The ANC’s political complacency is exhausting
· Citizen
There aren’t any ANC spies trying to bed DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis. I’d like to think it’s because the ANC engages in ethical statecraft and won’t take direction from their Chinese friends. Maybe they don’t know how to include “sleep with the leader of the opponent to get information” in a job description without getting in trouble with the CCMA.
More likely, they simply lack the political creativity to conjure up any strategy beyond reminding us of the liberation and keeping the aluta course.
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One thing they’re good at is keeping us waiting and then disappointing when the wait is over. Most recently, after days of waiting to find out how the ANC NEC is going to align with coalitions after the local government elections, we got the news that… they’re not. No national strategy. No top exec commitment. No direction. They may as well have told us that it’s Friday night, so let’s just leave it up to whoever and go home.
Hilariously, halfway through the statement, there was a paragraph confirming the constitutional obligation on municipal authorities to provide water, electricity, safety and maintenance of public spaces. You know, the kind of things the ANC would have liked to have delivered if only it had held the seats of power in all three levels of governance over the last 30 years. Oh, wait.
Political complacency
The political complacency is exhausting and hardly moves the country forward. The NEC mandate for the ANC to talk to all parties and civic organisations is a non-starter. It took two days to decide that they will talk with everybody. And that’s all they came up with?
It took less time for Treebeard in Lord of the Rings to report: “We have just agreed… I have told your names to the Entmoot, and we have agreed you are not Orcs.” At least after that, they saw the devastation around them and went to war. Pretty decisive, albeit emotive… and fictional.
The ANC NEC, however, confronted by the devastation around them – both in political viability and the state of the nation – thought that what we need is to tell the people that we are open to talking. Gee, thanks. It gives a sense that its action is fiction.
I’m so glad that a third of the votes went to the guys who need two days of holding internal talks to decide to hold external talks.
Somebody should remind them that we have less than two weeks to get this over the line and then report them to Fifa for time-wasting.
No planning or foresight
But this is the most telling part of the ANC story; no planning, no ambition, no foresight. Other parties had their mayoral candidates out. Post election, we still don’t know who the ANC would have as our overlords. Other parties had their lists in. The ANC needed to pray to Mary in the ConCourt. Sure, they won on an impressive legal technicality, but to commit resources to a very avoidable problem says something.
We had so many polls leading up to the election, yet the ANC maintained that they would cross that bridge when they got there. When approaching the bridge, it was determined that it was Friday night so others could start crossing the bridge and we’ll catch up again on Tuesday.
Small wonder why infrastructure across the country – the stuff that needs long-term maintenance planning – isn’t doing that great.
The lust for meetings is lovely because who doesn’t like being heard? I’m pretty sure that voters aren’t turning out so that 80 or so people can spend two days talking about who else they want to talk with. I’m more certain that voters turn out because they need the state to prioritise service.
Following the NEC meeting, some action needs to take place, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
I’m hopeful that one day they may wake up and do something. I’m afraid that the day Hill-Lewis discovers awful leather jackets as the ultimate honeytrap for CCP spies is closer than we think.