State capture: South Africans protested outside the treasury in Pretoria after President Jacob Zuma fired finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy
ANC runs out of time
In the press conferences that took place after the recent Cabinet reshuffle, three things were particularly interesting. The first was that the ANC appeared divided and the fragments, which demonstrated deeply rooted internal factionalism, scattered publicly.
Senior leaders came forward to express their anger and disappointment at how the reshuffle was done. The main issue was that President Jacob Zuma, although he has power to reshuffle Cabinet, did so without consulting the ANC. Party leaders knew the reshuffle would take place and waited for the president to follow due process, but he didn’t.
This led to former minister of finance Pravin Gordhan, his former deputy Mcebisi Jonas, the South African Communist Party, trade union federation Cosatu and senior leaders expressing their thoughts individually. One thing was clear, the party’s official communication channels took a back seat, which demonstrated disunity.
Second, the president, in the midst of opposition and protests, chose to create an imaginary enemy that he could rally the people against. This was so-called white monopoly capital and the convenient solution that Zuma calls radical economic transformation.
These are not new concepts. The Economic Freedom Fighters’ leader, Julius Malema, was an advocate before Zuma. But these were dismissed as not being ANC policies. It indicates that Zuma is under pressure and using every rhetorical device to remain relevant to the people.
After the Constitutional Court ruled that he broke his oath of office by failing to uphold, defend and advance the Constitution in the Nkandla saga, the ANC failed to discipline him for bringing the party into disrepute, a charge that was brought against Malema when he was in the ANC Youth League. This is an indictment of how the president is a law unto himself.
Third, the ANC is degenerating. Its regular national executive committee meetings have turned into catch-up sessions and tea parties with no tangible or decisive resolutions. The party is fighting to survive rather than addressing unemployment, poverty and inequality.
The tripartite alliance is becoming irrelevant, caught up in political infighting. It is difficult to understand its role because workers are not adequately represented. Now that the ANC is limping and bleeding, the opposition parties are regrouping. The ANC will regret not taking decisive action when it had time to do so. Soon it will be too late. – Itumeleng Ntsoelengoe Aphane, Johannesburg
Cool Cape Town with Camissa
I read Sipho Kings’s piece “Why we don’t have cool, clear water” with interest. Having lived down here in the Cape of immense beauty and environmental heritage, I can see our water is equally threatened by man’s inhumanity to our natural water sources.
Up north, mining plays a massive role in river water pollution, as does farming, illegal mining and poor municipal sewage treatment. Much of your water is above ground.
In the Cape, our above-ground water is about to run out. Our dams are empty.
The remaining water source that we have left in the immediate future is the Table Mountain aquifer.
This is the historical reason that Cape Town is situated beneath the shadows of Table Mountain and not at Saldanha Bay. Saldanha is a naturally protected bay with no water. Hence the bays of Table, False and Hout became the destination.
The water? The indigenous people were well aware that this magical Table Mountain had a hidden secret, water. They named it Camissa, which means “sweet water”.
What was there then is still there today. The Newlands spring is a water landmark. Thousands queue up to collect this living water for home consumption. The SAB turns it into beer.
The Table Mountain aquifer, our last water source, is being poisoned by dog poop. Dog walkers fail to take off the mountain what their pets leave behind. The result is Escherichia coli in our water. Water that started off as pure rain from the heavens is now polluted by dogs.
It is staggering in this time of a drought crisis in the Cape that this situation continues. What is the City of Cape Town doing to secure water for its citizens? Desalination on the seaboard and a borehole in the City Bowl?
Google Caron von Zeil’s Reclaim Camissa. The immediate short-term solution lies beneath Table Mountain. – Andrew Pollock, Cape Town