It came as no surprise to read reports of African National Congress hoodlums throwing chairs and half-bricks at the mayor of Cape Town, threatening her with knives, all because she dared to enter Crossroads, an area deemed to be ‘no go” for white politicians. Such brutish behaviour is becoming sadly typical of the ANC, now that the malignant ecstasies of power have metastasised to every organ in the beast.
Last weekend, the Sunday Times ran as its lead story details of the newest drivel to emanate from the ANC’s Premier of the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rasool, who bragged that his mission in life has now become the dislodging of Helen Zille as mayor of Cape Town. In the forlorn mixture of base invective and garbled reasoning that Rasool seems to believe constitutes coherent debate, he raved on like an enraged schoolyard bully.
Such statements from Rasool are, like the chair- and brick-throwing, no more than a fulmination into physical actuality of everything the ANC is becoming under its national leadership: a party of political ruffians. The hysterical and irrational responses of Rasool are tangible proof of that. As the main editorial in the same Sunday Times commented: ‘[Rasool’s] message will encourage the hooligans who still seek to take by force what they failed to win in the municipal elections.” Far too grand to get his own hands on the chairs and bricks, Rasool adopts the next best option, which is to all but openly approve of those who threw them.
Flick over to the ‘Op-Ed” page of the same Sunday Times and see Chris Barron struggle to prise the Table Mountain-sized chip off the shoulder of the ANC Western Cape provincial chairman, James Ngculu. The same subject was under discussion, but all Barron got in response to his questions were eruptions of foetid apparatchik flatulence. ‘We are a party that receives floor-crossers, and when they approach the ANC we won’t reject them.” Or what about this gem: ‘Crossing the floor is a constitutional requirement.”? Or best of all, in answer to Barron’s comment that the Democratic Alliance got more votes than the ANC: ‘More votes I concede. But that doesn’t give it a right.” Obviously Ngculu holds to the divine enablements of kings to revoke the mere wishes of the people. Hats off to Barron for giving Jim enough rope to strangle himself.
And what of the overweening hypocrisy displayed by the national ANC in its watery disapproval of the chairs and bricks. ‘This is not the way the ANC does things,” pontificated Joel Netshitenzhe, the presidency spokesman. What Comrade Joel omitted to acknowledge is that roughneck political behaviour is the predestined corollary to national policies and tactics that play mentor to the actual brick-throwing. When the continual anti-white utterances of ANC politicians so faithfully reproduce those of today’s Zimbabwe, it is no wonder the party thugs behave as they did at Crossroads.
In its now almost paranoiac fear of losing its tenacious centralist control of even the last lonely clerk in the civil service, the ANC has set itself to a sometimes ruthless manipulation of power. Our very Constitution is under siege as the justice ministry tries to get control of the courts. SABC news is the official mouthpiece of the Union Buildings; no one else gets other than token coverage. This obsessive need for power has its obvious penalties. They may be seen in the government’s tardy response to the HIV/Aids pandemic, a lasting national disgrace. The crucial instruments of municipal management are so racked with corruption and ineptitude they have, in some cases, all but ceased to function at anything like a working level. Industry and homes are starved of electricity. In return for this, the CEO of Eskom is paid R30 000 a day, but an appallingly underfunded and badly administered police force is expected to confront the awful realities of crime. Jails are filled to bursting point.
Never mind the sordid excesses of a Brett Kebble, what about the recipients, at the very highest levels of the government, of his looted millions? What of the obscene luxuries of Gautrains and World Cups, the shameless self-enrichment, the appointment to mayoral seats of convicted criminals? Of course there is good work done, but it is slowly being swamped by the bad, like the 25 000 people in Social Welfare who have been ripping off the pensions of the poor.
What is revealing is the bewilderment to be seen in the nowadays eyes of those who donated their lives, intellect, loyalty, sometimes even abandoned personal safety, in their refusals of apartheid and its horrors. Marooned in their disappointments, they stand shocked at the growing excesses of a colder fascism that they would supersede.
On my way to buy the Sunday papers I see children sleeping on the pavements, huddled under cardboard. These shivering and hungry are among the residual casualties of a city council until very recently run by the ANC. Fascinated by the brilliance of his own intentions, Rasool seems blind to such insignificant issues as kids without homes. Getting rid of Helen Zille is all that concerns him.
No fool, our Mr Rasool. He may be sure that if he can get an ANC city council back in power, these children will know that their tenancy of the pavements and gutters is well secured.