MOKONYANE’S INCLUSION INSULTS VOTERS
This is the same politician who in 2013 viciously told voters … the ANC did not need their ‘dirty votes’
THAT the former minister of water and sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane, is on the ANC’s election list, despite much evidence which severely compromises and incriminates her, is for me the most damnable inclusion.
It serves to severely tarnish and undermine the commitment President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeatedly made about cleaning up the mess of seething corruption the ANC has conspicuously sunk into over the past few years.
Ramaphosa, I am convinced, has made a serious mistake, for which the electorate in Gauteng might come to punish the ANC in the May election.
Last week, the Mail & Guardian newspaper reported that the minister who succeeded her at the department, Gugile Nkwinti, stated that he inherited “a mess”.
He said many important projects were delayed by what the paper referred to as a “mix of corruption, angry residents, dubious contracts and general ineptitude on all sides”.
The newspaper also reported that the chairperson of the relevant portfolio committee, Lulu Johnson, expressed serious concerns that the department did not have a director-general and a chief financial officer, and that many suspensions had taken place without the committee being informed.
Furthermore, Leonard Mannus, the department’s acting deputy directorgeneral, asserted that several projects were not working and that there had been serious delays to the critically important building of dams and raising the walls of old ones, as a direct result apparently of this “mess”.
It was also during Mokonyane’s tenure that irregular expenditure spiralled from R13 million in 2009 to a shocking R4 billion by the time she left the department. The paper also reported on other very serious financial and project-related dysfunctionalities which have hindered its work.
In the light of this report and numerous stories in other newspapers, why does the ANC insult the intelligence of the electorate like this?
Even voters of the most average intelligence can discern that there are many things which went seriously wrong during Mokonyane’s tenure in the department of water and sanitation, regarding arguably the most important services – especially for working-class communities.
There has been zero accountability for this unmitigated “mess”. Instead, the ANC has the nerve to tell the electorate that Mokonyane and other severely compromised candidates on their list have not been found guilty in a court of law.
This, especially the case of Mokonyane, is such a brazenly technical insult to the intelligence of voters that just to entertain it is galling. This is one of the major reasons the absence of a constituency-based system is the biggest hindrance in our electoral system to a culture of mass-based, democratic accountability.
Besides, this is the same politician who in 2013 viciously told voters in Bekkersdal the ANC did not need their “dirty votes”. Her spokesperson’s attempt then at damage control was feeble and unconvincing.
As long as party bosses control these vitally important aspects we will have such naked abuses of political power by leaders.