Title: Critical evaluation of the three main political parties’ capability to steer successful land expropriation in post-2019 South Africa: Part 3-The ANC in perspective (11: Introduction)
Gabriel P Louw
iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6190-8093
Extraordinary Researcher, Focus Area Social Transformation, Faculty of Humanities, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, South Africa (Author and Researcher: Healthcare, History and Politics).
Corresponding Author:
Prof. Dr. GP Louw; MA (UNISA), PhD (PU for CHE), DPhil (PU for CHE), PhD (NWU)
Email: profgplouw@gmail.com
Keywords: Capability, desperate, evaluation, electorate, expropriation, journalism, marginalised, populist, probation, scenario, violence.
Ensovoort, volume 40 (2019), number 11: 2
1. Background
During the post-May-2019-to-2024 parliamentary term of the ANC, certain political tendencies may be expected to emerge which would have a profound effect upon South Africa. Some may be described as positive, while others may be characterised as extremely negative with the inclination to produce unrest, anarchy and revolution. Post-May 2019 will not necessarily mean the beginning of a golden age in the South African republic, but neither does it mean that it would be impossible for the ANC to be rehabilitated. The installation of the new regime on 9 May 2019 portends two future periods under the ANC with clear outcomes that may bring dramatic changes in its policies and actions: the 2019-to-2022 period (from May 2019 until the national conference of the ANC in 2020), as well as the 2022-to-2024 period (national conference in 2020 until the next national elections in 2024).
The post-May 2019 period may turn out to be a kind of continuation of the pre-2019 system during which the ANC will again be the ruler with the same failures and misdemeanours of the pre-May-2019 period. But, there is the possibility of an emerging post-May political radicalism, such as land grabbing under the ANC (that may be effected together with the other radical parties like the EFF), which transform South Africa at last into the long-expected autocratic and failed country (which is far worst than a failed state) prophesied by conservative commentators. The period from 2019 to 2022 may be full of political intrigues, chaos and of power struggles between splinter groups of the ANC, further aggravated by radical small parties of the EFF calibre. Included herein would be the ongoing economic and social failures, problems with water and electricity, etc. And if this period does not have the potential to bring enough upheaval, unrest and revolution, there will follow the critical period from 2022 to 2024 during which new factions and political groupings may be formed inside and outside the ANC, which may vary from ultra-radicalism to ultra-conservatism. All of this may play out if the main problems of South Africa, such as comprehensive land reform, are not dealt with during the pre-2022 phase. Both these two periods and timeframes have their own uniqueness and may be intertwined, but, as mentioned, may also be seen as distinct and independent from each other. The denouement of each may steer South Africa into incapacity or success.
The line in South Africa between chaos, stability and order is thin. Justice Malala, a writer and commentator, tries hard to comfort South Africans in some way when he writes:
Politics is toxic everywhere in the world right now. The Democrats in the US are moving to impeach President Donald Trump. The UK is run by a buffoon whose ham-handed actions on Brexit continue to imperil Europe. Across the globe, politics are failing the citizenry. Nigerians do not trust President Muhammadu Buhari or the system he represents. South Africans are not the first people to be failed by politics and politicians and won’t be the last.1: 21
The successful execution of the post-2019 land-reform issue is undoubtedly dependent on the abilities, integrity and sound cognitive thinking, planning and implementation by a so-called “good” government, together with a “good” leadership in whom integrity and Solomon’s wisdom are essential characteristics. This means a regime that is not blindly on a path of “reaching the goal at any cost” but to effectively achieving an end-result regarding the matter, which would be a success. This requires a regime honestly serving the interests of all its people by following a well-drawn-up roadmap for an orderly land-reform initiative, and steering it into reality.
The essential question here is thus whether the ANC can be theoretically deemed a candidate or may be shortlisted and thus be considered to have the leadership potential to ensure the successful implementation and completion of the post-2019 plan on land expropriation.
The evaluation guidelines for political parties are:
- Its general policies as well as specific positions on aspects such as respect for law and order, and the fighting of corruption, state capture, delinquent behaviour by its MPs and MPLs, including its top brass, as well as the party’s and its leaders’ views on land expropriation without compensation, etc., as put forward in its manifesto for the 2019 election;
- Public criticism for the period 1994 to 2019 in newspapers, etc., evaluated and expressed by political analysts, strategists and commentators on the party as a political organisation, its members’ and leaders’ behaviours and actions such as corruption, state capture, as well as the delinquency of MPs and MPLs, the leaders, their views on land expropriation without compensation, etc., as well as the party’s internal organisational conflicts, and controversial political, economic and social views and opinions.
1.1. Introduction
This study is a continuation of the previous article (Article 10, titled: “Critical evaluation of the three main political parties’ capability to steer successful land expropriation in post-2019 South Africa: Part 2—The DA in perspective (10)”.
The focus of Article 11 is on the ANC as the elected present-day regime. The article is part of a series of articles on the ANC, published under the title: “Critical evaluation of the three main political parties’ capability to steer successful land expropriation in post-2019 South Africa: Part 3 —The ANC in perspective”. It purports to analyse and further discuss the arguments, opinions and viewpoints on the integrity and the ability of the ANC to effect land expropriation successfully as reflected by its CVs and Attestations.
1.2. Aims of article 11
The primary intention of the publications on the ANC is to continue the reflection on the three main political parties by specifically describing the profile of the ANC on the same basis as was done in Article 9 on the EFF and Article 10 on the DA.
The aim is to evaluate the ability of the ANC to take care of the land expropriation matter in terms of its empowerment as ruler received during the election of 8 May 2019. The focus will be on the party’s leadership to detect poor personal and political integrity. The intention of the researcher is thus to see if the ANC as a political party and the ANC’s MPS and MPLs, its top brass and chief executive, as well as other officials at state enterprises have the ability to successfully execute comprehensive land reform.
1.2.1. The exclusive use of newspaper articles and direct quotations in article 11
It must be noted that the emphasis in information collection for this research was on the use of mostly recent South African newspaper reports, seeing that the information was offered daily in describing (with analyses, comments, investigations and discussions) the prominent political, economic and social events. In totality these reports reflect a very comprehensive and in-depth picture of present-day South Africa’s political, judicial and economic life. On how South Africans trust, read and share news, research published by Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, together with Isabella Maake and Graphics24, shows that printed newspapers are being used by 40% of the South African population to obtain information and insight. Most of the newspapers used in the research as references, may be described, for instance, in terms of their weekly percentage usage by the total population as follows:
Sunday Times: 25%;
Daily Sun: 21%;
Sowetan: 13%;
The Citizen: 12%;
City Press: 12%;
The Star: 10%.
In addition, local newspapers were also used (21%), while other newspapers (Afrikaans) like Beeld and Rapport (of which the percentage usage is unknown) were also consulted as they are being comprehensively used by the Afrikaans-speakers.2:14
On the extensive use in this research of South African journalistic reporting, it is important to note the following comment in the City Press of 23 June 2019, defining the absolute need for critical journalism to fight crime and political delinquency in South Africa. It reads3:13:
Going deep into the belly of governing circles in countries [African] where the majority of citizens are desperately poor, we discovered how local and international business partners assist presidents, ministers and governing party bureaucrats to convert political power, often via access to natural resources, into personal financial reserves and assets.
And:
Support for African investigative journalists as they continue to expose wrongdoing is once again noted as an important need.
That the country’s journalists are under immense strain, as well as physical and emotional attacks by delinquent politicians without any safeguard such as bodyguards, is reflected by the recent (but failed) action of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) and five journalists to go to the Equality Court for an interdict to stop a specific political party from intimidating and threatening journalists and inciting violence against them. Munusamy4:18 writes:
And this matter goes beyond the realm of individual safety. Our industry is increasingly on the retreat as political attacks and vilifications intensify. Journalists and editors are already self-censoring to avoid being harangued by politicians and denigrated online. Social media is a toxic space where people can direct violent and misogynistic attacks, either themselves or through troll armies, without consequences.
She continues4:18:
The focus of the attacks is now shifting to the judiciary… Our society cannot claim not to see the warning signs of our democracy under attack. The challenge is whether we respond or watch impassively.
Any public utterance or writing by a civil person, another politician or an author pinpointing alleged wrongdoings by controversial politicians or state officials, are fast being taken to court as instances of slander and libel whereby amounts from R500 000 up to R35-million are being claimed as compensation! It must be noted that most of these public utterances and writings occurred with reference to the alleged state capture under the ANC regime, and are often anchored in the testimonies offered to the judicial commissions such as the Zondo one. In perspective, it seems to be many previously deeply-in-love ANC comrades and other cronies that are calling each other names such as liars, fraudsters, apartheid spies, known enemy agents, charlatans, EFF-sleepers, even “extraordinary k****r”. These “calling out” actions have also been observed between the ANC leaders and churches, as well as other parties’ politicians who try the court seemingly as a “money-spinner”. Most of the lawsuits are plain nonsense, juvenile and sorely reflect the poor quality of our law-makers. Furthermore, these revenge actions are wasting the valuable time of the court, while some seem indeed to generate money for the claimants. Critically observed, most of these civil actions seeking revenge or compensation for so-called libel and slander claims, are also attempts at outright distraction from the spotlight on the guilt of the claimants and threats towards those exposing them, in order to stop their investigations and writing on the culprits’ wrongdoing.5-17
It is clear that most of these cases of libel and slender are purely because the SAPS (South African Police Service) has so far done nothing to investigate the alleged law-breaking and the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority) has not prosecuted, leaving crooks many times over untouchable and free in society to continue their crimes.
This research is not investigative, but purely to use existing newspaper articles that were already published and accepted as correct by the general public and critics, given that the persons named or alleged to have committed crimes or corruption, never objected to the articles’ contents nor did they take action against the newspaper or its investigative journalists, political commentators and political analysts. As a researcher I am very thankful to the mass of investigative journalists, political commentators and political analysts for their information which formed the backbone of my research project on the ANC. It must further be noted that very little of the enormous reporting on testimonies before the various judicial commissions, like the Zondo one, were used in this research. It was just too much to include into the research. I am considering making it part of a future publication, namely: The phantom of the South African Parliament: the ANC 1994 to 2019.
My publications on the ANC are thus in principle a collation of published information and reflections from this gathered or archived information, on the ANC’s activities. Firstly, the preference for this “reflecting” approach follows from the immense amount of available information, just waiting to be collected and currently underused. Secondly, this published information has already been tested and published according to the criteria of “true news”, or as truth which has not been legally challenged as defamation or falsehoods. The publications quoted in this research were thus operating from within the ethics of good journalism, meaning right, trustworthy and credible, with which editors allowed journalists and authors to publish the information in their newspapers. Many of the cases reported on are still awaiting investigation by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and possible prosecution by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). For this reason the terms “alleged” and “alluded”, as used throughout in newspaper articles, are also used as here. The term alleged is applicable to every case reported here: even in cases were culprits were prosecuted and sentenced, these outcomes are treated as “alleged”, seeing that there can be still appeals to the courts. Directly reflecting the allegations made by political analysts, political commentators and investigative and crime journalists, compelled the large-scale use of quotations. This approach brings the reader directly into the picture of the ANC’s politics, while at the same time giving appropriate acknowledgment to the various authors for their hard work. These quotations tell an intimate story which is frequently lost through indirect references, descriptions and paraphrasing. The guideline of Ngwenya12 on good journalism occupies a central position throughout this research project. He writes12:8:
The reflective call in these tricky, dicey, trying times for journalists is to be independent. Sharpen no knives, grind no axes and dig no graves. If journalism is right, trustworthy and credible the dishonourable will feel the weight of public censure to fall on their sword in a grave they dug for themselves.
The descriptions of this subdivision, titled: 1.2.1.The exclusive use of newspaper articles and direct quotations in articles 11, is also fully applicable to all the articles which are following as part of this project on the ANC. Thus, they will not be repeated.
2. Method
The research has been done by means of a literature review. This method aims to construct a viewpoint from the available evidence as the research develops. This approach has been used in modern politico-historical research where there is often not an established body of research, as is the case regarding the abilities of political parties to effect successful land reform from 2019 onwards. The sources included articles from 2018, books for the period 1944 to 2018 and newspapers for the period 2017 to 2019. These sources have been consulted to evaluate and to describe the facts that must guide us in making an evaluation on the suitability of the ANC as the ruler of South Africa to achieve successful land reform as from 2019.
The research findings have been presented in narrative format.
3. Results and discussion
3.1 Absence of an Electorate-Parliamentarian-Employment Act and an Electorate-Parliamentarian Ethics Code
The serious question that is prominently being asked by political analysts is: how did South Africa end up in its present mess? Various answers are proffered, varying from it being the end-result of Apartheid, to the end-result of the ANC as a failed revolutionary party. Looking at the utter failure and constant economic decline, failed human uplifting and impoverishment of the mass of the people, the fact is clear that the ANC is the main culprit as a revolutionary that never creates, but takes only from the rich without giving—as the good thief Robin Hood would do—to the poor. Moreover, South Africa’s political setup of pre-1994 and its much-praised but in some ways failed Constitution, offered the ANC the opportunity to successfully establish its revolutionary culture of crookedness, mismanagement, state capture and autocracy, unobstructed over 25 years. Central to this power structure is the incapable ANC elite with their sole intention of self-enrichment and utmost power hunger. But the question remains: how was it possible for the ANC to be able to hijack the mass of poor Blacks’ votes and use the South African Parliament exclusively, from one administration to the other, to benefit them solely? One of the answers lies in the fact that there was the lack of a Basic Conditions Electorate-Parliamentarian-Employment Act [equal to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCOEA)] to describe and enforce a mandate between voters and a regime, obliging the regime to govern a country and its people only with justice and rectitude.18,19
3.2 Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s sincere warning and prayer for good governance
To assess and control an elected party during its term of five years (like the ANC again for the period 2019 to 2024, after it had already been ruling for 25 years since 1994), certain basic guidelines should be in place before the election and inauguration of a government (as an employee in service of the people.) There should be basic guidelines, such as to act all of the time while governing solely in terms of its promises made before the election to the voters (the employer, who takes the government as an employee in service). In South Africa such an act or code is absent. It is thus important to outline it here: firstly, to understand how good governance could have been attained from 1994 until now; and secondly, the absolute present need to promulgate such legislation to get rid of corrupted and failed governments. If such a piece of legislation were in place we would not be shamed by the need of the Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, when he swore in ministers and their deputies at the Sefako Makgatho presidential guesthouse in Pretoria recently at the start of South Africa’s sixth Parliament, to give them a clear warning. In this context Hunter18:4 shows how Mogoeng digressed significantly from his traditional swearing-in speech to say to these public figures (mostly from the ANC) that “they should shiver if they even think of misspending public funds in their care, while he also warned elected public representatives to take their oath of office seriously and not to act as if the public owe them something”.
In this context he had undoubtedly referred to the totally failed government of the ANC since 1994. His warning was an attempt by him as a last resort to inculcate good employee habits into the mindsets of law-makers in the new Parliament after so many years of failure. Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, specifically pointed to the status of law-makers as plain “public employees” and not, as some seemed to have been thinking and doing since 1994, as high-level mighty “employers” in charge of the voters and the public. Mogoeng said that he wanted to ensure that those who took the oath or affirmation know that18:4: “…power doesn’t belong to you, and the resources that come with that office don’t belong to you. You are a servant of the South African public and this is what you are promising those who have employed you. For you to suddenly begin to treat those who have privileged you with an opportunity to serve – especially at a high level – as if they owe you something and be insensitive, almost, to the dire circumstances they find themselves in [is wrong].”
