EFF worries ANC and DA

NEXT week’s municipal election is probably going to be the most exciting we have had because the outcome is riddled with uncertainty.

In previous elections, the major players, the ANC and the DA, were confident about winning constituencies but in this election, the relatively new boy on the block, the EFF, has sent these major parties into worry mode.

Prior to the entry of the EFF, the two major parties felt secure in the company of the less influential, smaller parties like Cope, the ACDP and the UDM.

The EFF has secured its position in the political landscape as a force to reckon with, its populist leader, Julius Malema, seizing every opportunity to embarrass our president with his payback-the-money campaign.

Malema shot to fame here and abroad with his irrepressible tactics inside and outside Parliament.

He was so persistent the desperate Speaker was at a loss for words to control the young upstart, who treated his former seniors, including his former boss, the president, with unrepentant disdain.

Not even our shameful president’s useless guffawing could save him further embarrassment from the fiery Malema. Malema did more damage to the Teflon-coated president than the 90 000 booing mourners could at Madiba’s funeral.

The DA has not been able to grow fast enough in the black townships because of its “white” image – even though it has a black leader – because it has proved vulnerable to chants from the desperate ANC that it is a “white racist party” with token blacks in charge. Former DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko’s attack on the party, over supposed male racism, falls right into the lap of the EFF and the ANC. On the other hand, the desperate ANC has no answer to the growing popularity of the EFF among the jobless youth of this country.

The ANC, sadly, like all revolutionary parties, started off well, as Zanu-PF did in Zimbabwe, but, like the latter, it has gone off track, with corruption getting its ugly tentacles into the leadership.

The leader of the ANC has so many corruption charges against him, has been found guilty of violating the constitution; has wasted millions of rands of taxpayers’ money, and has allowed the Gupta family to influence major government appointments in the face of a very weak, helpless, asinine and sycophantic NEC, who supported their president at every turn because their livelihoods depended on their currying favour with him even though it went against their better judgement.

There is little reason to doubt the ANC has captured the SABC in spite of Gwede Mantashe’s feeble protestations against the despicable action by Hlaudi Motsoeneng to ban all coverage of violence.

The ANC is aware most violent protests are the result of poor service delivery in poorly run ANC municipalities.

To hide this information from the public was to give the ANC an unfair advantage in the election campaign.

Hopefully the recent court ruling to compel the SABC not to censor coverage of violent protests and the reinstatement of the journalists who were unfairly fired, will give it enough time to correct the wrongs of the past two months.

In 1994 a majority for the ANC was the right thing because it gave this party the power to correct the wrongs of the past, unhindered; 22 years later, this majority has become our downfall; their veering to unmanageable corruption has become unstoppable.

Another year of them will spell doom for our young democracy.

Our vote may not get us a government that can deliver but it can reduce corruption by preventing any one party from winning the majority of seats in government.