Voices of the people now heard
LAST week’s election results overwhelmingly and undoubtedly showed us that the will of the people shall forever be the answer to people’s problems, humbling the ANC. It is Africa’s oldest liberation movement (at 104 the ANC is no spring chicken) and one of the most revered on Earth.
It was indeed a watershed moment as the DA and the EFF showed that it was possible that the ANC could be stopped. The DA proved yet again that it is the ruling party’s fiercest rival, competing with the ANC in what used to be the ANC’s strongholds such as Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.
But perhaps the biggest winner in the recent local government elections was the EFF, a three-year-old political party born out of disgruntlement from the very same ANC against which it now contests elections. The EFF of Julius Malema, Floyd Nyiko Shivambu and the others got a national vote from no less than two million South Africans who would have easily voted for the ANC had Cyril Ramaphosa not announced the dismissal of Malema, Floyd and their friends some three or so years ago.
At the time it happened Malema and his buddies immediately became a laughing stock and at some stage had even mentioned vehemently how they would never leave the ANC as the party was in their blood and that the ANC could only expel them on paper.
A lot of things happened as Malema was humiliated, and he looked and sometimes sounded like a finished man whose time as the enigmatic and raucous young leader that he was was over. Jacob Zuma had at some stage even tipped the then young Malema as a future president of the country and to repay him, Malema had said he’d kill for Zuma.
But as the situation stands it’s more likely Malema will kill Zuma (politically) than be willing to kill for him. As I write this, Malema’s EFF is what the media has called kingmaker in that it is the middle man with keys to some big metros such as Johannesburg and Tshwane.
If Gwede Mantashe had been told this was possible two years ago he would have laughed it off and possibly made fun of the sayer or suggester of such. But no, this is a reality today and the arrogant ANC leaders have learnt this lesson the hard way.
The ANC has lost the Nelson Mandela metro to the DA and the new boss in town, in his sleek command of Xhosa, has already said he’s the broom that’s going to sweep clean. Shivers have already been sent down the spines of ANC comrades.
It’s tough times for the revolutionary party, very tough times. But perhaps what’s very important is that before we praise the political parties, we need to understand that all of this is because the people of South Africa finally realised that they matter a lot, that their voice matters and they showed it by that democratic weapon called elections (voting).
These people finally lost confidence in the ruling party, especially where it matters the most, in the metros. Today Zuma may report at will to parliament in a Western Cape overwhelmingly under the DA and he stands to have his official residence under a DA-ruled municipality as well as the country’s economic hub of Johannesburg under the DA.
This will be more than an embarrassment to the ANC especially because the ANC’s sprog, the EFF, will have a lot to do with this embarrassment. Today the ANC is ready and willing to listen to a Malema it once mocked and called, among other disgraceful names, an empty vessel.
Today the once proud ANC must knock at Malema’s office with its tail between its legs and beg him not to go to bed with Mmusi Maimane’s DA. This is a result of an ANC that got way too comfortable for its own good, and now has been humbled and humiliated.
The two million-plus people who voted for the EFF are traditional ANC voters plus a good new group of youth who got disgruntled and felt that the ANC had lost the plot. Today the ANC has got no one but itself to blame because the revolutionary movement took its eye off the ball.
And it’s sad that when you hear the so-called reflections from the cadres, they seem to have known what the problem was all along but thought it would just pass on its own.
It didn’t, as the election results clearly show, and unfortunately this is the most humiliating mistake the ANC has ever committed in its 104 years of service to the oppressed in South Africa and the continent. As Thabo Mbeki once mentioned, “history will judge”.
Well, history at its best.