In the context of Mogoeng Mogoeng’s “preaching”, he further read the so-called Riot Act to the law-makers (who in present-day South Africa seem more and more to be acting as schoolchildren going on a picnic), and emphasised that public officers must realise that people suffer the consequences of bad decisions18:4: “So we never forget, just the thought of giving somebody millions that they ought not to get, that are supposed to help elsewhere, should make you shiver. Just the thought of it should make you shiver.”
But it seems as if there was doubt in the Chief Justice’s heart that his verbal and written warning alone was not going to have an effect on the Ramaphosa cabinet and its officials. This is confirmed by the fact that the honourable justice had also included a prayer to those being sworn in, seemingly hoping in this way to impress his prescribed virtue on the minds of the ANC elite.18
From a practical and judicial viewpoint, as spelt out clearly by the Chief Justice above, the business of government and its proper execution, represents a mandate received by a regime to do certain work for the people in exchange for compensation. This means that the appointed ruler (employee) received his mandate from the voters (employers) in exchange for the pre-election promises, meaning that they will execute these agreed-upon actions and policies—neither more nor less. Looking back to the period 1994 to 2019, very few of the ruling party’s officials—from presidents to their most junior officials—had ever respected the voters or had “shivered” in Mogoeng’s sense when diverting funds to their own pockets. Jacob Zuma and the Parliament under the ANC laughed at both the judiciary and the public. Looking at Cyril Ramaphosa and his cronies, since coming to power in 2017, the alleged Phantom of the Parliament has not changed much of its act.
It is thus important to offer a guideline of what should be in position to assure good government for the sixth Parliament during the period 2019 to 2024.
3.1.2. The unborn Electorate-Parliamentarian Act
3.1.2.1. Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCOEA)
Regarding the ANC‘s many failed promises and wrongdoing, nearly bringing the South African state to a fall (thereby failing in its mandate as na employee), there is only one clear guideline to be used in order to fully understand and describe the ANC’s actions as a failed employee within a legal employee-employer relation, namely the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCOEA). A similar Electorate-Parliamentarian Act to the BCOEA should have be promulgated in 1994 to guide the rights of the employee (ANC-government) in its actions and those of the employer (voters) who want certain and specific work done via Parliament. Central to the BCOEA stands the legal concept of probation that needs to be highlighted and which the ANC regime failed to respect in its job contract via Parliament with the people of South Africa.18,20
To illustrate the need for an Electorate-Parliamentarian Act and the clause of probation for a party as a government and its law-makers as parliamentarians, the BCOEA will be made applicable as a voters-and-government agreement, equal to an employer-and-employee agreement and be discussed theoretically, to illustrate the ANC’s utter failure over 25 years and to show how a failed regime can be stopped dead in its tracks with the correct legislation. The basis will thus be to encapsulate the concept of good governance and the use of probation as a means to end the various ANC regimes’ mischief. This comparative discussion clearly shows what is missing with the present mandate of the government and why the ANC-government (the supposed subordinate employee to the voters) had spun out of control from 1994 to 2019, to engage in unobstructed state capture, failing to activate good services as to education and health, ignoring the Constitution, etc. It will also bear out how the voters were sidelined immediately after every new election of the Parliament, and how the MPs and MPLs became an untouchable force of employees after their election, leaving the employer (voters) powerless until the next election. In reality, it reflects a coup d’état by the law-makers, the moment after they were sworn in.20
Michael Bagraim20, a labour expert, writes excellently in The Star of 12 June 2019 on the matter of a failed employee versus the right of an employer to punish such an employee by requiring him to better himself, as opposed to being able to fire him with immediate effect. His clear writing makes it easy to adapt and compare the rules of the BCOEA to politics. Such a comparision enables one to characterise the ANC regime as a failed employee who should be kicked out and its contract terminated very early in its period of probation. It also makes it possible to obtain insight into the rights that would be awarded to the voters should such a voters’ regime agreement become a legal reality and had to have been thoroughly applied since 1994 to the regime and the law-makers of the South African Parliament. It also shows the specific legal obligations of the regime in terms of which the voters could and should have booked it in order to get rid of the regime when it failed. This would mean terminating the employment contract of the regime (employee), cancelling its stay in Parliament for the full term of five years if such a legal agreement existed.20
Bagraim20 writes that in terms of the BCOEA every employment relationship must have a written letter of appointment or contract of employment. (This agreement goes far further legally than the oath of office that law-makers pledged before the Chief Justice: the oath is essentially a plain promise that may, but does not need, to be respected as was born out by the Zuma regime.) One of the conditions of service is a probationary clause in writing which is prescribed for both the employer and the employee to know and understand that there would be an assessment period before the contract became permanent. Probation is a vehicle to assist an employer to possibly terminate the employment relationship if the employer feels the employment relationship is not a perfect fit or the employee is not performing in accordance with the contract of employment, posits Bagraim.20 In this context it means that if the probationary employee’s work does not meet the standards required by the employer, then the dismissal should be able to seen to be fair. The position of a probationary employee is different from that of a permanent employee and both the procedure and merits of that dismissal will be less onerous on the employer. In this context of the probationary period versus the permanent period, is it important to bear in mind that, besides that the probation clause may differ from employer to employer, the duration of the probation period may also differ in time: it will be longer if the position is one of a senior nature. Prominent in this context are the positions of MPs and MPLs on senior level that warrant a lengthy period of assessment. This reference clearly reflects two aspects relating to the status of a regime as an employee: firstly it needs a lengthy period of assessment stretching fully over the five years as elected representatives to Parliament. Secondly the employment of parliamentarians as employees of the people in terms of this constant assessment is limited to five years in duration which makes the employees’ right to permanent appointment zero (no reappointment of a party as regime without a new election). Implicitly, parliamentarians as representatives are supposed to be “permanently on probation” for their full term.20
The BCOEA has an inscribed clause that a probation period may be extended to erase short-comings and better the employees. In the case of law-makers their probationary period, as said, is supposed to be running for a full five years, excluding any shortening of the probation time. Any legal extension of the five years term is not allowed without another election. It means the re-election of a failed regime and its law-makers can indeed be seen as a willing extension of the probation by the voters, as was done for the ANC over six elections notwithstanding a poor record and performance by the regime.20
The BCOEA requires that the standards set by the employer must be fair and reasonable. The probationary clause provision is also intended to protect the employee who might wish to leave the employer because the position was not as the employee envisaged. Further, the standards set by the employer must be fair and reasonable. In the case of law-makers the writing and execution of these standards are totally handed over to Parliament in governing for the period of five years after the election, during which the law-makers are free to rewrite and set their own standards, totally ignoring the people’s wishes after their election.20
Looking at the fine print of the aim of assessment of the BCOEA, when you see it equal to a law-maker-voter agreement, one sees probation’s function of assessing the new employee (meaning in politics the two entities, namely Parliament and its law-makers) and his capacity for fitting into the organisation (meaning in politics the people’s/voters’ interests) and whether that employee is compatible with fellow employees and the immediate management of the employer. Probation is not only a period granted to the employer to assess the employee, but also to give feedback to the employee in order to ensure better performance and better compatibility which may include training and guidance. Firstly, parliamentarians are expected to be well trained, skilled, seasoned and experienced before they move into Parliament because it was during the pre-election exercise that they were selected and elected by the people for their ability to handle their mandate effectively. Secondly, the only feedback in response to parliamentarians and the ruling party’s performance (good or bad) at present available to the people/voters is to vote for the law-makers and the ruling party or to vote them out in the next election.20
Probation in contracts under the BCOEA is not compulsory. Often appointments are not subjected to probation because both parties are aware of the abilities of the employee. This erasure of the probationary period is presently built-in to the law-makers’ contacts because it is traditionally believed that they are highly qualified and of high integrity before making themselves available to stand for Parliament and thus do not need oversight and monitoring from outside by the voters. The only opportunity to moan about or to reject elected law-makers and a regime is, as mentioned, to not vote for them in the next election.20
The BCOEA further states that an employer must constantly monitor a probationary employee, keeping a record for feedback, keeping minutes of discussions and to see to it that the employee receive the necessary development, support and guidance for improvement. In the voters-versus-law-makers relationship the law-makers obtained the sole right to oversee themselves regarding the development and bettering of their training, experience and behaviour. The present setup regarding public oversight of the regime of the day and law-makers, reflects a process whereby there is very little monitoring of the quality and integrity of law-makers during their period of five years in Parliament, as became evident during the so-called Zupta saga.20
In light of the above, it is clear that Parliament’s management, with specific reference to the party which is also the regime in power, as well as the law-makers elected to Parliament, is totally uncontrolled. The Parliament and the mandated regime become independent powers to do as it and the law-makers “see fit”, leaving the individual citizen stripped of his citizen’s rights. The fact that the ANC received only 28% of the eligible voters’ support in the past election and that only 49% of the total eligible voters participated in the May 2019 election, render the ANC in post-2019 South Africa in practice a non-representative ruler, bordering on self-empowered autocracy. This kind of dangerous ruler-empowerment explains why and how the ANC as a regime has become an irresponsible autocratic ruler since 1994, ignoring the concerns of the majority (51%) of South Africans. Corruption, crookedness, state capture and mismanagement became the normal form of rule. In the end the criminal justice system had to deal with the depths of corruption and misrule, with courts and commissions of enquiry bringing to light the delinquent actions of Parliament and a number of its law-makers.19-21
However, thanks to ANC misrule, the criminal justice system is in itself broken, supporting the crooked law-makers, as was recently well illustrated by various testimonies before the Zondo commission. The ex-head of the KwaZulu-Natal Hawks, Johan Booysen22, testified that there existed a web of alleged corruption in the police, the Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and pointed out that such corruption culminated in those institutions “being subverted to ensure the shielding of certain individuals from criminal sanction”. A submission of 70 pages by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS,) dealing with the crooked relationship between the national executive and the criminal justice leadership, contains the following sentence22:13:
There can be no doubt that the abuse of executive authority in respect of criminal justice agencies has been central in allowing the current proliferation of corruption.
Gareth Newham, the head of justice and violence prevention at ISS said22:13:
There has to be a much broader political project to uncapture these institutions.
The overwhelming evidence of political and criminal-justice delinquency forced the chair of the Zondo commission, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, to declare22:13:
If we do not have a proper law enforcement agency then we don’t have a country.
To curb the massive delinquency in the South African Parliament, it urgently needs an Electoral-Parliamentarian Act to be promulgated as a priority before the end of 2020. If the BCOEA had applied to Parliament’s law-makers and the ANC-regime specifically, all would have been fired long ago due to poor performance, incompatibility, poor training and experience, as well as misconduct. Moreover, looking at the way in which they are aggressively handling the land-reform matter by threatening the 30 million poor Blacks (a significant part of the population and in reality the ANC’s employer), the ANC regime is indeed victimising its own employer. Their dismissal would be justified in terms of all the criteria of dismissal.19-21
3.1.3. The central roles of the ANC’s democratic-centralism and the electoral system in parliamentary abuse
3.1.3.1. The ANC’s democratic-centralism ideology
The ANC’s so-called democratic-centralism plays a prominent role in the failed political outcomes of their five post-1994 administrations and portends similar manifestations to be repeated during their sixth administration under Ramaphosa. This uniqueness of the ANC’s party organisation and its steering of the thinking, planning and actions of every one of its members, from the ordinary to its president, are overlooked by many, even political analysts, commentators and journalists.19-21
This ANC’s democratic-centralism and the established power structure of the ANC as a party, nullifies the claim that a specific ANC member, like its president, is the sole empowered person to act and decide on ANC matters (also making his/her authority as President of South Africa subordinate to the ANC’s power). The implication is thus that the interests of the ANC as a party are determined by its national conferences and must be strictly adhered to and be executed by every member. But this also means that the interests of the country, whether inside or outside Parliament, are subordinate to the interests of the ANC. It does not matter if these ANC interests are crooked deals, state capture, corruption, etc.19-21
The principle of the ANC’s interests first and the subordination of every one of its members to the decisions of its national conferences, is well described and acknowledged by Bishop Hangwai Maumela23 of the Lazarus Maumela Foundation. In his defence of the ANC’s so-called “democracy” and the ANC’s so-called “servicing the needs and right of every citizen”, when he swankily writes in the City Press of 30 June 2019 as follows23:4:“…members of the ANC who are in Parliament have been deployed by the ANC. There’s no member who is superior to another. They pay the same affiliation fee to the ANC. They have been allocated various portfolios – some as ministers, deputy ministers, chief whips and chairpersons of portfolio committees. All of them account to the ANC…”
Mthombothi24 also writes on the corrupt democratic-centralism of the ANC which makes all ANCs subordinate to the interests and decisions of the ANC and absolutely not subordinate to the country’s interests, together with the contaminated intertwining of the country’s direct and indirect appointments of parliamentary law-makers and a Parliament only accountable to itself in the Sunday Times24:15:
The men and women who’ll rock up after the elections to be sworn in as our “public representatives” in parliament play absolutely no role in this campaign. They’re insignificant and invisible. They will get their seats as a reward for loyalty to their party, not for their service to the voters or the community. And it has stench of bribery about it. Which is why all the skelms have made it into their party lists – to buy their silence. Choice, the basis of any democracy, is next to nonexistent. The sum total of what passes foe an election campaign is a smiling face on a poster hanging on every pole throughout the country. It’s almost as if the country has been reduced to a single village or community with the same needs, grievances and aspirations.”
Munusamy25, in this context, writes25:20:
Many people lined up by the main political parties to be our public representatives are an insult to our nation. They would not even be able to run a cake sale without eating the cake themselves- or peddling the backing process to their patronage networks.
If an individual has not come to a firm conclusion about the election, that individual will do more for their country/community by not voting, rather than making a mistake.
The clincher: “Supporting the lesser of two evils is still supporting evil”.
The Zondo commission has made me realise how farcical the political system is when corrupt business people are able to control the state by simply buying off politicians and key officials.
The reason there are so many hopeless people vying to be our public representatives is because the political system is closed off to credible, capable leaders who have the potential to modernise and reimaging our future.
We have to revert to the goals of the Freedom Charter, written in 1955, because nobody can think of fresh solutions to society’s current problems.
SA has many great minds who opt to remain on the sidelines or choose to look after their own financial wellbeing rather than the good of society. So it is difficult to invest in a system that is never going to attract or shape good leaders.
Democratic-centralism makes, as said, all the ANC members (from the Number One to the lowest ranked ones) subordinated to the ANC national conference’s decisions. These decisions are again based on the ANC’s Marxist-Leninist political ideology. The outcomes of these decisions are and must be overseen at all time by the top brass of the ANC, as mandated by its politburo as represented by its Top Six executives and NEC (National Executive Committee) of eighty members. Inside this practice of blanket democratic-centralism by the ANC, there is evidence that it has allowed the development of a strong top brass (its so-called Top Six), but that it has limited to some extent the development of an extreme African-leadership syndrome (until Jacob Zuma arrived in the presidency and became the ANC’s and South Africa’s untouchable paramount chief for a while).24,26
Mthombothi24 writes in this respect regarding the paramount chief of the ANC as being associated with the Nazis and the Fascists as well as South Africa’s tribal system24:15:
Everything is centred on the party leader. He’s the fount of all wisdom. This practice has engendered the sort of behaviour or attitude that’s been prevalent in Africa for so many years, of the leader as all-knowing and omnipotent — the so-called Big Man syndrome, often corrupt and autocratic. The Big Men stay too long in power and when they are done, choose their successor, often a member of the family. Which is what Jacob Zuma almost succeeded in doing.
