TITO, THE VOICE OF SANITY

off our secretary-general”.

Speaking in the Free State town of Parys, Magashule himself was full of praise for former president Jacob Zuma, the man who arguably did more damage to the ANC than anyone in its 107year history. “When we were not there, when we were cowards, you took up arms,” he said of Zuma. For good measure, he incited people to ignore the law by downloading pirated versions of Pieter-louis Myburgh’s book, Gangster State, which details Magashule’s own compromised past. This is despite the fact that the ANC’S national executive has told Magashule to stop using ANC platforms to attack the book.

Ramaphosa’s views aren’t the public position of even the top six members. The ANC is riddled with factions, which leads, at best, to policy incoherence; at worst, to irreconcilable contradictions.

But there’s another problem with a “strategic vote” for Ramaphosa, which is that there’s no certainty that it would actually give him a greater mandate in the party. As one ANC veteran put it, the larger the vote the ANC gets, the less the Magashule faction would need Ramaphosa later.

An Ipsos poll of 3,600 adults has tipped the ANC to win 61% of the vote, the DA 19%, and the EFF 11% in next week’s election — if nearly three-quarters of the registered voters turn up on the day.

But the most revealing answer from the survey is that just days before the election, 45% said there was no party that represented their views.

This shows that none of the parties presents a compelling vision. There are promises, but those are cheap. The ANC, which first promised a better life for all in 1994, has been falling short of that for years, unless your last name is Gupta. It’s hard to see that changing, even under Ramaphosa, no matter how impressive he seems.

Subeditors: Dave Landau (Chief), Magdel du Preez (Deputy),

Dynette du Preez.

Proofreader: Norman Baines.

Art director: Debbie van Heerden. Contracted artists: Colleen Wilson, Vuyo Singiswa, Sylvia Mckeown. Graphics & statistics: Shaun Uthum. Photographer: Freddy Mavunda. Editorial assistant: Onica Buthelezi. Office assistant: Nelson Dhlamini. ito Mboweni may be SA’S finance minister, but he remains the epitome of a central banker in character: resolutely independent of thought, captured by nobody. In some senses, it is a surprise that he could remain a member of a political party, so unlikely is he to toe any particular line.

This is why, even after he’d been asked by his party, the ANC, to desist from discussing the ailing SAA, Mboweni couldn’t resist it in an interview with the Financial Times. “If it was my personal money, I wouldn’t put one cent into SAA,” he said.

He resorted to analogy to make the point about the airline: “If I were running a chicken farm and I kept on putting in inputs, but I wasn’t getting any eggs, I would close it down.” This, of course, is the rational answer to SAA’S predicament. He’s said the same about Petrosa, another sieve into which the government continues to pour desperately needed resources. This is exactly what you’d want of a central banker (Mboweni’s former position) and a finance minister (his current one). It is not, however, what a ruling party that has no pragmatic grasp of austerity measures for state-owned companies understands.

President Cyril Ramaphosa should move mountains to ensure Mboweni stays: we have too few economically sensible people in the cabinet as it is.

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