Golden chance for ANC

SINDISO Magaqa was laid to rest at a moving funeral at the weekend, after finally succumbing to the gunshot wounds that had confined him to a hospital bed for two months.

Speaker after speaker stood up to pay tribute to the inspirational former secretarygeneral of the ANC Youth League, who had turned to full-time politics as a councillor in the Umzimkhulu local municipality.

Indeed, it is the work he did there that many believe cost him his life.

One person in particular, his friend Less Stuta, told mourners Magaqa was shot to prevent him from blowing the whistle on the construction of a multimillionrand community hall awarded to someone in the Eastern Cape, not on the basis of what they could provide, but rather who they knew.

This is not a new phenomenon in South Africa. Indeed, there is even a brandnew word unique to our country, coined to describe this: tenderpreneurism. There are other terms, like rent-seeking. It all comes down to one issue: corruption, plain and simple.

It’s a very high-stakes game, with plenty to lose for those exposed for what they are doing – and the benefits that they are creaming – which is why there is very little compunction among them to use whatever means possible to prevent their nefarious deals being revealed, and with them the corrupt web of patronage all the way to the very corridors of power that would have facilitated this.

It’s a very high-stakes scenario for the ANC, too, because it depends on the support of the people on the ground who are being robbed of what is their right by the very people purporting to represent the party. When the people start seeing the party and corrupt officials acting in its name as one and the same, there are only two outcomes – democratic revolution at the ballot box, or bloodshed in the hills and valleys of Umzimkhulu.

Magaqa’s death provides the ANC with a golden opportunity to prove its commitment to transparent and clean government by getting to the bottom of this tragedy and rooting out the evil-doers.