There is more than enough evidence that all the ANC presidents — from Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, up to Cyril Ramaphosa — had challenged as far as their powers allowed according to the ANC’s principle of democratic-centralism in their pursuit of ambitions to become the paramount chief or the “emperor Julius Caesar”, but were politically destroyed in the end. It was specifically Jacob Zuma, through his open and well-planned corrupted self-empowerment, who had neutralised to a great extent and temporarily the ANC’s democratic-centralism and its exclusive parliamentary functioning and statutory empowerment through the ANC’s politburo (consisting of the ANC’s Top Six and NEC). As a result of Zuma’s internal party coup, it has made Parliament and the executive politics of the country extreme dysfunctional, continuing to this day under Ramaphosa. Moreover, it has created in some way the idea of a true democracy framed in a Constitution of excellence, driven and managed by an effective executive team and Parliament, all under an executive-empowered President who has been totally freed by the ANC’s politburo to do his own will: meaning to take independent decisions and actions and to steer the country as he alone thinks suitable. It seems as if the false belief of the ANC’s absolute “democracy” has become overwhelmingly rooted in most of the media and public’s mindsets too.24,29
The above is only theory as long as the ANC stays in power. The ANC’s own constitution — that became the mandated constitution for the president of the ANC and thus also of the State of South Africa since 1994 — essentially nullifies Sections 84(1) and 85(1) of the South African Constitution. It makes the ANC’s politburo directly and indirectly the “head of state and head of the national executive”, nominating their elected ANC president as South African state president while the secretary-general of the ANC in the background remains the real Number One who might “recall” the state president at any time, as happened to Mbeki. Although such secretarial power did not always exist in the past in the same manner and was not as openly exercised by previous secretaries-general such as Alfred Nzo, Kgalema Motlanthe or Gwede Mantashe, we now have a new contender in the form of Ace Magashule, whose strong hands in the politburo is ever-present in the management of the ANC’s appointed state president. The relationship between Ramaphosa and Magashule may be compared to that between Mandela and Mbeki, immediately after 1994. Nelson Mandela was at best a ceremonial president and his deputy Mbeki teh “unofficial” executive president, while both were subject to direct management by the politburo. The rogue rule is: the ANC comes first and South Africa second. This type of pseudo-democratic political culture has characterised the ANC’s modus operandi in the past and will also in future be part and parcel of the ANC’s radical way of governing, as cemented in its Marxist-Leninist ideology and conditioned by its so-called false “democratic-centralism” (which in reality means autocratic-centralism).26-29
A prominent side-stepping of the law by the post-Mandela ANC leaders and followers, when the ANC brass ran into trouble as during the present crisis of integrity in the ANC — mainly created by its democratic-centralism based on Marxist-Leninist ideology — is just to continue with delinquency, while calling at the same time on the late Mandela for forgiveness and salvation. Meaningless clichés are echoed by the pro-ANCs, absolving them from the bad consequences because they have not ruled the country with integrity. Dugmore30 formulates it thus30:20: “The democratic system in our country, so hard fought for by Mandela and his generation, and which involves all our political parties, is at risk if we do not address these urgent needs.” However, never is the question postulated as to what kind democracy is referred to and why democracy is now suddenly at risk while there was essentially an autocracy in place already back in 1994.
To understand how much subjectivity is present in today’s South African politics and the existence of the misconception of the ANC as “democratic” (including its leaders) with the intention to serve every citizen, it is again important to read Mthombothi’s31 claim that the nationalist-militant’s abandonment of democratic liberties leads to fascism, which may be associated with the EFF (otherwise, he once also referred to the ANC regime since 1994 as fascistic due to its “autocratic-centralism”).
Mthombothi31 writes in this context31:19:
There are as many definitions of fascism as there are experts on the subject, but a few characteristics stand out: intolerance, racism (including anti- Semitism), misogyny, militarism, a predilection for violence, with a cult of charismatic leadership which often demands blind and unquestioned loyalty.
The EFF exhibits almost all these traits in its behaviour. The organisation is obviously not yet in power and it is therefore impossible to know how it would behave if it were to hold the levers of power. But on current evidence, the signs aren’t very good. It is aggressively intolerant towards those who disagree with it both within and outside the party.
Mthombothi31 enlightened us further on fascism in profiling the EFF by quoting Robert Paxton’s31 The Anatomy of Fascism. Mthombothi describes31:19: “…fascism as ‘a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with the community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants…abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion’.”
The above view by Mthombothi31 may be true for the EFF and its leaders, but all of those elements are clearly associated with the politics of the ANC before and after 1994: all the traits and characteristics of fascism are emblematic of the traditional ANC. In addition, every one of its leaders as presidents have displayed those traits so far and not only Jacob Zuma. Its fascism became in some way latent immediately after the ANC took power in 1994 because the New Dispensation had forced them to “behave” until they were ready to fully assume political and economic power, which we have seen emerging since 2017 by openly adopting their “autocratic-centralism”. Land grabbing and the nationalisation of the Reserve and Land Banks, Apartheid victimhood, radicalised BEE and cadre deployment are only a few concrete examples of the ANC’s Marxist-Leninist politics awaiting South Africa from 2019 if it stays in power.31,32
The ANC’s unbreakable pre-1994 radical politics (which is now being well-directed by both Ramaphosa and Magashule, notwithstanding that they are locked in a leadership-ambition struggle inside the greater ANC), which the media seems to regard as something of the past, must be specifically compared to the rather meek advent of the fascists and the Nazis via so-called “good people or labour parties”, only to capture Italy and Germany in the end through autocratic-centralism. The two blueprints are being expertly used in post-2019 South Africa. Mthombothi31:19posits:
But of course fascism as an ideology cannot be wiped of the face of the earth. Only its manifestations can be curbed or conquered. But it continues to emerge in different guises and in different countries. Although fascism is identified as a right-wing ideology, there’s no doubt that the Left has contributed to its origin. Mussolini himself, however, was unconcerned about whether fascism was located on the right or the left of the political spectrum. “We don’t give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorised by these words”, he said. But just as Mussolini, who founded fascism, is a child of the Left, so is Nazism. The Nazi Party is short for National Socialist German Workers’ Party: its precursor was the German Workers’ Party. The intention was to attract workers from left-wing parties. Nazism is short for National Socialism, which became opposed to – and hostile to – international socialism or any other creed of the Left.
The absolute striving towards self-centredness and empowerment of the ANC over South Africans (Black as well as Whites) is well described by Chilenga-Butao33 when he refers to the ANC national executive committee (NEC) lekgotla at the beginning of June 2019 where there was an effort to revive the democratic-centralist habit of the ANC’s politburo power structure against the onslaught by the “Big Man” Ramaphosa who may alone think, plan and do for the ANC. Referring to the ANC’s democratic-centralist framework, Chilenga-Butao33 pointed out that the ANC policy and resolutions, which are taken during conferences, are applicable to all its members, including the presently serving President of the country, Cyril Ramaphosa, as an ANC member.24,33
On the conflicting statements between Ramaphosa and Ace Magashule, the secretary general of the ANC and seemingly the Number One of the ANC in enforcing the post-May 2019 ANC politics directed by democratic-centralism, for example on the change of the Reserve Bank’s mandate as prescribed by its national conference in December 2017, Chilenga-Butao33:30 writes:
Thus democratic-centralism has dissipated and it has happened because the party is not putting South Africa first. The fact that these contradictory statements emerge shows that there are parts of the ANC that are trying to re-establish a form of democratic centralism by saying what they want to see happening in the country and in so doing, arm-wrestle the president into following suit. If they cannot secure democratic centralism in the party, they are hoping to turn their statements into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But these party members are also using issues such as the Reserve Bank as small battles in the ongoing war to secure their interests and power in the party and over the country. In this way democratic centralism could be used as a tactic in a much larger scheme.
Chilenga-Butao33:30continues: “…the secretary general’s statement contained the bold declaration that the ANC remains the centre of the country and policymaking” and: “This shows that the ANC comes first, especially if that means leading South Africans down the garden path of false hope”.
This ANC comes first was also confirmed when Ace Magashule contradicted Fikile Mbalula who credited Ramaphosa with the ANC’s election win by saying that the electorate did not vote for an individual like Ramaphosa but solely for the party.34,35
The above remarks by Chilenga-Butao33 and Magashule35 confirm our suspicion that the ANC comes first and the country and its people always second. This also brings the focus on the ANC’s capture of the ownership of Parliament since 1994 with its majority of votes obtained in the national elections which does not necessarily mean that the majority of eligible voters had voted for it. With the ANC’s eighty NECs and ANC Top Six’s placing of the ANC as a party and regime always first, Parliament became once more, after having been voted into government on 8 May 2019, their sole property to do with what they want, including its executive powers. The party’s interests come first with the ANC’s application of its democratic-centralism in the selection of its own MPs and MPLs and these law-makers’ sole responsibility to the ANC’s National Conference policies, even apart from the evil it wreaks via Parliament most of the time. There is no role or empowerment — or even the slightest say — for the country’s voters outside the Parliament where the ANC enjoys a vast majority. Or, in terms of the BCOEA, there is not the slightest trace of a kind of employer-employee contract to curb the ANC’s powers.33,35
Our electoral system — which as mentioned, determines that only a political party via the indirect mandate it received at the ballet box, decides and selects the persons who are going to Parliament to represent the party — fits perfectly into the ANC’s democratic-centralist style of government. This entwining of the faulty electoral system with the autocratic democratic-centralism of the ANC government, led directly to South Africa lapsing into a stupor of criminality, criminality and state capture due to the ANC system of cadre and crony-empowerment being employed, since 1994, but especially from 2009 onwards.24,36
In conclusion on the autocracy of the ANC’s democratic-centralism, it can be postulated with utter safety that it has given the ANC a monopoly on political power for 25 years, but at the same has made the ANC a failed regime and South Africa a failed state with the State President merely a figurehead inside its democratic-centralism, captured and controlled by the ANC’s Politburo.23,34
3.1.3.2. South Africa’s faulty electoral system
In the context of receiving a mandate by a political party (as the ANC has managed continuously since 1994) to rule South Africa, it must be noted that South African voters have been caught in an undemocratic voting system. It is a setup of which the ANC has taken full advantage. Ramaphosa himself seems reluctant to part from it and with good reason, because it enables the ANC through the imbalanced proportional system the power of directly selecting and appointing law-makers, without the voters or constituents having a say in who is to represent them, thereby opening the door of government to all of the ruling party’s crooked candidates. There is no opportunity for the ordinary voting public veto them except by waiting another five years and voting against them at the party level. Thus, the present proportional representation system means that MPs and MPLs are only accountable to party bosses (and are being appointed by party bosses on the party’s list) instead of by the electorate.37-40,42 Notable here is Mthombothi’s39 excellent description39:19: “…our MPs and MPLs are plain party representatives and not public representatives”.
The current system creates a total lack of public accountability by the MPs and MPLs, as evidenced many times over by the ANC’s delinquent MPS, MPLs, ministers and even a past President. This chaos, especially pronounced during the Zuma regime, seems to be a process that is going to continue under Ramaphosa.38-42
A private legal action was started in 2019 to reform the election system and to end the present skewed empowerment of the ANC through the electoral system through a court application of the New Nation Movement (NNM), a KhoiSan organisation, to change the Electoral Act (Act 73 of 1998) to make provision for the direct election of MPs and MPLs by voters. This court application was heard initially on 17 April 2019 by Judge Siraj Desai, but was rejected as not urgent. The appeal by the New Nation Movement, Chantal Revelle and the Mediation Foundation for Peace and Justice to the ConCourt was also unsuccessful. In this case Chantall Revelle of the Mediation Foundation said that at present the country was being ruled by a very small minority. Voters do not even know who are representing them in Parliament. Judge Edwin Cameron of the Concourt said on May 8, 2019 that the application was not urgent. For Cameron it was an important and prominent fact that it could take up to August 2019 to run the election if the court agreed with the applicants’ opinion and that already R36-million had been spent on the organisation of the May 8 election. The ConCourt heard the application on 15 August 2019. It must, to bring greater clarity regarding the case, also be stated that the ConCourt had already decided in terms of the financing of political parties, that every adult citizen had the right to stand as an independent candidate for municipal, provincial and national councils but that the present legislation forbade it.38-46
If legislation is promulgated to reform the Electorate Act it would mean the end of favouring the ANC in its ability to manipulate the voters and to continue its spree of looting by crooked candidates without the ordinary people having a say. Moreover, the indication is that this could bring the ANC down in the next election, if it would not have fallen in its own sword already in its governmental term from 2019 to 2024.38-46
In the context of our faulty electoral system, coming from before 1994, there is no doubt that it is keeping the autocratic ANC directly and indirectly in power. The country’s imbalanced and undemocratic electoral system, rooted in the ANC’s corrupt principle of “party interests first”, can, if not immediately corrected, benefit and advantage the Zuma-Magashule clan after 2024 and damage the Ramaphosa clan’s ascendancy immensely. It can play a primary role in the disorderly implementation of land grabbing and the activation of revolution. Our faulty electoral system of public representatives via Parliament is nothing less than the practice of autocracy inside democracy par excellence. This faulty system, together with the ANC’s revolutionary decision-making via mass opinion, had ensured that Mandela, up to Ramaphosa, and now possibly also Ace Magashule, had obtained the ability to maintain their corrupt political power via the “innocent” ballot box. It must be remembered that the controversial Faith Muthambi, Mosebenzi Zwane and Bathabile Dlamini and so on, prominent ANCs who are still in the post-May 2019 Ramaphosa regime because they have not so far been prosecuted for alleged wrongdoing (notwithstanding testimonies before the Zondo and Mpati commissions against them). They have so far avoided legal repercussions because of a well-planned avoidance scheme by the ANC’s top brass for its tainted officials to escape prosecution. Such corrupt figures are not just the face of the present-day ANC: they are, with Jacob Zuma, David Mabuza and Ace Magashule, the soul of the ANC. Democratic parties would not put the names of many of the tainted ANCs anywhere on a list, besides “wanted”. The listing of alleged crooks by the ANC for the May 2019 election and their reappointment as MPs and MPLs as well as in high-ranking parliamentary positions by the ANC, is an excellent example of how the South African political space, especially Parliament, has become toxic and dominated by the same unrepresentative and elderly politicians within the ANC elite and top brass, giving imbalanced dominance to it as a political party, writes Munusamy. It is also significant that the ruling party has less than one million members while there are as many as 37 million eligible voters outside the ANC members’ circle.23,33,34,38-42,47
Mothombothi’s39 writing is clear on the fact that if the people of South Africa could choose themselves their MPs and MPLs directly — as well as their vice-president and president — the ANC would not return to power after the May 2019 election. He writes39:19:
What would astound a visitor from Mars, for instance, would be to hear that the party responsible for these crimes and misdemeanours is set to be returned to power with a thumping majority. That doesn’t square with what democracy is supposed to be. In any other place, a party with that sort of record, especially one that blatantly steals from its people, would be consigned to the political wilderness, never to be returned in power again. And yet, instead of wearing sackcloth and covering himself in ashes as a mark of repentance, President Cyril Ramaphosa, we are told, is almost as popular as Nelson Mandela was at the top of his powers. Instead of embarking on an apology campaign, he’s already on what looks suspiciously like a lap of honour, certain that he’ll be given a mandate to rebuild what his party has wilfully destroyed.
To illustrate once more the imbalance of the Electoral Act, excluding the individual aspirant MP and MPL from becoming independent law-makers but favouring only a political party that fulfils certain prescribed regulations, we may quote the worrying remark of Judge Desai on his rejection of the initial application on 17 April 2019. Marx reports44:6: “Desai het die aansoek verwerp dat die Kieswet gewysig word om onafhanklike kandidate in te sluit en het gesê Revelle kan by ‘n politieke party aansluit of haar eie stig.”
