Vuka, ANC! We’re not your people any more
IAM humbly appealing to our organisation, the ANC, to wake up and smell the coffee after Friday’s countrywide marches. People are angry, and worried about what will happen to their hard-earned assets — bonds, houses and vehicles.
Those who understand the meaning of junk status are in the majority but did not join the protest to demand President Jacob Zuma’s recall.
Guess what: they will exercise this voice and right at the polling station.
The people are angry with the ANC for failing to protect this country and for allowing presidential appointees to run the ANC.
Those who speak in defence of the president are only those ministers appointed based on loyalty to the president, not because they are hard-working ministers.
For the organisation to win elections, ordinary South Africans must vote for the party.
But now ordinary South Africans are angry. Everyone that I know who previously supported the ANC has turned their back on the ANC.
Let people like Police Minister Fikile Mbalula, ANC Youth League president Collen Maine and Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane continue to destroy the ANC and isolate the ordinary people.
The ANC cannot continue to claim or use the statement “our people”.
“Our people” is the Zuma faction, the women’s league, the premier league and the youth league, aligned against the ordinary people.
It is unfortunate that 2019 is still far away, but come 2019, the ANC is out.
The ANC is showing its true colours. Greed, factions and corruption are winning this war — but not for long.
The ANC will be out come 2019. — Concerned ordinary ANC member, Pretoria
Dagga looks harmful
THE public is constantly informed of the potentially lethal effects of alcohol and tobacco, but on perusing your article on legalising cannabis I can’t help but observe the unfortunate side effects of this drug blatantly displayed in the photo accompanying “Dagga ruling just the start — activists” (April 2).
It seriously debilitates the users’ ability to control oral hygiene, coiffure and dress sense, to such a degree that any prospects of obtaining useful employment outside of a reggae band are seriously compromised.
I have some expertise on this subject having witnessed similar dreadful side effects on the UK’s aging hippie population. — David Lawson, St Lucia
Who do we believe now?
THE ANC started losing support when it decided to have Zuma as a leader of both party and country, a leader lacking an analytical mindset and integrity.
It is also worrying that some people who backed him for the position didn’t have the wisdom to know he was not suitable, and are now vehemently driving for his removal.
Who must we believe in this country? — Vusi, Benoni
Ministers left it too late
SACKED ANC ministers, the opposition parties have been asking you to vote out the president, but you were so arrogant. Now he has voted you out. — Lindi Zantsi, Worcester
Secret poll might bring Zexit
A POSSIBLE Zexit? A secret ballot would show best the true reflection of the no-confidence vote. South Africa is suffering from bad politics! — Baba Saloojee, Rustenburg
Prerogative to misrule
WE view with contempt and indignation the overuse of and the hiding behind “the president’s prerogative to appoint and fire cabinet ministers”, when it is clear he is carrying the country in a paper bag while walking in the rain. — Bait Malimela, Ntuzuma, Durban
Party loyalty bought
I SHOULD be pleased if the Sunday Times would expose the earnings and perks enjoyed by cabinet ministers, MPs and those heading the parastatals. I am sure this would explain why it is so difficult for any of these officials to leave the ANC.
It would also explain what proportion of our taxes is used to keep them in office. — Gordon Dally, Weltevreden Park
Negating narrative
MAMPHELA Ramphele, in her article “Time for SA to embark on the pilgrimage of healing” (April 2), stresses the need “to challenge the narratives that negate [Africans’] pre-colonial role as not only the cradle of humanity, but the pioneer of science, technology and philosophy now ascribed to ‘Western civilisation’ ”.
There is no doubt that Great Zimbabwe and Egypt’s civilisation represent the African role in human development and that the earliest evidence of mankind on the planet is in Africa, but the “narratives that negate” are not colonial.
Europe went through the Dark Ages, leaving little written history and no evidence of development.
Africa must have gone through a similar period. Settlers in Southern Africa found no sophisticated developments and no written history. However, acceptance of this fact does not negate Africa’s precolonial role and it does not ascribe
A different Buthelezi
REGRETTABLY, in our country today, the surest way to dent someone’s reputation, particularly those in the public service, is to allege or insinuate even the slightest smidgen of corruption on their part and, voila! , you are free to lead with a headline such as “Prasa cloud hangs over new deputy finance minister Buthelezi” (April 2).
The report states that “[Thuli] Madonsela had wanted to find out whether Buthelezi declared the conflict that arose from his relationship with Makana, a subsidiary of Cadiz Holdings, a company that secured work to provide advisory services to Prasa on its R51-billion rolling-stock tender”.
Nowhere in the report does it suggest that the Sunday Times sought comment from newly appointed Deputy Minister Sfiso Buthelezi.
When public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane finally concludes the investigation into Prasa and finds that Buthelezi had indeed declared the conflict, in compliance with best practice in corporate governance, the this history to Western Civilisation. That said, it was Westerners who led the palaeontological research into the cradle of mankind and mostly Westerners who started the exploration of Egyptian history. — Andre Jensen, Port Elizabeth
Mapungubwe mysteries
WHAT is Ramphele’s position on the skeletons of Khoisan found at Mapungubwe?
And can she give us a logical explanation as to why the golden rhino has only one horn when all African rhinos have two? — Sydney Opperman, Oudtshoorn deed will have been done and the character of an upstanding patriot will have been harmed. Those who buy ink by the barrel are free to abuse their power.
Yet those who know Buthelezi are familiar with a different reality, that of a young man who enlisted in the liberation struggle at age 20 in exile, and later, while serving his eight-year term on Robben Island for Umkhonto weSizwe deployments, completed his first of three degrees in economics.
He has served the ANC and society with honesty and honour in whatever capacity the movement has deemed fit, without campaigning for any appointment or ingratiating himself with anyone for personal benefit.
Please be fair in your coverage. — Lebang Pule, Johannesburg