers strike they shoot them with live ammunition.
Anglo-American and other companies which used to sponsor apartheid are now enjoying the benefits of democracy yet the soldiers you were with in exile don’t know where their next meal will come from.
Your political son, Comrade Chris Hani, once said: “What I fear is that the liberators emerge as elites who drive around in Mercedes Benzes and use the resources of the country to live in palaces and gather riches”.
Today the leaders of the ANC drive around in those top-of-the-range cars, have bodyguards and are VIPs while the condition that you left Alexandra in is still the same.
Today the leadership of the party are celebrities who dine and dance in Sandton, while the majority of the membership live in abject poverty. The NEC of the ANC is preoccupied with what to loot instead of helping the movement.
I regret that the movement you led for over three decades is about to be history like the Kanu of Jomo Kenyatta. May your spirit continue to live among us. Enkosi tata! Sekhukhune, Limpopo