The above remark can undoubtedly leave the view that Desai as a judge does not take an objective stance in relation to the imbalanced political advantage enjoyed by the present-day government by means of what many see as a defective electoral system out. It was and is still indeed the rejection by Revelle of the ongoing prescribed rule to be a member of a political party and to obtain a seat in Parliament through the proportional system that motivated his court application to Desai. Desai’s opinion and conclusion can in a certain context be seen as a confirmation of the constitutional correctness of the present Electoral Act. It can even be interpreted by some critics of the ANC regime and their abuse of the Electoral Act as supporting the ANC regime and Ramaphosa as president who had opposed the application by Revelle and others.38-46
For many antagonists of the current Electoral Act and the ANC’s parliamentary power, Desai’s remarks46:6: “Revelle kan by ‘n politieke party aansluit of haar eie stig”, revive memories of the old Apartheid ways of the judiciary where there was often a profound irritation with the will of the people, as well as fear by the judiciary that they could overreach by siding with the people against the politicians, risking a rejection of any judgement they did not like. Desai’s remarks could even be seen, rightly or wrongly, as a form of oppression. The individual KhoiSan and Kora citizen, who is at present without a direct say in the law-making of the country because the Electoral Act is not correctly phrased and the Constitution is incorrectly executed, may see the functioning of the electoral system and the insistance by the judiciary in defending the present Act, as political and even human oppression.38-46
Many persons, especially the minorities, who feel victimised and penalised by court verdicts, start to observe the statutory and judicial models of their country as incomplete or as a failure, paralysed by a weak chain of justice. Such outcomes can become engraved on the minds of these “physically and emotionally injured” citizens that their country’s law enforcement agencies are subjective and not fit to safeguard their citizen and group rights. Even pristine, good legal verdicts can sometimes have very bad consequences for the judicial system, essentially because they may seem to lack empathy and an insight independent from the regime’s politics.38-46 The “verdict” by Desai can set off such negative attitudes with his interpretation and order of46:6: “Revelle kan by ‘n politieke party aansluit of haar eie stig”. Revelle’s case — for her undoubtedly a case which should not be a legal failure at all — needs to be tested by the ConCourt as being correct or wrong (as the court is now in the process of doing). In South Africa’s confused politics such cardinal issues cannot be left to a single judge’s sole discretion. If Revelle’s appeal is successful, it will signal the end of a system favouring the ANC’s manipulation of the voters and their corruption spree by crooked candidates without the ordinary people having a say in who gets nominated.38-46 It seems as if the judiciary has forgotten what had happened in the past in South Africa (pre- and post-1994) when the judicial system failed to address issues affecting ordinary citizens. The editorial of the Sunday Times, dated 8 September 2019, appositely describes the ongoing series of failures since 1994, during which almost every state institution was grabbed and steered by the crooks for their sole benefit, casting even a cloud of suspicion over the judicial system’s integrity48:18:
The Zondo commission has become a permanent fixture in our lives – entertaining up to a point, but something of a pointless charade. The National Prosecuting Authority seems especially dormant at a time when we would have expected it to be in overdrive. And through all this, promises, fine words, ringing declarations. But little action.
As the situation now stands, our electoral system is a failure. It allowed a dishonest collection of MPs inside the Parliament and and time and again their crooked party managed to rule Parliament as the outcome of the May 2019 national election confirms. The words of Mthombothi49 must ring daily in eligible voters’ ears — as well as those of Desai — when he posits49:21:
Whichever way one looks at this matter, it is hard not to arrive at one conclusion: our system of government lacks proper and effective accountability. It is past time that our electoral system is reformed so that politicians are answerable directly to voters and not their parties.
It is indeed the duty of the judicial system to see to it that this happens.
3.1.4. The lack of Kantian enlightenment in a chaotic South Africa
To accuse Parliament and the rulers of 1994 to 2019 alone of being “political thieves and rapists of the statutory rights” belonging to individual South Africans is incorrect. Most of the individual South Africans were willing participants in this political orgy by shying away from applicable decision-making during elections, as the past 8 May elections confirm wherein 51% of the eligible voters stayed away from the ballot box. Moreover, they failed to vote out the ANC and enforcing the much-needed Electoral-Parliament Act. Pithouse19 relates this citizen’s passivity to Immanuel Kant’s thinking on the waking up versus the failure of self-thinking in the 1780s when Europe had been equally mesmerised.
It seems to a certain extent that in South Africa the “Kantian enlightenment” of human virtue and political empowerment that the 1994 democracy should have brought to the mass of poor and landless Blacks never emerged. Political immaturity, resulting from the so-called “laziness and cowardice” that prevent people from thinking for themselves and from engaging in constructive deeds under less favourable circumstances, prevailed for six parliamentary elections up to May 2019. It is plunging more and more of the Black supporters of the ANC deeper into anarchy, but more precisely, it is thrusting 72% of the voters outside the ANC-supporting voting population into an equal amount of chaos. This is a negative phenomenon, whereby the emergence of a newly-enfranchised class has very little effect on quality of life or levels op development but is rather exploited to further the interests of a new, revolutionary elite. This has been the case in the 1890s in Europe. The shift in power creates and strengthens the poverty, inequality and joblessness of the masses in favour of a small ruling class and group whose interests become paramount. In contemporary South Africa it manifests as well-nigh irreparable chaos.19 This condition was appositely defined by Kant when he said that the19:27: “…lack of property and the estate of direct labour, of concrete labour, form not so much an estate of civil society as the ground upon which its circles rest and move.”
The South African scenario plays out exactly as the European one did centuries ago in form of delinquent acts by the then European capitalists and their corrupt rule. The ANC elite’s organised effort to dominate the masses of poor people with its hijacking of Parliament as an exclusive ANC kingdom has parallels in bygone European class structures. Pithouse19, more precisely, writes19:27: “In other words, the bourgeois public sphere depends, materially, on the impoverishment of the people that it excludes from participation.” The European Enlightenment and its liberal idea that regards all human beings as fully or equally human, is absent in 2019 in the mindset of the ANC leadership. Pithouse19 indirectly brings Kant’s description into focus here regarding the so-called “right of the ANC to mismanage and misuse the mass of poor Blacks at the voting box and in Parliament” because the ANC alone (which is false) freed the people from Apartheid, when he writes further19:27: “In an essay published in 1793 he [Kant] insisted that property was a qualification for citizenship, and that the “domestic servant, the shop assistant, the labourer…are…unqualified to be citizens”.
To break the ANC’s so-called “anti-Kant politics of curtailment of the poor Blacks” does not seem easy. The ANC and its left-bourgeois mentality has been cemented into Parliament, something which will not be erased overnight. The ANC will not allow it, even if they need to carry out a coup d’état to stay in power. Here in South Africa – where the resistance that had led to the fall of the NP was strongly activated by the trade union movement with their Durban strikes in 1973, the community struggles that mobilised millions of people by the 1980s and their building of democracy from below in their focussed dismantling of White supremacy – that political power was hijacked from them in a deliberate way in 1994 by the already crooked ANC elite returning into the mainstream of politics. Shamelessly the ANC elite sent the true and original 1970s and 1980s fighters for democracy “back to the caves” as Pitman19:27 put it. From 1994 the ANC elite (politburo) started to exercise its dominant power “from above”, continuously via Parliament and the ballot box with false promises. This led to the maintenance of ANC political power through the misuse of its electoral vote, writes Pithouse. For Pithouse19, to reverse the present political contradictions brought about by ANC rule from 1994 to 2019, will require an immense counter-input, similarly to the one between 1973 and 1994 by the masses of Black poor. What is needed firstly, is breaking down the ANC’s power which has silenced the impoverished majority of poor Blacks for 25 years. Secondly, the ANC’s so-called legitimacy via Parliament needs to be erased, together with its many well-established cancerous roots in politics, economics and society. Only this will and can erase the ANC’s present-day misuse of Parliament.19
The lawlessness, corruption and dominance, freely appropriated by the ANC regime via Parliament over 25 years in the absence of an Electoral-Parliament Act, together with the lack of a Parliamentary Ethics Code included in the Act, thus forces three immediate questions upon us:
1) Does the ANC under Cyril Ramaphosa hav the ability to reform and to cleanse itself to serve the people of South Africa, their employer, who has appointed them?
2) May any of the promises in the ANC’s May 2019 manifesto be trusted?
3) Is the ANC able to successfully effect land expropriation with or without compensation between 2019 and 2024?
The 51% voters who stay away from the ballot box in May 2019 and the 28% of voters voting for the ANC in those same elections were willing partners in this political orgy by standing aloof from applicable decision-making during the May 2019 elections. The 72% of voters failed also, by choice, in enforcing or promoting anything like the much-needed Electoral-Parliament Act. Pithouse19 compares this passivity and failure with Immanuel Kant’s thinking on the awakening of self-thinking versus the failure of self-thinking in the 1780s. Pithouse writes19:27:
In 1784, Immanuel Kant argued that enlightenment is the emergence from the immaturity that results from the laziness and cowardice that prevents people from thinking for themselves. He asserted, against forces in the state and church, the imperative to respect ‘the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters’.
Kant’s enlightenment sorely escaped the attention of the mass of 30 million poor Blacks. They are strangers to the concept of freedom and individual self-determination: they are strangers because they are delinquently kept there by the ANC elite’s cunning and devious actions. Looking at the ANC’s continuous strengthening of their grip on power over 25 years, it seems the electorate is going to remain captured for many years to come. Given the absence of political reasoning and constructive public debate by the masses outside Parliament and their blind support for a hard-core ANC regime over six elections, one may have serious misgivings about the future of South African democracy. Voter apathy and blind support for the ANC will ensure the continuation of corrupt politics post-May 2019, together with the shameless misuse of Parliament.19,23
3.1.5. The much-needed “sifting mechanism” for political leaders
Kant’s enlightenment not only escaped the attention of the mass of 30 million poor Blacks, but seemingly also that of educated South Africans. What specicially stands out regarding the more learned section of the population, is their fixation with the Constitution as the only means of law-enforcement as regards political practice in country and how the President is selected and elected. The implications and impact of the Electoral Act on politics are disregarded. This Act and the Constitution of the ANC display a totally undemocratic process in the selection and election of the President, which goes against the grain of liberal democracy. It is not a new trend but a custom and policy that has been followed since 1994. It indeed shows that the Electoral Act must dramatically be revised together with the Constitution to make provision for a much-needed sifting mechanism in the selection and election of executive political leaders, meaning the process. The current politically-laden, undemocratic system in the selection of the President was well-illustrated by the tainted Jacob Zuma’s election in 2009 via the ANC’s national conference system which excluded the say of the majority of South Africa’s voters. The lack of understanding of the indirect, non-voters’ election of the President and the skewed process of his selection as leader, may be seen in the recent opinion by Taylor50 in which he defends the election of the President solely “in terms of our so-called liberal democracy as gestalt by the Constitution”. This postulation of Taylor50 is far from the truth and an utmost misunderstanding and a misleading view of our real politics. [The practice of the election in the selection of law-makers of the Parliament, as well as that of the vice-President and the President, was already fully described in the previous two subsections: ANC’s democratic-centralism ideology (See: 3.1.3.1.) and the South Africa’s faulty electoral system (See 3.1.3.2.) and will only shortly be referred to again].
On his so-called “direct democratic selection and election by the voters of the President in terms of their so-called assumed liberal democracy and Constitution”, Taylor50 writes as follows50:20:
The essence of a democracy is that political power flows from the people (the demos) and the people alone. We and no-one else get to decide who will be our president. Every five years parties give us their lists of candidates, we go to the polls and we elect our representatives on the basis of proportional representation. Any of us can put up our hands to be a representative, to be the president, and the demos will vote on our candidacies; there can be no other criteria, no other sifting mechanism. Anything else isn’t democratic.
The constitution has two primary philosophical functions. The first is that it provides the rules for how the temporary transfer of power from the people to representatives works: in other words elections, the structure of parliament, separation of powers and how, for example, the will of the people is realised in the choosing of a chief justice.
The second function is to place restrictions and obligations on how our representatives operate during their five years tenures. Traditionally, human rights serve as barriers against repressive state action. They are lines in the political sand: the state cannot restrict our speech, it cannot deprive us of life, deny our religious beliefs or force religious beliefs upon us, and it cannot prevent us from organising ourselves in unions, associations and political parties. We can hit the the streets and insult our “leaders”. Moreover, human rights ensure equality in law: that none of us is superior to another.
Looking critically at the last (third) paragraph of Taylor’s50 postulation, it is a pile of unrelated philosophical rhetoric which has nothing to do with obtaining and maintaining good executive political leadership. It must be ignored, together with the philosophical postulations of paragraph two. Only then may we focus on Taylor’s resistance to a sifting mechanism to select and elect the President, which boils down to the notion who sees himself fit for office may stand to be elected as President. Paragraph one contains a contradictory element where he praises the proportional representation system of the present Electoral Act, while he seems to be oblivious to the ANC’s policy of democratic-centralism. In the current setup the ANC’s delegates/representatives of less than 4 000 at its national conference select and elect the ANC leader who at the same time becomes the President of the RSA. Furthermore, it must be noted that the ANC has less than 1 million inscribed members out of a ±57 million population (representing less than a 2% ANC impact) and out of a ±35 million eligible-voters population (representing less than a 3% ANC impact). In the May 2019 elections, only 49% of the total eligible-voters population actually voted. Of this 49% only 28% voted ANC. What Taylor50 further missed, is that in many of the modern liberal democracies, as inscribed in their Constitutions, it is compulsory for all their eligible citizens to register and to vote in elections. This statutory shortcoming in our so-called “excellent” Constitution contributed to the fact that 51% of the eligible voters did not take part in the May elections. This absence of an established liberal democracy is part of the conundrum which has contributed to the ANC having been the sole ruling party since 1994 at the national level. The current President, Cyril Ramaphosa, cannot claim to be elected democratically, neither can the ANC pride themselves on being a democratically elected regime representing the total population.50
South Africa needs a sifting mechanism in the choosing of its executive political leaders on all levels written into the Constitution which states certain clear pre-requirements, for instance a minimum educational qualification and a clean integrity certification. The last-mentioned should include any alleged crimes and misdemeanours under investigation and of course a life-style audit. At the moment the ANC “clearing” rests on its so-called “integrity” committee’s decisions as well as the “approvals” of the Top Six and the NEC of the ANC (the so-called ANC politburo). The lists of candidates to which Taylor refers and where for instance the ANC put up their eligible candidates, were tainted by alleged criminals and even murderers. As many as 22 candidates were alleged to have been tainted and many went back to Parliament, not only to be law-makers, but were promoted into senior parliamentary positions. Jacob Zuma would not have qualified if an official sifting mechanism had been in place when he ousted Thabo Mbeki in 2009 to become President. Likewise, Cyril Ramaphosa would not stay a day on as President after the Public Protector’s finding that he misled Parliament about the R500 000 “gift to his election campaign” from the corrupt company, Bosasa. Central its policy of launching crooks into high-level political executive positions — at least for the ANC as a party and regime — is its “declaration” that “no-one is guilty before having been prosecuted and sentenced by a court of law”. The secretary-general of the ANC, Ace Magashule, via the decisions of the ANC Caucus’s Political Committee, the ANC’s General Council and the ANC’s Integrity Committee, made this standpoint clear in the ANC’s reappointments of tainted ANC-leaders in senior positions in the post-May 2019 government. Integrity only counts for the ANC top brass when they are locked up, an outcome that is not easily reachable when it comes to the ANC’s top leadership in post-1994 South Africa. The ANC’s top brass knows it well and rides the crooked judicial system. How crooked the leadership of the ANC has become but still qualifies today in terms of the proportional representation to be included on its tainted lists of parliamentary candidates, has been the subject of multifarious comments by various political analysts and commentators.50-53
Gumede51 identifies ten untouchable groups that must first be tackled before the rule of law and good politics may be restored. Such groups should be eliminated from the regime’s inner circle and positions of power and influence, which they owe precisely to the ANC’s democratic-centralism and our faulty electoral system that lacks a leadership-sifting mechanism. Here he identifies as the primary untouchable group the ANC’s own corrupt but senior politicians at national, provincial and local level, who flaunt their power and corruptly acquired assets and live ostentatiously on public resources.51
But this ideal outcome propagated by Gumede51 is easier said than done, because the ANC’s democratic-centralism and our faulty official electoral system has been rooted in the ANC’s politics and has been expertly used since 1994. It allows someone such as Ace Magashule to evade the law for his alleged delinquencies. Munusamy writes52:20:
ANC secretary-general ACE Magashule can claim to be a victim of a “fake news media conspiracy” because the National Prosecuting Authority has not been able to formulate a case against him despite myriad illegal activities during his term as Free State premier. The line between wrong and right is indistinct.
