The Democratic Alliance’s alternative ”People’s Assembly” held at Parliament on Monday appears to have highlighted growing resentment against the African National Congress in some sections of the coloured community.
The DA, and most other opposition parties, boycotted the official People’s Assembly in Kliptown, Johannesburg, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter.
They maintain the R5-million spent on the celebrations should rather have gone to poverty alleviation. As an alternative to the Kliptown celebrations, the DA staged its own event in the Old Assembly Chamber.
”It hurts so much to see how the government is dividing the different shades of black in the communities,” former ANC member Elize Tally told the gathering in the Chamber.
Tally, a former ANC member for 32 years and Congress of SA Trade Unions shop steward, said she swapped allegiances when the promises of the Freedom Charter seemed not to apply to her home at Netreg near Valhalla Park in Cape Town, and other coloured communities.
”I am black but not black enough for the ANC,” she said, accusing it of only providing houses, employment, and food to black ANC ”comrades”.
Describing a community torn apart by gang wars, poverty, disease and hunger, she explained how even the police officers living in Netreg manufactured drugs to make ends meet.
”The ANC spent how many thousands on the Kliptown festival when so many are starving. It’s unfair,” she said.
Tally said she had also spent time in prison for the ANC, but now they were in power she had been forgotten.
”I am black but not black enough for the ANC,” she said.
Mzuvukile Mfengwana, from Crossroads, also accused government of not doing enough for the poor.
Quoting from George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, Mfengwana likened the ruling party to the ruling pigs in the story and the poor as the hard working farm animals.
”The hardest working people in this country are the poor of this country. For us poor people it takes guts to wake up in the morning,” said the self-described ”squatter camp businessman”.
While both he and his wife ran businesses, legislation and opportunity did not ”recognise” them because they lived in shacks.
”I am free only in black and white. I don’t feel the freedom,” he said, warning that if the ANC did not pull up its socks, opposition parties would take over.
Concluding the meeting, DA federal chairman Joe Seremane said the ANC had failed to honour the Freedom Charter.
”Our four speakers here today, and the communities they represent — the communities of Crossroads and Valhalla Park — have been forgotten by the ANC.”
He said the ANC’s Freedom Charter celebration in Kliptown was nothing more than the launch of their local government election campaign.
Highlighting a list of ”broken promises”, Seremane said the ANC had reneged on its People’s Contract to create work and fight poverty.
”So while the people of Crossroads and Valhalla Park — and indeed people right across the country — suffer the consequences of the ANC’s broken promises, the ruling party is spending enormous amounts of taxpayers’ money on launching its election campaign with the Freedom Charter as its manifesto,” he said. – Sapa