ANC ‘has fallen from glory’

DA SPOKESMAN Mmusi Maimane used Heritage Day yesterday to wax lyrical about SA’s 19-year-old democracy, saying the ANC was no longer the same movement that liberated SA.

THE Democratic Alliance (DA) candidate for Gauteng’s premiership, Mmusi Maimane, used the occasion of Heritage Day yesterday to start his campaign in earnest, firing a broadside against the African National Congress (ANC).

He said the ruling party was no longer the same movement that led the fight against apartheid and liberated SA.

Mr Maimane’s campaign for the office of premier, under the slogan “Believe”, was unveiled in Alexandra at the weekend. Yesterday, during a speech at one of the Heritage Day braais in Dobsonville, Soweto, he said life had improved for some in SA, but unemployment and poverty were still “unacceptably” high. “Our heritage as South Africans is not just a heritage of apartheid.

“It is also a heritage of great victories. We voted for President (Nelson) Mandela because we believed on that day we would start a new heritage. On that day (first democratic elections in 1994), it didn’t matter where we came from, we were all South Africans.”

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, speaking at a Heritage Day celebration in Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape, said much of SA’s history was “hurtful and bad”, but it had to be accepted as “part of the growing pains” of the free society SA wanted to create. “We should seize opportunities like this to pay homage to those who came before us and made remarkable contributions to the evolution and development of our country.”

The ANC remembered fallen Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers at a wreath laying ceremony in Lethabong, Ekurhuleni to mark Heritage Day.

Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele, speaking at Heritage Day celebrations in Vhembe district in Limpopo, said the ANC was clinging to power.