Gordhan57, referring to the crooked outcomes between 1994 and 2019 resulting from the ANC regime’s veto of any merit system when it comes to leadership appointments, posits57:19:
The past decade has been characterised by the paralysis of law enforcement agencies to act against corruption, the looting of state coffers, the catastrophic dismantling at the South African Revenue Service (Sars), and rise of a parallel security state targeting political opponents of the state capture project.
Gumede51 similarly comments on the state of lawlessness resulting from ANC cronyism and the lack of any mechanisms to select leaders of integrity by saying51:20:
Allowing political, criminal and business gangsters to remain seemingly untouchable, strutting around arrogantly while ordinary citizens live in fear and poverty gives the sense that SA is out of control, lawless and leaderless.
On 28 June 2019 Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng50 saw fit to allude to the anarchy surrounding so-called “state capture” and its concomitant corruption, as revealed by the Zondo and Mpati Commissions. In a speech to corporate South Africa at the Sunday Times Directors Event in Sandton, he posed the following pertinent questions50:20:
How do we choose leaders? Who qualifies to be a leader? Is there a sifting mechanism of sorts? Isn’t it desirable that, for starters, before you can become a president there are very stringent requirements to be met before you can even begin to run?
It is significant that Mogoeng50 too, is proposing the establishment of some kind of sifting mechanism for political leaders, not only internally by the political parties themselves, but also officially by the state. The power of politicians and rulers to shape the fate of the country is simply too great to leave to mere chance, and requires them to be at least morally “fit for office”. It is clear that South Africa’s so-called “liberal democracy” and its Constitution are not foolproof and is open for exploitation by dishonest politicians.50
Taylor’s50 subsequent reaction to the above questions by Mogoeng50 may be seen as not only inapplicable, but inappropriate. It borders on bad faith when he writes50:20: “What is a problem is that chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng doesn’t like our democracy.” In the same breath he continues his attack by addressing justice Mogoeng directly in an open letter as follows50:20:
Chief justice Mogoeng, you are a functionary of the people, not a paramount leader. Your function is to ensure that political power remains with the demos and that means, at the very least, that we are the “sifting mechanism”. We choose our representatives through the electoral process and they rule at our pleasure. Our vote is the most stringent criterion because, ultimately, political power belongs to us.
Looking critically at Taylor’s50 criticism of Mogoeng, it was exactly because of Mogoeng’s position as functionary of the people that he as a justice had put the questions. Taylor50 uncritically places his faith in the act of voting itself, forgetting that in many totalitarian states voters have for years voted in corrupt dictators, whether coerced or not.
Not anyone of us should have the automatic right to stand for political office: every aspirant candidate needs to be scrutinised for a lack of integrity and education. Without such a pre-selection, democracy is absent and freedom misused. It is important to note that for all statutory professions there are pre-requirements in terms of training and integrity to be able to register and practise for instance as a doctor, an attorney, etc. These registrations are further subject to compulsory renewal yearly as long as the practitioner wants to stay on the roll. Negligence and personal deviances/delinquencies may mean the removal of the professional practitioner’s name from the roll and the end of his ability to practise. In comparison, the careers of philosophers, etc. are not seen as statutory professions and anyone, without the slightest training, may practise it. The status of the self-styled philosopher or the well-learned philosopher does not differ very much from the status of the postdoctoral philosopher. Politicians, especially political leaders, are appointed to high-level positions as law-makers, which make them nothing less than statutory professionals. This makes an official sifting mechanism for politicians urgently needed in a future South African political system. If such a system had been in place since 1994, the Zondo and Mpati Commissions would not have been needed today.50
The above also has a direct bearing on Munusamy’s54 absolute need for lifestyle audits to expose corruption among those whom she called our all-too-easily-tempted-politicians [to which may be added: all-too-easily-elected-politicians]. The argument here is that there are always some politicians who want to live above their means and are therefore amenable to corruption, as well as narcissism, writes Munusamy54. More precisely, there are undoubtedly people directly and indirectly in politics using their positions to access additional sources of income, varying from crooked contracts, bribes, up to donations for election campaigns and the corruption around it, in order to enrich themselves, as well as to ensure their selection to positions of great political power. The best means of applying checks and balances to politicians is through official and rigorous lifestyle audits. It must be comprehensively applied not only to an aspirant politician, but also all of his/her associates such as for instance the companies, trusts and his/her secret donors who are giving to his/her election. The so-called Act on Privacy must not play a role in safeguarding crooked politicians from investigation and the state agency evaluating a candidate must have the right to use all means available, from the SAPS to the NPA and SSA, etc., to gather information in detail. The ANC itself has promised since 2016 to introduce lifestyle audits for ministers, government officials and leaders of public enterprises. Indeed, last year Cyril Ramaphosa pledged that everyone in the government including himself, would undergo them, reports Munusamy54.
Featuring prominently in Munusamy’s54 proposal, is the strict requirement that all MPs and MPLs should also be audited. So far, regarding the ANC’s talking the talk but not walking the walk, nothing has realised. Indeed, as previously said, if these law-makers’ audits had been done since 1994 (when persons with serious criminal records were allowed into Parliament because of their exoneration from doing “evil” as result of “Apartheid’s evil”), South Africa would have been saved the current need for running commissions on state capture and crooked VIPs. It would also have saved Ramaphosa the unnecessary and embarrassing attention of the Public Protector concerning his 2017 Nasrec election campaign. Moreover, it would have set in motion the much-needed evolution of the ANC’s economic policies, cemented as they have been in democratic-centralism which emanates from its pre-1994 years and its communist past. As a result of its iron grip on power in South Africa, 86 members serve in the ANC’s autocratic politburo (representing only 2% of the ANC-members) who have never had a lifestyle audit so far and of whom some are even regarded by the ANC’s Integrity Commission as seriously tainted.54,55
Regarding the findings of the ANC’s own integrity committee, these are often rejected in favour of keeping corrupt politicians in office. Commenting on this tendency, the political commentator Justice Malala writes96:
These leaders of the ANC past and present don’t believe they and a large chunk of the electorate are bound by the laws passed by its parliament and enforced by the organs of state: the police, the prosecutorial services and the judiciary.
It’s not just at national level. It cascades down through the entire ANC. Two weeks ago it was reported that the ANC in Gauteng had rejected its own integrity commission’s recommendations to remove several members, including two who are linked to the VBS Mutual Bank scandal.
The integrity commission in Gauteng, headed by Trevor Fowler, recommended that the mayors of Merafong and the West Rand be fired for their complicity in taking ratepayers’ money and unlawfully, despite clear legal advice, depositing it into VBS. They broke the law and they did so knowingly. Yet the ANC in Gauteng, which for the past 10 years many of us gullible fools have been calling “the enlightened ANC”, chose to defend them. As Mbete said, they see things differently in this ANC. They do not see the rule of law.
The above absence of an official sifting mechanism of politicians before being allowed into executive positions, such as lifestyle audits for the ANC politicians seeking parliamentary positions (besides the utter failure of the party’s integrity commission described by Malala), is deeply rooted in its strong democratic-centralism. Its primary aim and intention is the gobbling up of any challenger or opposition to its well established Marxist-Leninist model of power maximisation and permanent rule. As Feketha56, Munusamy54, Gordhan57 and Padayachee et al.55, already showed in some way, Professor William Gumede58 of the School of Governance at Wits takes further, in depth. Besides the ANC’s adherence to and continuing practice of its rigid pre-1994 revolutionary ideology to maintain undisturbed democratic-centralism, Gumede also points to the use by the ANC’s top leadership of racism and “Black victimhood” to secure their position of political power over the last 25 years. The intertwining of three insidious elements led directly to an ANC-sanctioned culture of state capture, corruption and mismanagement while constant, internalised malfeasance created a culture of unaccountability and irresponsibility. In fact, irresponsibility and unaccountability might be described as an insouciant “lifestyle” in its own right. This in turn makes the implementation of lifestyle audits impossible and the 2016 intention of Ramaphosa to introduce it, tantamount to hypocrisy: On the contrary, it became a topic for the top brass to avoid, because it endangers the established democratic-centralism (autocracy) of the ANC and thus will nullify the top brass’s autocratic rule over the greater party, Parliament and the country. Such autocracy is a revolutionary tradition, habit and custom, which has been internalised in the ANC mindset since its terrorist days. It is a system that Mandela, up to Ramaphosa, brilliantly uses when their power is endangered from within the ANC as well as from outside. The same strategy is applicable to Jacob Zuma, Ace Magashule and David Mabuza fighting at present in the ANC for the autocratic soul of the party.54-58
Gumede58 elaborates further on the functioning of the power structure within the current ANC58:16:
The ANC is guided by democratic centralism, where every member has to obey central decisions and where leaders vet even the lowest-level appointments. These are among the reasons why corruption flourished in a system where everyone must support the party leadership, no matter whether it is wrong, incompetent or corrupt. “Deployment” to government or to the private sector is based on loyalty and struggle “credentials”, rather than ability and competence.
There is the belief that the party laws are above those of the country, even above individual conscience. Many ANC members and supporters would rather follow the party line. They uncritically support party leaders. When corruption is exposed, the party faithful close ranks.
In a centralised party system, a small group can capture the party and wield power over life, careers and public resources.
They made centralised decisions that were accepted as edicts. They appointed loyalists to every level of the party and government. They were uncritically supported by the rank and file, under the rubric of loyalty.
The deputy-general of the SACP, Solly Mapaila, has argued that the use by the ANC’s politburo of democratic-centralism-cum-autocracy to develop a predatory state, has been well hidden inside their pretended implementation of Black economic empowerment over the years. This has led to disadvantage the Black majority while propping up a few politically connected politicians.56
On the intention of the ANC politburo to maintain at all times its policy of democratic centralism, rendering the introduction of an honest lifestyle audit, independent of the ANC’s corrupt party politics, impossible, Gumede58 shows how White racism (citing Apartheid going all the way back to 1652) is seen by the politburo as a danger to Black nationalism. He writes58:18:
Many ANC supporters often still back leaders, issues and politics almost exclusively on the basis of race. US scholar of race Cornel West, in a differing setting, warned about reducing every issue to “racial reasoning”. When an individual is corrupt, all one has to do is to claim racism, and people rally emotionally to that person. Misplaced black solidarity often demands closing ranks behind dubious personalities.
If a white person rightly criticises a corrupt black person, the corrupt person is embraced. Misplaced struggle solidarity has the same effect. If a non-ANC person, or an opposition party member or supporter criticises a corrupt ANC leader, the corrupt ANC leader is protected. If a black person is doing the criticism, he or she is a “puppet” of whites as “white monopoly capital” and “selling out” their race.
This organised racial politics of the ANC in assuring its corruption, etc., but most of all its’ politburo’s absolute autocracy, also streamed since 1994 out of its so-called democratic centralism into the cognition of “black victimhood”, sanctioned further the ANC’s politburo’s right to can do anything wrong because it “services the Black-nation”.
Gumede further enlightens us58:18:
Black victimhood also encourages corruption. It appears that almost every wrong government decision, failure and poor policy made by current leaders is blamed on apartheid, colonialism or conspiracies by the white elite or hostile Western countries.
Black leaders in government and the private sector are increasingly using colonialism, apartheid and Western “imperialism” to cover their incompetence, mismanagement and corruption. Many African leaders and government have cynically promoted the idea of Africans being victims. This easy option numbs creative thinking. It means that leaders and governments can shrink their responsibility to voters. It has also made it difficult to hold leaders and governments accountable for wrongdoing, lack of delivery of delivery and corruption.
The introduction of the much-needed “sifting mechanism” in the selection of ANC political leaders and the doing of a lifestyle audit on them as “preached” by Cyril Ramaphosa in 2016, will and can never be executed in terms of uncontaminated and responsible international evaluation criteria. When looking at the many tainted top ANC members in the present Ramaphosa regime “because they have not yet been found guilty in a court of law”, Ramaphosa’s own inexplicable and seemingly desperate efforts to keep the donors to his 2017 Nasrec leadership campaign secret at all costs via the court provides a prominent example. His use of the permanent, age-old, ingrained trick of “stretched values” in the selection of the ANC’s leaders, makes it clear that the testing of the concepts of goodness, integrity, honesty, responsibility and accountability has never been internalised in ANC political culture and will probably never be internalised in the future. They refuse to face accusations in public to prove their innocence. The abuse of the South African courts for civil cases to silence accusations has become the order of the day for many ANC leaders to ride out accusations and allegations. Prominent here is the court order obtained by the suspended chief financial officer (CFO) of the Sol Plaatje municipality, Lydia Mahloko, who had interdicted the Northern Cape’s local governance executive committee members (MEC) from tabling a damning investigation report which recommends that she be criminally charged for flouting supply-chain management processes during the procurement of a fleet, including the purchase of the mayoral vehicle. The mindset of the ANC politiburo is saturated with autocracy as guided and practised by means of democratic-centralism, racism and Black victimhood. Magashule, Zuma, Mabuza and Ramaphosa’s political activities reflect all the manifestations of these syndromes. If Ramaphosa already has a problem with the Public Protector’s elementary investigation of the donors and the “movement and end-allocation” of their so-called “sincere gift money” for his 2017 Nasrec election, what will his counter-attack look like when she launches a full lifestyle audit on him, starting in 1980, and scrutinising every cent he generated as well as from whom, for which service delivered?54,58,59
3.2. Evaluation guidelines for political parties
3.2.1. Overview
The successful execution of the post-2019 land-reform issue is undoubtedly dependent on the abilities, integrity and sound cognitive thinking, planning and implementation by a so-called “good” government, together with a “good” leadership in whom integrity and Solomon’s wisdom are essential characteristics. This means a regime that is not blindly on a path of “reaching the goal at any cost” but to effectively achieving an end-result regarding the matter, which would be a success. This requires a regime honestly serving the interests of all its people by following a well-drawn-up roadmap for an orderly land-reform initiative, and steering it into reality.
The essential question here is thus whether the ANC can be theoretically deemed a candidate or may be shortlisted and thus be considered to have the leadership potential to ensure the successful implementation and completion of the post-2019 plan on land expropriation.
The evaluation guidelines for political parties, as already used in the previous Articles 9 (EFF) and 10 (DA) will precisely be re-used to evaluate the ANC as national, provincial and municipal rulers. These guidelines on the ANC are:
- Its general policies as well as specific standpoints on issues such as respect for law and order, as well as the fighting of corruption, state capture, the behavioral delinquency of its MPs and MPLs, as well as its top leaders, in addition to the party’s and its leaders’ views on land expropriation without compensation, etc., as evidenced by its manifesto for the 2019 election;
- Public criticism for the period 1994 to 2019 in newspapers, etc., evaluated and reflected by political analysts, strategists and commentators on the party as a political organisation, its members’ and leaders’ behaviours and actions such as corruption, state capture, as well as the behaviour-delinquency of MPs and MPLs, top brass leaders, their views on land expropriation without compensation, etc., as well as the party’s internal organisational conflicts, and controversial political, economic and social views and opinion.
