For a while now the concerted view dominating social media has been consternation as vast as the Nile River. For some time now people in taxis and taverns and at the workplace have been consumed by a single major consternation: President Jacob Zuma.
In spite of all that, however, it seems as if not only the president, but the ANC itself seems to believe that Zuma, soiled and compromised as he is, is in fact one of the good guys.
The decision to encourage people to come forward with Gupta state capture information can be understood and perhaps should be understood to mean the ANC NEC wants the elephant in the room to have a bit more space to manoeuvre.
But truth does not recognise postponement. What is true today will still be true tomorrow.
Even if one were to exercise dispassion and say the ANC as a political entity should quite naturally put its interests first (Jacob Zuma has already said the ANC comes first, the country next); that the ANC should run its affairs without being told how by the opposition or non-members or social commentators, this notion that they have every confidence in their obviously soiled leader remains stubbornly and outrageously preposterous.
There has been admissions, and we hope many would surface, by senior members of the ANC that the Guptas promised them cabinet appointments if they did one thing or the other for them in return.
At the centre of these admissions, something which the ANC chooses to ignore, at least for now, is that such overtures by the Guptas are emboldened by their powerful relationship with the president.
This is symptomatic of nothing else but just how compromised the president is.
But then again the NEC of the ANC is a body that, like you and I, must not be denied the right and the opportunity to err, if it so chooses. To allow a president who persistently and extraordinarily scandalises our country is one such error.
Deputy Minister of Finance, Mcebisi Jonas, has admitted openly that the Guptas offered him a cabinet position. Vytjie Mentor, a former parliamentarian whom the president does not recollect, said openly that the Guptas called her to Saxonworld to offer her a cabinet position if she agreed to do them a favour. Themba Maseko came out publicly to say the president told him to help the Guptas.
These admissions are evidence of untold violence visited on our country and its constitution. This has certainly upended our body politic if what we have seen on social media and the media in general is to be taken seriously. But the NEC of the ANC, faced with the opportunity to act decisively against a compromised president, who in all likelihood leads a compromised cabinet, decided to deal with everything else but the elephant in the room – the almighty Jacob Zuma.
Interestingly, when he fumbled through his speech during last year’s ANC National General Council, the president admitted that the ANC’s membership has gone down from 2012’s 1 200 000 to that difficult number – 769 870, in 2015.
Now this membership number pales in comparison to millions and millions of South Africans who have registered to vote, and therein lies the problem: was the ANC NEC responding in the best interest of their less than a million members only when they decided not to recall Zuma?
What about the rest who I’m afraid are far more important than a few card carrying members? (By the way, that ANC’s flag has three colours on it – black, green and gold. The ‘black’ represents ‘the people of South Africa who, for generations, have fought for freedom’, NOT the few members of the ANC.)
The NEC of the ANC erred this past weekend in not removing Zuma as the president of the country because, well, it does not care. It therefore has turned itself into some indefensible entity even by its own members, because when Zuma switches to his scandalising shenanigans, the entire country is victimised.
Considering the ANC NEC’s deportment towards this uncluttered disgracing of our nation by one man, one wonders if a great deal of that NEC, just like the disgracing Zuma, is not Guptarised. If this characterisation is correct, then by extension the entire ANC is captured.
That would amount to barefaced, rotten disgrace.
I should hasten to emphasise that if it gets discovered like in the case of the Guptas that other leading businessmen – black or white, foreign or local, are running the state, they should be equally condemned, including those that they handle.
Just like our Brics fellows Brazil who seem to be facing the same crisis, perhaps we should be taking to the streets in our thousands to send an inflexible message of disgust at the wanton assault visited on us as a country.
Perhaps, too, we should use the ballot box to voice our displeasure. The ball is strictly in our court.
In the final analysis we must accept that the ANC has claimed its right to err, in the process aggregating the consternation referred to above, all to the benefit of one man.
The opposition on the other hand beams, why not? I mean, isn’t it true that for as long as there is Zuma, the opposition has all the ammunition to eat away from what was once a trusted, enviable political outfit called the ANC?
Ed. Maruping is an independent commentator. Visit social platforms for his views.
