No surprises ANC finances are a total mess
The party has not paid its workers while its leaders are rolling in cash
Last week the employees of the ANC who were on strike because their employer had not paid their salaries issued a very worrying statement.
Those employees, who expressed frustration because, as they themselves put it, “our families and children are suffering”, declaring that “The African National Congress our (sic) beloved organisation and Employer (sic) that liberated this Country (sic) has fallen”.
The ANC’s failure to pay its workers is a problem that has been brewing for a long time. It has now reached a point where hungry workers no longer have the strength to sweep filth under the carpet.
Every human being whose morality has not been twisted must feel the pain of employees who work and are told that there is no money to pay them at the end of the month.
Imagine what the ANC would say if it were to be revealed that there are black farmworkers in Western Cape who were told by their white employer that there is no money to pay them after working.
Maybe it is time for white farmers in our country to show their humanity by issuing a statement, condemning the ANC for undermining the dignity and human rights of black workers.
There must be a version of black-on-black racism that the ANC is guilty of. If such a concept does not exist, we could perhaps commission the most gifted among our linguists to coin a special word that would make it clear that black people are not happy with what the ANC is doing to black workers.
Those unpaid workers are indeed correct to say they have been abandoned by their own “Cdes [who] are in power”.
Their top Cde in power, President Cyril Ramaphosa, is the second richest black man in SA, estimated to be worth R6.4bn.
On the other side of the ANC’s factional divide stands Jacob Zuma and his son Duduzane, whose joint net worth is estimated to be more than R400m.
This obviously does not include stashes of illicit cash they may have hidden somewhere.
Other than Ramaphosa and Zuma, we know that there are many other senior leaders and thieves of the ANC who have hoarded loads of money through connections to the party.
The question is: why are they not intervening to pay those hungry ANC workers whose “families and children are suffering”?
The truth is that the rich ANC leaders and thieves have lost confidence in their own organisation.
That is why they are not willing to use their money to rescue a party that even its own employees can see “has fallen”.
The question is: if rich ANC leaders and thieves are not willing to give money to their own organisation, who will? The answer is simple: no sane non-ANC human being in SA and beyond will sink their money into the bottomless pit called the ANC. Only a madman would dump his money there.
It is sad but true that the only option left for those unpaid workers is to abandon ship. They must go and look for jobs elsewhere, and, in their quest for new employment, those workers must take care to avoid dodgy employers like the ANC.
There is something more worrying for the rest of our country. We now know that we are governed by a political party that cannot govern itself, a financial mismanager that cannot even pay its workers.
Would it not be madness to think that a party that cannot manage itself can manage a country? A man who cannot manage the finances of his household is not fit to run a church or stokvel.
Year in and year out, the auditor-general finds that the finances of government institutions are in shambles. Indeed, it is the same government run by a party that is in shambles.
In 2014, Prof Mzukisi Qobo and this columnist published a book, The Fall of the ANC: What Next? The point was to warn South Africans never to allow the ANC to fall with our country. The question is: how will you answer when your grandchildren ask what you did to save SA when it became clear that the ANC had fallen?