3.2.1.1. The Louw Appraisal Checklist
For the quantitative classification and measuring of the political records of the ANC, the Louw Appraisal Checklist to Assess the Leadership Qualities of South Africa’s Executive Political Leaders and Regimes: 1652 to 2018 will again be used.60 The 82 selective items of the checklist on leaders and governments, quantified in terms of its bad-versus-good-classification, was again applied to all information collated in the literature review of the party’s manifesto and the writings of investigative journalists, political commentators and political analysts and interpreted as the researcher sees applicable. For guiding the gathering of the information on the ANC, the approach used with the EFF and DA, is again set out as follows for better understanding, namely:
1) The Curriculum Vitae (CV) to obtain insight into the candidates’ qualifications, experience, extraordinary skills, etc; and
2) The letters of the referees, the Attestations, to offer, firstly, further insight into the qualifications, experience, etc. of the candidate; and secondly, at the same time give us confidential insight into the good versus bad habits, customs, characteristics, etc., of the candidate, that are well-masked in, or absent from the CV. This referee-data mostly informs us well regarding the “goodness” or “badness” of a candidate, which can make him in the end a failure or a success in the handling of the responsibilities of the post.
In this research the manifesto and self-description offered by the ANC and its leaders will be seen as their CVs. Hereto the public reporting by journalists and other sources will be seen as the letters of referees/references or attestations. The account or verdict awarded to the ANC as a capable and skilled ruler able to successfully execute land reform, will only be calculated in terms of the Louw Appraisal Checklist60 at the end of the final article in the series (article 20).
3.3. African National Congress
3.3.1. Overview
The manifesto, self-descriptions and public referees of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF: Part 1) and the Democratic Alliance (DA: Part 2) have already been published in the previous two articles (9 and 10) under the title: “Critical evaluation of the three main political parties’ capability to steer successful land expropriation in post-2019 South Africa”.
The manifesto, self-descriptions and public referees of the African National Congress (ANC: Part 3) will be published next, also under the above general title.
It is an open question if the ANC, “mandated” by the voters as the post-2019 government of South Africa, can truly drive the intended land expropriation as an enterprise with honesty and integrity, to bring it to a successful end? Issues that immediately come to mind are the skills, abilities, integrity and capabilities of the ANC as a regime and as a party, together with the skills, abilities, integrity and capabilities of its elite and leaders. Primary among these is the important question of integrity and whether they might be trusted by voters to exercise their mandate. Integrity is not limited to a single plane: it is comprehensive, including social, economic, personal and political trustworthiness and honesty. Looking at the ANC’s pre-2019 regime record, when comparing it with the prerequisites of Patricia De Lille’s61 list of the seven conditions (which she formulated in her Good Party manifesto for the 8 May elections) which a so-called good government must fulfil too, it clearly fails all of these seven conditions. (Notwithstanding this failure, De Lille joined as minister in Ramaphosa’s cabinet!) The problem here is that the ANC’s election manifesto and its 1994 to 2019 behaviour as a regime did not adhere to the cognitive mindset, the psyche, the culture, customs, traditions and habits or the ability to distinguish between good and bad government. It means that if pre-2019 ANC behaviour is repeated in post-2019 South Africa, good governance will stay an unattainable dream within ANC politics. A successful land expropriation plan thus equally unattainable.61-63
The general ANC manifesto can give us some clue as to what positive or negative elements may be expected from the regime for the period 2019 to 2024.
3.3.2. The general ANC manifesto
Regarding the ANC’s general manifesto for the May 2019 election, launched in January 2019, Derby62, Hunter64 and Kgosana63 point out that it was again saturated with a mass of empty promises of more and better work, better health and education, and contaminated with populism. Missing, however, was prudence. The manifesto further reflects some conflicting views, opinions and mostly, hostile commitments: a Ramaphosa version and a Magashule-Zuma–version, contrasting with each other on issues of cardinal importance such as nationalisation, etc. The coexistence of these two versions and a seemingly growing split in the ANC’s general as well as specific politics (which seems to be purely a leadership struggle rather than a true fight around political principles according to many analysts) are still continuing at the close of this article on 31 October 2019.62-64
Kgosana63 described the ANC’s general manifesto, after an in-depth analysis of it, together with a history of the regime as from 1994, as follows63:17:
The manifest failures of the ANC’s manifesto are all around us: The same bright, shiny, shameless promises are repeated each election, never to be actually met.
More specifically on the ANC’s manifesto, Kgosana writes63:17:
Yes, the ANC has done a lot since 1994. Building infrastructure, electrifying homes, connecting people to clean water, ensuring near universal access to basic education. But these achievements are negated by a bloated and uncaring bureaucratic system, corruption, incompetence and indifference. After the nightmare of the Zuma years, the ANC has to do a lot more than repeat empty promises.
Derby62 takes us closer to the “political darkness” inside the ANC soul, as reflected by its manifesto, when he comments62:2:
In a still-precarious position, there’s simply no room for the ANC — or, I’d add, any party looking to lead after this year’s polls — to veer far off a script that speaks of fiscal prudence. The party has blown the surplus position it had more than a decade ago; it has hired all the public servants it can hire and doled out all the political favours it possibly can. On the last one, we can only hope, right?
It will be interesting see what the manifestos still to come will offer as solutions to what’s now a stale tale of woe. And thereafter we‘ll have to wait for the “Naas Botha” commentary that follows to drum up uncertainty. A state, I am starting to believe, that is inescapable for any functional democracy.
Built into the ANC general manifesto for the May 2019 elections must be read the party’s poor track record coming from 1994, writes the editor of the Sunday Times on 10 February 2019. Specific stands here as reference President Ramaphosa’s Nation Address (Sona) in February 2019. Putting into perspective the many promises of Ramaphosa (which had seemingly become a habit with him still nearly six months after the elections) to improve education, accelerate the economy and return the country to the rule of law, etc., it was clear that neither Ramaphosa as a leader, nor the ANC as a party and regime, have what it takes to deliver from 2019 to 2024 what it has promised. South Africans have heard many promises from the ANC’s executive leaders from the same podium as the one that Ramaphosa used in February 2019. The editor of the Sunday Times in this context writes65:16:
Who can forget Zuma’s first promise in 2009 after his election as state president a few weeks earlier? At the heart of our worst recession, Zuma stood in front of the nation promising to create 500,000 jobs every year. He never delivered, despite repeating this promise of creating jobs every year of his nine years in office.
Ramaphosa’s reign has so far echoed Zuma’s failed actions, however much his clan wants to manipulate the truth in their stand-off with the Magashule-Zuma clan, which has now become a daily cry from the Ramaphosa camp to the public to take these myths and lies for the truth.65
Note what Jacob Zuma himself said in April 2019 around the hypocritical “virtue” of the ANC after 1994 — seemingly “anointed” and innocent as an angel just descended from Heaven — in his ANC May election roadshow promoting the ANC’s general manifesto by describing all the post-1994 wrongs under the ANC (wherein the ANC and its elite was the sole governing party) to be simply the after-effects of Apartheid. Cele66, in this context, reports66:8:
He lauds the party for being honest; admits that there had been some difficulties in fixing the wrongs made by the oppressors, saying that it cannot happen overnight. When you vote for the ANC, you vote for a car that is already en route, you don’t vote for a car whose road worthiness you are unsure of. There is no one who can say that the ANC has not worked for its people.
Zuma is not alone in this cloud of empty promises and dreams. The political figure Cyril Ramaphosa also stands out in his empty pre-election promises and undertakings, writes the labour-relations journalist Terry Bell67. Bell refers to these many promises as outlandishness, which he defines as meaning: looking or sounding bizarre. Specifically on the political, emotional and spoken manifestations, Bell writes67:2:
Extravagant – outlandish – promises are the stock of the political elite as they seek the votes to install them at the parliament trough.
Take the guarantee by President Cyril Ramaphosa that the ANC would build 1 million new houses in Johannesburg‘s Alexandra township within five years.
One million houses? For a population of anything up to 500 000 people living on 800 hectares of land, which, government admits, has the infrastructure to only cater for 70 000 residents? The mind boggles.
And older residents, among them trade unionists who were part of the militant Alex anti-apartheid resistance of the 1980s, have heard it all before.
As recently as 2001, former president Thabo Mbeki announced a R1.6 billion Alexandra renewal project that promised between 50 000 and 66 000 new homes within seven years. What happened to the money and the project is still being investigated.
This outright misleading and false information can already give us an indication of what to expect from 2019 to 2024 from the ANC in most of its endeavours of which addressing land ownership will be the most important. In this context the question is how can any person mislead himself so immensely as to accept his own lies as the truth? Political manipulation and empty promises may be part of the politician’s stock-in-trade, but the ANC has take it to a new level, comparable to some of the more outlandish, to use Bell’s term, promises and predictions made by African dictators such as Idi Amin or Mobutu Sese Seko.
Looking critically at the content of the ANC’s manifesto for the May 2019 election, much of it consisted of the recycling of old ideas, as well as failed outcomes disguised as doubtful successes: it says really nothing of constructing a future and bringing value to the people of South Africa. Looking more broadly at what the text of the manifesto tried to address — such as, for example, the erasing of poverty, inequality, unemployment and the maintenance of a capable state, etc. — these are indeed hackneyed themes during ANC rule from 1994 to 2019. These problems were mostly exacerbated by the ANC itself through its immense mismanagement, such as the theft of state money belonging to the poor by the ANC’s cronies. It was only repackaged for ANC propaganda during the May 2019 elections, not so much as to bring healing, but to present their failures as the results of Apartheid, deflecting from ANC wrongdoing. The political researcher, Thokozani Chilenga-Buta33, also sees the endless repetition of the ANC’s populist themes in the run-up to the May elections, when he writes33:30:
Though these are nice ideas, they are not new. They were punted in the National Development plan (NDP) which was endorsed by Parliament in 2013. At the time the ANC had the full support of Parliament, including opposition parties, to implement the ideals of the NDP.
These problems and failures created by the ANC regime, lacking as always a constructive effort to address and solve them at least in some way, were also reflected by the lekgotla of the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) at the beginning of June 2019. Chilenga-Butao states33:30:
“That in 2019 the NEC lekgotla is propagating the same old rhetoric — without saying why it thought these ideas had failed to be implemented since 2013 — is a major deception.”
3.3.3. The Ramaphosa manifesto
Ostensibly in an effort to imprint his own powerful status upon the minds of both the ANC and the public, Cyril Ramaphosa also published his own pre-May 2019 manifesto. (This was clearly seen by some analysts, firstly as an attempt to undermine the ANC’s democratic-centralism wherein every member, including the President of the South African state, is subordinate to policy and resolutions taken during its conference, and secondly as a direct effort at that time by Ramaphosa to call attention to his saviour-status in his leadership conflict with Ace Magashule, the secretary general of the ANC).
The best reflection of a self-description (and of a CV) of the present-day ANC’s intentions to shamelessly mislead the public and dishonestly recruit of voters after 25 years of corruption and failed governance, were the nine paragraphs below containing the ANC’s general political manifesto and its president’s seemingly politically confused mindset.33,72.73
This manifesto, emanating directly from Cyril Ramaphosa’s belief-system and political mindset, does not sound different from that of Jacob Zuma. Ramaphosa’s message to South Africans to vote for him and the ANC was published on 17 March 2019 in both the Rapport and the Sunday Times respectively. It reads72:9 and 73:2:
Mede-Suid-Afrikane/ Fellow South Africans
Die toekoms van ons land is in die hande van diegene wat die meeste daarvoor omgee. Jy, die stemgeregtigde/ The future of our country is in the hands of those who care about it the most. You, the Voter.
‘n Hernude gevoel van trots – en ‘n nasie vol verwagtinge – berus op die punt van die pen wat jy op 8 Mei 2019 sal gebruik om jou stem uit te bring/ A renewed sense of pride – and a nation bursting with expectations – sits squarely at the tip of the pen that will be using to make your mark on the 8th of May 2019.
Bring dus jou stem uit vir die party wat met dieselfde passie as jy in hernuwing glo/ So, make your mark for the party that believes in renewal with the same passion that you do.
Die party wat ons nasie se toekoms vooropstel in sy hart en ‘n regering wat ‘n gespesialiseerde teen korrupsie-eenheid gestig het/The party that has our nation’s future foremost in its heart and a government that has put in place a specialised anti-corruption unit.
Die party wat daarop aangedring het om die Zondo-kommissie te stig om staatsopname bloot te lê en te vernietig/ The party that insisted on setting up the Zondo Commission to expose and destroy state capture.
Die party wat die proses gelei het om weereens die Suid-Afrikaanse Inkomstediens (SARS) gekry het om volgens wêreldgehalte te funksioneer/The party that has led the process of once again getting SARS working at its world class best.
Die party onder wie se leierskap, ‘n nuwe leierskap van die National Prosecuting Authority, daargestel het/The party under whose leadership, a new leadership of the National Prosecuting Authority has been put in place.
Die party wat die vermoë van die regering herstel het om dienste billik aan almal te verskaf./ The party that is restoring the ability of government to provide services fairly to all
Op 8 Mei 2019, maak ‘n onuitwisbare merk vir die toekoms van vernuwing wat Suid-Afrika verdien/. On the 8th of May 2019, make an indelible mark for the future of renewal that South Africa deserves.
Maak jou merk/ Make your mark.
Stem ANC/ Vote ANC.
Saam Sal Ons Suid-Afrika Laat Groei/ Let’s Grow South Africa Together.
