ANC’s lights going down with Eskom
THE slow – now accelerating – collapse of Eskom is, for most South Africans, the worst thing that’s happened since the Covid lockdowns rocked the economy. It might also be a blessing in disguise, for it’s beginning to prise loose the ANC’s death grip on power.
The country has never been more united and vocal in its condemnation of the government’s venality and ineptitude. The public passivity that, over the past dozen or so years, has seen a plunge in voter registrations, as well as in election turnouts, might be changing.
Sure, the revelations that came out of the Zondo Commission into State Capture, about the looting of national assets during the administration of former president Jacob Zuma, angered people. But the scale and remoteness from the daily lives of ordinary people – R1.5 trillion of taxpayer money in a country where 29 million live off social grants, while just over 5million people contribute 40% of total tax revenue – meant the fury was largely confined to the middle class.
Among many in the historically excluded populace the reaction was different. There was some grudging admiration and a refrain of redress, that it’s “our people’s turn to eat”. Underpinning the response was a kind of political Lotto – the vague hope that, through nepotism and connections, some of the freefloating dosh might, out of the blue, find its way into one’s back pocket.
Eskom is different. Whether you sullenly but dutifully pay for your power in suburbia, or gleefully and illegally tap into it, virtually everyone is affected. Every day.
Several times a day, in fact.
Load shedding is like a vampire mosquito that cannot be exterminated and is drawing debilitating amounts of blood. And now it’s unmistakably the blood of those who President Cyril Ramaphosa likes to refer to as “our people”, meaning black Africans.
This week, thousands marched on ANC offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg in #PowerToThePeople protest actions by the DA. Such marches, says the DA, cheekily stealing its line from the antiapartheid Mass Democratic Movement’s script, is part of a planned programme of “rolling mass action” leading up to next year’s general election.
Remarkably, by a significant margin, most of those taking part, certainly in the march on Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, were black. Equally remarkably, the large number of sjambok- and club-wielding “defenders” the ANC in the past mobilised and bused in “to protect” the sacred turf of Luthuli House against the political infidel, was vastly reduced.
As it turned out, except for sjambokking a few white DA supporters who had become isolated from the main body of marchers, the ANC thugs honestly didn’t seem to have their hearts in it. I guess it’s difficult to keep one’s ferocity focused when increasingly confronted with the politically bizarre phenomenon of ANC members, branches, structures and affiliates marching against ANC members, branches, structures and affiliates.
There are other signs of change in the air. Previously, South Africa’s seething masses understood well the limits of disaffection.
It’s always been acceptable to blockade public highways with burning tyres and other barriers in response to failed service delivery. It’s even been okay to throw rocks at hapless motorists.
But now public anger is becoming more directly focused on the ANC. Jan van Riebeek, apartheid, white monopoly capital and foreign agents are no longer as readily accepted as the architects of our country’s present predicament.
On Tuesday, residents of one of the most benighted local authorities in the country, the Enoch Mgijima Municipality in the Eastern Cape, laid siege to the venue hosting the ANC’s 111th birthday celebrations.
Angry at being without electricity for a month, they prevented ANC delegates from entering a gala dinner presided over by the party’s secretary general and Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula. The glitzy celebrations were delayed for hours, as the guests waited for the Public
Order squad of the police to disperse the protesters.
At one stage, the residents corralled one of the delegates, ANC Women’s League provincial task team leader Nokuku Dube, and bombarded her with complaints and insults, shouting that in the light of load shedding and other government collapse, the dinner was “an insult” to the people. The ANC wasn’t welcome and should hamba.
Dube can be seen remonstrating with the crowd when, out of the blue, a woman protester sneaks up behind her and snatches her hair weave from her head. The protester then dashes into the crowd to roars of laughter and hoots of encouragement, with Dube tottering in high heels in vain pursuit.
The incident is not as trivial as it appears. It is another sign of the waning respect and patience of the masses towards the ANC.
Africa is not Europe, needless to say, where politicos – with the exception of Saint Jacinda of Aotearoa – are accustomed to being held in cheerful contempt. There’s a long and tolerated tradition in the Western democracies of low-level politician abuse, ranging from rude signs to the occasional thrown egg.
The Dube comedy turn is part of a sea change.
When deference turns to derision. That’s the moment when you should start feeling nervous.
Especially if you’re a politician in Africa. And even more so if you’re a member of the governing party.