ACE AND THE JOKERS IN THE ANC PACK

ithin a few days last week, the ANC revealed why there is suspicion that its leader’s notion of a “new dawn” is the emptiest of promises. It is a party with little coherence and squanders whatever goodwill comes its way.

First, no less an authority than The Economist magazine endorsed Cyril Ramaphosa, urging voters to back the ANC on May 8 for reasons which it says are “painfully pragmatic”.

“The least bad plausible outcome … is for voters to give the ANC a solid majority, thus boosting Ramaphosa and allowing him to shun the populists and face down the mafia within his own party,” the magazine argued.

If Ramaphosa doesn’t get such a majority, The Economist argues, it could pave the way for a coalition with the EFF — the party of “racist demagoguery and disregard for economic reality”.

The magazine endorsed the DA in 2014. This time, it says, the DA has the right ideas for fixing SA, but “is in no position to implement them”.

It was an unlikely fillip for a party desperately trying to hold a single line, ahead of next week’s vote. Yet within hours, there was the ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, illustrating exactly why it is a party that doesn’t deserve that vote.

Ramaphosa’s position has been that of the reformer, seeking to purge the most toxic elements of the party, to reinstate the ANC’S former moral authority.

But how, in this new dawn, can there still be place for the likes of Nomvula Mokonyane (she of the overly generous gifts from Bosasa), Bathabile Dlamini (she who nearly torpedoed the social grants system) or Magashule himself?

Many in the ANC have no time for “reform”. Banners at ANC rallies this weekend, bearing the faces of Mokonyane, Dlamini and Magashule, proclaimed: “Hands off our ministers” and “Hands

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