[Signed] Cyril Ramaphosa
President van die ANC/ President of the ANC
3.3.3.1. Analysis of the Ramaphosa manifesto
The above message firstly needs to be analysed before the ANC may be considered as a potential ruler (an employee), mandated by the voters (as the employer within our scheme) effect land expropriation with or without compensation. The above nine paragraphs consist of at least eleven misleading items and untruths: it seems to be clear here that in Ramaphosa’s political mind, as in that of most of the ANC’s top brass, myths have become truths after their 25 years of unfettered rule and extreme power.72:9
The use of the words “renewed, renewal and restoring” is striking, confirming that the ANC itself has recognised that its political integrity, actions and deliveries from 1994 to 2019 have been sorely lacking, apart from its corruption, negligence and mismanagement.72:9
Referring to a renewed feeling of pride, the “renewed” and “restoring” confirm that the period 1994 to 2019 was undoubtedly a period of constant despair and of loss, experienced by the nation exclusively at the hands of the ANC regime. His specific reference to the renewing of the ANC is an acknowledgement by him of his outright failure, as well as that of his party between 1994 and 2019 to fulfil their mandate of providing good government. Pertinent here is the literature which confirms that the ANC’s mindset and behaviour became totally focussed on internal matters with serious wrongdoing and a culture of delinquency.72:9
Ramaphosa’s reference to the repair of the ANC is again an admission of guilt that the ANC was in 2019 a failed party and a failed regime, overseen by equally failed leaders since 1994: A party that would not be trusted or allowed again as the post-2019 government if a sifting mechanism existed. Ramaphosa’s pleading for the rehabilitation of the ANC above reminds one of the empty words of a confirmed psychopathic criminal, asking for forgiveness for his bad actions to society and to be allowed back amongst them, knowing well he is just going to continue with his serious delinquencies, being conscious that his bad character cannot be changed for the better. To speak like Ramaphosa of his party who had put the nation first/foremost from 1994 to 2019, is an utter lie and a hoax. Firstly, the chaos in our economics, the extreme poverty of 30 million Blacks, criminality and corruption, etc., by the ANC elite and their cronies have long ago erased the concept of nation from most South Africans’ minds. The promise to restore the ability of the government to provide services to the citizens, who are the people (employer) who had appointed them, is nothing else than the acknowledgement that never after Apartheid had there again been any services of average standard offered by the ANC, or when sometimes offered, limited to short periods after 1994 and limited to the ANC’s favourites. Secondly, when Ramaphosa speaks of the concept of a nation, he, for vote-gathering, clearly deviated from his party’s previous classification of Whites as non-Africans and as colonists respectively and thus not part of the ANC’s nation concept.72:9
Ramaphosa’s bragging as to the establishment of a specialised corruption unit must let him feel giddy: Who was the ruler from 1994 to 2019 and who was vice-president under Jacob Zuma when the immense corruption, which Ramaphosa now “promises to erase”, started to develop and to reach a climax: the ANC and Cyril Ramaphosa. The founding of the specialised corruption unit is indeed meant to catch the ANC’s elite (although the prosecuting outcome is far from that). Ramaphosa’s specialised corruption unit failed so far at the closing of this research on 31October 2019 to bring to book a single one of the ANC’s top elite who had been identified by the Zondo or the Mpati commissions. With the establishment of the Zondo commission, notwithstanding the fact that it was conducted under the chair of an excellent justice with high integrity, Ramaphosa knows well that is toothless and a masked instrument to strengthen his position against the Zuma-Magashule clan in the hope of underminging their power in the ANC and within the party’s NEC after 2019. It is about his own power struggle and not improving the lot of the voters or that of the country.72:9
For instance, his so-called renewing of SARS means one thing: SARS (the South African Revenue Service) collapsed solely under ANC rule and is still struggling post-May 2019. Evidence suggests that SARS is miles away from rehabilitation and a positive restart. Also Ramaphosa’s stumbling with the NPA as renewed by the appointment of a new leader who has bettered it, is far from the truth: there is a new leader but so far no real high-ranking culprits identified by the Zondo and Mpati commissions, have been arrested.72:9
A further element in the above, is an effort to rehabilitate the ANC and its elite, after their disastrous rule of 25 years, through Ramaphosa’s plea of “please forgive the ANC top brass their failings”, a hint of despondency in Ramaphosa’s message, without saying it directly, that there had been an immense collapse in the ANC from 2009 onwards. The investigative literature offered by many journalists and political analysts prominently point to Jacob Zuma as the so-called “culprit”. This misleading thinking was also confirmed and promoted by the ANC’s head of elections, Fikile Mbalula74 (a prominent Ramaphosa fan), when he notably said74:4:
We have baggage from an era of a president who was not providing leadership but was associated with all the bad things. Literally everyone influential in the republic never believed in the leadership of former president Zuma,
and74:4:
Zuma affected our image because he was viewed in relation to state capture as the president of the country and the ANC, and that caused damage to the ANC”, as well as: “But now we have a new head of state who is doing good things because it is the new dawn, a strategic era that we are in.
Mbalula, as well as Ramaphosa know well it is not true: both Mbalula and Ramaphosa were prominent ANC leaders during the Zuma administration and did nothing constructive to stop Zuma and his cronies.72,74
In reaction to Mbalula and the Ramaphosa clan’s above political folly, all that can be said is that it seems as if Ramaphosa and the ANC were misleading the public with the Ramaphosa manifesto. Just read what Danny Titus75 writes about the ANC circus of fools and crooks — and possibly indirectly reflecting also on the Ramaphosa manifesto — when he posits75:19:
Die politici skud hul vere reg om straat toe te gaan met hul basuine: “Stem vir my, daai ander ouns is net ‘n klomp robbiese!” Enige erkenning oor korrupsie of hoe om dit op te los? Bloedweinig. Enige verwysings na korrupsie en die impak daarvan op doodgewone mense, die kiesers? Vergeet maar daarvan.
Titus75 refers to “election talk” and suggests that there are lies and subterfuge involved in propping up the ANC’s charade of a “free and democratic South Africa”75:19:
Konstrateer daarmee die vetgesmeerde katte van die politiek en die bedryfslewe, luister na die verkiesingspraatjies en dan sien ons die daaglikse leuens waarin in die vrye en demokratiese Suid-Afrika gelewe word.
It seems, reading the Ramaphosa manifesto (as well as the general ANC manifesto), as if even the President of the ANC and President of South Africa, does not understand the meaning of Titus’s specific pinpointing of the serious consequences of the ANC’s corruption between 1994 and 2019 and how the ANC regime cold-bloodedly crooked the innocent and most vulnerable citizens of South Africa over 25 years of their rule. Titus refers in this context to a United Nations report on the impact of corruption on basic human rights (which undoubtedly includes South African) that shows up the many contradictions in the Ramaphosa manifeste and the general ANC manifesto, as well as the illogical thinking of the ANC top brass on good governance. Titus75 states, regarding the devastating effects of corruption under ANC rule75:19:
Korrupsie is ‘n skending van menseregte, ‘n skending van ons Grondwet. Die reg op voedsel, huivesting, gesondheidsorg, die reg op lewe – dit word daagliks geskend deur munisipalteite, provinsiale en nationale regerings. Nie deur onbevoegdheid nie. Die skending vind daagliks plaas deur korrupsie wat ons land soos dryfsand ingesuig het. “Poorest of the poor; inequality; poverty and unemployment” – dié rympie hoor ons nou al jare. Deur volksverteenwoordigers wat willens en wetens hul kiesers belieg en bedreig.
How much the promises of the election manifestos of Ramaphosa and the ANC on the eve of the 8 May 2019 election were devoid of truth, was at last confirmed by Ramaphosa himself when he responded in June 2019 (after his inauguration as President) on the criticism levelled against his Third Sona and his unrealistic dreams by admitting that neither he nor the ANC regime could fix the country’s problems, mostly created by the ANC themselves, in the next five years, or even in ten or more years. He want so far as to admit that there were no shortcuts or quick fixes to solve the problems he had promised in his election manifesto to fix fast.76
Ramaphosa’s manifesto message is not worth the paper it is printed on: it is built on myths and deception. Contradicting the exclusive guilt of Jacob Zuma since 2009, is all the evidence that the ANC has been a failure from 1994 to this day during which Zuma was only one of a mass of corrupt ANC leaders. It is time that Ramaphosa obtained better insight into his “virtuous ANC”, as well as himself as a so-called beloved, good paramount-chief and as an extraordinary saviour to make post-2019 South Africa a success. Looking at his part in the Zuma regime, up to his present actions in the ANC, it is doubtful if he could ever obtain that insight.72
Ex-President Kgalema Motlanthe77 (who had served as interim president from September 2008 to May 2009 and who had also been secretary general from 1997 to 2007 and the party’s deputy president from 2007 to 2012), warned Ramaphosa in public on his foolish election campaign — specifically his promises, but seemingly without impact before the May elections. Firstly, he tells Ramaphosa that he is not the anointed politico-messiah to save the dying ANC, or to save the post-May 2019 South Africa. What Motlanthe77 apparently tried to say was that the ANC is terminally sick. Until the ANC will be finally deceased, the ANC and its leaders pose great dangers for post-May 2019 South Africa’s democracy, economics and the rights of its people. The ANC stayed an opportunistic revolutionary party to this day. The Ramaphosa manifesto confirms it in an exemplary way.77
3.3.4. The extravagance, outlandishness and bizarreness characteristic of some ANC politicians’ mindsets
The seeming extravagance, outlandishness and bizarreness characteristic of some politicians’ mindsets, which were reflected in the run-up to the May 2019 elections by some of the parties’ manifestos and which spell danger for the South African community post-May 2019, became in some way at last understandable when Siyahleba68 introduces us to the weird world of politics with his description of the origin of the naked ambition of politicians. Siyahleba writes68:2:
Delusion of grandeur is the fixed, false belief that one possesses superior qualities, such as genius, fame, omnipotence or wealth. It is most often a symptom of schizophrenia, but can also be a symptom found in psychotic or bipolar disorders, as well as dementia.
Then Siyahleba68 goes on to describe a certain person in the ANC. But looking critically at the ANC’s elite’s delinquent actions in general, it seems as if Siyahleba’s68 formulation is also applicable to some of the ANC’s other leaders, as evidenced not only by their false promises to the voters, but also by their false behaviour in politics over the period 1994 to 2019.
These bizarre promises in reality extend wider as regards the ANC’s elite. Knowing for instance all too well that their Alexandra Renewal Project was a failure, primarily because of their maladministration as ruling party, intertwined with their corruption and theft of state funds. Moreover, the despair created by the ANC regime, commencing in 2006 as a result of their failed Alexandra Renewal Project, is in the process of being steered into serious and comprehensive civil unrests.69 It signifies an identity struggle inside the soul of the ANC. When evaluated in-depth, the ANC leader’s psyche reflects the confusion of a soul in peril, resulting from decades of changes and exposures to new constructive elements, far away from the old, unstable liberation and revolutionary elements. It seems to fit into Siyahleba’s68 theory of schizophrenia, psychotic or bipolar disorders, and dementia. The ANC top brass display more and more delusions of grandeur and faith in a make-believe world where their false promises become realities, good outcomes that are going to realise, that they are geniuses, and that they are the only anointed persons who can save the country and its people. The so-called “big man syndrome” but then in the form of elect saviours.70
The above shows how the strong or “big” men of the ANC have received the entitlement to rule, unobstructed as “anointed” leaders of the liberation party (“…and in a Zuma way, until Jesus comes back to the earth”, according to his famous dictum), cognitively unaware that they are not political geniuses and did not receive mandates for autocratic rule in terms of the extreme and dangerous mood-swings of their minds. These leaders see themselves as “keepers of the liberation heritage”, which they used first and foremost to ensure their own self-preservation as the party’s elites. The whole approach to stay in power is done by means of false propaganda to members, supporters, voters. They became messiahs whose false words and integrities no-one may dare to doubt, as the many political fallacies of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and now apparently Cyril Ramaphosa adhere to in their self-confident belief in their own “good” leadership and their so-called “sincere love” for the population, reflect very well.70
Makhanya71 further unmasked this false liberation ideology offered by the ANC leadership in their political manifestos going as far back as 1994. Hereto the promises from pre-and post-May 2019 of the present ANC leader Ramaphosa are central – namely, as a good leader and still a keeper of the ANC’s liberation heritage, he could make promises in the May elections to voters notwithstanding the failure of the ANC’s liberation after 1994. Regarding the fallacious promises of the ANC and thus also Ramaphosa’s promises as its leader which will and cannot be realised after 8 May 2019, Makhanya informs us71:2:
…those who are drunk on Ramaphoria must wake up from the stupor and recognise that the work that must be done is arduous and that the messiah is someone who watched passively from inside the cockpit as Zuma willingly navigated the ship into stormy waters. The man may be our leader for the next five years but he will not be our saviour [especially not through his promises].
How the ANC’s leadership has projected itself during the May 2019 elections to its supporters and voters as “good” and assured the voters that in the past they have only been doing good and that they are going to do only good in the future for them, as well as being the keepers of the future democracy while at the same time in the ANC backroom contradictory thinking and corrupt actions were going on, is pointed out by Bell regarding the ANC’s silent promulgation of their “Bantustan Bill”. Here, in an effort to keep their rural supporters for at the expense of the poor rural Blacks, the ANC’s Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Bill as well as the Traditional Courts Bill (which were for obvious reasons were not a public part of the ANC’s “election promises” in their manifestos) are on the verge of being signed into law, writes Bell67. On the dangers that these two Bills are holding for the innocent and uniformed voters if they become laws – and thus after the ANC leadership’s glowing promises before 8 May, Bell reports67:2:
“Together, they reinforce the Bantustan Balkanisation of the country and remove from the general rule of law some 17 million people who live in what the apartheid state called ‘tribal homelands’.”
3.3.5. Past, present and future South African scenarios
Looking back critically at the 1994 to 2019 political history of the ANC, there are certain signs of growths, developments and actions which show constancy and which form the basis for being able to offer generalisations on the actions to be expected from the ANC post-May 2019. The outcomes flowing from these generalisations may be positive or negative in the end. But, as history’s Joker often does, he can make the post-May 2019 political scenario suddenly and unexpectedly look totally different from the pre-May 2019 scenario. Such an outcome may disturb South African politics dramatically and drastically. To a certain extent we must note it and make preparations for the future, even for “political joking” or unexpected developments in post-2019 South Africa. In the next subdivision a summary of past, present and future scenarios, offered by political analysts, is presented.
3.3.5.1. Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection’s Indlulamithi Scenarios for 2018 to 2030
Makhanya71 reports on the indicators of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection’s Indlulamithi Scenarios for 2018 to 2030. These scenarios envisage three primary paths for what Makhanya in summary calls the post-Zuma-South-Africa. He writes71:2:
One was when the inequality grows and resentment spills into unprecedented protests and even a mini revolution.
The other envisaged a prospering ‘nation in step with itself’ where we returned to our core values of a caring and pro-poor constitutional state that could even achieve a 4.5% growth rate.
The third was the ‘floundering false dawn’ scenario, in which the promise of renewal in 2018/2019 becomes a mirage, leading to lost hope, social upheaval and state repression in the new decade.
Makhanya71 continues (and warns) on the above-mentioned third scenario’s outcome as follows71:2:
This scenario imagines that whatever new optimism you might find now turns out to be false optimism and instead what we discover is that the extent of corruption, mismanagement, nepotism and cronyism is deeply embedded at provincial and municipal level, further extending far beyond the echelons of government or the private sector.
Unless we act and stop looking for messiahs, this is the scenario that is scariest. Dashed hopes are ingredients for toxic recipes.
3.3.5.2. Bloomberg Misery Index
In line with the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection’s Indlulamithi Scenarios for 2018 to 2030 are the findings of the Bloomberg Misery Index also with a negative classification of South Africa.78
Focussing on the pre-2019 versus the post-2019 South Africa, according to the Bloomberg Misery Index (calculated as the sum of a country’s inflation and unemployment rates with its forecast as of 11 April 2019), South Africa joined Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey, Greece and Ukraine as the most miserable countries out of 62 countries worldwide. This marker shows that South Africa, with its high (negative) index of 32.4 against Thailand’s low (positive) index of 2.1 and Switzerland’s index of 3.1, displays the presence of intense economic stress and scant progress in taming price-growth and getting people back to work. Moreover, it confirms the chaotic politics of the country, which characterises unstable regimes such as those of Venezuela and Argentina where corruption, nepotism and dishonest are prominent daily phenomena.79
3.3.5.3. International Risk Report of the World Economical Forum (WEF)
The International Risk Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF) identified at its meeting in January 2019 in Davos ten possible negative outcomes (in line with Makhanya’s high political risks for South Africa after May 2019). Theo Venter78, a political analyst of the North West University, defined the following 10 negative attribues of sub-Saharan Africa78:17:
- Werkloosheid;
- Mislukking van nasionale regerings;
- Energie-prysskokke;
- Verval van kritieke infrastruktuur;
- Fiskale krisse;
- Mislukking van finansiële meganismes of instellings;
- Mislukking van streekstrukture of instellings;
- Waterkrisisse;
- Voedselkrisisse; en
- Onbeheerbare inflasie.
