ANC has lost connection with reality

LAST weekend’s policy conference of the ANC was a reminder of the growing disconnect between the governing party and the people.

The country’s ruling elite live in a world far removed from the grim realities of most South Africans. The gap is now so great it appears to be bridgeable by neither empathy nor intelligence.

And the ANC appears to have given up trying. After 28 years in power, it is tired, divided and uninspiring.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was supposed to reinvigorate the party after the damage done during his predecessor’s presidency, is visibly listless and dispirited. He has good reason.

While the party endorsed, against the resistance of the contingent from KwaZulu-Natal, his stand-aside rule for those ANC members criminally charged, it is a double-edged sword. It potentially neutralises Ramaphosa’s most potent challengers at December’s leadership conference but it can equally clinically and abruptly end his hopes of a second term if he is charged in connection with the bizarre Farmgate scandal.

It has become a juggling act, with the president desperately trying to keep the power balls in play for the next five months, while the other political performers try to trip him. It’s worked but the pressure is building.

Until now, opposition calls for a parliamentary investigation into whether Ramaphosa has contravened Section 89 of the Constitution, which provides for a president’s removal from office on grounds of serious misconduct, a criminal act, or a violation of the Constitution, have been stonewalled.

This week, Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula missed her own deadline on whether to set up a committee to probe Farmgate. Her office announced that due to unexplained delays, she would need more time to decide whether to proceed with an investigation.

The DA, in response, accused her of trying to shield the president from accountability. In all likelihood, they will have to go to court before the Speaker will act.

Seven of the parliamentary opposition parties have joined forces to hold Ramaphosa accountable as a matter of urgency, without “distractions and procrastination”. Aside from the parliamentary inquiry, they want the acting public protector to make public the president’s responses to that office’s questions on the matter.

The president tried his best at the conference to deliver his trademark rah-rah optimism. However, with the growing Farmgate storm hanging over