Essentially the ANC regime, up to 8 May 2019, had failed to get a clean audit on any one of the above ten markers. Venter shows that the biggest risks for South Africa post-2019, in terms of the International Risk Report, are the following: The failure to maintain the national, provincial and local government structures and the undermining of their functioning by ongoing state capture, nepotism, corruption, politicking, etc., meaning outright poor governance and a lack of political integrity. Confirming Venter’s78 warnings is the fact that only 18 metro (local) authorities, out of 257, received unqualified Treasury audits in 2019. Relevant here are the constant failures of the SAPS/NPA for a decade or more to curb corruption — forget about removing it from society and from the lifestyle of the ANC regime. Hand on hand with these, also goes the failure of the ANC regime’s police force to eliminate crime from daily life.78.80
The above analysis by Venter, done in terms of the findings of the International Risk Report, reflects the extreme social instability and the increasing collapse of critical infrastructure which are absolute needed on a daily basis for especially the poor and landless community to live and survive (such as the provision of water, electricity, roads, basic healthcare, basic education, etc.). There are indications of dissatisfaction turning into a possible physical reaction against the ANC regime. Prominent here is the countrywide evidence of unrest, acute anarchy and at times behaviour bordering on acute revolution. This present social chaos, that seems to grow instead of diminishing, confirms the status of a well-established, chronically dysfunctional regime that may trigger outright revolution.78
For example, confirming Venter’s78 analysis, is the evidence of how chaotic the provincial government of the ANC all over the country has become, failing the people who voted them into government. To cite but one instance: after the May 2019 election, storms tore through KwaZulu-Natal so that many villages in the southern-most part of the province still do not have access to clean water today. In response to this chaos, the DA’s councillor for Ward 2 in the Ugu area described this failure of delivery and maintenance to 175 000 inhabitants by the ANC-associated municipality as follows81:14-15:
We have a water crisis here but we don’t have a shortage of water. There is no drought. Other than this current crisis the production of water is fine. The real problem is a dereliction of maintenance and last-mile reticulation: getting water to people’s houses. This is a threat to our society and the people to blame for it are the Ugu council. It’s a failed entity — you can’t bleed R10-million a month and claim you are a going concern.
Reflecting this kind of in-depth failure under the ANC government oversight and rule, and the immense misuse of tax-payers’ money, is the fact that the Ugu municipality received a qualified audit from the auditor general for 2018-2019 over unauthorised expenditure amounting to R243 billion. For 2017-2018 the auditor gave Ugu a similarly negative rating because of the municipality’s inability to account for property and equipment valued at R4 billion. Harper and Verasamy81, as well as Harper82 consider this disaster as just one example of the many failures of the country’s ANC-ruled municipalities to get water to the people.81,82
Venter78, Harper and Verasamy81 further debunks the ANC’s claims when it comes to municipal government and providing “services to the people”81:14-15:
Government says that about 95% of people in South Africa have “access” to water. But, in the Ugu district, access only means that there is infrastructure. It does not mean that water flows out of taps and brings life. By its own admission, the national water department says that about a third of households don’t have regular clean water. That’s 20 million people.
Noting the fact that out of a total population of 57 million as many as 30 million South Africans are utterly poor, more or less 30 million of them are jobless, and more than 15 million are living solely on monthly social grants, the Ugu district chaos speaks volumes about the path of disaster onto which the 28% of the eligible voters, who thoughtlessly voted for the ANC in the May 2019 elections, had willingly placed themselves from 2019 to 2024, together with the other 72% of non-ANC and passive voters83-86.
3.3.5.4. Bawa reference
Khadija Bawa87, a researcher at the Social Justice Coalition in Khayelitsha, Cape Town points out the failure of effective policing in the country and the lack of policing to ensure the personal safety of the individual citizen. Her critical analysis shows that such conditions are often created by the ANC’s poor and failing management at the national level of essential services such as the South African Police Services, which spiral downwards into local mismanagement, thereby creating chaotic living and housing conditions in informal settlements. She recently stated87:8:
South Africa is one of the most violent countries in the world. That violence, however, is not experienced at the same level across the country. Year in and year out South Africa’s statistics reveal that poor, working-class, urban and semi-urban, and predominantly black police precincts carry the greatest burden of violent crime.
Why is it the case that in historically demarcated, still predominantly white areas police patrols are visible while in historically demarcated coloured and black areas they aren’t?
Bawa87 describes the siege of Coloured and Black living areas by crime further by showing the role of poverty and landlessness which had forced jobless Coloured and Black people to live in these informal crime-ridden settlements. The lay-out of these areas, lacking any national governmental support and infrastructure, further exacerbates the already sub-standard policing in such poor settlements. Again the failure of the pre-20019 ANC regime stands out, extending over a period of 25 years, to supply stable living spaces for these unfortunate poor and landless people and to ensure a permanent income for them as promised before elections. She writes87:8:
Even though the lack of visible policing can be blamed on the police service and local law enforcement, other governmental departments are failing these communities, and the police, by not delivering services. The lack of built environment interventions in areas of high informality, have a direct impact on the safety and security of residents.
3.3.5.5. Harvey reference
The political commentator and analyst, Ebrahim Harvey88, reflects specifically on the context of the present-day badly neglected mass of poor Black people in the country — going as far back as the then young people whose role in the so-called Black student uprising of 1976, together with the Black workers in the trade unions and members of various Black communities country-wide, had, through their anti-Apartheid actions, made a decisive impact on the liberation politics of pre-1994 South African and brought the ANC to power in 1994. However, after 1994 these groups were immediately sidelined by the ANC elite and are still today being excluded by the ANC inner circle from being uplifted in a supposedly bettered South Africa. Harvey writes as follows88:8:
Unfortunately, both these major constituencies of the ANC suffered most from the neoliberal policy regime the ANC adopted after 1994.
Harvey88 further elaborates on this post-1994 failure of the ANC — correctly described as “Black-on-Black discrimination and exploitation” — when he posits88:8:
We can see the negative effects of those policies in many areas of our society, but most notably in the very high unemployment rate among the black youth, the protracted problems in all spheres of education, and the serious lack of infrastructure and social justice in townships where by far most still reside.
A walk through most black townships in the country shows starkly the horrific extent of these problems.
Any study of the reasons why youth face these serious problems point to the effects of neoliberal policies, a related serious lack of funds, the incompetence of ANC members deployed to various sites of education, and an increasing corruption within all levels of government.
On the educational failure of the mass of poor Blacks by the ANC regime, specifically during the pre-2019 period and which is going hand-in-hand with the above suppressing and “crashing” of the development and empowerment of poor Blacks that have been advertised by the ANC regime since 1994, Harvey88 sees the role being played by some of the governing party’s affiliates88:8:
There is no doubt that the South African Democratic Teachers Union, strongly linked to the ANC, has in many respects done the youth at schools a huge disservice. Incompetence, corruption and irresponsibility in its ranks have had a blistering effect on our schools and learners.
Harvey investigates this contaminated political environment further and deeper in his writing when he hints that this failure has the potential to activate in these youths’ minds in the post-2019 politics of South Africa a vicious circle of mass obstruction, unrest, anarchy and passive revolution. The existence of dissatisfied, hostile and aggressive youth makes them potential candidates for recruitment by radical groups in South African politics, such as the EFF.
He refers specifically to th EFF’s hostility to racial minorities and its support for a radical land grab. The EFF seems to regard minorities as so powerless and numerically insignificant that they may be insulted or provoked at will. According to Harvey,
People from these “minorities”, which EFF leader Julius Malema in particular likes to attack in his speeches, are not going to always sit back and allow the EFF to attack and walk over them.88
However, there are radicals in the ANC too who share the Afro-Marxist ideology of the EFF. The same radicalism is openly reflected by the left-wing of the ANC, as evidenced by the Magashule-faction (in which the Zuma clan features prominently). Their use of racialised demographic statistics in inviting confrontation with minorities is similar. The possibility therefore exists that in post-2019 South Africa both the EFF and a faction within the ANC could unleash markedly racial confrontations in various social settings. Harvey writes88:8:
I often feel that this distinct danger is steadily gathering pace in many political and social settings. This country, given an immensely violent history and many unresolved social issues, is deep down a tinder box which can explode in their own hands at any time.
The reaction of the minorities may be much more severe in relation to the ANC as opposed to the EFF, given that the ANC is the sole ruler of the land, notwithstanding that it seems to be a very divided party. A blueprint has been laid since 1994 for anarchy and revolution. Anarchy and revolution are waiting to explode in post-2019 South Africa and this may be laid at the door of the ANC’s corrupted elite politics.88,89
3.3.5.6. Mohale reference
Bonang Mohale90 is the chief executive of Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA). He claims that post-2019 South Africa is politically and economically grinding to a political and economic halt. Positive growth seems to be absent, while transgression has become the rule of the country’s politics. He formulates it thus:
There is no doubt that collectively, we have not succeeded in eradicating the legacy of apartheid and the 350 years of colonialism; the economy is on its knees; young black graduates roam the streets hopelessly; inequality has widened; racism is at an all-time high; public schooling is broken; public schooling is broken; public hospitals fail the poor and vulnerable; crucial infrastructure is in decay; lawlessness is rife.90
The rhetorical question is: Why would the ANC change its delinquent and corrupt habits if has managed to obtain parliamentary majorities six times in a row while getting front-page cover for its succession of financial and other scandals from 1994 until now?
The alleged pervasive corruption of the ANC as a political party and as a regime, including many of its leaders, making them gangsters and serious delinquents, has become a feature of South African life. Closely associated with this is the imminent land grabbing, defined as “land expropriation without compensation”.89,90
3.3.5.7. Andrew reference
Andrew91 draws attention to the ANC’s chronic delinquency and corruption, starting from 1994. Similarly to many other political analysts, Ken Andrew, who also happens to be a seasoned politician, puts it clearly that the ANC’s rot did not start with Zuma: the country become mired in a culture of immense corruption, even post-1994, especially on the level of the ANC’s top leaders, which Zuma merely made bigger. The ANC’s rottenness is clearly identifiable from 1994 when it became the ruling party with its many delinquent actions such as theft, corruption and mismanagement around issues like Sarafina, the arms deal, the improper enrichment of the ANC’s front company, Chancellor House, and the dismantling of the Scorpions long before Zuma’s presidency.
The economy went into decline long before Zuma, directly because of poor policies and failed profile building with foreign countries, etc. Andrew also points out that the Eskom debacle was born before Zuma because the ANC lacked even back then a constructive electricity policy. The implementation of inappropriate affirmative action policies at Eskom by the ANC forced out able technical staff. State capture started officially in 1997 with the ANC National Conference’s decision in favour of the deployment of ANC cadres in all spheres of government and state institutions, including the judiciary. Other ANC actions undermining good governance, identified by Andrew91, are the introduction of bad educational policies such as outcomes-based education, the closing of teachers’ training colleges, the voluntary severance packages given to educationists in the late 1990s and the kowtowing to the South African Teachers Union via Cosatu as a partner in the ANC’s corruption and mismanagement.91
3.3.5.8. The Mthombothi view of an ANC permanently drunk from the alcohol of corruption
Mthombothi92 writes in July 2018 that the “ANC is drunk from the alcohol of corruption”. One outcome of chronic alcoholism is causing extreme mental confusion. In the ANC’s case it has clearly has severed its contact with political, social and personal decency and justice. But the ANC’s habitual corruption has not stopped after 8 May 2019. Mthombothi92 predicts that the ANC’s deviant behaviour, extending back to 1994, is going to spill over to post-2019 South Africa with serious consequences.92
The best evidence for the ANC’s condition as a failure and a drunkard through corruption, crooking and political mismanagement is the testimony in March 2019 on the contemporary ANC psyche by ex-President Kgalema Motlanthe77. For Motlanthe, the present-day political integrity of the ANC is the lowest it has ever been since it took power in 1994 and the leader Ramaphosa is unable to effect rehabilitation.74,77,93,94
Motlanthe77 traces the immense inability of the ANC to act as a competent and qualified ruler of post-May 2019 South Africa, back to its clear record of delinquency which stretches over 25 years of misgoverning and utter corruption. More damning on the ANC’s inability do good at any level of government in future after May 2019 and the immediate need for the ANC to disband in order to end its wrongdoing, Hunter77 conveys Motlanthe’s77 opinion on the chaos in the ANC as follows77:4:
[Motlanthe had said that]…he believed that the ANC could only change if it died in its current form and was reborn as a grassroots movement.
Fikile Mbalula, one of the current politburo members of the ANC and at present a minister in the Ramaphosa cabinet, himself admitted the immense mental and political pathology inside the ANC. On this deep-rooted crookedness in his own ANC, which Mbalula describes as an in-depth cancerous infection which needs an equally in-depth treatment, he said95:4: “… you can’t clean a sore without going deep into it — just dressing the wound won’t help”.
The ANC’s infected sore goes to the bottom. To be honest: it is advanced cancer; it is in its brain, body, stomach, its heart, its psyche, its soul. Many political analysts, together with Mbalula and Motlanthe, have put forward the question if the ANC can be rehabilitated, or if it has the potential to “rescue” itself from its own immense wrongdoing, let alone its promises to rescue South Africa! The evidence suggests there is no hope of rehabilitation for the ANC. The ANC became more than a habitual drunkard guility of serious delinquent behaviour; it became a habitual criminal.74,77,92-95
Note: The evaluation and discussion of this division (3.3 African National Congress) will be continued in article 12 under the subdivision: 3.3: The African National Congress: Perspective 1994 to 2019.
4. Conclusions
It is clear that the current South African political system, continuously run by the ANC regime for 25 years, has been captured by an autocratic ideology in which the party’s Marxist-Leninist leanings maintain and steer its democratic-centralism. The right of the individual voter counts minimally while the ANC politburo has consolidated most available power, making the ANC’s constitution more applicable to governing the country than the South African Constitution.
The pre-May 2019 election promises of the ANC, specifically those of Cyril Ramaphosa, to rectify all South Africa’s ills quickly and completely, more and more seem to be lies and myths. The scenarios, reflecting the immediate present, as well as the future awaiting South Africans, are coming across as very problematic, mostly portending a decline in economics, politics and social cohesion. It seems as if the fallacious belief in the ANC’s absolute “democracy” is overwhelming rooted in most of the media’s and public’s mindsets too.
The Code of Ethical Conduct and Disclosure of Members’ Interests to regulate dishonest conduct by law-makers is insufficient. Prominent is also the faulty Electoral Act, as well as the absence of an Electoral-Parliamentarian Employment Act and an Electoral-Parliamentarian Ethics Code as contributors to the establishment of the ANC as the sole regime over 25 years. These legal short-comings seem to be the primary causes of the ANC’s national election victory in May 2019 during which only 49% of the total eligible voters participated and the winning party received only 28% support of those eligible voters. The ANC’s re-election as ruler for a sixth term of another five years (2019 to 2024) was an immense error. It was tantamount to political fraud in the first class.
In the next (Article 12), titled: “Critical evaluation of the three main political parties’ capability to steer successful land expropriation in post-2019 South Africa: Part 3-The ANC in perspective (12: Prosperity)” the ability of the ANC to take care of the land expropriation matter in terms of its empowerment as ruler it received after the election of 8 May 2019, will be further evaluated.
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PEER REVIEW
Not commissioned; External peer-reviewed.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The author declares that he has no competing interest.
FUNDING
The research was funded by the Focus Area Social Transformation, Faculty of Humanities, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, South Africa.
UNSUITABLE TERMS AND INAPPROPRIATE WORDS
Please note that I, the author, am aware that the words Creole, Bantu, Kaffir, Native, Hottentot and Bushman are no longer suitable terms and are inappropriate (even criminal) for use in general speech and writing in South Africa (Even the words non-White and White are becoming controversial in the South African context). The terms do appear in dated documents and are used or translated as such in this article for the sake of historical accuracy. Their use is unavoidable within this context. It is important to retain their use in this article to reflect the racist thought, speech and writings of as recently as sixty years ago. These names form part of a collection of degrading names commonly used in historical writings during the heyday of apartheid and the British imperial time. In reflecting on the leaders and regimes of the past, it is important to foreground the racism, dehumanization and distancing involved by showing the language used to suppress and oppress. It also helps us to place leaders and their sentiments on a continuum of racism. These negative names do not represent my views and I distance myself from the use of such language for speaking and writing. In my other research on the South African populations and political history, I use Blacks, Whites, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaners, Coloureds, KhoiSan (Bushmen), KhoiKhoi (Hottentots) and Boers as applicable historically descriptive names.